Copyright 1997 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 2, Summer 1997, p. 2. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

From the Editor

Nearly twenty years ago, CAUSE/EFFECT was launched to address issues of interest to higher education information systems professionals and to provide them a vehicle for professional development through publication. Back then, CAUSE had just been redefined as The Professional Association for Development, Use, and Management of Information Systems in Higher Education. Content focus in those early journal days revolved around the importance of information systems to managing colleges and universities, especially to strategic planning and support for decision-making.

While those issues are still of concern to CAUSE members, in more recent years, CAUSE/EFFECT, like the association, has broadened its purview to the management and use of information resources -- a term the association adopted in 1994 to encompass information and services, as well as technology. Among today's professional challenges are the following:

(1) The need to restructure central information technology organizations to better accommodate user support in a distributed technology environment, including partnering with departmental technology support personnel and restructuring IT job designs and classifications.

(2) The need to promote and develop an institutional technology architecture, as well as an institutional information architecture, based on campuswide standards, to facilitate support, access, authentication, encryption, directory services, electronic commerce, and so forth.

(3) The need to integrate planning for information technology into the institutional planning process, to ensure congruence with academic program directions as well as institutional strategies for reengineering administration.

(4) The need to rethink current models for financing the acquisition of information resources, given technology life cycles and the increasing digitization of information resources, and to develop cost models for the delivery of technology-based education on and off campus.

(5) The need to address the myriad policy issues that arise in the rapidly changing networked information environment.

Articles in this issue of CAUSE/EFFECT address a number of these management challenges, beginning with Celeste Giunta's update on the information technology job design and reclassification project begun by the California State University System three years ago and now fully implemented. Her article provides lessons learned that should be helpful to other campuses seeking to change their IT personnel structures.

Two other articles focus on new technology support models. Babson College has established a "peripatetic help desk" support staff who roam the halls providing local help, while at Emory University a new Indirect Support Team has revolutionized the concept of supporting local technology support staff by improving communications with and building a community of such staff; informing, empowering, and training this community; and promoting the growth of this local support model throughout the University.

Charles R. Thomas, CAUSE's founding executive director, has contributed an article to this issue in which he advocates the establishment of an institutional information architecture as the basis for a campus data warehouse initiative. He laments that too often data warehouse projects are begun as departmental initiatives rather than to support an enterprise-wide approach to information resources management.

Finally, David Stones offers a description of the server that the University of Texas at Austin has established to provide higher education institutions a convenient and secure mechanism to use electronic data interchange standards for exchanging student transcripts via the Internet. His article encourages institutions to take the steps necessary to make secure electronic commerce a reality in student services in the near future.

In addition to this issue's features, half a dozen other articles offer informative and/or challenging perspectives on a number of current concerns-from Internet2 applications and new models for software licenses, to issues raised by virtual universities, universal network access, and intellectual standards in our industry.

One closing note that may explain the somewhat nostalgic opening of this column Having been the editor of this journal for fifteen years, I am about to turn over the reins to CAUSE's incoming Director of Publishing and Communications Services, James Roche, former senior editor at the American Association for Community Colleges. As Jim begins his editorial reign this month, please welcome him and send your comments and suggestions for CAUSE/EFFECT and other publications to [email protected]. It has been my pleasure -- and a wonderfully rewarding experience -- to edit and publish CAUSE/EFFECT through the years. I look forward now to new challenges as CAUSE's Director of Research and Development, and to working with Jim and my other colleagues at CAUSE to continue the association's dedication to delivering high-quality products and services.

Julia A. Rudy, Editor

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