Indiana University: What Presidents Should Know About Integration of Intormation Technologies on Campus Background Paper for HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #1 "WHAT PRESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ON CAMPUS" Prepared by representatives of INDIANA UNIVERSITY Thomas Ehrlich President James G. Neal Dean of University Libraries Polley Ann McClure Associate Vice President for Information Resources _______________________________________________________ Copyright 1992 by HEIRA. The Executive Strategies reports are published by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance), based on background papers prepared by teams of contributing editors from institutions of higher education. This material may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credit to the HEIRAlliance, which is a vehicle for cooperative projects between the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM. _______________________________________________________ In our discussion of this topic, we address integration from two perspectives: 1) the convergence and integration of information technologies with one another, and 2) the need to fully integrate the use of information technology into the fabric of our academic institutions. We see information technologies as encompassing a rapidly evolving set of tools, increasingly based upon computers, that we use to gather and manipulate information. These technologies can be powerful amplifiers of the human intellect and its academic work. It is this quality that distinguishes them in our academic processes from such tools as typewriters and copying machines. We have distilled our ideas on both aspects of the topic into the following set of observations. Though we present our points serially here, the interconnections among them are many. 1. In past decades, information technologies were distinct and independent of one another. Today's technologies are converging in common digital formats and processes. With this convergence come both problems and opportunities for university presidents. The problems spring from the fact that our institutions were organized around these historically separate technologies. On the other hand, with reorganizing to encompass new technologies comes the opportunity to leverage for organizational transformation and improved academic productivity. 2. Inherent in the structure of a university are centrifugal forces that seek to pull that structure apart. Among these is the very diversity the university seeks to encourage. Also challenging the university's structure is the fact that its faculty takes part in intellectual disciplines that are global in nature, rather than local to the university. Further, faculty act within their universities as "independent contractors." Information technology can act as a glue that helps bring together the divergent parts of a university. 3. These centrifugal forces make it difficult to design an infrastructure to support an integrated information technology. To wit: faculty need hardware and software that is dictated by their academic work more than they need to be part of the fabric of their universities. 4. The climate of diversity in which we work is bound to continue for the foreseeable future. Different disciplines need different technologies. The sciences will continue to depend on supercomputing technologies; history and literature will need full-text and textual database software; music counts on sound data; and art and geography count on graphics. Further, technology is adopted at different rates across disciplines, and plays different roles within them. Even within disciplines, there exist various technological "cultures." 5. Setting technological standards is encouraging university-wide integration. As national standards evolve, integration becomes easier because local and discipline-specific standards converge. 6. Many university presidents are countering the tendencies toward disintegration of their information resource fabric by appointing high-level administrators to coordinate and lead the evolution of their information resource environment. Approximately one third of the institutions responding to the 1992 CAUSE IT survey report having a CIO position at the present time. The plans and policies these administrators develop need to be university wide, and should include the architectures and standards that can support decentralized decision making. 7. If university presidents do create such offices, then abandon them to their CIOs, there is a high risk of failure. Information technology is a university's "intellectual circulatory system." As such, all administrators must learn and attend to its development. CIOs can build awareness, but cannot be the sole points of responsibility. Presidents must stay involved. 8. New information technology applications will support collaborative scholarship, both within disciplines (across the globe) and across disciplines (across our campuses and multicampus universities). These collaborations will increasingly span higher education, government, and commercial sectors. 9. There is now sufficient computing "horsepower" for use by individuals that information technology tools can make important contributions to the teaching/learning process. This horsepower will create rich, multi-media information bases that instructors and their students can explore. These information bases transcend traditional place-bound information. And the technology makes it possible to push outward our classroom walls to include not only new data, but new sets of students, interactively, in the discovery process. 10. Integration is allowing us to focus on data as an institutional resource. A decade ago, administrative information systems were developed for the needs of such administrative service departments as registrars and accounting departments, using technology platforms that were not accessible from the academic side of the institution. Today we can provide access to the information these systems create and offer it as an institutional resource for faculty and academic managers. Now, when we develop new systems, our focus must include developing the policies and tools these new customers will use to access institutional data. We must also focus attention on effective ways of organizing the data so they can be stored efficiently and used effectively. 11. Integrating information technologies can ensure that information is channeled to presidents in answer to their questions. But it is up to the presidents to decide which questions need answering. 12. With decentralized control over information resource decisions, universities risk missing important opportunities to enhance services and/or reduce costs. As information technologies continue rapidly to converge, universities need to be vigilant about adjusting the mechanisms that maintain these technologies, to keep them efficient and to minimize wasteful and destructive turf wars and political strife. For example, many universities have found it beneficial to merge their once separate administrative and academic computing organizations, finding today that their equipment and activities are more similar than different. Nearly 60% of the univertities responding to the 91- 92 CAUSE ID survey indicated that they had a merged academic and administrative computing organization. Most of these merged organizations reported to the CIO. Focussing overall responsibility for information resources at a high level in the administration is an efficient way to identify and respond to these opportunities. Lacking such an office, the office of the president may be the only point in the organization where the reporting lines of authority for these once distinct functions now intersect. Most presidents do not have time to directly manage the development of information resources for their institutions. Following are some examples of what such management entails: A. Printing in computer centers, duplicating centers, printing centers, departmental offices and users' desktops. B. Transport of voice, video, and data. C. Proliferation of printed reports from all sources. D. Responsibility for census and other online databases in libraries, computer centers, and social science research centers. E. Shifting responsibility for visual and audio media as these become digital. F. Support for access to networked information off campus. 13. A very important activity of an information resources office is developing the institution's strategic plan for information resources. This activity provides an important opportunity for broad-ranging discussion and consensus-building, and serves as a roadmap to guide the evolution of the institution's infrastructure. 14. If information technology is to be integrated into the academic mission, two things need to be in place: an effective infrastructure within the institution, and appropriate means for faculty development and support. To build effective infrastructures, universities need to recruit and develop system development and technical expertise. Today's marketplace for this human resource is highly competitive. Faculty development and support programs should take into account the diversity across academic disciplines in technological needs and expectations, speed of adoption, and the variety of applications. Technology managers frequently tend to focus on technology, and leave development and support to chance. This may be the most frequent reason institutions fail to realize fully the benefits of the investments they make. 15. Academic goals must lead information resource priorities, not vice versa. Instead of focusing on building a great technological enterprise that may or may not serve the academic mission, many presidents appoint a faculty member as CIO to facilitate applying appropriate technology to building a great academic enterprise. 16. We placed much of our focus on information technology over the last decade on automating the university's administrative functions. Our focus for the next decade should be on making strategic new investments that will increase academic productivity and will re- engineer the administrative processes of the institutions for greater efficiency. 17. In past decades, the central information infrastructure for higher education was focused upon one or more mainframe computers. Our focus in the '90s should turn to networks and workstations and to information as an institutional resource. 18. Difficult budget times cannot be allowed to deter us from pursuing strategically important investments in information technology. 19. All presidents should begin to require cost-benefit analyses and assessment mechanisms to help their institutions learn about the real benefits of investments in information technology. Hard-core academic benefits are especially difficult to quantify. Attention should be given to ways of recouping some of the benefits (especially in administrative support) in order to fund the technology investments that promise to yield them.