2016 Top 10 IT Issues Resources



The items below have been selected to provide further information on the 2016 top 10 IT issues. These resources may include articles, conference presentation materials, blogs, feeds, webinar archives, and podcasts that you can access by browsing and searching particular issues and topics in the EDUCAUSE Library.

  1. Information Security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to information security to create a secure network, develop security policies, and reduce institutional exposure to information security threats.
  2. Optimizing Educational Technology: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to understand and support innovations and changes in education and to optimize the use of technology in teaching and learning, including understanding the appropriate level of technology to use.
  3. Student Success Technologies: Improving student outcomes through an institutional approach that strategically leverages technology.
  4. IT Workforce Hiring and Retention: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows.
  5. Institutional Data Management: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance.
  6. IT Funding Models: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth.
  7. BI and Analytics: Developing effective methods for business intelligence, reporting, and analytics to ensure they are relevant to institutional priorities and decision making and can be easily accessed and used by administrators, faculty, and students.
  8. Enterprise Application Integrations: Integrating enterprise applications and services to deliver systems, services, processes, and analytics that are scalable and constituent centered.
  9. IT Organizational Development: Creating an IT organization structure, staff roles, and staff-development strategy that are flexible enough to support innovation and accommodate ongoing changes in higher education, IT service delivery, technology, analytics, and so forth.
  10. E-Learning and Online Education: Providing scalable and well-resourced e-learning services, facilities, and staff to support increased access to and expansion of online education.

 

1. Information Security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to information security to create a secure network, develop security policies, and reduce institutional exposure to information security threats.

 

2. Optimizing Educational Technology: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to understand and support innovations and changes in education and to optimize the use of technology in teaching and learning, including understanding the appropriate level of technology to use.

 

3. Student Success Technologies: Improving student outcomes through an institutional approach that strategically leverages technology.

 

4. IT Workforce Hiring and Retention: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows.

  • "The Tech Talent Wars and #WomenInTech," EDUCAUSE Review, October 12, 2015. To win the war for top IT talent, college and university leaders need a strategy for coming out ahead in one key battle: the paucity of women earning degrees in technology and pursuing related careers.
  • Transforming the IT Organization (August 2015), the third paper in the "Preparing the IT organization for the Cloud" addresses the impact that cloud computing is making in the evolution of the changing roles of IT staff in higher education.
  • The Chief Information Officer in Higher Education, 2015 Reports, ECAR, July 20, 2015. This study provides information about higher education CIOs' attributes, education, experience, and effectiveness and about the technology professionals who are likely to replace these CIOs.
  • "Developing a Meaningful Labor Cost Estimate," EDUCAUSE Review, April 27, 2015. Because in-house labor expenses can consume more than half of the IT budget, it is essential for IT leaders to understand labor's cost, productivity, and impact.
  • Retaining Your IT Staff: Insights from the ECAR Workforce Study for Higher Education CIOs and IT Managers, August 14, 2014. This research bulletin uses data from ECAR's study on the higher education IT workforce to provide CIOs and managers with an understanding of the demographic makeup of today's higher education IT staff; the professional activities and skills staff consider important to their success; factors that underlie staff retention; and recommendations for creating a better work environment, increasing staff motivation, and facilitating staff retention.
  • Today's Higher Education IT Workforce, January 2014. This ECAR research incorporates results from a comprehensive survey on more than 2,000 IT professionals as well as focus groups to provide a description of the current state of today's IT workforce, how it has changed in the past three years, and what changes may need to be implemented to retain and strengthen IT staff.
  • "The 4Rs of Metric System Design," EDUCAUSE Review, September 2013. The four rights (4Rs) approach focuses on measuring the right things in the right way and taking the right actions at the right time.
  • 2014 CDS Benchmarking Report, February 25, 2015. These annual reports summarize results from the annual EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) survey, which provide a detailed look at the most pertinent and interesting IT financial and staffing findings, with a high-level summary of the state of IT services.
  • "IT Career Development of the Future," EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2013. As colleges and universities move away from directly supporting services to outsourcing services, and as legacy technology skills fade, the author asks, what new opportunities will emerge? How do we build staff members' skills to make that transition and encourage self-development?
  • 7 Things You Should Know About ITIL, EDUCAUSE 7 Things brief, October 2010. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework for guiding the design and delivery of IT services.

5. Institutional Data Management: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance.

  • Establishing Data Stewardship Models, December 2015. This paper provides guidance on establishing a data stewardship program for administrative data. It clarifies the different types of data stewards and managers and their roles and responsibilities, where they reside in an organization, how they work with colleagues to ensure that the data are maintained, and what special skills or training are needed to meet both university responsibilities and best practices.
  • The Compelling Case for Data Governance, ECAR, March 17, 2015. This paper is intended to serve as a conversation starter among stakeholders and executives about the importance of having well-planned data governance.
  • BI Reporting, Data Warehouse Systems, and Beyond, ECAR bulletin, April 23, 2014.
  • Resources for Presidents and Senior Executives: Administrative Systems and Services, September 15, 2014
  • EDUCAUSE Higher Education IT Assessment and Benchmarking Projects [http://www.educause.edu/focus-areas-and-initiatives/enterprise-and-infrastructure/higher-education-it-assessment-and-benchmarking-projects]
  • The NACUBO/EDUCAUSE Working Group on Administrative Services and Systems, February 2014. This working group final report identified a broad set of proposals that EDUCAUSE and NACUBO might pursue to drive greater administrative cost-effectiveness across higher education
  • Five IT Questions Presidents Should Ask Their CIOs, EDUCAUSE Review, December 2013. To provide a framework that presidents and CIOs can use to discuss technology, we queried a number of presidents, CIOs, and other institutional leaders and identified the following five basic IT questions that presidents should ask their CIOs.
  • Substantive Collaboration: Are We Ready to Lead?, EDUCAUSE Review, December 2013. Can campus IT leaders drive a collaboration transformation both within our individual institutions and collectively with peers?
  • The 4Rs of Metric System Design, EDUCAUSE Review, September 2013. When annual service satisfaction survey scores for students, faculty, and employees is less than 50 percent and descending, significant change and process improvement are required. This was the challenge facing the Yale University CIO, and the impetus for a new metric design and service improvement plan. This case study shares one of the initiatives implemented to address this challenge.
  • IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects, EDUCAUSE paper, 2012.The author points out that achieving both greater efficiency and better outcomes through information technology requires a commitment to fundamental, unfettered thinking about the future both within and outside current institutions.

6. IT Funding Models: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth.

7. BI and Analytics: Developing effective methods for business intelligence, reporting, and analytics to ensure they are relevant to institutional priorities and decision making and can be easily accessed and used by administrators, faculty, and students.

8. Enterprise Application Integrations: Integrating enterprise applications and services to deliver systems, services, processes, and analytics that are scalable and constituent centered.

9. IT Organizational Development: Creating an IT organization structure, staff roles, and staff-development strategy that are flexible enough to support innovation and accommodate ongoing changes in higher education, IT service delivery, technology, analytics, and so forth.

  • Leading Change in Higher Ed IT, December 7, 2015. IT personnel often struggle with change more than people working in other areas. In particular, they perceive a lack of personal influence on their larger group or the overall enterprise.
  • Preparing the IT Organization for the Cloud, May 7, 2015. The third paper in this series, Transforming the IT Organization, addresses the impact that cloud computing is making in the evolution of the changing roles of IT staff in higher education.
  • Developing a Meaningful Labor Cost Estimate, April 27, 2015. Because in-house labor expenses can consume more than half of the IT budget, it is essential for IT leaders to understand labor's cost, productivity, and impact.
  • Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader, April 27, 2015. IT is simultaneously more challenging, relevant, and exciting than ever; leading IT requires unique characteristics and capabilities. But what qualities make for a successful IT leader in this environment?
  • Higher Ed Tech Talent: Get 'Em, Keep 'Em (If You Can), February 9, 2015. The hiring search for technically skilled employees to join institutional IT departments encounters multiple challenges, including the disparity in salaries for technology jobs between higher education and industry.
  • "The New Leadership Challenge," EDUCAUSE Review, December 2014. Today's IT leaders need a different set of skills than their predecessors to thrive in an era of commoditized and democratized technology. Collaboration, innovation, and strategic alignment with institutional goals are essential to their own success—and that of their institutions—particularly in a time of profound budgetary challenges

10. E-Learning and Online Education: Providing scalable and well-resourced e-learning services, facilities, and staff to support increased access to and expansion of online education.