2017 Top 10 IT Issues Recommended Resources

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The items below have been selected to provide further information on the 2017 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 reducing institutional exposure to information security threats
  2. Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
  3. Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
  4. Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
  5. Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
  6. Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
  7. Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resource
  8. Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
  9. Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics
  10. Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission

 

1. Information security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to reducing institutional exposure to information security threats

  • Cybersecurity Initiative. The Cybersecurity Program supports higher education institutions as they improve information security governance, compliance, data protection, and privacy programs.
  • Information Security Guide: Effective Practices and Solutions for Higher Education is a compendium of information providing guidance on effective approaches to the application of information security at institutions of higher education.
  • Information Security Program Assessment Tool. November 2016. This self-assessment tool was created to evaluate the maturity of higher education information security programs using as a framework the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27002:2013 "Information Technology Security Techniques. Code of Practice for Information Security Management."
  • NIST SP 800-171 Compliance Template. September 2016. This compliance template will help institutions map the NIST SP 800-171 requirements to other common security standards used in higher education and provides suggested responses to controls listed in NIST SP 800-171.
  • CDS Spotlight: Information Security. August 2016. This bulletin addresses the current state of information security, specifically addressing budgets and staffing and exploring institutional capacity to provide information security.
  • Higher Education Information Security Awareness Programs. August 2016.
  • IT Risk Register. This register was created to help institutional IT departments get their strategic IT risk management programs off the ground.
  • A Guide to Effective Security Metrics [archived: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2015/7/a-guide-to-effective-security-metric]. June 2015. This guide defines security metrics, describes characteristics of effective metrics, discusses different types of metrics and where they are best used, and provides tips for communicating metrics to executives
  • This Magic Moment: Reflections on Cybersecurity. EDUCAUSE Review, September 2015. This article takes a look at the state of cybersecurity in higher education.
  • Outside the Box: Evolution & Ascent of the CISO. EDUCAUSE Review, December 2014. Over the past decade we've seen increasing executive interest in understanding risks, protecting privacy, and mitigating the impacts of cyberthreats.

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 2. Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion

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3. Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students

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4. Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership

  • Modeling an IT Strategy for Student Success. EDUCAUSE Review, November 2016. For institutions to fully benefit from their investments in student success and to position themselves for continued improvement, IT leadership must get engaged and develop an IT strategy that supports student success and can evolve with the institution’s needs.
  • Culture Change and IT Leadership. EDUCAUSE Review, October 2016. A vice chancellor of information technology for 25 years looks back to review some of the areas that any central IT organization—and its leader—must address in order to succeed more frequently and become more trusted.
  • Enabling Transformative Change. EDUCAUSE Review, October 2016. Building effective leadership teams, for both the institution and the IT organization, can enable transformative change in higher education.
  • Building a Common Technology Vision. EDUCAUSE Review, July 2016. The most effective IT leaders solve institutional problems, not simply IT problems. Their success relies on a shared understanding with institutional leaders on how technology can advance the institutional mission.
  • New Approaches to Higher Education IT Strategic Planning . This paper looks at causes for the shift in how institutions are approaching IT strategic planning and how IT strategic planning relates to overall institutional planning. In addition, new models and trends in IT strategic planning are identified to help guide IT organizations as they are considering their own strategic planning approach.

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5. Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth

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

  •  Learning Data Privacy Principles and Recommended Practices [webinar]. December 2016. The University of California’s Educational Technology Leadership Committee drafted the UC Learning Data Privacy Principles and Recommended Practices to assist campuses and service providers gather, store, and protect this data using ethical and secure measures.
  • The Higher Education CPO Primer, Part 1: A Welcome Kit for Chief Privacy Officers in Higher Education. November 2016. The Higher Education Chief Privacy Officers Working Group has created this resource to serve as a welcome kit for CPOs in higher education.
  • Data Protection Primer for Higher Education: Environmental Considerations, Culture, and Practices. June 2016. Data protection demands proactive consideration of numerous issues and cultural shifts, even as data protection tools and practices evolve. The variety and volume of institutional data are phenomenal, and data management is increasingly decentralized.
  • Addressing Information Security and Privacy in Postsecondary Education Data Systems. EDUCAUSE Review, May 2016. Any national postsecondary education data system will contain a large collection of data that can provide useful and reliable information about postsecondary student success and outcomes. The security and privacy of that data are paramount concerns.
  • Establishing Data Stewardship Models. ECAR, 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 Chief Data Officer in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Review, June 2015. The role of chief data officer meets two urgent needs on campus: leading data administration efforts and building analytics capacity to drive decisions with data.
  • 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.
  • Good BI Governance Is Just Good Business. EDUCAUSE Review, December 2013. Business intelligence success is contingent on three key concepts: the nature and drivers of BI, the quality of the BI governance model, and the operating culture in higher education. Good governance plays a critical role by ensuring a nimble BI enterprise that minimizes decision delays and leads to customer delight.

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7. Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources

  • Innovative Cooperation, at Scale: An Interview with Michael M. Crow. EDUCAUSE Review, October 2016. The Arizona State University president talks about student success, technology changes in recent years, institutional transformation at scale, cooperation within higher education, personalized learning, and analytics.
  • The Impact of Cloud Implementations on Budget Strategies. EDUCAUSE Review, September 2016. To manage the financial challenges of developing a cloud strategy, make a compelling business case, communicate clearly with the rest of the institution, use governance for decision making, align with institutional mission, and pay attention to risk.
  • Aligning IT Funding Models to the Pace of Technology Change: Enabling Financial Flexibility for Core, Flexible, and Transformative Services. ECAR, December 2015. The results of a collaboration between technology and business officers provide guidance and suggestions to help institutions make smart, informed decisions about their IT investments.
  • 2016 College Affordability Diagnosis National Report [https://irhe.gse.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Natl_Affordability2016.pdf]. This report provides a tough look at college opportunity in the United States today: A postsecondary education is no longer affordable for many low- and middle-income students and their families.
  • Engaging Alumni and Students Using Online Education Technology. EDUCAUSE Review, November 9, 2015. Small, undergraduate liberal arts colleges can take advantage of technologies used in massive open online courses offered by larger research universities to create small, private online courses.
  • Competency-Based Education Technology Challenges and Opportunities. EDUCAUSE Review, October 12, 2015. Growth in competency-based education has been stymied by a lack of software support. The Technical Interoperability Pilot incorporates vendor engagement on finding solutions that work together seamlessly to support the scale and operational integrity required to sustain accreditors' and regulators' scrutiny of CBE programs.

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8. Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows

  • Higher Education IT Salary Report, 2016. October 2016. The topic of higher education IT salaries is briefly explored in this ECAR report.
  • Retaining the Higher Education IT Workforce. EDUCAUSE Review, June 2016. Lessons from the research report The Higher Education IT Workforce Landscape, 2016 provide helpful guidance on how colleges and universities can retain IT workers and avoid unnecessary employee turnover.
  • The IT Workforce in Higher Education, 2016. ECAR, March 2016. This research focuses on the evolving IT workforce needed to support contemporary models of IT service delivery and the emerging world of analytics.
  • 2015 CDS Benchmarking Report, March 2016. The 2015 Core Data Service Benchmarking Report summarizes key findings from the CDS 2015 survey, provides a glimpse into the breadth of CDS data, and ultimately provides you with an opportunity to conduct your own benchmarking assessment.
  • Technology in Higher Education: Guiding Aspiring Leaders. February 2016. In May 2015 EDUCAUSE and Jisc convened a new working group of 10 U.K. and U.S. IT leaders and challenged them to explore the question, “How do we best prepare the next generation to lead?”
  • 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. ECAR, 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.

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9. Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics

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10. Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission

  • Adapting to Learn, Learning to Adapt. ECAR, September 2016. The University of Central Florida (UCF) has been engaged in online learning for more than two decades and was drawn to adaptive learning based on the belief that a combination of well-designed courses and a capable adaptive learning platform could lead to increased rates of student success.
  • Lessons Learned From Early Implementations of Adaptive Courseware [https://library.educause.edu/resources/2016/6/lessons-learned-from-early-implementations-of-adaptive-courseware]. SRI International, April 2016. To address the urgent need to improve student outcomes in developmental and general education courses, higher education institutions are turning to new learning technologies. Prominent among these is adaptive learning courseware that uses computer algorithms to parse learning analytic data collected as students interact with online learning environments.
  • Personalized Learning as a Team Sport: What IT Professionals Need to Know. EDUCAUSE Review, April 2016. Personalized learning holds considerable promise for higher education, and reaping the benefits of personalized learning depends on broad participation of various groups across campus, including faculty, senior leaders, and IT professionals.
  • Adaptive Learning Platforms: Creating a Path for Success. EDUCAUSE Review, March 2016. Colorado Technical University began piloting courses with adaptive learning in early 2012, launching its adaptive learning platform, intellipath. The increases in student success markers like grades, retention, and engagement justify their new path.
  • 2016 Students and Technology Research Study. This hub provides findings from the 2016 student study.
  • Leadership for Teaching and Learning: More Choices, More Complexities, New Models. ELI, October 2015. This paper discusses the role of the leader in teaching and learning initiatives, looking for elements and activities that contribute to success.
  • 2015 Student and Faculty Technology Research Studies, December 2015. This ECAR hub contains the 2015 student and faculty studies from the EDUCAUSE Technology Research in the Academic Community research series.
  • Engaging Faculty as Catalysts for Change: A Roadmap for Transforming Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Review, February 2013. The Faculty Fellowship Program at the University of Minnesota aims to implement effectively the thoughtful and innovative application of educational technologies.

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