2020 Top 10 IT Issues Recommended Resources

The items below have been selected to provide further information on the 2020 Top 10 IT Issues. These resources may include articles, blogs, community groups, conference presentation materials, feeds, and webinar archives that you can access by browsing and searching particular issues and topics in the EDUCAUSE Library.

Information Security Strategy: Developing a risk-based security strategy that effectively detects, responds to, and prevents security threats and challenges
Privacy: Safeguarding institutional constituents' privacy rights and maintaining accountability for protecting all types of restricted data
Sustainable Funding: Developing funding models that can maintain quality and accommodate both new needs and the growing use of IT services in an era of increasing budget constraints
Digital Integrations: Ensuring system interoperability, scalability, and extensibility, as well as data integrity, security, standards, and governance, across multiple applications and platforms
Student-Centric Higher Education: Creating a student-services ecosystem to support the entire student life cycle, from prospecting to enrollment, learning, job placement, alumni engagement, and continuing education
Student Retention and Completion: Developing the capabilities and systems to incorporate artificial intelligence into student services to provide personalized, timely support
Improved Enrollment: Using technology, data, and analytics to develop an inclusive and financially sustainable enrollment strategy to serve more and new learners by personalizing recruitment, enrollment, and learning experiences
Higher Education Affordability: Aligning IT organizations‚ priorities, and resources with institutional priorities and resources to achieve a sustainable future
Administrative Simplification: Applying user-centered design, process improvement, and system reengineering to reduce redundant or unnecessary efforts and improve end-user experiences
The Integrative CIO: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner of institutional leadership in supporting institutional missions

1. Information Security Strategy: Developing a risk-based security strategy that effectively detects, responds to, and prevents security threats and challenges

The EDUCAUSE Information Security Almanac 2019. This two-page, easy-to-scan almanac shares the most important EDUCAUSE data regarding the state of information security, privacy, and identity management in higher education. Data for this almanac are derived from the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service 2018 survey.
Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT). Updated November 2019. This tool was created to evaluate the security of third-party vendor and cloud solutions. It helps higher education institutions ensure that cloud services are appropriately assessed for security and privacy needs, including some that are unique to higher education.
Information Security Program Assessment Tool. Updated July 2018. 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."
IT Risk Register. This register was created to help institutional IT departments get their strategic IT risk management programs off the ground.
The Higher Education Information Security Council (HEISC) works to improve information security, data protection, and privacy programs across the higher education sector through its volunteers and focused partnerships with government, industry, and other academic organizations.
Toolkit for New CISOs, a resource developed by members of the Higher Education Information Security Council.
Security Community Group. This group provides a forum to identify problems and share strategies or solutions as colleges and universities continue to improve information security governance, compliance, data protection, and privacy programs.
Security Matters. This EDUCAUSE Review column covers everything related to information security, privacy, and risk in higher education.
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2. Privacy: Safeguarding institutional constituents' privacy rights and maintaining accountability for protecting all types of restricted data

The Higher Education CPO Primer, Part 1. This welcome kit was developed for chief privacy officers in higher education.
The Higher Education Chief Privacy Officer Primer, Part 2. This roadmap was developed for chief privacy officers in higher education.
Education before Regulation: Empowering Students to Question Their Data Privacy. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. In higher education, we must work not only toward providing better security around student data but also toward educating students about the need to critically evaluate how their data is used and how to participate in shaping data privacy practices and policies.
Take Charge of Your Online Reputation. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Advice for students entering the job market is equally applicable to those in other career stages looking to successfully manage their online reputations.
7 Things You Should Know About GDPR. 2018. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) confers numerous rights upon data subjects who are located in the EU, including the "right to be forgotten."
Privacy Community Group. This group provides a forum on privacy issues and challenges in higher education. Discussion topics include the intersection of IT and privacy, as well as privacy issues related to security, surveillance, analytics/big data, compliance, policies, internet of things, etc.
Policy Spotlight. This EDUCAUSE Review blog focuses on IT policy issues affecting higher education.
Security Matters. This EDUCAUSE Review column covers everything related to information security, privacy, and risk in higher education.
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3. Sustainable Funding: Developing funding models that can maintain quality and accommodate both new needs and the growing use of IT services in an era of increasing budget constraints

Evolution at the University of Alaska SWOIT. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Faced with massive budget cuts, a distributed bureaucracy, and resistance to change, the University of Alaska Statewide Office of Information Technology found success by focusing on small improvements that are paving the way for significant future progress.
ELive! Webinar | Budget Fundamentals for the First-Time Manager. 2019. This webinar discusses foundational tools to help a first-time manager excel in the new role.
Complexity: A Leader's Framework for Understanding and Managing Change in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Complex adaptive systems offer higher education leaders a framework for understanding dramatic systemic change as well as approaches to engaging, managing, and driving change.
Understanding Costs and Value. This collection of resources is compiled from the Enterprise IT Program.
The Power of a Higher Education Consortium. EDUCAUSE Review, 2017. The future requires having a keen eye for truly differentiated needs and opportunities and the ability to move with agility in and out of those spaces. It means knowing that evolving digital workflows might require changes in governance, processes, or pedagogy, and the value of extensions to infrastructure.
In Enterprise Technology Operations, Sometimes It's Not What We Buy but How We Buy It. EDUCAUSE Review, 2017. Given the changes in today's educational marketplace, to succeed institutions need to collaborate and look deeper into not only where technology dollars are spent but also how they are spent.
Aligning IT Funding Models to the Pace of Technology Change: Enabling Financial Flexibility for Core, Flexible, and Transformative Services. 2015. ECAR brought together a group of high-level IT and finance leaders from a wide range of institutions to work together to understand how to better align IT funding models to the pace of technology change. The results of this collaboration between technology and business officers provide guidance and suggestions to help institution.
Advancing without New Resources. EDUCAUSE Review, 2014. How can the IT organization address the increasing demands without new resources? By making a list of the top 10 things it wants to accomplish and a list of the top 10 ways it might find resources to accomplish those things.
Maximizing Value in a Time of Change. EDUCAUSE paper, 2014. This EDUCAUSE/NACUBO Administrative IT Summit 2014 report provides several recommendations for how institutions can maximize the value of administrative IT
Core Data Service. CDS benchmarking helps IT leaders make decisions by providing peer data comparisons, including IT budgets and spending.
CIO Community Group. This group engages in discussions of issues and challenges that affect chief information officers in higher education.
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4. Digital Integrations: Ensuring system interoperability, scalability, and extensibility, as well as data integrity, security, standards, and governance, across multiple applications and platforms

10 Best Practices to Ensure Data-Governance Efforts Will Fail, Plus 10 Best Practices for Success. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. The authors highlight common challenges surrounding data management and governance in today's higher education institutions by offering both tongue-in-cheek and serious best practices.
Architecting the IT Organization. EDUCAUSE, 2019. IT organizations are pursuing growth in three fundamental practice areas—enterprise architecture (EA), IT governance, and IT service management (ITSM)—to direct the development and delivery of IT services that maximize value to the institution and ensure alignment with its goals.
Getting Ready for Digital Transformation: Change Your Culture, Workforce, and Technology. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. The digital transformation of higher education is at hand. Leaders must prepare their institutions now to take strategic advantage of the coming shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.
Addressing New Challenges of Data Ingestion. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Institutions that hope to use analytics to make better decisions must develop the architecture and processes to work efficiently with data from disparate sources.
Integrating Data and Systems, 2018. Next-generation enterprise IT efforts aim for agility, scalability, cost effectiveness, and effective analytics. Integration of data across multiple systems is a key element of the work.
Supporting Analytics through Data Integration and Governance. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. IT leaders describe how their institutions have used governance best practices to support institutional analytics initiatives.
Enterprise Architecture Practices: A Holistic Approach for Planning Next Generation Services. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Next Generation Digital Learning Environments and Next Generation Enterprise IT platforms have many common features and capabilities and, most importantly, need many of the same technical environment underpinnings.
Digital Capabilities in Higher Education, 2017. 2019. Using data from EDUCAUSE Core Data Service maturity and deployment indices, the Digital Capabilities in Higher Education reports are designed to provide a view into the current status of digital capabilities within higher education.
A Shift in Focus: Preparing for a Service-Centric Future. This report summarizes the EDUCAUSE/NACUBO 2016 Enterprise IT Summit.
EDUCAUSE Enterprise IT Program
Dx: Digital Transformation in Higher Education
Data Governance and Chief Data Officers Community Group. This group is a venue for data governance managers—and open to those seeking to initiate data governance programs.
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5. Student-Centric Higher Education: Creating a student-services ecosystem to support the entire student life cycle, from prospecting to enrollment, learning, job placement, alumni engagement, and continuing education

ECAR Study of Community College Students and Information Technology and 2019 Students and Technology Research Study. 2019. These ECAR research studies explore technology ownership, use patterns, and expectations as they relate to the student experience.
Online Student Services: What, Where, Who, When, How, and Most Importantly, Why. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Implementing student services for online students involves answering the basic, but nonetheless complex, questions of what, where, who, when, how, and why.
Digital Transformation: What Is It? EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. As in other industries, four elements are driving digital transformation in education: customer experience, competitiveness, profitability, and agility.
Gameful Design: A Potential Game Changer. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Gameful design embraces incremental implementations of proven intrinsic motivators while it acknowledges, accentuates, and builds on the work that good instructors do as second nature.
Unbundling and Rebundling Higher Education in an Age of Inequality. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Unbundling and rebundling are happening in different parts of college and university education, through new forms of teaching and learning provision and in different parts of the degree path, in every dimension and aspect—creating a complicated environment in an educational sector that is already in a state of disequilibrium.
Using Process Mapping to Redesign the Student Experience. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. This low-cost, low-tech tool brings people together to improve discrete processes and cumulatively create broader change.
Using Telepresence Robots to Support Students Facing Adversity. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Telepresence robotics allows students who are temporarily unable to attend their classes to continue participating remotely.
CIO Community Group. This group engages in discussions of issues and challenges that affect chief information officers in higher education
Student Success Analytics Community Group. This group provides a forum for people from educational institutions, organizations, and providers serving them who are actively planning or implementing analytics initiative aimed at improving student success.
Dx: Digital Transformation of Higher Education. This EDUCAUSE initiative seeks to help IT leaders play a critical role in helping their institutions understand the urgency and potential of digital transformation and designing the architecture and infrastructure that will enable it.

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6. Student Retention and Completion: Developing the capabilities and systems to incorporate artificial intelligence into student services to provide personalized, timely support

2019 Horizon Report. 2019. This report profiles six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology as ranked by an expert panel of leaders from across the higher education landscape.
2019 Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. 2019. This study presents important findings from EDUCAUSE's 2019 research on students and information technology. It also provides technology and higher education leaders with recommendations for addressing students' most pressing technology support and solution needs, with the goal of enriching students' learning experiences on campus and helping to advance student success. See also the ECAR Study of Community College Students and Information Technology (2019).
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Applications, Promise and Perils, and Ethical Questions. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. What are the benefits and challenges of using artificial intelligence to promote student success, improve retention, streamline enrollment, and better manage resources in higher education?
Designing a Digital Learning Environment for the University of Wisconsin System. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. With its LMS contract set to expire, the University of Wisconsin System set out to reimagine its systemwide learning technology platform to better harness both technology and data in order to maximize student success.
Findings from the Time for Class Toolkit. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Digital learning continues to become more mainstream as an increasing number of colleges and universities look for ways to fully integrate technology into innovative instructional practices and enhance the educational experience.
Principles for the Responsible Design of Automated Student Support. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Higher education's digital transformation is creating bright opportunities for automated student support, and it's time we consider how to design these automated systems in principled, responsible ways.
Student Success: 3 Big Questions. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Colleges and universities embrace the aspiration of student success yet are still grappling with big questions about how to define, measure, and structure student success, all while keeping the student at the center.
Using AI to Help Students Learn "How to College". EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Artificial intelligence can help students learn "how to college." This sets them on the path to graduation and to success far beyond the college or university.
Adaptive Learning Unplugged: Why Instructors Matter More than Ever. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Far from replacing instructors, adaptive learning gives them the data they need to engage students in new ways.
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7. Improved Enrollment: Using technology, data, and analytics to develop an inclusive and financially sustainable enrollment strategy to serve more and new learners by personalizing recruitment, enrollment, and learning experiences

7 Things You Should Know About Enrollment Management. 2019. Enrollment management is a comprehensive process for achieving optimal institutional outcomes for student recruitment, retention, and graduation.
2019 Horizon Report. 2019. This report profiles six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology as ranked by an expert panel of leaders from across the higher education landscape.
2019 Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. 2019. This study presents important findings from EDUCAUSE's 2019 research on students and information technology. It also provides technology and higher education leaders with recommendations for addressing students' most pressing technology support and solution needs, with the goal of enriching students' learning experiences on campus and helping to advance student success. See also the ECAR Study of Community College Students and Information Technology. 2019.
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Applications, Promise and Perils, and Ethical Questions. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. What are the benefits and challenges of using artificial intelligence to promote student success, improve retention, streamline enrollment, and better manage resources in higher education?
Catching the Waves: Technology and the Community College. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Four waves of technology are linked to access and success—the twin pillars of community college philosophy. We are poised to have more tools, techniques, and technologies at our fingertips than ever before to help our students access learning, succeed on their learning journeys, and ready themselves for productive careers and lives.
Changing Demographics and Digital Transformation. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. As a result of changing demographics and digital transformation, the next generation of higher education will be vibrant, thriving, and more important than ever to US social and economic progress.
Using AI to Help Students Learn "How to College". EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Artificial intelligence can help students learn "how to college." This sets them on the path to graduation and to success far beyond the college or university.
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8. Higher Education Affordability: Aligning IT organizations‚ priorities, and resources with institutional priorities and resources to achieve a sustainable future

Milked: California State University Channel Islands Offers the CSU's First "Z-Majors". EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. The rapidly rising cost of course materials is making college prohibitively expensive; in light of this, one university has introduced a promising initiative that has saved its students over $1 million to date.
OER Cost Assessment Strategies. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Open educational resources can provide access to high-quality resources while offsetting the costs of traditional textbooks.
The Power of a Higher Education Consortium. EDUCAUSE Review, 2017. The future requires having a keen eye for truly differentiated needs and opportunities and the ability to move with agility in and out of those spaces. It means knowing that evolving digital workflows might require changes in governance, processes, or pedagogy, and the value of extensions to infrastructure.
In Enterprise Technology Operations, Sometimes It's Not What We Buy but How We Buy It. EDUCAUSE Review, 2017. Given the changes in today's educational marketplace, to succeed institutions need to collaborate and look deeper into not only where technology dollars are spent but also how they are spent.
2018 ACUHO I State of ResNet Report. 2018. This report, published by ACUHO-I, is the seventh installment of a study to measure the pulse of ResNet practices and policies in higher education.
Building Technology Strategy that Enables Next Generation Enterprise IT. This collection consist of resources from the Enterprise IT Program.
Aligning IT Funding Models to the Pace of Technology Change: Enabling Financial Flexibility for Core, Flexible, and Transformative Services. ECAR Working Group, December 2015. ECAR brought together a group of high-level IT and finance leaders from a wide range of institutions to work together to understand how to better align IT funding models to the pace of technology change. The results of this collaboration between technology and business officers provide guidance and suggestions to help institution.
CIO Community Group. This group engages in discussions of issues and challenges that affect chief information officers in higher education.
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9. Administrative Simplification: Applying user-centered design, process improvement, and system reengineering to reduce redundant or unnecessary efforts and improve end-user experiences

Architecting the IT Organization. EDUCAUSE, 2019. IT organizations are pursuing growth in three fundamental practice areas—enterprise architecture (EA), IT governance, and IT service management (ITSM)—to direct the development and delivery of IT services that maximize value to the institution and ensure alignment with its goals.
Dx and Evolving Organizational Models. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019.Smart leaders know that the organizational changes brought about by digital transformation are as much about people, staffing, and training as they are about technology. Foregrounding that knowledge as part of organizational transformation may also provide a positive way to address long-standing problems.
From Transformation to Simplification. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. With a goal of simplification, digital transformation may be the best investment an institution can make to free up time and talent for what matters most.
Getting Ready for Digital Transformation: Change Your Culture, Workforce, and Technology. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. The digital transformation of higher education is at hand. Leaders must prepare their institutions now to take strategic advantage of the coming shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.
How Improving the Everyday Stuff Can Help Transform an Institution. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Ensuring better IT service delivery can help to support the organizational changes that are necessary to implement Dx initiatives.
Maintaining Business Process Redesign Efforts through Change Management. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. IT teams face many challenges in planning and implementing business process redesign, as well as in establishing a culture of continuous improvement in the higher education context. These case studies describe how teams at three institutions managed these challenges, found effective solutions, and learned lessons along the way.
IT Change Management: A Practical Approach for Higher Education. EDUCAUSE, 2018. This paper outlines steps to take to implement effective IT service change management. It provides guidance on defining your change, setting up your change management process (including roles and responsibilities, change management activities, RFC components, and risk and impact questions), and improving your process.
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10. The Integrative CIO: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner of institutional leadership in supporting institutional missions

Architecting the IT Organization. EDUCAUSE, 2019. IT organizations are pursuing growth in three fundamental practice areas—enterprise architecture (EA), IT governance, and IT service management (ITSM)—to direct the development and delivery of IT services that maximize value to the institution and ensure alignment with its goals.
7&4: An IT Leadership Philosophy. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Wayne Brown shares his 7 thoughts about IT leadership and 4 thoughts about professional success.
Digital Transformation Signals: Is Your Institution on the Journey? EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. The digital transformation signals listed in this article indicate progress along the way and provide guideposts for the journey.
Getting Ready for Digital Transformation: Change Your Culture, Workforce, and Technology. EDUCAUSE Review, 2019. The digital transformation of higher education is at hand. Leaders must prepare their institutions now to take strategic advantage of the coming shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.
Becoming Institutional Partners and Brokers: The New Role for IT. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. IT leaders describe how they are collaborating and cooperating with their campuses as they transition to their new organizational role.
The Future of the IT Profession and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Today and in the future, the IT profession has a key role to play in taming the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Perspectives on the Future of the Profession: Looking Forward, Then and Now. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. IT professionals are engaged in more than could even have been imagined two decades ago. Yet the issues discussed then continue to resonate today and offer insight into the future of the profession.
Strategic IT: What Got Us Here Won't Get Us There. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. To fully realize the value of information technology as the strategic asset it is, we must embrace strategic IT.
Scenarios, Pathways, and the Future-Ready Workforce. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. Strategic workforce development through scenario planning and job pathways mapping can build a common vision to transform technological and cultural disruption in higher education into a positive digital transformation.
The CIO's New Clothes. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018.Can we energize our institutions' capacity to socialize the next wave of information technology in ways that fulfill technology's promise while respecting our institutions' culture and legacy?
What Presidents Want from Their CIOs, and What CIOs Would Like from Their Presidents. EDUCAUSE Review, 2018. A president and a CIO list the attributes and contributions they seek from each other in their critical partnership to further the goals of their institution.
Dx: Digital Transformation of Higher Education. This EDUCAUSE initiative seeks to help IT leaders play a critical role in helping their institutions understand the urgency and potential of digital transformation and designing the architecture and infrastructure that will enable it.
The IT Workforce in Higher Education, 2019. 2019. This ECAR research focuses on the evolving IT workforce in higher education and builds on previous ECAR research to provide a longitudinal perspective.
EDUCAUSE Review Leadership Column. This column features views from the top, written by campus and association presidents and CEOs.
CIO Community Group. This group engages in discussions of issues and challenges that affect chief information officers in higher education.
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