The CIO Strategic Plan outlines how IT initiatives will be aligned with UB 2020. In the past, the CIO was responsible for enterprise-wide technologies rather than a holistic, campus-wide view engaging both centrally managed and distributed IT support. This plan creates the foundation for a new UB Information Technology organization in a cautious and deliberative manner, transforming how services will be delivered to the entire campus community.

To meet UB 2020 principles and objectives, UB senior leadership began examining common IT needs required to more effectively deliver and support teaching, learning and research campus-wide. These conversations were driven, in part, to response to new academic and business models that encourage multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaborations in addition to ensuring that expenditures are as efficient as possible.

Phase I of the IT strategic transformation initiative dealt with project priorities to enhance university wide services. Many of these projects are now production services that have resulted in savings of over 6.2 million dollars. Phase II will transform how the university supports projects through broader portfolio management, services common to all decanal units, and discipline-specific specialization through new staffing and support models.

Detailed interviews with deans, vice presidents and their respective IT managers identified key resource needs and details of inconsistent support practices across the University. Working from this report, the Office of the CIO coordinated further data collection with decanal budget officers to examine departmental IT budgets, including IT staff responsibilities.

A plan began to emerge from these efforts. First, it was necessary to devote IT staff away from the nearly 30% non-IT work being conducted in order to concentrate on their core IT responsibilities. Second, departmental duplication of enterprise level service efforts, and conversely, enterprise level work specific to departmental needs, required re-alignment.

The CIO charged his leadership with gathering more details of departmental operations to ensure that no services would be interrupted as the result of strategic reorganization. Memoranda of understanding between the CIO, deans, vice-presidents and unit leadership are detailing how services will be supported in the future through service level agreements. New service and support teams, combining efforts from UBIT staff from both divisional units and enterprise IT will be organized to begin fulfilling the vision of campus-wide UBIT.

As integrated service teams begin executing new projects and services, it is important to define key performance indicators, collect service metrics and analytics, and interview stakeholders to ensure the reorganization is fulfilling its mission and providing continuous improvement as we collectively move forward.

Data from multiple sources will help inform, revise and “tweak” service delivery. UBIT will remain in close contact with all university stakeholders through enhanced communication efforts to ensure UBIT is collectively meeting the vision and goals as set forth by UB 2020.

The project team is currently developing the project plan and estimating the resource requirements. The new tools will not require IT units to provide additional modes of support directly.