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We Have a Plan
5/6/2003
If we try to do security department by department, the nasty folks who would like to destroy our systems will have a much easier job.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty
We don't get the advantage of all the
things that IT can offer if we can't get help when we need it. A central IT
help desk or user services group is essential for making sure we can actually
use all the IT offerings. We'd use the help desk much less if good IT training
was available on-site or online. A central IT group can also fill that critical
task.
The development of enterprise portals is the biggest change to the way we use the Web and develop systems for it. It also holds the promise of making all of our users much more effective and efficient and of cutting administrative costs in every university department. Every university needs an enterprise Web portal and they need just one and only one of them to get the maximum benefit from portals. Only a central IT group—with the cooperation of every university department who owns data—can build the single portal a university needs.
Some group needs to carry the news of IT to individual departments. No matter how big an IT group a department builds, it will not be aware of all the ways that IT can help it and all of the IT facilities that are in place in the university. It is never enough to build some new IT facility; it needs to be marketed to potential users—by the central IT group of course.
Finally, a central group needs to look to the future in a deliberate, planned way. To adapt to inevitable change and to take advantage of future IT developments there must be a central advanced technology group that is poised to turn the next development into the blessings of IT liberty for the future.
Signed By
All in all, there is a great deal of work to run a central government and a
central IT group. But we should remember that the Constitution was signed by
all the members after these words: "Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent
of the States present …"
It was clear to the framers of the constitution that no central government was possible without the unanimous consent of the States. If the central government could not offer the States advantages that they needed and at the same time give them the freedom they wanted, then the central government had no chance of survival. The survival of central IT groups will depend upon the same kind of agreement with the independent university departments. Without such an agreement there will IT anarchy much to the detriment of the entire university community.
Guest Opinion by Howard Strauss (howard@princeton.edu), Manager of Technology Strategy and Outreach at Princeton University
Terry Calhoun, IT Trends Commentator (splendid@umich.edu), is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) www.scup.org.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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