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What Is An “IT Commons”?
10/22/2003
A few weeks ago I shared a news item about the new IT Commons at Mount Holyoke College. Most of us, when we hear the phrase "IT Commons" probably think of a specific physical location on a campus, where IT resources are shared.
At the University of Michigan, however, "IT Commons" means something else. It's not a user-based idea; it's a planner and creator-based idea. It means a deliberate, campus-wide shift toward an IT strategic planning culture which is less centralized local-unit planning with incentives for wider collaboration among IT units and also a shift to realign IT strategic planning with "existing University governance, processes, and culture."
How is this working?
In 2003, the average, educated modern person who hears or reads the word "commons" may well think of the essay "Tragedy of the Commons," written by ecologist Garrret Hardin, who passed away just last month. Writing at the height of the Cold War in 1968, and drawing on earlier sources, Hardin bemoaned that when using a shared resource (the "commons," a central meadow where people grazed their cattle, individuals or smaller groups came, quite rationally, to perceive their self-interest as lying in behaviors (putting more of their own cows out to graze there) that eventually would destroy the commons.
There is an echo of that perspective in the voice of U-M executive director of Information Technology Central Services, Kitty Bridges, when she says "Technology has made it possible for everybody to do everything. So schools and colleges from the very smallest to the very largest are providing all services, across the board, resulting in too much duplication of effort." http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0304/Oct20_03/07.shtml. In other words, each unit's resources may be used up first to handle the basics, like e-mail, calendars, and file servers, and there may be no energy left over to do work on higher-level things that could make a difference to the institution's mission, like support for research and teaching.
And no one at the University of Michigan wants a centralized dictatorship, either. James Hilton, associate provost for academic, information and instructional technology affairs, says that the IT Commons is "rooted in the core values and mission of the University, it reflects the diverse priorities of our many units and programs, and it emphasizes the advantages of creative collaboration" http://www.umich.edu/itcommons/3dmemo.html.
A slide show created for the University of Michigan's "IT Summit" about what at the time was called "the Roadmap Initiative" brings out some of the differences between where the university saw itself then and where it wants to be:
Old Ways
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