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Interview
In Search of Good Governance
An interview with Jack McCredie
9/12/2007
The most common question that I hear about governance from different campuses is, "What should be centralized and what should be decentralized?" There is no theoretical correct answer to this question in my opinion. The answer will be different for different organizational cultures, for different IT missions and goals, and for different overall governance structures at each campus. The most significant change I have observed recently is that many chancellors, presidents, and faculty leaders are now asking IT governance questions.
What factors have precipitated this focus on governance? Certainly technology itself plays an important role. For example, the emergence of departmental minicomputers and then very powerful individual desktop systems caused major shifts away from central systems to decentralized departmental and individual computing environments. Governance processes that worked for the mainframe environment quickly became obsolete when departments and individuals purchased their own systems. The importance of networking, both wired and wireless, led to requirements for campus, system-wide, statewide, and even national standards. Enterprise-level financial and human resource systems introduced another set of issues. Security and privacy concerns and copyright protection issues led to a different set of needs for campus-wide policies and procedures. And now virtualization technologies have once again shifted the optimum balance between centralized and decentralized investments. Another major impetus for governance review is the change of a CIO, provost, president, or chancellor.
Given all those changes, are IT organizations really keeping up and adjusting quickly enough? These examples of significant changes in our campus IT environments have often not been accompanied by corresponding changes in our governance structures. However, I see evidence that many campuses are now examining their IT governance structure to determine if it fits their current needs.
What are the impacts on IT leadership development? And what should IT leaders plan for in the coming years as they look to staff their IT organizations? My hypothesis is that one of the most important factors affecting the overall performance of an IT organization as well as the IT governance process is the competence of the campus IT leadership team and its ability to work well within the overall culture and governance structure of the campus. A great leadership team can do wonders even when the formal governance structure is ill-defined or even nonexistent. Conversely, a poorly functioning senior IT team will probably not do well even with an excellent governance structure. However, such a team probably will not last too long because an excellent governance structure will have accountability and transparency features that should lead to changes in a poorly functioning senior team.
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