News Article

Stepping up and Embracing Change

by Shel Waggener, Chief Information Officer

February 13, 2006

When Jack McCredie retired last December after 13 years, he entrusted to me a healthy organization that invests more than $70 million a year and a committed staff supporting information technology at UC Berkeley. As a result of Jack's energy and vision, his position evolved from running a department primarily focused on research computing to leading efforts campuswide, statewide, and nationally to enhance all aspects of a technology-savvy research university. As I begin my tenure as UC Berkeley's Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor—Information Technology, I am committed to sustaining this momentum and to ensuring that information technology supports UC Berkeley's mission-critical needs.

UC Berkeley's preeminence relies on the ability of our scholars and learners to inquire, discover, and engage — endeavors that are ever more reliant on technology. Information technology professionals across the campus strive to identify and implement solutions that will help meet the growing demands and expectations in teaching, research, security, and student and administrative systems. However, with the pace of change accelerating, IT professionals must look beyond specific technologies and consider a broader role as integration and solutions architects. This will not only require continued mastery of technology and trends, but greatly improved organizational flexibility, expanded project-management capabilities, and excellence in our cross-departmental delivery.

To help focus our energy and efforts, I have identified three concepts to guide my planning, decision making, and priority setting:

The Chief Information Officer is responsible for the development, implementation, and oversight of the campus's strategic technical vision. This is a distinct and separate role from the responsibilities of running IST.

A best practice among peer research universities is to identify one individual — a Chief Information Officer (CIO) — as responsible and accountable for the vision and strategy for information technology across the entire spectrum of campus needs. It is also important that the CIO not become too distant from the day-to-day challenges of technology implementation. As a first step toward leading the development, implementation, and oversight of the campus's strategic technical vision, I have created a Technology Program Office to work with campus IT professionals and user communities to provide project-management services for major technology projects. This office will provide project-management training, and define and publish technology standards and tools that can be used by all campus departments and project managers.
One IST: United in support of UC Berkeley's many communities.

IST provides a very broad range of technical solutions, supporting every individual on campus in more than one capacity. A downside of this diversity has been a less than seamless experience for campus users. To alleviate the burden on users to navigate their way through many organizational layers to find the right group or individual to help them, IST must first eliminate processes and organizational structures that discourage interoperability among IST departments. IST must then identify a few common processes and architecture standards for all IST groups, which will simultaneously enable IST departments to better support each other and the campus community at a lower cost.

IST needs to consider IT groups throughout the campus as both customers and peers. This encourages local innovation while offering the campus community common IT solutions and individual assistance that reduce the overhead needed to support technology in campus units. As the largest IT unit on campus, IST needs a clear strategy about how best to partner with and support the campus community.

Finally, to support this work and to move toward a culture of shared success, IST's processes, tools, structures, plans, projects, finances, skills, successes, and challenges should be clearly documented and visible to the campus community.

My first step toward one IST united in support of UC Berkeley's many communities has been to launch a series of strategic action–oriented discussions with my direct reports in IST.
Delivering technology as a service.

The accelerating pace of change, coupled with the high expectations of a 24x7 world, requires a level of flexibility and creativity never before demanded at the University. IST and other campus IT providers must adjust to meet business needs with solutions that are cost-effective, scalable, timely, and flexible.

I believe that the future of technology lies not only in the ability to accomplish things better, faster, or cheaper, but in technology's capacity to democratize content and to expand every individual's view of and connection to the world. Beyond just viewing or using the Web, new and yet-to-be-named technologies will enable every user to become a sophisticated consumer and producer of technical solutions. The UC Berkeley technical community needs to lead the way by creating technical solutions, services, architectures, and flexible organizations that can evolve with the changing demands. This will enable not just the campus, but every member of the UC Berkeley community to thrive in an electronically connected world.

Although the transformation from individual technical solutions to a more comprehensive campuswide services oriented architecture will take time, I intend to begin right away with this year's budget process. The recently completed study on UC Berkeley's IT governance, funding, and structure calls for some substantial changes in the way we make decisions regarding our technology investment. For this year's budget process, I am leading a team of IT and finance experts to develop procedures and tools that will help departments identify and align their intended technology investments with the directions laid out in our campus technology strategic plan (available for review at http://technology.berkeley.edu/).

I am excited about being able to serve and lead as CIO and AVC–IT in an era where technology has incorporated itself into every aspect of our work and life, where newly arriving students are more technically sophisticated than those who came before them, and where I can actively participate in and contribute to a community known for its world-renowned teaching, research, and public service. The journey promises to be a challenging one and I invite you to join me in stepping up to embrace the coming changes that will support UC Berkeley's continued success.