IT Governance
This document provides an overview of the IT Governance process at UNE. IT Governance comprises of the leadership, organizational structures, and processes to ensure that UNE’s IT capabilities continue to sustain and extend its strategies and objectives.
Effective governance will enable us to align our technology and services with the highest needs of the institution. It will provide us with multiple forums of discussion to debate our priorities and assure that the policies and practices that impact UNE's use of technology are responsive to the concerns of faculty, students and staff. Collaboration and focus are two of the most important by‐ products of good IT governance.
To realize the vision of the university strategic plan and to cost effectively support IT initiatives, the university must look at technology from an institutional perspective. To that end, UNE must build on its existing structures to create a more comprehensive and integrated IT governance structure.
Funding
The importance of maintaining effective IT funding practices permeates many aspects of the University Strategic Plan and IT Strategic Plan. The issues around funding are far more pervasive and complex than the obvious need for investment to sustain the plan. Rather, it extends to how funding practices and policies meter demand for services.
It also illustrates technology as an area of investment. Capital invested in technology in support of teaching and research support successes that burnish the University's reputation and make it more competitive in the recruitment of faculty and students. Investments in technology in support of our business practices can make us more efficient and create a culture of evidenced based decision‐ making.
Funding Principles
The following set of principles has been developed to guide UNE's IT funding practices.
• The decision to approve a project and the decision to fund its one‐time and recurring costs should be made at the same time.
• Departments consuming services beyond the core or requiring enhanced service levels should arrange for those services through their departmental funding and in consultation with the Chief Information Officer.
• UNE must be able to see a better picture of its total cost of technology across the institution to support more strategic resource allocation decisions and to spot areas of inefficiency. The senior level IT governance group and/or the cabinet should see an all funds view of
technology spending and be empowered to intervene to correct strategic imbalances or to minimize inefficiencies.
• Decisions about when to centralize a service to ITS or outsource it to another party should be made with an understanding of the total costs of providing the solution in a
decentralized manner not the perceived costs borne by individual departments.
• Technology is an area of investment that supports innovation in research and excellence in higher education.
• The costs of learning technologies must be proactively invested in to maintain innovation and continue to meet student expectations and ensure the quality of the learning
environment at UNE.
CIO’s Responsibilities
The governance structure is intended to foster consultation and to enable the most important decisions to be made with appropriate input from key stakeholders and University leadership. However, broader consultation cannot come at the expense of the ability to act nimbly. Not every issue and decision can be reviewed by the governance structures. The University CIO must be trusted to make day to day decisions that are aligned with UNE's overarching strategies and priorities. For example, the CIO will continue to be responsible for prioritizing small and moderate sized projects. Typically, this will be done in direct consultation with the department or
departments making the request. The CIO will also be responsible for altering priorities or re‐ allocating resources among priorities to maintain alignment between how the university invests its resources and the broader strategic directions provided by IT Governance. The IT strategic plan will provide a framework for guiding these small and moderate sized prioritization decisions. The CIO will maintain the responsibility of ensuring that UNE leadership stays informed of these smaller decisions and that the UNE community is aware and informed of any affected changes.
In addition, the CIO will be charged with the ultimate responsibility for establishing technology directions and standards for the University. The CIO will bring technology policy recommendations, once they have been vetted by other governance groups, to the President's Cabinet for approval. The CIO is ultimately responsible for making decisions that provide a secure, reliable and robust technology infrastructure for UNE. The CIO will consult as widely as possible before making these recommendations.
Through a process established and overseen by the Information Technology Steering Committee (ITSC) and managed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO), a collection of projects, each with executive sponsorship, forms the recommendations on UNE’s IT portfolio of campus‐wide projects. The governance committees include the Information Technology Steering Committee, the Academic Technologies Advisory Committee (ATAC), and the Administrative Applications Advisory
Committee (AAAC). Once finalized, the IT project portfolio becomes a set of project and budget recommendations that are submitted to the President and IT Steering Committee.
The IT Governance structure specifies the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in using IT to further the University’s mission. This desirable behavior is characterized by:
• Integration of IT strategic planning with campus strategic planning • Appropriate accountability for IT initiatives
• Transparency ‐ IT plans and investments are made visible to the campus community • Adoption of a broad campus‐wide view
• Willingness to share and use IT best practices across the campus • Entrepreneurial spirit and creativity in applying IT
• Participants understanding the value of governance and actively participating in it
IT Steering Committee
The InformationTechnologySteeringCommittee is responsible for strategy, policy, and decision‐making. It serves as head of the UNE IT governance structure. ITSC is the primary governance and oversight body for information technology and services at UNE. This committee has purview over UNE's information technology strategies, which include consideration of technology infrastructure, the increasingly interrelated realms of academic, research and administrative computing, and central vs. distributed deployment of resources.
Membership
President, Chair
Provost
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Information Officer
Charge
Set UNE‐wide IT goals, strategies and policies
Annually update rolling 5 year capital plan
Regularly review the portfolio of IT projects and investments across UNE
Identify gaps, leverage investments, identify opportunities
Bi‐annually prioritize, approve and sponsor IT projects
Ensure that projects are fiscally responsible and assess whether funding mechanisms are satisfactory
Annually recommend ITS operational funding
Periodically review IT staffing investments across UNE
Communicate IT priorities back to community
Ensure that within UNE's Strategic Planning Process and budget environment, a budget strategy is developed that reconciles the overall IT plan with the distributed goals of the academic and administrative units.
CommitteesreportingintoInformationTechnologyGovernanceExecutiveCommittee(ITSC)
• Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) • Administrative Applications Advisory Committee (AAAC)
Administrative Applications Advisory Committee (AAAC)
The AdministrativeApplicationsAdvisoryCommittee(AAAC) is responsible for preliminary assessment, technical planning, and integration in conjunction with Information Technology Services (ITS). It is appointed by the Chief Information Officer, and its members include Academic and Administrative Directors.
Chaired by: Chair elected on annual basis by AAAC membership
Membership
Chief Information Officer
Library
Fiscal Affairs
Enrollment Services/Admissions
Student Financial Services
Research Administration
Student Affairs
Human Resources
Institutional Research and Assessment
Online Worldwide Learning
VP Finance and Administration and CFO (Chair)
Executive Dean for Administration ‐ Bio‐Med Medical Affairs
Assistant Vice President and University Controller
Associate Vice President for Budget and Planning
Vice President for Facilities Management
Charge
Ensure that the University's administrative systems are meeting the needs of faculty, staff and students
Collect, endorse and prioritize requests for administrative systems projects
Sponsor projects to be considered by IT Steering Committee
Report back on activities to Information Technology Steering Committee
Recommend policies related to administrative systems
Establish & charter Administrative Systems Subcommittees as needed (e.g. HR/Finance, Research Administration)
Is the official voice of the campus IT community with regard to common systems in the campus IT governance process
Recommend revisions to the strategic plan on an annual basis.
Identify emerging needs for institution‐wide services.
Recommend projects to ITSC for approval.
Identify opportunities to better coordinate services
Recommend strategies to manage issues common to multiple enterprise applications (e.g., data management and the implications of new technology on functional staff skill sets).
Prioritize requests for additional technologies and services
Establishes Administrative Data Stewardship and standards
Sets priorities for programming requests to align with overall institutional goals and objectives.
Ensures the accuracy and integrity of institutional data.
Participates in planning, implementation and testing of software installations and upgrades.
Meeting Frequency: TBD
AcademicTechnologiesAdvisoryCommittee
The AcademicTechnologiesSteeringCommittee(ATAC) is responsible for strategic and tactical planning for academic technologies that support the teaching, learning, research and scholarship missions of the university. It is appointed jointly by the Provost and the Chief Information Officer, and members include faculty and staff with responsibility for, interest in, and leadership of the use of academic technologies in the classroom and online, and technologies to support research and scholarship.
Chaired by: Chair elected on annual basis by ATAC membership
Membership:
• Associate Provost for College of Graduate and Professional Studies
• Chair of the University Faculty Assembly Computer Technology Committee • One Faculty Assembly representative from each College
• Representative from Research and Scholarship • One faculty representative from each Research Center • Dean of the Library
• Director of Learning Assistance Program
• University Librarian
• Chief Information Officer (ex officio, non‐voting) • Others as needed
Charge
Facilitate communication and collaboration between IT providers and University offices responsible for curriculum and instruction
Collect, endorse and prioritize requests for instructional IT projects
Set priorities for projects to be considered by IT Steering Committee
Monitor portfolio of projects related to instructional technology
Report back on activities to IT Steering Committee
Collect, endorse and prioritize requests for use of technology by the research community
Monitor portfolio of projects related to use of technology by the research community
Creates a continuing and evolving campus‐wide vision and implementation plan for IT in undergraduate instruction, both in the physical and online classroom
Makes recommendations to the ITSC on key IT initiatives that impact undergraduate and graduate instruction
Advises the Provost and the Deans on matters related to IT in undergraduate instruction
Evaluates effectiveness of instructional IT services and develops strategies to support continuous improvement
Supports faculty training and development activities in the effective use of academic technologies
Creates a continuing and evolving campus‐wide vision and implementation plan for IT in research and scholarship
Advises the Provost and the Deans on matters related to IT in research and scholarship
Supports faculty training and development activities in the effective use of research technologies
Determines outcomes for academic services such as labs, faculty resource centers and training for faculty.
Recommends to the ITSC standards and procedures that impact learning and information technology across the institution.
Clearly communicates the direction of information technology, important policies, procedures and standards to their respective constituencies.
