Monday, March 13, 2000
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Information Technology Policy Board oversees consultants developing proposal for chief information officer’s position
By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Walter McRae, acting CIO and associate provost, along with UGA’s Information Technology Policy Board, is overseeing the work of the consultants who are developing a proposal for a chief information officer’s position at the university. He spoke with Columns about the goals of the project.

Columns: Why do we need to think about changing the way information technology is managed at UGA?
McRae: The provost felt that we weren’t able to effectively establish a common institutional vision and coherent strategic goals for the use of information technologies in all of our programs.

Columns: Is that a result of the scattering of technology offices throughout numerous campus units?
McRae: For a variety of reasons, many of which are simply historical artifacts and not the consequence of conscious institutional planning. In the last decade information technology has become pervasive. The present organization is such that responsibility for information technology is--even at the institutional level--distributed across multiple offices. I’ve identified 13 or 14 units as institutional information technology providers--units which serve in some sense the entire campus and not a specific department, college or school. Trying to accomplish coherent planning in this structure is difficult at best.
The provost concluded, after discussions with campus leaders this past summer, that if we’re going to maximize our investment in these resources, be they capital or human, we would be better served by putting in place what is traditionally called a chief information officer position to coordinate all of these currently separated functions.
Let me give you some illustrations. Number one: we have no idea how much we expend annually on information technology. My best estimate is that we’re expending something in the neighborhood of $80-100 million, as a campus, on these activities. We need a central administrative entity to coordinate our investment-planning and support services in this area.
Another motivation is that it’s virtually impossible for the university to employ and retain skilled people in this area, because of the salary options that are available at the university compared to the benefits that staff in this area can achieve in the private sector--even in the local government arena. A major responsibility of the CIO will be to work with our human resources office to attempt to put into place more flexible employment and retention policies for staff.

Columns: This must be common on university campuses these days.
McRae: Almost all--I’ve not examined every one, but almost all--of our peer and aspirant institutions are either presently moving or have moved in the past to establish these positions.

Columns: How was the consulting firm chosen?
McRae: We initially issued a “request for information” to a large number of prospective consulting organizations who specialize in information-technology management. Ten firms responded. Based on those results we crafted an invitation to bid.
There were eight responses to the bid, from which we selected Athene Consultants, Inc., of Miami, Fla. They focus on information-technology management planning in higher education.
That award was made in late December, and they organized their activities into three phases. The first was assessment and fact finding, where three of them came to the campus and met with a large number of people and organizations, staff as well as management. Interviews with 33 different groups and individuals were scheduled, along with an open session for faculty and staff, as well as students.
That was followed by phase two, in which they returned, after having assimilated and analyzed all of the findings from their earlier meetings, to carry out additional conversations with specific individuals or groups where there might have been ambiguity. They worked with the steering group for this project, the Information Technology Policy Board, which consists of faculty and directors of IT support units on the campus.
Phase one occurred at the end of January; phase two was at the beginning of February. The third phase is going on now. They are producing, on the basis of their conversations here, a preliminary report, which they will provide to us in the middle of March, for our comments and response. Then the final report, with their recommendations, is due by April 1.

Columns: And what happens then?
McRae: As part of the contract, the consultants will make up to three presentations of their recommendations. I would expect that one of those presentations will be to the president and his cabinet, and also to the provost’s deans’ council. And then it will be up to the institution--the provost, the president, the cabinet--to decide whether to act on those recommendations.
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