iNews: From the Chief Information Officer

Strategic IT planning for UC Berkeley

Jack McCredie, CIO

The UC Berkeley Academic Senate Committee on Computing and Communications (COMP) and senior staff members from Information Systems and Technology (IST) are jointly coordinating a strategic planning initiative focused on the information technology (IT) environment of our campus. This process is an outgrowth of the campus Strategic Academic Plan, which was completed in spring 2003. The goal of the current IT strategic planning initiative is to identify and describe the critical information technology elements required during the next five to seven years to support UC Berkeley's goals as articulated in the Strategic Academic Plan.

Why is a strategic planning initiative important when the University is facing some of the most severe financial challenges in its history and campus IT budgets are shrinking, not growing? This is precisely the time when our investment decisions are the most important and we must make judgments based on a sound long-range vision. The process is designed to develop an optimal balance between the unbounded IT needs of our constituents and the significantly limited resources that are available to satisfy those needs.

As part of the planning process, we are examining challenging questions that will help us define the key elements of our future IT environment. For example:

1. How can UC Berkeley participate in developing new research and learning paradigms based on the ongoing transformations fueled by information technology?

2. Where should UC Berkeley be an innovator, early adopter, or follower in its information technology environment?

3. What are the critical issues for teaching, research, administration, and public service that IT can help address at UC Berkeley?

4. What is the appropriate role for information technology to play in transforming the teaching and learning processes at UC Berkeley?

5. Which strategic IT initiatives should the campus focus on in the next five years?

In order to help answer these questions, we have been working with several campus advisory committees. During the next three months, they will be identifying the core IT principles that will guide campus investment decisions; the critical IT issues and challenges that the campus faces; and the set of IT initiatives that management should consider funding in the coming years to address the critical IT challenges and opportunities. Obviously, UC Berkeley cannot embark on all the IT initiatives that members of the campus community would like to see. Therefore, we will be asking for help to prioritize these ideas. Later in the spring, we will engage students, faculty, and staff to help shape the priorities for our operational plans.

A few examples should clarify these planning concepts. Computing advisory committees are working to define the broad set of IT principles that will guide the campus in the coming years. As an illustration, three principles that guided IT decisions during the past decade are:

• The campus data network will become ubiquitous and serve as a major tool supporting learning, research, outreach, management, and all forms of scholarly and personal communication.

• Students are encouraged to own their own computers, but the University will provide a broad set of information resources freely available to all, including email, Internet access, web services, computing labs, and digital library materials.

• Computing to support sponsored research activities will be supported by grants and contracts and not funded through campus allocations.

Three illustrative IT issues and challenges currently facing the campus are:

• Budgets are shrinking rapidly; each year it is becoming more difficult to maintain the information systems currently in place and to find investment funds for new initiatives.

• Increasing attacks from hackers threaten both the stability of the campus information infrastructure and the privacy of sensitive personal and financial information stored on campus systems.

• The campus culture of decentralization leads to a fragmented environment with many inefficiencies and overlaps in the provision of important IT services.

Four illustrative potential IT initiatives suggested by advisory committees are:

• Deploy ubiquitous wireless data and voice services throughout the campus.

• Engage in broad-based experiments using technology to transform the learning environment for undergraduates.

• Develop a new partnership between the research community and campus information technology providers to take advantage of federal cyber-infrastructure programs.

• Develop and deploy an enhanced security architecture to protect the campus IT environment and the resources it provides.

Although UC Berkeley's IT principles, critical issues, and strategic initiatives are certainly not yet complete, the examples above illustrate the framework we are using in the IT strategic planning process that is underway. We invite you to participate in surveys later in this semester and/or to submit ideas to this process by contacting either Ken Goldberg, chair of the Academic Senate COMP committee, or Jack McCredie, the campus Chief Information Officer.

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