IT Strategic Plan
From itch
Cross-Cutting
This represents the IT goals that cross divisional boundaries and apply to or affect a wide cross-section of the Evergreen community. Often this category includes goals pertaining to communication.
Manage Resources Effectively
Building academic and administrative systems requires optimizing limited resources to maximize the college IT assets.
Strategies:
Cost Containment
Evaluate and implement cost savings/cost containment measures (e.g., printing, open source solutions, purchasing).
IT Governance
Formalize a clear and effective process for cross divisional IT planning and decision making.
Coordinated Assessments
Coordinate annual assessment of campus IT resources and plans to provide for improvements (e.g., bandwidth, speed, diskspace, staffing, facilities).
Effectively Maintain Current Resources
Ensure existing college systems receive support and maintenance as required.
Support Sustainability Initiatives
Comply with the Sustainability Task Force recommendations.
Strategies:
Print Strategies
Reduce energy and paper consumption.
Equipment Purchases
Reduce the number of computers and individual desktop printers and photo copiers.
Provide Effective Communication and Collaboration Resources
Support easy to use technologies for facilitating collaboration, including but not limited to governance work, student activities, academic data sharing, professional staff and faculty development.
Strategies:
Electronic Communications
Identify technologies for electronic communication
Push and Pull Strategies
Develop strategies, tools and training for appropriate push or pull information
Governance Communication
Develop an electronic communication strategy for governance activities such as DTFs
Improve and modernize Evergreens tools for community announcements
Improve communication across IT workgroups
Define, develop and support appropriate methods of communicating with students, staff and faculty
Improve Institutional IT Project Management
Improve success rates for IT projects while reducing development costs.
Strategies:
Project Management Coordination
Standardize project management processes. Note: Establish project clearing house (communication tool?)
Project Management Support
Identify and designate management tools, training and staff to provide project management support.
Develop Effective Training Mechanism
"We are unsure what the goal is for this? It relates to training and building knowledge of new technologies as they become available and used by the campus. Does this goal still apply?"
Effective and accessible training opportunities for students, staff and faculty is critical for both attracting and maintaining a savvy, technology-literate population.
Strategies:
Training Assessment and Planning
Assess IT training needs and develop a training plan to meet those needs.
In-house Experts
Make better use of in-house experts to provide training. Provide those experts with "train the trainer" resources
Coordinate Resources
Coordinate and share training resources across work areas.
Student Internships
Develop more internship opportunities for students in technology.
Attract, Develop and Retain a Well-Trained IT Workforce
Develop an innovative, cost effective way of attracting and maintaining an engaged technical workforce.
Strategies:
Increase Training Opportunities
Develop resources and opportunities for IT staff, e.g., explore sabbatical, class attendance, budget and exchange program opportunities for technical staff.
Innovate and Explore
Provide staff opportunities to innovate and explore experimental technologies as it applies to their work area.
Publicize Outstanding and Innovative Work
Publicize outstanding and innovative work done by technical staff.
Create a Safe and Reliable IT Environment
Enhance the reliability of the network,applications and hardware.
Strategies:
Appropriate Use Policy
Maintain, update and distribute a strong appropriate use policy.
Provide System Protection
Adopt and implement effective spyware, malware and virus protection toolsets.
Security Awareness
Implement a dynamic security awareness program.
Electronic Records
Develop and implement a policy on the retention of electronic records (public records).
Content Protection
Develop and implement a policy to protect the privacy of our community members. Does this cover all areas where we have a need or requirement to secure information?
Build intuitive pathways for Networked Navigation Making it Easy for Users to Manage Information
Users across the institution expressed a deep interest in improving the ability to navigate and locate electronic resources at Evergreen.
Strategies:
Develop Personalized Web Content
Develop personalized web content and pathways, eg. Portal.
Content
Separate navigation from web content via implementation of a content management system.
Web Plan
Develop an action plan based on the information gleaned from the Web assessment. (Check with Susan.)
Accessibility and Usability Studies
Allocate funds to evaluate and ensure the accessibility and usability of web resources.
Scheduling
Expand web-based scheduling capabilities so that students can view their complete class schedules.
Make Web Publishing Easy
Develop better strategies for creating and maintaining consistent and up to date web content.
Strategies:
Update Content
Fully implement the strategy (CMS, Moodle, Drupal, etc.) to enable non-technical authors to easily and efficiently update and maintain their web content.
Evaluate Support Models
Research and evaluate other support models for web publishers
Teaching and Learning
These are goals specific to the Academic mission of the college. It pertains directly to the activities of and support for teaching and learning at Evergreen.
Enhance the partnership between faculty and academic support staff
Develop an instructional environment that integrates technology with curricular expertise by encouraging innovation, creativity, and the support of early technology adopters.
Strategies:
Coordinate support
Coordinate academic technology support across work groups (e.g., Media, Library, Scientific Computing, Academic Computing, Technical Support Services).
Integrate faculty into technology support
Working with the Academic Deans and the Evergreen governance processes, develop strategies to engage faculty in projects around technology adoption, implementation and support.
Promote and expand faculty opportunities
Promote the work of faculty and expand opportunities to integrate new technologies in to the curriculum (e.g., in-house grants like Plato and the Fund for Innovation)
Coordinate new technology initiatives
Coordinate new technology initiatives among faculty, technical staff and academic administration (e.g., Language Technology Lab, eportfolios)
Improve faculty, staff and student IT support
including hardware, software and support for instructional technologies. Given Evergreen's distributed support environment, work to develop/coordinate a more comprehensive approach to providing timely, holistic support for the diverse set of user needs.
Strategies:
Improve Mac support
as well as cross-platform functionality of enterprise-wide IT applications.
Evaluate IT support models
to identify best possible support mechanisms given available resources
Online self-help
Expand and better coordinate online self-help tools, resources and information.
Student Technology Support
Explore formal structures for student personal technology support.
Coordinate Adaptive and Assistive Technology Support
In partnership with Access Services, improve the coordinated technology support for AT stations across campus
Coordinate the evolution of technology teaching and learning environments
and infrastructure to ensure they continue to meet the needs of the curriculum.
Strategies:
Planning
Develop mechanisms for understanding curricular needs and introducing new technologies to the curriculum.
Computing spaces
Evolve academic computing and technology teaching spaces to meet curricular needs.
Access to resources
Provide access to technology resources for teaching and learning spaces.
Resource allocation
Evaluate resource allocation strategies (lab upgrades) to ensure efficiency and a direct connection to the curriculum.
Wireless
Prioritize further deployment of wireless on campus.
Technology and Information Literacy
Support the campus wide development of Information Technology literacy.
Strategies:
Technology and Information Literacy Implementation
Once articulated, work to integrate this understanding into more aspects of our teaching, learning and decision-making.
Digital Collections
Improve access to digital collections to enable/enhance both instructional and research needs.
Strategies:
Facilitate access
Develop a strategy to facilitate access to digital collections.
Evaluate curricular needs
Evaluate curricular needs to online content.
Digital conversion
Develop a strategy to manage the formats and conversion of analog materials to digital where appropriate.
Business Processes
Effective support of the academic mission of the college requires a robust set of tools and services. These goals support the administrative foundation of the institution.
Improve the Efficiency and Management of College Business Systems
The college maintains a considerable investment in IT systems. We will take steps to ensure that investment is used to our best advantage.
Strategies:
Imaging System
[ITCH is thinking to change from imaging to a document management strategy] Consider implementing a common imaging system across the college. Registration and Records has extensive experience using optical imaging systems to store documents. Other offices have expressed interest in exploring a similar solution. As the college explores using imaging solutions in other areas, we will seek to implement a common system.
Workflow Solution
Identify business systems that would benefit from the implementation of a workflow solution. The college has purchased a workflow solution. Our recent experience with Banner implementation and the re-design of the narrative evaluation system demonstrate the potential value of thoughtfully implemented workflow projects. The college will identify other systems that could benefit from this kind of project.
Expand Reporting Systems
Expand reporting systems to better support management research and planning. To fully realize the benefits for the Banner system and other IT resources, it is important that the college continue to identify management and planning needs and develop appropriate reports.
Reduce Risk Associated with Individually Managed Business Processes
The college should take steps to ensure that, where there are individually managed business processes critical to the college, reasonable steps are taken to protect the college against the loss of data and other IT related risks.
Strategies:
Identify Processes
Identify individually managed business processes
Develop Plans
Develop plans to either meet these needs through institutionally supported systems or to mitigate risks.
Maintain Adherence to Desktop Standards
Achieving this goal will significantly improve the college's ability to maintain and troubleshoot systems. It is also essential to effectively protect the college's systems from viruses and other threats.
Strategies:
Increase Awareness
Increase awareness of security issues associated with desktop standards.
Create non-Standard Process
Create a clearly defined process for staff or faculty who want to seek a waiver to purchase new equipment that does not fall within the standards.
Update Standards
An annual update of standards will be linked to the college's budget process so that the cost of replacing or retiring obsolete equipment can be systematically identified.
Improve the Ability to Transact Business Over the Web
The implementation of Banner Registration was a major step. More work remains to be done if the college is to meet the expectations of students, parents and others.
Strategies:
Implement Web admissions tools
Faculty Evaluations
Continue to improve the process of faculty evaluation of students.
Student Learning Contracts
Improve the process for handling student learning contracts.
Student Evaluations
Improve the tools and support for student evaluations.
