Wayne Brown

Governance can be defined as the process for formalizing who has input into a decision and who actually makes the decision. In the information technology (IT) profession, we also tend to add the term “alignment” when technology governance is discussed. For instance, effective governance ensures the technology department is aligned with the institution’s mission. This means we aren’t implementing technology for technology’s sake. Rather, we are implementing the technology the institution has asked for and providing customer service – the reason for our existence as a department. Technology governance, in general, has been on our chief information officer (CIO) collective list of things to do, or things to do better, for a very long time. It continues to rank in the top 10 on the EDUCAUSE Current Issues list and is an ongoing Gartner research topic (Camp & DeBlois, 2007).

The absence of effective technology governance leads to a situation where the technology department makes functional department decisions and vice versa. In addition, alignment of the technology department with the mission is very difficult to achieve. From an IT-department customer perspective, governance ensures the right decisions are made by the right people. For example, the CIO should not make decisions about how grades are entered into a student’s record or how technology is used to enhance teaching and learning. On the other hand, a financial aid employee should not decide what the technology architecture should look like or what the technology department’s principles should be.

At Johnson County Community College (JCCC), the issue of administrative technology governance has been a continually improving work in progress since the school implemented the Banner enterprise resource planning (ERP) system more than 15 years ago. The process for the ERP-based committees continues to be refined, but overall it works very well. The functional areas and the technology department leadership are represented on the committees. The committees operate as a team to create a prioritized list of technology projects and timelines for the operational plan. This planning process ensures the administrative section of the technology department is aligned with the institutional mission. As a result, the college functional area leadership makes decisions about the priority order of college functional area technology projects.

However, one important item that was missing from the JCCC technology department governance was a written document outlining the governance process. Consequently, JCCC added a governance document that describes how JCCC technology governance decisions are made. The JCCC technology governance philosophy and document are based on Weill and Ross’s (2004) work on technology governance. Unfortunately, academic technology at JCCC did not have the same level of governance or alignment.

JCCC did have two academic technology committees in the past. One of the committees, the Distance Learning Coordinating Council (DLCC), continued to be very active and focused solely on distance learning issues. The committee was chaired by an instructional administrator and included faculty representation.

The other committee, the Instructional Computing, Planning, and Advising Committee (ICPAC), had ceased to exist. The technology department’s view of ICPAC was that it had been very focused on “my technology problem” and had not been effective in working with the technology department on governance or alignment. The faculty and nontechnology department employee view of ICPAC was that it had tried to work on governance but had a number of challenges (J. Bacon, E. Lovitt, and J. Magliano, personal communication, spring 2008). The challenges ranged from unstable membership to lack of an agenda. The committee eventually voted to disband.

As a result, the institution did not have an academic technology committee devoted to the governance of technology initiatives. The technology organization could not be truly aligned with the institution or have a healthy governance process without a formal, academically focused technology committee. Furthermore, there was no formal and visible technology governance process or a functional area group that could be consulted about academic technology needs and prioritization. This last issue was particularly troublesome because there were a number of academic technology projects on the IT department’s operational plan every year, but no nontechnology leader or functional source could be identified for such projects. This challenge translated into the technology department deciding which technologies faculty and students needed without getting their input on the need or prioritization of the projects.

In the spring of 2006, the CIO began working with faculty and instructional administration to charter a new college committee called the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC). The purpose of the committee was to advise and guide Information Services in the selection, prioritization, research, testing, and implementation of projects in support of instructional technology at the college.

A decision was made to have the committee co-chaired by the director of academic technology, a mathematics professor, who was also the faculty association vice president, and the dean of liberal arts, who was also the chair of the DLCC. Other members of the committee included a number of faculty and students, the CIO, the library director, the assistant dean for business and technology, the administrative computing director, and a representative from continuing education. The voting members of the committee were all faculty and students.

The first meeting of ATAC was held in the fall of 2006. The committee immediately began a review of the current fiscal year plan for the academic technology group. The result was a number of projects being removed from the group’s plan and other initiatives being added. It was very rewarding to watch this technology department alignment happen in real time. Since the first meeting ATAC has played a major role in the life of academic technology at JCCC.

Despite the fact the committee is only in its second year, it is already very mature. The maturity level of the committee may stem from the strong leadership and membership that included a number of employees from other technology-focused committees. In the second year, ATAC leadership and membership changed very smoothly. Another prominent faculty member assumed duties as the faculty chair, and the library director replaced the liberal arts dean for instructional administration. The committee was instrumental in the creation of the technology department’s plan for the next fiscal year. In addition, ATAC, together with the DLCC, was at the center of a decision about whether or not to replace the current JCCC learning management system (LMS). After that decision was made, the ATAC and DLCC spearheaded the LMS request for proposals and decision process.

While the JCCC technology governance process works well and has been highlighted by Gartner as a model, there are still improvements that could be made (Rowsell-Jones, Colella, & Gerrard, 2007). There will have to be tighter integration between ATAC and other JCCC technology committees to ensure all of the committees have an institution view of the technology initiatives. In addition, committee members will need a deeper understanding about the time and resources it takes to implement projects. This information will help the committee make sound decisions during the project creation and prioritization process.

The implementation of a technology governance process takes an understanding of how an effective governance process should work. There are other models available, but Weill and Ross have an easily understandable and usable approach to the process. A representative committee led by technology and functional area employees will have to be created. The leadership of the group is not for the IT department to have alone, nor should the responsibility be ceded completely to the functional area – it should be shared, as the decisions are. While effective technology governance takes time, it is well worth the effort. It results in decisions being made by the right people, reduces the amount of unhealthy conflict, and aligns the IT department with the mission. Ultimately, technology governance takes less time and effort than cleaning up the mess when decisions are made by the wrong group.

Moving from ad hoc academic technology planning, prioritization, and alignment to a formal and visible process led by faculty and students with technology leadership guidance was the right move for JCCC. The authority and responsibility for functional area technology decisions have been clarified. Furthermore, the process brought the academic technology efforts of the IT department into alignment with the college. While the ongoing maintenance of the process is not easy, perhaps we can begin to cross academic technology governance off our list of things to do.

References

Camp, J. & DeBlois, P. (2007). Top-Ten IT Issues, 2007 EDUCAUSE Review, 42(3), 12-33.
Rowsell-Jones, A., Colella, H., & Gerrard, M. (2007). Making Decisions Right. Stamford, CT: Gartner.
Weill, P. & Ross, J. (2004). IT Governance. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Wayne Brown is Chief Information Officer at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas.

Cynthia Wilson, Editor