Response to the Coopers and Lybrand
Information Technology Strategic Plan-- Governance Section
October 27, 1997
Introduction
The attached report represents the current status of the Board’s work on Executive
Vice Chancellor Kennel’s request for the Board to convey, by October 1, its response
to the governance recommendations in the May 1997 IT Strategic Plan prepared by Coopers
and Lybrand (see footnote 1). Our report should be viewed as
an alternative to the Coopers and Lybrand recommendation. Appendix 1 diagrams our proposed
IT organization.
The AITB devoted the better part of six meetings over the summer to discussion of
computing governance. We believe that our proposal - although it may not be correct in all
details - is fundamentally on target. We realize that much work remains to be done to
develop a common vision of what we want to accomplish and to reach agreement on
implementation details.
The roots of the AITB, which go back to the early 1990’s, were triggered by
faculty initiative that demanded a computing environment at UCLA that was more responsive
to academic interests, specifically to faculty and student interests. It was a reaction
against a computing environment that was controlled by non-academic administrators. The
honest way to put it was that the faculty gave to the central computing administration a
vote of no confidence.
As a result of extended pressure from the faculty, a joint Administration/Senate
Computing Planning Committee was appointed by EVC Rich in 1992. This group recommended the
establishment of an instruction and research computing committee. The Instructional and
Research Computing Council (IRCC) was established and functioned from 1994 to 1997, and
produced several initiatives that have greatly influenced both faculty and administration
views on computing policy, including the disposition of OAC and the handling of proposals
for inter-unit computing initiatives. The IRCC was, by explicit agreement of the Academic
Senate and Executive Vice Chancellor Kennel, reconstituted as the Academic Information
Technology Board (AITB) in Spring 1997.
Coopers and Lybrand give little indication that they credit or even that they were
familiar with the April 1993 Final Report of the Academic Computing Planning Committee.
After careful study and extended discussion, the AITB concluded that although Coopers and
Lybrand usefully described the problems of computing and information technology at UCLA,
they did not reach deeply enough into the "governance culture" and
"computing history" at UCLA to come up with a workable and durable governance
model.
Our discussion of the defects of the Coopers and Lybrand proposal led in a natural way
to an alternative proposal.
The working through - in practical ways - of the details of the governance system that
we are proposing will take, in our judgment, at least six months of hard work. This work
must be done in a consultative yet focused way, and with sensitivity to the human aspects
of the dislocation which inevitably occur in an undertaking of this complexity and
magnitude. We are recommending that during this transition period the current IT
management structure can remain in place, even while the changes we are proposing in
Appendix 1 are being implemented.
To assist in implementing a new governance system we make the following additional
recommendations, which we hope will receive early attention:
- The name of the Academic Information Technology Board (AITB) should be changed to
Information Technology Board (ITB).
- That the membership of the AITB should be augmented - in addition to the undergraduate
and graduate student representatives (see footnote 2) - with
the Administrative Vice Chancellor and the Research Vice Chancellor.
- That the ITB be asked to submit to you a final report on governance, representing close
consultation with the Academic Senate, and campus-wide input.
If it is agreed that having one IT Officer for UCLA - as outlined in the diagram - is a
sound idea, the recruitment process will take upward of six months. Therefore, we want to
begin that process as soon as possible. At the same time, to implement the transition
plan, the AITB intends to appoint an IT Working Group with a Chair, and we will need
resources to do this.
We are eager to get underway. The IT Working Group would be functionally responsible
for coordination and management of transition activity, would formulate and prepare
recommendations to the Board on substantive IT issues, and would act to implement Board
decisions. Establishing this mechanism is both important and urgent in our view.
Background
In May 1997 the Information Technology Strategic Plan prepared by the consulting firm
of Coopers and Lybrand was transmitted by Executive Vice Chancellor Kennel to the Academic
Information Technology Board (AITB) for review and recommendation. In addition, the AITB
was asked to respond by October 1, 1997 to the following governance recommendations in the
Coopers and Lybrand document:
- The creation of a central organization, Instruction and Research Information Technology
Services 'IRITS', that merges instructional and research computing.
- The appointment of an Academic Information Technology Officer who would manage this unit
and assume a leadership role with regard to all aspects of academic information technology
The reason given by Kennel for singling out the governance recommendations for
expedited attention was that until the governance system for IT was in place it would not
be possible to act on current and future substantive – often controversial – IT
matters that are important to UCLA.
AITB Review Process
The AITB began work in early June to ensure that the Coopers and Lybrand’s
recommendations on governance would be thoroughly considered. This included:
- A mass e-mail announcement to faculty to alert them to the availability of the IT
Strategic Plan on the Web and in hard copy. The intent was to provide faculty with the
document to review during summer vacation.
- A summer agenda that allowed the Board to primarily focus on the Coopers and Lybrand
governance model and the specific requests made by the Executive Vice Chancellor.
- The creation of an AITB web site (http/www.aitb.ucla.edu) to ensure a highly visible and
open process. The web site is used to inform the campus on Board progress and provides an
avenue for campus input on issues under consideration by the Board.
AITB Summer Meetings
Between May 1997 when the AIT Board was appointed and the beginning of the Fall
Quarter, the Board held six meetings. The minutes of each meeting were promptly dispatched
to Vice Chancellor Kennel and the Chair of the Academic Senate. The idea was that they
would handle additional distribution within their respective organizations. In addition,
the minutes were posted on the AITB web site for information and to stimulate feedback and
campus discussion.
Procedural issues were the focus of the first two Board meetings on June 9 and 11.
Substantive discussion of governance dominated the meetings held on July 23, August 28,
September 11, and September 17. (The public record of these meetings is available on the
AITB web site).
The Board’s thinking evolved over the course of the meetings. A brief summary of
each meeting follows:
Meeting of July 23: At this meeting Peter Segal, the senior Coopers and Lybrand
higher education consultant on the IT strategic planning process provided the background
and rationale for their proposed governance model (see Appendix 2).
According to Segal any governance system established at UCLA would have to try to solve
several fundamental problems:
- Slow, uncoordinated, and sometimes academically-insensitive decision making.
- An unusual degree of fragmentation between central IT organizations.
- A lack of coordination between central and local IT organizations.
- A large gap between the level of support people need and what is provided.
Every AIT Board member expressed concern that the Cooper’s and Lybrand governance
system - which completely separates academic and administration computing - would
encourage continued fragmentation rather than provide solutions for integration,
accountability and continuity of IT resources and services. Examples were cited of
traditional administrative computing areas that were integral to various academic
initiatives.
As an outcome of the July 23rd meeting, two alternative IT governance approaches were
sketched and posted on the AITB web site for review and discussion.
Meeting of August 28: Preliminary agreement was reached on several
characteristics of a workable IT governance system at UCLA. These included:
- Information technology governance at UCLA must be accomplished through an academic and
administratively empowered AIT Board and Chair. The Board would be responsible for policy
and strategic direction for information technology at UCLA.
- One Information Technology (IT) Officer, rather than two as suggested in the Coopers and
Lybrand model, would assume a leadership role having oversight and operational
responsibility over all central IT organizations and functions. The IT Officer would be
fully accountable to the Board for policy and governance implementation and to the
Executive Vice Chancellor for day-to-day operations.
Meeting of September 11: The Board continued its discussion of IT governance by
focusing its attention on the relationships between the AIT Board/IT Officer combination
and the existing central and local IT organizations.
Three structural relationships evolved:
A. A direct reporting relationship to the AIT Board/IT Officer.
B. An oversight and advisory relationship.
C. A primarily facilitating and coordinating relationship.
As a consequence of this discussion several IT units and functions were preliminarily
placed in one of three categories. OAC, AIS and CTS into category A; IT components of OID
, Library and Registrars Office into category B; and, multi-disciplinary IT initiatives
and local centers into category C.
Meeting of September 17: At the Board’s final meeting of the summer it
fine-tuned the system that had evolved and came to closure on a composite governance
system.
Recommendation
It is the Board’s conclusion that the Coopers and Lybrand report did quite a good
job in identifying problems that beset the present IT arrangements at UCLA. At the same
time, the Board feels that the governance model proposed by Coopers and Lybrand fails to
respond to these problems in a manner which reflects the underlying values and governance
traditions for something so central to UCLA’s academic future as IT. The chief
consultant of Coopers and Lybrand seemed to agree with the Board’s views.
If UCLA were to adopt the governance model proposed by Coopers and Lybrand it would --
at best -- constitute a superficial patch on a growing and increasingly complex set of IT
issues facing UCLA. The Board recommends a bolder and more comprehensive approach to IT
governance at UCLA. The Board’s proposed governance recommendation, diagramed in
Appendix 1, is based upon the following underlying characteristics:
- The line that historically delineated administrative from academic computing is blurred.
Information technology affects all facets of the academic mission thus the traditional
separation between administrative and academic computing are becoming increasingly
arbitrary. UCLA Connected, Bruin Online Remote Access, Instructional Enhancement
Initiative (IEI), R-Net and Internet 2 are only a few examples of high profile, large
budget, campus-wide issues that represent a "graying" between administrative and
academic computing and the shared interests of all members of the UCLA community.
- The proposed governance system must be robust and measured against its ability to offer
solutions to the problems summarized in the Coopers and Lybrand report. The governance
system must be:
A. Easily understood and communicated both internally and externally
"The central IT units lack mission that are broadly accepted by the UCLA
community, defined customer sets and well-defined accountability measures. The effect of
these ambiguities is internal conflict, a wide variety of opinions about the value and
effectiveness of central IT units and an environment in which central service providers
find it difficult to be successful."(Coopers and Lybrand, IT Strategic Plan, page 20,
B.1.A)
B. Coherent - Increasing investments of financial resources and human time and
energy requires a governance system that can provide a unified focus. The system must be
able to - 1) articulate a campus-wide vision, 2) recommend policy and strategic direction
and 3) implement objectives.
"UCLA lacks an institution-wide governance and decision-making structure to ensure
that IT resources and projects are aligned with important institutional objectives. The
result has been a collection of central IT resources that are structured and guided in an
ad hoc manner, meeting the needs of a subset of the UCLA community."(Coopers and
Lybrand, IT Strategic Plan, page 11, A.2)
C. Facilitative - the system must recognize a highly decentralized information
technology environment and ensure that resources reserved for centralized units serve
genuinely shared needs. The system must be able to garner resources at the central level
to facilitate innovation at the local level.
"The current organizational structure of central IT resources and the existing
division of responsibilities between central and local resources have inhibited the full
value and impact of IT across the institution." (Coopers and Lybrand, IT Strategic
Plan, page 11, A.3)
D. Innovative - the system must build relationships beyond what traditional
organizational delineation allows. A consolidated and focused system must leverage all IT
resources in pursuit and support of UCLA's academic mission.
"There are very few mechanisms that encourage and facilitate sharing of innovative
IT usage across the institution. Faculty believe that their colleagues at UCLA are
developing interesting and relevant applications of IT in teaching and research that are
applicable across disciplines, yet the benefits and knowledge reaped from local
developments are rarely shared or communicated across disciplinary boundaries."
(Coopers and Lybrand, IT Strategic Plan, page 11).
E. Responsive - the system must recognize and respond to the dynamic evolution
of information technology and the necessity for flexibility and change. Complex
governance systems with multiple reporting lines and IT executives will create fragmented
processes that will slow effective decision making.
"UCLA lacks a senior representative with responsibility for IT who can help ensure
that the institution has a coherent and effective IT strategy. The Chancellor and
Executive Vice Chancellor do not have amongst them a peer who is responsible for key IT
issues and who is responsible for advising the institutional leadership on how to manage
and develop IT capabilities that provide academic, competitive and financial benefits to
the University." (Coopers and Lybrand, IT Strategic Plan, page 20)
Conclusion
The AIT Board believes that the proposed governance system diagramed in Appendix 1
provides the framework for these characteristics to be realized. The Board recommends
recruiting an IT Officer. The advisability of the more detailed structural changes
proposed by Coopers and Lybrand to combine OAC and the IT components of the OID will be
resolved during the transition period. This will allow for adequate discussion to ensure
that all components within the system are properly defined and articulated – leading
to a broadly communicated and accepted governance system for information technology at
UCLA. During the transition the Board will provide the Chancellor and Executive Vice
Chancellor input and advice on substantive IT issues that require immediate policy
attention.
Appendix 1 - Proposed UCLA Information Technology
Governance System
Appendix 2 - Coopers and Lybrand Proposed
Governance System |
