I Found the IT UC Berkeley Report Very Useful and Strikingly Familiar

I found the IT@UC Berkeley report very useful and strikingly familiar. NC State is faced with many of the same problems, with perhaps the exception of recent advances in providing teaching technology support (ClassTech and DELTA). In particular, NC State is plagued by a huge disconnect between IT management at the University level and IT support and services at the ‘street level.’ A CIO is needed not only to unify campus-wide IT services, but to integrate IT management from top to bottom. This necessarily requires some restructuring of IT governance along the lines of the suggested models for recommendation #3 in the Berkeley report. As such, my responses below emphasize the need for a new governance structure, and a CIO who can inspire collaborations and build consensus for the future of IT among disparate constituents. In this regard, the single most important quality of the CIO must be leadership.

1. Your description of the position might include these elements:

• The CIO is responsible for all IT activities at the University, including RMIS, ITD, DELTA, and extending (in some form) to departments and colleges. Research computing at all levels should be included. • The cone of influence should extend to local IT support with some form of governance that encourages communication and cooperation among different levels (department, college, university): IT management at the unit level must work with the CIO to define the future of IT at NC State. • Although the goals of ITD and RMIS may differ, the end-user is typically affected by both enterprises. Merging of these offices to create a single face of campus-wide IT is necessary to improve efficiency and effectiveness of IT services.

2. Your outline of qualifications and attributes presumably will touch on the usual dimensions -- degrees, prior experience, and so on -- but perhaps will go beyond these to touch on

• management style: listen and lead. The autonomy of different units on campus provides a fertile ground for developing new ideas in IT. The CIO should tap this resource for guiding campus-wide IT services and disseminating best practices. At the same time the CIO must be able to lead these different units in a unified direction, persuading them to buy into one vision for campus IT. • familiarity with environments like NC State's, balancing the demands of administrative computing, academic, outreach and research computing. • whether particular kinds of IT expertise are necessary or desirable: No.