Our Current Work
Study into the Integration of Technology into Institutional Strategies
This study is funded by the JISC and is the first piece of work to be carried out within the recently announced partnership of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and the JISC.
British higher education has invested heavily in the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to support learning, research, management and administrative functions in recent years. Little of this investment, however, has been integrated into a common strategic direction. Individual “best of breed” solutions have been developed to resolve emerging operational needs or to provide benefit from perceived opportunities. Such investments have demonstrated successful innovation and imagination, but the focus of development has typically been the individual needs, understanding and expertise of separate strands of the institution. Researchers, academics and managers have sought and found solutions to their own pressing concerns and agendas, with a keen awareness both of market opportunity and risk and of emerging best practice elsewhere. There has however been limited attention paid to integrating technology in either of two senses:
- to bring together separate technological systems and solutions into comprehensive and coherent institutional-level solutions to institution-wide needs
- to include technological options explicitly in the discussions and decisions of leaders and senior managers when determining the institution’s long term strategy and the delivery of its goals.
The Leadership Foundation has identified the critical strategic role of ICT within an increasingly global, highly competitive marketplace for Higher Education, not only in the management of information and the delivery of teaching, but also in the capability and capacity of institutions to stay at the forefront of research activity, nationally and internationally.
Identification of the mechanisms, both procedural and interpersonal, for the binding of technology into strategy is the basis of this study. We shall seek both to unearth the critical success factors which characterise those institutions which manage the process well and to identify gaps or difficulties, particularly those relating to the development of senior management’s capability to adapt and adopt a consideration of the impact of technology upon strategy. Such an approach is distinctly not a statement of a need to invest additional resources into ICT; rather it is an identification of the need to tie ICT investment clearly into the strategic context, addressing the needs and aspirations of institutions, to ensure that the best possible use is made of technology.
The core of this study will be structured interviews with representatives of a number of HEIs. We shall select a sample of institutions that will as far as possible be representative of the nations and regions of the UK, and exemplify within it the diversity of the sector as a whole, taking into account factors such as the background of the institution. We shall seek to speak to one or two people from each institution, covering the following roles:
- A member of the institutional SMT;
- The institutional planning officer;
- The CIO or head of ICT services;
- A member of the institution's governing body.
The core interviews will be supplemented by a set of interviews with board level representatives of a few sizeable organisations outside the educational sector. In these interviews, we shall look to identifying good practice in the business sector to provide a benchmark for higher education.
Duke & Jordan Ltd are undertaking this work in association with Bob Powell, an independent consultant, formerly of the JISC and Becta.
1 July 2008