Jessie Minton, vice provost for Information Services and chief information officer, facilitated a two-day IT governance development meeting on September 12 and 13, 2017. More than 50 people, representing academic, research, and administrative units as well as students, faculty, and UO Senate, participated in the workshop.
Governance helps create alignment of IT decisions with institutional mission and stakeholder needs, assurance of stakeholder buy-in for IT policies, budgets, and projects, integration of risk management into IT decision-making, and improved communication around IT across campus.
IT governance aims to be both strategic and flexible, enable community input and decisions, and guide UO’s management and use of technology.
Minton guided the group through discussions about campus-wide IT decision types, stakeholders, and structure. The group also deliberated on governance for Transform IT and how to strategically and transparently manage savings produced by that initiative.
Minton will develop a draft IT governance structure by Wednesday, September 20. Session participants will have the opportunity to provide feedback on that document before it is presented to the IT Steering Committee the week of September 25.
Developing a complete IT governance structure was identified as a priority for the university during IT strategic planning work conducted in 2015. Currently, the university has a number of service-specific advisory groups as well as an IT Steering Committee that makes recommendations to the provost.