About Transform IT

Transform IT Team Members

  • Program sponsor: Patrick Phillips
  • Steering committee: Transform IT Steering Committee
  • Project sponsor: Jessie Minton
  • Team
    • Program managers: Melody Riley, Gary Sullivan
    • Project manager: Paul Taylor
    • Business analyst: Tommy Harmon
    • Communications: Patrick Chinn and Nancy Novitski

Transform IT Steering Committee

The Transform IT Steering Committee will review and approve any proposed service changes, and service transition committees will guide respective service transitions. See Transform IT Steering Committee Roster for a list of current members.

Comments and Feedback

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History

In June 2015, the university embarked on an IT strategic planning initiative. This initiative was guided by a steering committee composed of the chief information officer (CIO), the vice president for finance and administration, the interim vice president for research, the assistant vice president for financial aid, the associate CIO for customer experience, the associate vice president for research, four deans, and two unit IT directors.

The committee contracted with Moran Technology Consulting (MTC) to facilitate the process, which began with a project kickoff meeting on September 1, 2015.  During this engagement, MTC met with representatives from the Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management,  Research and Innovation, Finance and Administration, Information Services, UO Libraries, Advancement, the College of Business, the College of Arts and Science, the School of Journalism and Communication, the School of Music and Dance, the School of Architecture & Allied Arts, the College of Education, Student Life, Business Affairs, Campus Operations, Athletics, UO Communications, General Counsel, and UO students. Through these interactions and working with the CIO and her team, MTC developed a set of recommendations for the steering committee to consider, including ideas around governance and a list of more than 40 proposals for IT investments.

Additionally, UO’s internal audit team engaged a separate organization, Baker Tilly, to conduct an IT risk assessment. This report was presented to the Board of Trustees in December 2015. In addition to highlighting the extent to which IT functions, responsibilities, and investments are dispersed across campus, the report provides an IT risk map depicting potential areas of risk, such as information security/privacy and governance.

After receiving MTC’s and Baker Tilly’s reports, three work groups were established to dig deeper into several areas and make recommendations for the steering committee and ultimately the provost and president to consider: (1) how to develop an IT governance model that selects, prioritizes, and provides oversight on major technology investments and policies; (2) how to consolidate and integrate functions and services to help achieve a more effective use of monetary and staff resources (i.e., leveraging resources); and (3) what IT investments should be prioritized.

The three work groups delivered their recommendations to the steering committee in January 2016 and the recommendations were then considered by the provost and president. The provost provided an update to the University of Oregon’s Board of Trustees at their March 2016 meeting that reflected the implementation decisions made by the provost and president based on the recommendations.

During spring term 2016, consultant Harvey Blustain was engaged to assess and make recommendations for rationalizing the university’s IT structure. The resulting assessment led to the creation of Transform IT.

Blustain’s report, Reorganization of Information Technology at the University of Oregon, noted that campus IT is very distributed and advised restructuring campus IT so that functions report to either Information Services or UO Libraries. To determine which unit should manage which service, the two units developed the Technology and Information Services Charter, which outlines where services should fall based on each unit’s core mission. (UO Communications and Research and Innovation were later added to this group.)

In the early spring of 2017, Jessie Minton was hired as vice provost of information services and chief information officer. She started work on May 1, 2017, and has since shifted the focus of Transform IT from staff realignment to service realignment.

For the latest on Transform IT, visit the front page of this website.