A Further Look at the Evolving Future of SUNY Technology

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A Further Look: The Evolving Future Of SUNY Technology Doug Kahn, 2012 1

A FURTHER LOOK: THE EVOLVING FUTURE OF SUNY TECHNOLOGY

Presentation at SUNY Technology Conference June 26, 2012

Doug Kahn, July 5, 2012

The Evolving Future of SUNY Technology1is an idea first presented at the SUNY Technology Conference

in Rye, New York on June 26, 2012. This paper is an elaboration on the concepts outlined that day.

Proposed are a number of solutions for consideration by the SUNY IT community. Active discussion

among all in SUNY is both necessary and welcome to refine this message into a constructive vehicle for

the benefit of the entire University.

THESIS

The 64 institutions that comprise the State University of New York have reached an unsustainable

plateau of technology. To meet the growing needs of our constituent students, faculty, staffs and

communities, technology must evolve. To quote Darwin: It is not the strongest of the species that

survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. SUNY

technology must become more adaptable in essence to survive.

If technology professionals can implement Three Big Ideas, SUNY can achieve evolutionary or

transformational results for the greater benefit of our students, faculty, staff, the New York State

taxpayer and the community. These three Big Ideas are:

1. Unite the Vision for SUNY Technology2. Harness existing technology resources toAchieve Critical Mass3. Finance the Solution using innovative and new funding models

As a direct result of these adaptations, information technology in the University will transform in a way

which allows campuses to better conduct their academic programs. This will result from two outcomes:First, institutions will be able to repurpose monies previously devoted to technology for their academic

mission. Second and equally important, Presidents, Provosts and their leadership teams will be able to

more clearly focus on academics as their technology infrastructure will be provided by the University

centrally.

UNITE THE VISION

The first and most critical objective toward the goal of transformational technology is to establish a

coherent technology vision for the entire University. Defining a mission for a single institution is difficult

enough. Extending this model to a single vision for 64 institutions plus a series of central SUNY

organizations would appear exponentially more difficult. This would be the case were it not for the

great effort taken to createThe Power of SUNY2under the leadership of the SUNY Chancellor, Dr. Nancy

Zimpher. Her extraordinary leadership has the University moving as a unit toward what she refers to as

systemness, a network of resources more powerful than its individual institutions.

1http://tinyurl.com/d3yyds3

2http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8X476YasTH4Y2FFM2VMNElkT28/edit?pli=1https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8X476YasTH4Y2FFM2VMNElkT28/edit?pli=1http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8X476YasTH4Y2FFM2VMNElkT28/edit?pli=1


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In a 2010 presentation titledHow to Feed and Care for Your Strategic Technology Plan3, I compared the

needs of a sound technology plan to those of Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs. I suggested a Kahns

Hierarchy of Needs for strategic technology plans. The steps fell into three main categories:

1. Strategic planning that needed to occur at the institution level before a strategic technologyplan could be developed.

2. The steps necessary to build a technology plan.3. The continual assessment and evolution of the plan to achieve excellent and transformation for

the institution.

The first or pre-requisite steps to building a strategic technology plan for SUNY have been largely

completed by the Power of SUNY initiative. The strong leadership of Dr. Zimpher and the input of many

colleagues across the University resulted in a strong strategic plan for the future. The next steps

therefore are for the Information Technology Transformation Team are: to create alignment and

partnering with the stakeholders of technology; and authoring the actual technology plan.

To accomplish these tasks, technology professionals must listen to and collaborate with their non

technical peers who are working toward achieving the SUNY Strategic Plan. They can then develop atechnology plan that clearly and concisely draws a course of action to maximize the return on

investment in these resources. Once developed it becomes incumbent on the leadership of all SUNY

institutions and technology professionals to maintain firm commitment to this single vision.

It can be asked why campuses should not be able to have divergent technology plans versus an

overarching technology plan for the entire university. I answer:

Without a united vision for technology across SUNY, disproportionate amounts of money,

staffing and time will be devoted to technology at every institution. This has and will continue

to have a growing direct negative impact on the overall quality of programs and instruction at

each college and university center because senior management cannot focus their attentionmore fully on academics.

ACHIEVE CRITICAL MASS

In contrast to the continuing message campus IT organizations communicate to their Presidents

regarding a lack of resources, both financial and staffing to achieve their mission, I suggest the following:

SUNY has more than enough staff, money and systems to achieve the Power of SUNY.

This is a fact. The simple reason we cannot produce coherent solutions on our campuses is we have

spread our people and funds too thinly over 64 IT organizations. The result is mediocrity in the overall

delivery of technology. While each institution has some area where they demonstrate technological

excellence, there is no single institution with adequate resources to meet the full needs of their

constituents. Many mission critical IT standards such as disaster recovery are not implemented to

industry standards.

3http://tinyurl.com/c9th3ny
http://www.stc.suny.edu/media/stc2010_DougKahn1.pdfhttp://www.stc.suny.edu/media/stc2010_DougKahn1.pdfhttp://www.stc.suny.edu/media/stc2010_DougKahn1.pdfhttp://www.stc.suny.edu/media/stc2010_DougKahn1.pdfhttp://www.stc.suny.edu/media/stc2010_DougKahn1.pdf


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One thing should be clear on this point: The overall lack of excellence is not the result of poor work by

our IT peers. Likewise, it is not the result of mismanagement of our institutions. It is the reality of a

decentralized approach to IT across the University from its inception. Every campus and their IT staff

have labored extremely hard at making technology work. Given the constraints they work under, they

have performed admirably.

I propose that the University unify the staff of all institutions into a single organization named United

University Technology Services. Combined, there are hundreds of IT professionals and budgets of many

millions of dollars. If these resources are managed as a single entity, the University will benefit from

tremendous economy of scale.

Consider for instance what it would mean to harness the talents of more than 130 Banner programmers

across the state. SUNY could boast a dozen teams of eight professionals each dedicated to a single

module of the system. This will allow for several teams doing the things there is rarely time to do:

project management, quality assurance, documentation, comprehensive training programs and more.

I suggest that SUNY create four main data centers to centralize operations and mitigate the risk of single

points of failure. This also relieves the local campus of responsibility for maintaining infrastructurebeyond the desktop and network. Even there, through unified teams engineering networks and desktop

solutions, a centralized standard in technology will increase the efficiency in delivery of these

technologies University-wide.

SUNY technology should also consolidate hardware, software and services contracts to single or two

vendor solutions wherever possible to maximize the purchasing power of the University. Recent optional

University purchases resulted in significant savings to all participating campuses. Applied to the entire

University as a standard there will be significant budgetary saving achieved.

FINANCE THE SOLUTION

To realize the benefit of a single University wide technology organization a sound plan for financing the

solution must be in place.

The current model of charging campuses for services provided by the University is no longer viable.

Conceptually this chargeback system works as a reverse subsidy whereby University offices tax SUNY

institutions for services. There are flaws in this methodology. SUNY offices and organizations use a

number of differing chargeback calculations, payment cycles and locations funds need to be transferred

to. The overhead of Income Fund Reimbursement alone is significant.

I suggest that as the University holds campuses to a centrally supplied technology organization, it is

incumbent on the University to provide that solution at no cost. This is clearly not possible in a single

stroke, or even in the short term. To do this, I suggest three funding paths to transition the cost from

campuses to the University:

1. On turnover of each technology position, the funding responsibility for the replacement staffmoves from the campus to the University. The campus then must replace this position with one

directly supporting their academic mission.


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2. All new technology initiatives are funded directly by the University without any charge tocampuses.

3. The cost of existing technology on campuses is transitioned from the campus to Universitybudget on a rate of 10% per year. Again, campuses should be required to directly move those

funds saved to their academic mission. It should be noted though that by achieving critical

mass, the technology footprint on campus and purchase volume will reduce overall cost at the

same time, diluting the impact of the 10% shift to the University.

By implementing these steps the University moves in a sustainable manner to budgetary ownership,

while campuses receive ongoing savings on IT that result in increased academic funding.

Campuses should be responsible to show that there are no offsetting cuts to their academic funding that

would balance out to a net zero growth in program funding.

SUMMARY

By uniting our vision, achieving critical mass and financing our solution, SUNY can capitalize on the greatexisting strengths of our people and funding. What must change is the method of delivery of these

services. Through a true transformation of our approach to technology, in partnership with our

colleagues in academics we can revolutionize the way students, faculty and staffs are supported.

Together, we can truly harness the Power of SUNY for the benefit of all New Yorkers.

The proposal I put forth on June 26 is just that: an innovative proposition to achieve evolutionary

growth in technology delivery to the University. There are many ways to accomplish this. This paper is

meant to foster new and creative ideas and further discussion in our community of professionals. I

cordially invite all technology peers, colleagues in higher education and stakeholders in SUNY to join in a

discussion on the subject of a transformation of technology services in the State University of New Yorkon my blog: http://dougkahn.blogspot.com.
http://dougkahn.blogspot.com/http://dougkahn.blogspot.com/http://dougkahn.blogspot.com/

A Further Look at the Evolving Future of SUNY Technology

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