What is the nature of IT Governance (ITG) in Higher Ed? This is a question I, and most of the TAMU IT community, have been wrestling with for a long time. As a Tier One, TAMU has such a distributed model of power (read: budget and decision-making), that common methods of governance don’t really apply.
IT governance (ITG) is defined as the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. – Gartner
I recently got together with a few of my colleagues from around the country that work in Student Affairs IT (SAIT), like me. We talked about some of the conferences we had been to recently. The two most common were EDUCAUSE and NASPA. We all lamented the fact that, while each of these organizations have different things to offer our discipline, neither one is very well suited to our needs. In other words, we seem to have fallen between the cracks. EDUCAUSE is focused on Higher Ed IT, but with a decidedly academic computing focus, while NASPA focuses on the discipline of Student Affairs without really knowing how to be technical. All of the NASPA events focused on tech so far (e.g., NASPATech) are focused on social media, which is related to SAIT as a service but certainly is not the totality of what we do. (more…)