It is generally accepted that the professional building of information systems for the organizations should start by a phase of strategic planning. The main goal of this phase is to ensure that the information system under development will support the mission and current and future aims and objectives of the organization. In this phase, all necessary human, organizational, financial and other requirements for successful development of IS are analyzed too. This contribution deals with more detailed description of the phase of strategic planning for university information systems. The main technological as well as non-technological issues of the process of strategic planning are discussed. The ideas presented in the contribution are illustrated by experiences obtained in the phase of strategic planning at Comenius University that has been accomplished during the last months.
Facing the last year of the 20th century we can take as evident that information technology (IT) has become the key technology of our times. It affects deeply our life as well as the life of other individuals, groups, organizations and the whole society. It brings quite new possibilities but at the same time strongly increases demands on all its users. If an organization does not want to stay behind, it must introduce IT in its day-to-day life.
Universities do not form any exception to this rule. Although they contributed considerably to the development of information technology, when they try to introduce IT into their day-to-day life they face similar problems as other organizations.
At Comenius University, we have tried to make use IT in university management since 1991. It is not the aim of the present contribution to describe the concrete details of this process. Rather we want to speak about some conclusions coming from our experiences that will influence our future work and could perhaps be interesting also for others.
When we speak about information system of an organization, we usually mean the use of IT in the organization management. One of the common definitions of the organization information system states that it is the set of all hardware and software means, methods and staff ensuring acquiring, storing, processing and disseminating data in order to produce and to present information for management and operation of the organization and for its presentation to outside world. Information systems development is considered today to be an issue of strategic importance for the majority of the organizations.
The university information systems have some specific features in comparison with those of other organizations. They do not provide information just for the university management but also for all members of the university community. Because of high degree of autonomy of individual university components, they must be sufficiently flexible. Because of wide range of users they must be robust and secure. Their usage must be simple. In spite of these differences, the success of universities also depends on the use of information technology in day-to-day activities.
The ways of information systems development and requirements on the systems have changed during the history. Main requirements on information systems today are usability, reliability, maintainability and efficiency.
Unfortunately, most of the today's information systems do not satisfy these requirements sufficiently. The most common shortages are insufficient coverage of information needs of the organization, lack of internal links among individual components, diversity of user interfaces and hardware and software platforms, low flexibility, and demanding maintenance.
These shortages are also quite common for university information systems. Because of university specifics, some of them are even more visible here. As a typical example we can present the low coverage of information needs by existing university information systems caused by high degree of diversity and complicated structure of activities at the universities. In the university environment, we can find also much higher demands on access to information from teachers and students in comparison with standard employees in other organizations. The development and putting of university information systems into operation are negatively affected also by higher degree of independence of departments and people within the university in comparison with the situation in enterprises. The regular changes of university management (rectors, deans etc.) implying different approaches to the issues connected with information systems have negative impact as well.
The development of an integrated information system is a very complex process. Different statistics dealing with the monitoring of information systems development projects show very high rate of failure of this kind of projects. In better cases the problems manifest in considerable longer development periods than planned and in worse cases in the total failing of the project.
This is due to different reasons. We would like to point out first the one we can often encounter also in the university environment. It lies in the nonprofessional approach of responsible managers who, being not aware of the complexity of the problem, consider that the system can be developed by a couple of students (or computing center staff) within a few weeks or months.
The most important fact negatively affecting information system development is simply the complexity of this task. To make the development easier, several methods and procedures have been elaborated during the last three decades. In spite of this fact, the use of these methods can just increase the probability of success of the project. There is no method that could ensure it definitely. But it is evident that good integrated university information system cannot be developed using a nonprofessional and nonsystematic approach building just on enthusiasm.
The professional development of software systems goes in general through several phases, the main of which are the gathering of requirements of future users and setting out what the system should do (analysis), the system design, and the system implementation. In case of information systems, an additional phase, called strategic planning, is necessary. The main task of this phase is to determine the aims of the information system and to create the information system architecture. The word "strategic" means here the period of 5 - 10 years. The overall view of information system development is in Fig. 1 (taken from [2]).
As an illustration we present here the recommendation of British Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) for the strategic planning [1]. The process of strategic planning by CCTA should have the following phases (we present also typical duration of the phases):
One of the consequences of this is that the typical minimal period for strategic planning is about half a year.
Very interesting conclusions have come from an inquiry on strategic planning for technology performed in the United States in 1997. More than 150 technology officers in higher education around the country took place in the inquiry. The results were presented by M. Ringle and D. Updegrove at CAUSE'97 Conference in Orlando [3] in their contribution "Is Strategic Planning for Technology an Oxymoron?"
One of the most important outcomes of this inquiry can be well expressed by the following quote of Dwight D. Eisenhower: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". It means, as the authors say, that the real benefit of strategic technology planning lies with the process and not the plan.
The motivations for strategic planning mentioned by queried officers were:
It can be easily seen that these goals have more to do with social, political, and economic concerns than they do with technological issues.
In conclusion the authors expressed their view that, if done properly, strategic technology planning is enormously valuable for institutions and it is not an oxymoron.
The history of using computers in education, research and administration at Comenius University is rather long. The year 1991 is one of important milestones in this history. That time the construction of the university computer network began, and, on the basis of it, the university information and communications system started to be developed. In autumn 1997, as a result of the rapid progress of information technology and growing demands on information resources, the responsible university bodies decided that the university would begin a project aimed to an innovation of this system under the name the Integrated Information and Communications System (IICS) of Comenius University.
The project of the IICS started with the following motto:
The new information system of Comenius University should not be only a collection of individual applications created in isolation under the pressure of day-to-day problems, but an integrated information system, which will provide, within the given conditions, the maximum support for the present and future aims of our university. Today, when information is becoming the most important capital, it should be the basis not only of electronic, but also of close functional interconnections between the faculties and other parts of the university, and so contribute to its internal opening and consolidation.
As the first step, a scoping study for IICS was worked out. It stated that the project would be extraordinarily demanding and it identified critical success factors for the project. It also showed that it would be necessary to work out the overall strategy of the new information system first.
Based on conclusions and recommendations of the scoping study, a strategic study for IICS has been elaborated.
The strategic study contains a description of the present state of the university and the state that is expected in the future as well as the present and expected future support of the university operation by information technology. Moreover, the study defines also the priority areas for future university development.
The issues that the strategic study deals with can be divided into technological and nontechnological ones.
The technological issues:
The nontechnological issues:
The goal of the analysis was to characterize the present and expected future state in individual areas of university activities. All university activities were divided into the following areas:
In all of the above areas, the description of the present state took the following structure:
As for the future, the following topics were analyzed:
In addition to the analysis of the situation in individual areas, the following organizational issues connected with the IICS development were discussed:
The following areas have been defined as priorities for future development:
The main conclusion of the strategic study is a proposal how to proceed in constructing of IICS. This proposal is a summary of the procedures recommended in individual areas.
On the basis of the strategic study, the responsible university bodies decided to continue with the IICS project. Afterwards a detailed plan for the first phase of the implementation of the IICS project was set up. It contained tasks, responsible persons, deadlines, the personnel, financial and technical requirements, and organizational measures. In the time of writing of this contribution the works on the first phase of the implementation were going on.
At the end, let's provide some statistical data. The work on the strategic study began in November 1997 and continued until June 1998. More that 30 faculty members, staff members and students of Comenius University were directly (but not for full time) involved in this work. They worked out around 100 working document of several hundred pages. The final report - The Strategic Study for IICS - has 272 pages.
The use of information technology is of vital importance for every organization. This is especially true for universities. But to answer fully the question how IT should be used is a serious challenge. In this connection, the strategic planning of university information system plays crucial role.
The main goal of the strategic planning is to make sure that IT will help the university to fulfill its mission and goals.
The strategic plan for building university information system is an inevitable background for the successful implementation of the system. But it is just the first step on the very demanding way of introducing the modern IT into the day-to-day life of our universities.
Peter Mederly,
Pavol Mederly,
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics,
Comenius University,
842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic,
Tel: +421-7-65420661,
Fax: +421-7-65425882,
Email:
Peter.Mederly@fmph.uniba.sk
Pavol.Mederly@fmph.uniba.sk