Track B Abstracts:
Information Technology in University Management
Student
Self-Service
- a Challenge for
Customer-Oriented Universities -
Dipl.-inform. Ulrich Kammerer
CEO of GINIT GmbH, Karlsruhe, Germany
Self-service is not primarily a technical problem – it is a organizational
decision of the university’s management.
This contribution is divided into three main parts and identifies
the social, organizational and economic background leading to the introduction
and integration of self-service functionality into the administrative business
processes within higher education institutions.
First, we describe several business processes, examine their suitability
for self-service and evaluate that potentials in improvement they eventually
pose to the involved personnel, student body and the institution as a whole.
In the second part an optimal scenario describing technological cornerstones
of and limitations to a new self-service approach is developed. What distinguishes
successful from unsuccessful implementations and how should self-service
components be integrated into larger frameworks? In the third part exemplary
self-service functionalities are presented as parts of the integrated solution
i3vÒ -Education for decentralized higher
education administration.
Web-based Information
Services for Studies Planning, Management and Administration
K.Pocius, A.Targamadze, L.Anusauskas, V.Reklaitis
Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
Higher education institutions of Lithuania are seeking for reconstruction
and improvement of academic studies and university management structures
to be able to join new European Union programs in education and training
like SOCRATES and LEONARDO. The process goes intensively on through redevelopment
of university Information System using IT as strategic tool for improvements
in information and management services. The paper will focus on approach
taken by Kaunas University of Technology (KUT) to make an open and flexible
study system by implementing principles of transparency, accessibility,
study data sharing and distribution in a networked environment. The work
is supported by the TEMPUS project "A Shared Architecture for Academics
and Administrators (SAAA)" during the period of 1998-1999.
Travelling
the innovation path: how to survive the implementation of a new Information
System
Sam Casey & Andrew Higgins
University of Greenwich, London, England
This paper considers the development of information systems within
UK Universities, and the demands that this places on business process managers
and computing professionals for staff development and training. The focus
will be on the implementation of SCT’s integrated BANNER 2000 Student System
at the University of Greenwich (UoG). The system is rules based and driven
by end users. It empowers the process manager and removes overall control
from the computing professionals. The project has highlighted the progression
of technology, the need to reassess UoG’s business processes, information
needs, and most significantly, human resource requirements and the way
people work together.
Getting
Management Support from an University Information System
Gabriel David and Lígia M. Ribeiro
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
In this work we describe a new layer of services for the Intranet
of the Engineering Faculty of Porto University, corresponding to the extraction
of relevant derived information specifically designed to support the several
levels of school management.
Balanced
Scorecard for Universities
Niclas Lindgren and Anneli Lappalainen
Elementum Oy and Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
In the second half of the 1990’s business management philosophy
moved on to conquer new territories with the emergence of the Balanced
Scorecard-theory. The Balanced Scorecard complements financial measures
of past performance with measures of the drivers of future performance.
The objectives and measures of the scorecard are derived from an organisation’s
vision and strategy. This new way of thinking provides a framework for
converting strategic targets into operationalised action plans complete
with activities and measures on every organisational level. At first the
philosophy was implemented in the business environment. As the benefits
of the new way of thinking and acting have been perceived, the same ideology
has been applied also in public, non-profit organisations.
The adaptation of the system requires transformation and modification
of the theory in order to make it converge with the implied host environment.
As the implementation of a Balanced Scorecard demands versatile verbal
and numerical documentation — both in the path of (hierarchy-wise) delegation
and setting of targets as in the path of reporting and measuring the realisation
of the implied strategy, it is more than natural to consider the impact
of and on information technology in such a context.
The aim of this paper is to describe the transformation process of
the general framework into a working and pro-active concept meeting the
evolving needs for strategic management in the university environment.
This paper will also go on to describe how this change process will be
realised with the developed technology platform called University Elements.
Reflections
on the Fate of IT Strategies
Alex Reid
Director of Computing Services, Oxford University, UK
This paper reflects on the fate of IT strategies at universities
in several countries, based on the author’s personal experience. It examines
the purpose, nature, form, process and context of the development of IT
Strategies, at universities in Australia, Hong Kong and the UK. It considers
the following aspects of the whole process:
-
the forces which led to the decision to create IT strategies at these
very different universities;
-
the processes and resources which were employed to create them;
-
their content in the context of their purpose;
-
the form which their content has taken;
-
the manner in which they have subsequently been (or not been) used.
-
Finally, it considers the value of these efforts in the light of their
fate.
In broad terms, it concludes that political factors almost always overshadow
the technical or "logical" issues, and that these need to be taken fully
into account when deciding the nature of the IT Strategy, the resources
and methods to employ in their creation, and the size of intellectual capital
to invest. It finds that they can be of immense value, but that IT staff
should have no illusions about their potential fate, and should not be
overly concerned if they appear to end up gathering dust on bookshelves.
The Growth of the
Information Strategy Approach
Andrew Rothery
University College Worcester, England, UK
The paper describes the growth of the information strategy at University
College Worcester (UCW) and shows how it has become part of the strategic
portfolio of the institution. In addition the paper reports on the growth
in the adoption of information strategies in institutions across the UK
and describes the recent extension of the Information Strategies Initiative
of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). A particular aspect
of the paper is the inclusion of learning and teaching issues in the information
strategy approach. Traditional Information Systems Strategies tend to focus
on management and administrative information but the JISC approach tries
to broaden the scope.
Characteristics
of IT Strategy in the Medical University of Varna
Iskra Mirtcheva
Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria
The Medical University in Varna, including the University Hospital,
has quite a complex structure coming from the 45 departments it comprises
and the 6 buildings spread over a distance of more than 5 kilometers throughout
the city. The structure of the University can be expressed in four levels:
departments, clinics, sectors and units (wards). Each of the departments
and their corresponding clinics and minor units have a considerable number
of computer facilities. There are also several computer rooms, used for
the education of students and staff. The curricula for Medical Informatics
for the students of medicine and for the students of health care management
are developed according to the best European standards. Some attempts of
implementing telemedicine has also been made. And yet, it is still not
quite possible to implement the IT strategy in the University. This paper
describes the aims of the IT strategy in the Medical University in Varna.
It also points to some of the difficulties of the implementation of the
IT strategy in the University. These difficulties have both objective and
subjective origin. The objective difficulties come mainly from the transition
period the country is undergoing during the last years, including the changes
in the health care system, financial shortcomings etc. The main difficulties
are the subjective difficulties, which are in fact closely related to the
medical staff of the University. This paper also gives some ideas for how
to overcome all those difficulties, the main task being to make medical
staff understand the usefulness of the IT implementation.
Systems,
Processes and Transformation - The Liverpool John Moores University Approach
to C&IT-Enabled Change
John Townsend
Liverpool John Moores University, UK
In March 1997 Liverpool John Moores University (JMU) embarked on
a University-wide transformation initiative to create ‘an enabling strategy
for the foreseeable development of JMU’. The agenda set by this initiative
presented a challenge through the need to coordinate University-wide process
reviews, existing systems developments, new technology pilots and ’business-as-usual’.
The dynamic and flexible Systems, Processes and Transformation approach
to the management of Information, Technology and Change has been developed
to answer this need. This approach should create the dynamic necessary
to take JMU forward through the alignment of business-as-usual, Transformation
objectives, and Communications and Information Technologies (C&IT),
and, through the development and refinement of the global process map and
associated information flows, in effect produce the JMU Information Strategy.