Not having board policy regarding technology is a serious problem. It is especially so when you have 36 different universities of differing priorities, pressures, and constituent groups. If I was going to be effective, I needed some authority to build common procedures.
Board policy regarding technology normally focuses on three components:
- Who is accountable for technology performance,
- Who makes decisions and establishes procedures, and
- Frequency and format of updates to the board
The answer to the first component is the USG Chancellor and university presidents. It is always the chancellor and presidents but it does need to be stated. I saw during my time as vice chancellor a couple of university presidents claim ignorance as a defense against accountability. It didn’t work.
The organizational leader is always responsible for everything the organization does or fails to do. This includes technology.
The answer to the second component is whoever the Chancellor and university presidents delegate responsibility to. The proposed policy stated the normal decision-maker – the chief information officer. This part of the policy also established that the system CIO had approval authority over all technology purchases at all sub-organizations of the board. I would delegate some of that authority through spending thresholds for the research, regional, and other university CIOs. System technology procedures would be captured in a multi-chapter procedure manual to be developed over a multi-year period. In a huge win for the CIOs, I worked a side deal with audit that all subsequent audits would use the technology handbook as the basis for technology audits rather than making something up every audit.
The answer to the third question varies by organization from quarterly to annually. For Georgia, the right answer was annual in 2010.
Chapter 10 of the Board Policy Manual passed with limited but thoughtful discussion and established a foundation for growth and maturity. Nearly fifteen years later, that chapter of the board manual remains virtually unchanged despite three subsequent CIOs.
The associated system procedure manual was developed over several years by co-authoring the manual with the 36 university CIOs. Timelines were established that were generous but rigorously enforced to move forward shared procedures and standards for the operations of technology systems. In practical terms, sometimes the university CIOs wrote the majority of a chapter and sometimes the system office wrote the majority of the chapter. The CIOs all met in person quarterly to discuss technology shared governance and approve specific chapters. The first eight chapters had been written and approved by the time I left in 2015. Checking fifteen years later, the technology procedures manual has evolved to ten chapters but is much as I left it in 2015.
The policy and procedure foundation built has survived the test of time. It was necessary and but not sufficient to address all of the challenges at the University System of Georgia. There was still so much to do.
If you are reading this website sequentially, the next chapter is the Politics of System and State. It is a dashing story of ambushes, fights, scheming political opponents, and political executions and firings. It is also a story of gritted determination, learning, and eventual triumph.