June 7, 2004—EDUCAUSE has just published the results of its fifth annual Current IT Issues Survey in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, identifying the issues that leaders in higher education information technology see as their most critical challenges.
The survey gathered responses from 35 percent (571) of the 1,638 primary representatives of EDUCAUSE member institutions, representing public and private, associate- through doctorate-granting, and all sized institutions. Primary representatives are typically the CIOs at their institutions.
Three findings for all respondents from this year’s survey are especially notable:
- For the second year in a row, “funding IT” remains the number-one issue in terms of its strategic importance to the institution, its potential to become even more significant in the future, and its consumption of IT leaders’ time. Reduced state appropriations and private giving over the past three years have resulted in substantially lowered institutional budgets and IT budgets in particular. While there has been an upturn in the US economy recently, improvements in IT budgets are not likely to be seen for several years, explains Educause. In such an environment, the challenge is not so much lobbying to increase IT budgets overall as distributing flat or shrinking resources creatively, managing more complex infrastructures efficiently, and prioritizing among rising appetites for bandwidth and academic and administrative functionality.
- Not only does “security and identity management” remain among the top-ten issues on all measures, it has risen dramatically in the resource consumption category: from eighth in 2003 to third in 2004. This jump suggests that campus plans for improving IT security in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have moved into implementations and staffing changes that are having a significant impact on budgets, explains Educause. Another likely factor is the many viruses and denial of service attacks that make networks vulnerable to costly down-time.
3. Two new issues made the top-ten list for strategic importance in 2004: “business continuity/disaster recovery” and “governance, organization, and IT leadership”. Beyond a logical tie-in with security concerns for the first of these, the appearance of these issues suggests a growing realization on campuses of the strategic importance of IT and the close relationship of leadership and governance for this critical resource, explains Educause.
The complete Current Issues Survey (.pdf format) article, with analyses of trends and institutional comparison tables, can be accessed from EDUCAUSE Quarterly. A condensed version of the article is also available in the May/June 2004 issue of EDUCAUSE Review. Additional resources on emerging campus IT issues and related policy initiatives may be found on the EDUCAUSE Current Issues page.
