blog#3.1The Strategic Plan of Indiana University

Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP) is the primarily responsibility of the Telecommunications Division of University Information Technology Services (UITS). Major initiatives in this plan for evolving and building upon a sound telecommunications infrastructure that has been in place at the University for more than a decade. Indiana University has a reputation as one of the nation's most-wired institutions of higher education. The initiatives will guarantee the continuation of that tradition and our reputation through the beginning of this next millennium.
Telecommunications Division is also uniquely able to leverage our expertise and reputation in national and international networking communities. The focus of the ITSP is certainly well placed in addressing the needs of Indiana University. The network of institutions, enterprises, and individuals that make up the Internet(s) are truly an extension of the IU community both in terms of potential resources to be used by the IU community, and potential users of resources made available by the IU community. As such, we must maintain and even increase our participation and leadership in many national and international advanced networking initiatives. We have the unique challenge of needing to juggle internal and external focus. Our priority must certainly be the services most valued by the IU community; but that same community benefits tremendously from our involvement in the broader networking environment
Indiana University must implement an effective strategic plan for the use of information technology in research and academic computing, teaching and learning, and administrative support. This plan must recognize the inevitability and ubiquity, but also the unpredictability, of the spreading use of information technology in higher education.
Information technology is in a state of rapid change. No one would have predicted where we are now five years ago, and there is no reason to suppose we can predict with certainty where technology will be in another five years. For this reason, flexibility and experimentation should guide every phase of information technology planning and implementation. Throughout this process, IU must stay light on its feet! Indeed, flexibility and experimentation are so important that these might well be guiding principles for this entire plan .
The plan is not just a plan for University Information Technology Services, but rather a strategic plan for information technology for all of Indiana University. Full implementation of this plan will need more than increased activity and funding for UITS. Much of the implementation will by necessity take place at the school and departmental level, calling for increased activity and funding there too. This fits the distributed nature of information, and is consonant with flexibility and experimentation. But as individual units make their own plans for information technology there should be an institutional expectation that these plans will be shared for review and comment with the UITC who, along with the Campus Computing Center Directors and the campus Information Technology Councils at IUB and IUPUI, can provide an important advisory and review function.
They recognize that this plan implies expenditures well beyond the historic norm, and that full implementation of this plan may be seen as competing with other University needs. The University should continue its efforts to increase revenue streams for information technology. Achieving fully the vision outlined in this plan may depend on increased state and federal funding, and on external partnerships, both national and international, with government, industry, and others in higher education which can help IU advance to a position of leadership in the application and use of information technology.



http://www.indiana.edu/~ovpit/strategic/b_.html