Certainly 2023 brought notable changes and transformation to IT, especially in higher education. The best way to get a glimpse of what 2024 might look like is to look back at the previous year by surveying IT executives across the country.
In January, technology journalist John Edwards in CIO Magazine identified eight top priorities for CIOs in 2023 that included topics such as building resiliency, improving the ability to deliver value, embracing digital transformation, modernizing cyber, and preparing to do more with less. He went on to mention the lack of critical IT skills and ongoing labor shortages. While some of these topics might have more relevance in business, others are especially important to higher education.
In an October 2022 piece anticipating the top IT issues of 2023, the Educause Review listed these as first, second and third priorities, respectively: making sure IT leadership has a seat at the table, boosting privacy and cybersecurity awareness, and making sure the department has enough flexibility and room for promotion to keep in-house talent. Here again, the issue of securing and maintaining critical IT staff was listed as a high priority.
As I personally surveyed a cross section of CIOs and IT executives, I found the trend of IT labor shortages was key. Current and retired CIOs provided insights into the value of securing qualified and dedicated employees, and the increased significance of maintaining institutional knowledge.
WHAT CIOs MISSED MOST IN 2023
Over the past several years, many CIOs experienced the “great IT staff migration” from higher education or retired from the field themselves. Many comments focused on missing the connection with employees and colleagues. Bruce Maas, CIO emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote, “What I miss most are the conversations around challenges with colleagues who care deeply about the mission of higher education.”
Dr. Mohamed Elhindi, IT executive at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and former CIO at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, lamented missing staff he had lost, but at the same time was happy his team had “accomplished so much for the organization and everyone landed in a place of their choice.”
Some CIOs admitted the pandemic caused dramatic changes in IT staffing. In some ways, retaining and hiring IT staff resembled the free agency draft of professional sports. As IT staff left their jobs, CIOs had to grapple with rebuilding their teams.
Ed Wozencroft, vice president for digital strategy and CIO at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Personally and for our team this was very much a ‘rebuilding’ year. I was fortunate to be entrusted with the full-time CIO role, while also needing to manage several key staff transitions and retirements. Despite that, I’m incredibly proud of our team for many great accomplishments and not skipping a beat on our digital transformation journey.”
Ron Bergmann, retired CIO and vice president of technology at Lehman College in New York, wrote, “I’m now happily engaged in my consulting practice, specializing in strategic technology and leadership. While I’ll miss Lehman’s service mission, my innovative team, and interactions with students and staff, I’m proud of the college’s exceptional use of technology to support student and institutional success.”
While these personal anecdotes paint a clear picture of seasoned CIOs retiring and engaging in their own “passion projects,” they might also indicate a trend of a loss of both professional long-term expertise and institutional knowledge in higher education.
For some, the term “institutional knowledge” can also be framed as the need for knowledge management. Steven Zink, former vice president of IT at the University of Nevada-Reno, pointed out, “(Knowledge management) offers an organizational perspective, rich literature, experience and a framework with which to work in the present environment. Traditionally, (knowledge management) required a great deal of pre-planning on managing data, information and knowledge to maximize the actual value of what has often been deemed the organization’s most valuable asset … not just people, but people’s knowledge (explicit and implicit) and how to share and use it.”
WHAT CIOs WON’T MISS FROM 2023
There are a variety of issues CIOs would not miss from 2023. Some noted the challenges of recovering from COVID-19, user demands of custom solutions, and the increasing costs of IT. One retired CIO pointed out their frustration of having to stay silent when “politicians use higher education as a punching bag to appeal to angry and hateful voters.” Certainly, partisan politics has created strong reactions on a variety of higher education topics including IT-related issues.
LOOKING FORWARD TO 2024
The second question I posed was: What do you look forward to or expect in 2024, whether in terms of funding, IT employment or cybersecurity? By far, the most common response was related to AI.
Bruce Maas of UW-Madison wrote, “One of the most exciting and frightening developments is in artificial intelligence. Higher ed has the chance to shape policies and practices that will help protect us from the worst that human nature has to offer. Higher-ed leaders must be proactive with investments that will enable AI to be employed securely at scale, resulting in more people around the world learning skills that advance civilization.”
Ron Bergmann predicted we will see “less hype and a more disciplined approach to embedded generative AI in systems and apps to augment human intelligence. I expect we’ll see increased governance, guidelines and policies in the responsible use of AI to ensure improved security, privacy and trust.”
Ed Wozencroft of New Jersey noted, “While AI ranks toward the top of most CIO lists, we broadened it to focusing far more on the emerging-tech space this year. Extended reality has come a long way and we’re excited to be investing in helping our faculty, students and staff embrace new and emerging tech.”
Steven Zink concluded by writing, “Companies with information-rich documentation can apply AI to make sense or various senses out of the data they have stored. We are only at the very beginning of the exceptional capabilities of knowledge-intensive disciplines to bring the full force of their knowledge repositories to extraordinary use. One can envision extraordinary applications if one thinks about the most (document)-based, knowledge-based organizations imaginable, including federal agencies, particularly defense, intelligence, transportation and space.”
So, what resource can universities and colleges rely on for seasoned experience and knowledge when their current IT leadership is still young? One useful resource is the cohort of Senior Fellows for the Center for Digital Education. Along with technology officials in state and local government, this group of current and retired CIOs and executives provides a wealth of IT knowledge and expertise in a wide variety of sectors through webinars, leadership summits and other events.
With an eye on the past and a careful review of today’s current trends, we can better understand and plan for the challenges IT faces tomorrow. It all starts with a solid plan to maintain and foster our past and current institutional knowledge, and to have staff who can effectively understand and utilize it.
