Executive Summary

Over the past five years, SUNY Buffalo State University Information Technology (IT) has experienced significant changes that directly affected its ability to stabilize and mobilize to meet customer expectations. Having had four chief information officers (CIOs) in five years, IT’s strategic direction has been transient at best. During that time, higher education IT has made a dramatic shift from being a behind-the-scenes contributor to being a key influencer of student success. At the same time, IT has been forced to address risks posed by cybersecurity threats. Consequently, the changing landscape and the lack of stabilization combine to pose a significant challenge that we must address immediately. An additional obstacle presented is the lack of an IT budget; the lack of fiscal clarity imposes strict limits on our aspirations.

Given the challenges presented, we chose to develop a three-year plan that focuses on improving both the customer’s experience and our IT infrastructure. To further inform our plan, we reached out for feedback from our key stakeholders. As we conducted stakeholder interviews, a few common themes emerged:

  • The voice of the customer needs to be heard
  • The IT infrastructure requires repair
  • There are open critical projects that must be brought to completion
  • Ineffective and inefficient processes need to be improved or reengineered 
  • Stakeholders need access to accurate data

As we outline our plan for achieving our desired end-state—realization of our mission and vision— we will address each of these themes. To that end, we have identified five strategic goals:

  1. Deliver world-class customer service
  2. Strengthen and secure the IT infrastructure
  3. Manage projects effectively
  4. Implement university wide process improvement
  5. Exemplify, support, and promote data-driven decision-making

This plan establishes the foundation and focuses on steadying IT. This focus is consistent with the university’s strategic plan and expectation of achieving that plan’s stated technology goals:

  • Maximize use of technology to provide real-time academic support according to student need.
  • Augment the use of technology to reach prospective students and other audiences.
  • The University Police Department must have sufficient resources in staffing and technology to create both the reality and the perception of safety on campus.

Contributors

Prior to developing the plan, Information Technology sought input from all key stakeholders including:

  • Deans
  • Financial Aid
  • Athletics
  • Students
  • IT Staff
  • Libraries
  • Police
  • Health and Wellness
  • Admissions
  • Faculty Chairs and Professors
  • Communications
  • Information Commons
  • Finance
  • International and Exchange Programs
  • Student Affairs
  • Government Relations
  • Advancement
  • Enrollment Management
  • Events Management

We believe in the importance of involving our stakeholders in shaping our strategy. We will continue to solicit and listen to the voice of the customer as we implement this plan.

Plan of Action

GOAL 1: DELIVER WORLD-CLASS CUSTOMER SERVICE

When we speak of our customer, we are referring to students, faculty, and staff. Delivering world-class customer service requires that we hear and respond to the voice of the customer in a knowledgeable, effective, and customer-friendly fashion. Information Technology will focus the following action items:

  • Complete requests in a timely manner
  • Develop a shared sense of urgency, learn the business impacts of IT functions
  • Prevent unnecessary delays
  • Develop and manage to service metrics and communicate service level expectations
  • Communicate the status and expected results for tickets, projects, and initiatives
  • Improve self-service
  • Make self-service more intuitive, transparent, and easy to follow
  • Make self-service a convenience and not a barrier to interaction
  • Establish service level agreements (SLAs) for services in catalog, communicate SLAs to customers, and implement and enforce SLAs in ITSM tool (e.g., TeamDynamix)
  • Develop strategy to implement Change Management, so support staff are aware of changes that may impact customers
  • Establish a Change Advisory Board (CAB) to review change requests
  • Establish customer satisfaction goals and relentlessly pursue achieving them
  • Establish regular dialogue with stakeholders
  • Establish clear escalation paths

GOAL 2: STRENGTHEN AND SECURE THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE

The IT infrastructure serves as the backbone for the university’s critical functions. The broad scope of the infra- structure’s impact includes recruitment, admission, aid, academic experience, safety, and alumni engagement. We must be certain the infrastructure is stable, secure, and performing optimally. As well, should minor, major, or disastrous events occur, IT must be able to restore services within an acceptable time frame. To that end, we will accomplish the following:

  • Restructure IT
  • Align the staffing approach with IT and university strategy
  • Ensure IT is well equipped, trained, and properly governed
  • Implement the appropriate operating procedures
  • Strengthen infrastructure
  • Ensure the infrastructure supports current performance expectations
  • Develop capability to handle future needs
  • Secure the IT infrastructure
  • Protect the infrastructure from external and internal threats
  • Regularly and proactively test security

GOAL 3: MANAGE PROJECTS EFFECTIVELY

IT project management needs to ensure predictability in project implementation success. Also, as software development is performed primarily by vendors, IT project management will not specify a required software development methodology. Methodologies will vary depending on the nature of the development. While some projects require iterative approaches (Agile, Scrum, etc.), other projects may be accomplished using waterfall. Our focus will be on delivery, and we will improve our effectiveness through accomplishing the following:

  • Strategically align and complete open critical projects
  • Evaluate open projects and confirm viability
  • Add strategic alignment
  • Understand and clearly define end-user requirements and expectations
  • Manage vendor vetting and selection
  • Manage vendor performance
  • Operationalize new solutions
  • Manage internal project teams

GOAL 4: IMPLEMENT COLLEGEWIDE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

With recent budget reductions in mind, Buffalo State University will be challenged to deliver higher quality results while significantly reducing its expenditures. IT will seek to significantly reduce operating expenses by eliminating waste in processes. In doing so, staff should be able to perform fewer unproductive tasks and apply their effort to more value-added tasks. In addition to improving process efficiency, we will improve process accuracy.

We will focus on the following:

  • Help the university realize a significant reduction in:
  • Risk of customer-impacting process errors
  • Operational expenses generated by inefficient processes
  • Simplify processes to improve student, faculty, and staff satisfaction
  • Develop and promote a continuous improvement culture

GOAL 5: EXEMPLIFY, SUPPORT, AND PROMOTE DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONMAKING

As technology now provides instant access to a wealth of information, consumers of data can make informed decisions in real time. The effectiveness of those decisions hinges on the ability to draw correct conclusions based on accurate and properly interpreted data. IT will lead the shift toward data-driven decision-making through accomplishing the following:

  • Systematically collecting and using data necessary to support planning efforts
  • Providing access to accurate data
  • Providing effective analysis quickly
  • Applying data-analytic thinking to our internal decisionmaking
  • Developing contextual analysis and statistics to empower policy discussions
  • Mentoring faculty and staff in the proper use of data