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EMERGENCE AND CONSEQUENCES OF DRIFT IN
ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

By

Harminder Singh

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILSOPHY
Business Information Systems

2010

 

 

ABSTRACT

EMERGENCE AND CONSEQUENCES OF DRIFT IN ORGANIZATIONAL
INFORMATION SYSTEMS

By

Harminder Singh

This dissertation theorizes how IS portfolio drift emerges, what its consequences
are, and how it is managed. I deﬁne IS portfolio driﬁ as locally-driven but centrally-
unintended adaptations of an organization’s collection of IT assets. These changes
comprise workarounds of ofﬁcially-mandated applications and the implementation of
alternative systems. They occur mainly because of a poor ﬁt of the ofﬁcially-mandated
technology with the task it is intended to support. Drift can be costly: the expenditure on
developing, purchasing and supporting the ofﬁcially-mandated applications is
squandered, while additional funds are needed to maintain the shadow systems. Decision
quality could also be reduced, because of uncertainty over data provenance. However,
drift could also be beneﬁcial to an organization, as it reﬂects the innovativeness of
employees in adapting to changes in local environments or in using emerging

technologies to enhance their performance.

Traditionally, research on IS governance has taken a rational and agency-oriented
perspective. I conceptualize IS governance from a practice perspective to highlight how
portfolio drift is an ongoing, macro-level outcome of the micro-level actions of various

agents. This analysis reveals that the process of governance is inﬂuenced by the relative

allocation of power (capital) between users and managers, and between the operational
ftmctions and the IT unit, how this allocation came to be, and how it changes over time
This study uses case studies of ten units within two organizations to delineate a process

theory of portfolio drift, and explain the situated practices used to steer the portfolio-in-

use so that it meets the goals of the agents involved.

Copyright by
Harminder Singh

2010

Dedicated to my parents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Brian T. Pentland, for going above and
beyond the call of duty in helping me meet my schedule and in always pushing me to
clarify my drinking. My colleagues in the ITM program and elsewhere in the Eli Broad
Graduate School of Business have always been a refreshing source of friendship,
commentary and critique. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Amrit- her unceasing

support continues to help me overcome life’s hurdles.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. ix
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. x
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1
CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUALIZING DRIFT .................................................................... 7
What is an IT Portfolio? .................................................................................................. 7
Why Portfolios Driﬁ ...................................................................................................... 13
How Portfolio Drift Occurs ........................................................................................... 21
Consequences of Portfolio Drift .................................................................................... 27
Appendix 1: Studies that have used Ciborra’s concept of driﬁ ........................... 29
CHAPTER 3: GOVERNANCE AS THE MANAGEMENT OF PORTFOLIO DRIFT..32
IS Governance as the Practice of Managing Drift ......................................................... 41
Appendix 2: Examples of IS Studies using Practice Theory ......................................... 51
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH SITES AND METHODOLOGY .......................................... 54
Sites ............................................................................................................................... 55
Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 59
CHAPTER 5: CASE STUDIES ........................................................................................ 65
Case Vignette 1: EduExcel — International Studies and Programs ................................ 65
Case Vignette 2: EduExcel — Athletics .......................................................................... 76
Case Vignette 3: EduExcel — Facilities Management ................................................... 93
Case Vignette 4: EduExcel — College of Agriculture .................................................. 101
Case Vignette 5: EduExcel — College of Business ...................................................... 120
Case Vignette 6: EduSucceed - International Center .................................................. 141
Case Vignette 7: EduSucceed — Athletics ................................................................... 152
Case Vignette 8: EduSucceed — Facilities Management ............................................. 161
Case Vignette 9: EduSucceed — College of Engineering ............................................ 182
Case Vignette 10: EduSucceed — College of Business ................................................ 210
Other Interviews: EduSucceed - Senior IT Manager, Local IT ................................... 229
Other Interviews: EduSucceed - Senior IT Manager, Central IT ................................ 236
CHAPTER 6: ANALYZING PORTFOLIO DRIFT ....................................................... 241

V11

Patterns of Drift ........................................................................................................... 243

Comparison of Drift Categories .................................................................................. 255
Process Theory of Portfolio Drift ................................................................................ 260
CHAPTER 7: ANALYZING IS GOVERNANCE ......................................................... 267
Governance Practices .................................................................................................. 270
Comparing IS Governance in EduSucceed and EduExcel .......................................... 273
Comparing Perspectives .............................................................................................. 287
CHAPTER 8: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...................................................... 292
Theoretical Contributions ............................................................................................ 293
Managerial Implications .............................................................................................. 298
Limitations ................................................................................................................... 303
Further Research .......................................................................................................... 308
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 311
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 313

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Components of an IT Portfolio .............................................................................. 8
Table 2: Deﬁnitions of drift ............................................................................................... 11
Table 3: Deﬁnitions and Examples of IT-based Workarounds ......................................... 16
Table 4: Studies citing Ciborra’s concept of drift ............................................................. 29
Table 5: Deﬁnitions of IS governance ............................................................................... 35
Table 6: Applying Practice Theory Concepts to IS Governance ....................................... 45
Table 7: Examples of IS Studies using Practice Theory ................................................... 51
Table 8: Backgrounds of Interviewees .............................................................................. 60
Table 9: Interview Protocol ............................................................................................... 62
Table 10: Antecedents and Consequences of Drift ......................................................... 244
Table 11: Categories of Drift ........................................................................................... 257

Table 12: Categorization of IT Governance Mechanisms in EduExcel & EduSucceed .290

Table 13: Examples of Terms used to Describe Resistance ............................................ 311

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: IS Portfolio Drift .................................................................................................. 3
Figure 2: Resultant Gap between Expected and Observed IS Portfolio .............................. 3
Figure 3: IS Portfolio Drift ................................................................................................ 13
Figure 4: Evolution of EduExcel’s and EduSucceed's IS Portfolios .................................. 57

Figure 5: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel's ISP
units ................................................................................................................................... 66

Figure 6: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel's
Athletics unit ...................................................................................................................... 78

Figure 7: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel's
Facilities Management unit ............................................................................................... 94

Figure 8: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduExceI's
College of Agriculture ..................................................................................................... 101

Figure 9: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduExceI's
College of Business ......................................................................................................... 121

Figure 10: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduSucceed's
International Center ......................................................................................................... 142

Figure 11: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduSucceed's
Athletics unit .................................................................................................................... 152

Figure 12: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduSucceed's
Facilities Management unit ............................................................................................. 162

Figure 13: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduSucceed's
College of Engineering .................................................................................................... 183

Figure 14: Governance mechanisms, IT portfolio and instances of drift for EduSucceed's
College of Business ......................................................................................................... 210

X

Figure 15:
Figure 16:
Figure 17:
Figure 18:
Figure 19:
Figure 20:
Figure 21:
Figure 22:
Figure 23:

Comparative Timeline of IT Evolution at EduExcel and EduSucceed .......... 241

Drift Category 1- Making a Truce ................................................................. 248
Drift Category 2- Co-creating the Portfolio-in-Use ....................................... 251
Drift Category 3- Going it Alone ................................................................... 254
Impact of Materiality, Capital and Habitus on Type of Drift ........................ 265
Process Theory of Portfolio Drift ................................................................... 266
Evolution of IS Portfolios of EduExcel and EduSucceed .............................. 268
Governance Mechanisms in EduSucceed ...................................................... 271
Governance Mechanisms in EduExcel .......................................................... 272

xi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

As more work processes are virtualized (Overby, 2008), IT has moved from being
a functional tool to becoming embedded with how work is done (El Sawy, 2003). This
evolution is reﬂected in the fact that IT expenditure now comprises more than 50% of
many ﬁrms’ capital budgets (Weill and Ross, 2004), and is growing faster than other
capital investments. At the organizational level, ﬁrms invest in information systems to
meet their organizational imperatives, such as avoiding risk, enhancing their growth
potential, attaining strategic ﬂexibility (Bharadwaj, et al., 1999), or improving the control
of work processes. For example, ﬁrms that are ‘defensive’ (Nolan and MacFarlan, 2005)
may purchase systems that increase operational efﬁciencies, such as automated billing
systems to reduce clerical preparation and error costs. On the other hand, ﬁrms that focus
on product differentiation (an ‘offensive’ goal) may invest in customer relationship
management systems, so that they can collect customer feedback and use it to make their
products more attractive.

Over time, a organization’s information systems (IS) portfolio, that is, its
collection of IT assets, changes when new systems are installed or existing (‘legacy’)
systems are retired. Portfolios change because of changes in the environment, such as
competitive threats, new regulations, or resource shortages, or in technology (e. g. Liu, Sia
& Wei, 2008), such as the shift from hierarchically-organized and centralized technology
to networks, informational products and services, and the reduction of time and space

constraints on human activity (Avison, Wood-Harper, Vidgen, & Wood, 1998).
1

Portfolios that are too stable hinder organizational adaptation, creating “stable systems
drag” (Truex, Baskerville, & Klein, 1999).

Portfolios could also change for micro-level reasons. Managers and/or users may
ﬁnd that the systems provided for carrying out their work do not meet their requirements.
This could encourage them to search for and install applications that are a better ﬁt for
their tasks. Users may also decide to work around systems that are too cumbersome or
burdensome. Such decisions are an aspect of ‘articulation work’ (Star & Strauss, 1999),
when individuals adapt their actions to meet changed needs. Central IT departments are
often not aware of these new systems or workarounds (Behrens, 2009), as they are
usually decided on and supported locally.

Organizationally, such changes to an organization’s ofﬁcially-mandated IS
portfolio have been argued to lead to higher-than-desired IT support costs, potential
security risks, and data fragmentation (McAfee, 2004), as well as being knowledge-
inefﬁcient (Snook, 2000). On the other hand, they have also been seen as a necessary part
of “process democratization” (Hill, Yates, Jones & Kogan, 2006), which holds that users
should be able to make use of emerging technologies to support their work, and as
resources for innovation (Behrens, 2009).

This dissertation examines this phenomenon, which I term ‘portfolio drift’, and
how organizations have responded to it. The concept of portfolio drift is based on Ciborra
(2000) and Snook (2000), and refers to changes in IS portfolios that are locally-initiated
and centrally-unintended. Drift is a result of the interaction between IT’s modiﬁable
nature and its situated human use, and occurs through resistance, learning-by-doing,
sabotage, coalition shifts, or serendipity (Ciborra, 2000).

2

Planned Change Unplanned Change

Acquiring, implementing Acquiring, implementing and using
and using new systems; centrally-unsanctioned systems;
upgrading existing systems working around existing systems

    
 
   
   
    

uture State of

 
 
 
 

 

 
    
 
  

 

 

 
 
  

Current State ,
. Information
of Information
Systems Systems
Portfolio

Portfolio
Managing Drift

Using governance processes to balance the
positive (innovation) and negative (costs, security,
data fragmentation) consequences of drift

Figure 1: IS Portfolio Drift

’ Expected
Information

ﬁ Systems
\

  

OK \ Planned Change

   
  
 

 
 
   
 

  

Original
Information

 

. Unplanned Change
. (Drift)

."Oooooo>

 
  

  
     
   
 

Observed
Information
Systems

 

Time
Figure 2: Resultant Gap between Expected and Observed IS Portfolio

While drift in has mainly been explored in the context of individual IS projects
(e. g. Elbanna, 2007; Ignatiadis and Nandhakumar, 2007a), it can be fruitfully extended to
examine the modiﬁcations of an IS portfolio. Portfolio drift represents the changes in an
IS portfolio as centrally-unsanctioned systems are adopted, or existing systems are
worked around (Figure 1)]. The end-result of drift is a gap between the expected IS
portfolio and the portfolio-in-use (Figure 2), which may be either beneﬁcial or
detrimental to an organization, depending on its goals. Organizations that operate in high-
reliability environments, such as utilities, would see the gap as being more of a risk than a
resource for innovation, while the opposite perspective could be held by a marketing
research ﬁrm. Organizations could also deﬁne the amount of drift they would allow or
tolerate in their IS portfolios.

While prior research has argued that IT adoption decisions are challenging
because of their uncertain beneﬁts and the substantial learning and adaptation costs
(F ichman, 2004), these decisions become more complicated when portfolio drift occurs.
There is additional uncertainty about two issues: will new IT investments be
appropriately used or will they be worked around, and will the new IT investments
duplicate the functions of ‘shadow’ applications managed by sub-units? Although studies
on IS governance have identiﬁed mechanisms and structures to help organizations obtain
greater value from their IT investments (e. g. Agarwal & Sarnbamurthy, 2002;
Sarnbamurthy & Zmud, 1999; Schwarz & Hirschheim, 2003; Weill, 2004), a gap exists in
terms of connecting these mechanisms with the micro-level actions of users and

organizational sub-units. In particular, the focus on business-IT alignment at the

 

' This study focuses on the software components of an IS portfolio. Hardware is usually more embedded in
work processes and thus, more difficult to work around.

4

organizational level does not take into account power differentials within organizations,
the inﬂuence of history, and the symbolic role of IT. Moreover, the traditional agency
theory perspective that underlies much of IS governance research becomes less
appropriate when changes in technology (the advent of Web-based applications) and
users (greater exposure to IT outside the workplace) are considered.

Incorporating these issues in a study of IS governance will help clarify why
business-IT alignment becomes a “long, torturous and fragile process” (Ciborra, 2002)
when portfolios drift. This dissertation uses a practice lens (e. g. Bourdieu, 1977; de
Certeau, 1984) to examine why drift occurs and how organizations manage the drift of
their IS portfolios. Practice theory focuses on the everyday actions of individuals and
how these actions shape, and are shaped by, the various types of resources available to
individuals, which inﬂuence their power relationships. In their everyday lives, individuals
(‘consumers’) manipulate and reinterpret products while adopting them for their own
interests. In this way, they meet their needs while appearing conforrnist. Applying these
concepts to studying portfolio drift highlights the situated, relational, and emergent nature
of IT adoption and acceptance. In line with recent calls to examine the material properties
of technology, “without reifying them (or) reducing them to the social” (Orlikowski &
Yates, 2006), the study compares the salience, affordance, controllability, and symbolism
of the ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ components of an IS portfolio.

The next two chapters put forward the theoretical framework for the dissertation,
based on understanding prior research on IT adoption and resistance and IS governance
through a practice theory lens. Chapter 4 presents the details of the case study method

and the research sites. The next chapter presents vignettes of the ten case studies,

5

organized in terms of changes in their IT portfolio, episodes of drift, and the governance
processes that took place. That is followed by a discussion of the ﬁndings. Finally, the
dissertation concludes by discussing its theoretical contributions, limitations, managerial

implications, and opportunities for further research.

CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUALIZING DRIFT

This chapter's objective is to explicate the origin, parameters, and impacts of IS
portfolio drift. It begins by revisiting the logic behind individual responses to
organizational investments in information technology (IT). These reactions, which range
from acceptance to a variety of forms of resistance to avoidance, affect the probability
that these IT assets will be assimilated into organizations. In this study, portfolio drift
occurrs when users use alternative systems or use the ofﬁcially-mandated investments in
a limited manner. From a theoretical perspective, portfolios drift because users possess
the agency to respond in different ways when confronted with material artifacts that do
not provide them the affordances they need. While the dominant perspective on IS
governance claims that top-down control can be exerted on IS portfolios, the changing
attributes of users and technology challenge such a claim. I conclude by discussing the
practices organizations use to manage drift, arguing that whether drift should be

supported or restricted depends on a range of contigencies. This dissertation asks:
a) Why and how does portfolio drift occur?

b) What are the implications of portfolio drift for IS governance?

What is an IT Portfolio?

The word “portfolio”, which originally meant a case for carrying papers or pictures,

today refers to a collection of ﬁnancial investments, the responsibilities held by a

government minister, or a selection of an individual’s work used to evaluate his or her
performance in some ﬁeldz. Broadly, therefore, a portfolio consists of a collection of a
variety of items, similar in certain attributes but fairly distinct in other ways. For
example, in a portfolio of ﬁnancial investments, bonds, stocks and other ﬁnancial assets
are aggregated on the basis of the volatility and magnitude of their return, so that their net
combined return meets the requirements and budget of a particular investor. The different
components of a ﬁnancial portfolio are similar in that they are all ﬁnancial assets that can
be traded in markets. Thus, they can be compared in terms of their present value and the
riskiness of their future predicted value. However, they are also different since they have

different levels of tradability and risk.

When extended to IT, the terms “IT portfolio” refers to an organization’s total
investment in IT, including the human resources required to operate and support it (Weill
& Broadbent, 1998). As above, such portfolios consist of a variety of components, each
similar in that they are needed for some aspect of an organization’s operations and
different in that they have different roles and capabilities. Some ways of categorizing

these components are shown in Table 1 below.

Study Categories of IT
Number-crunching, Manufacturing, Business
Bresnahan and Greenstein, 1996 Applications, Database, Systems Software,
Communications/Networking

 

Chatterj ee et al., 2001 Automate, Informate, Transform
. Transactional, Informational, Strategic,
Weill and Broadbent, 1998 Infrastructure

 

Table I: Componena' of an IT Portfolio

 

2 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/portfolio, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50184557 (as
at February 8 2010)
8

The choice of the type of IT to invest in depends on an organization’s objectives.
Broadly, organizations can be classiﬁed into those that emphasize market responsiveness
and new product development, and those focused on reliability and cost-effectiveness
(Nolan & McFarlan, 2005; Whitworth, et a1. 2006). While most organizations would
argue that they target both goals, there is usually a bias towards one or the other. For
example, some retailers could sell cutting-edge designs, while others might be low-cost
vendors. The same argument applies to utilities or defense technology ﬁrms: some could
focus on developing creative solutions to their client’s problems, while others could focus
on being low-cost and reliable. Organizations of the ﬁrst type could be expected to invest
in business intelligence applications to analyze demographic and sales trends, while the
second type of organization would be more likely to purchase labor-replacement

applications, such as RFID-based inventory management applications.3

Although the term “IT portfolio” is widely used by both IS academics and
practitioners, in some key aspects, the portfolio metaphor does not transfer completely to
an IT context (Ciborra, 2000). For example, while the individual components of a
ﬁnancial portfolio can be bought and sold fairly easily, the components of IT portfolios
have high switching costs and are “sticky”, meaning that their value is often embedded in
their use in a particular context (Shapiro & Varian 1999). A common transaction cost
encountered in the IT adoption process is user resistance to the introduction of new
technologies. Also, while the value of each component in a ﬁnancial portfolio does not

depend on the others, IT assets are often valuable to organizations because of their links

 

3 It is worth noting that an organization’s IT adoption choices are also inﬂuenced by its coordination costs
(Dewan, Michael and Min, 1998), the level of slack resources it possesses (Kobelsky, Richardson & Zmud,
2002), its membership in professional associations (Swan & Newell, 1995), and the level of industry
concentration (Melville, Gurbaxani & Kraemer, 2007).

9

to other assets in the portfolio (Ciborra, 2000). Finally, the ability of users to introduce
new technologies implies that IT portfolios are more dynamic and reactive compared to
ﬁnancial portfolios, since there are at least two sources of change: management and
users. Given that many actors are involved in the development of an organization’s IT
infrastructure, and that its history makes many decisions path-dependent (Ciborra, 2000),
it is unavoidable that IT portfolios will be more dynamic than they are commonly
presumed to be, and that this dynamism originates from both ends of an organization’s

hierarchy.

Portfolio Drift

A useful perspective for framing the evolution of frrrns’ IS portfolios is Ciborra’s
(2000) concept of drift. He considered drift to be the deviation of IS systems from their
planned purpose because of resistance, learning-by-doing, sabotage, coalition shifts, or
serendipity. Even when management is focused on control, drift occurs because of
environmental turbulence, implementation tactics, the power of the installed base, the
difﬁculty of second-guessing ﬁnal user behavior, and the complexity of new
infrastructure (Ciborra & Hanseth, 2000). Examples of drift during enterprise systems
implementation projects include changes in project objectives and conﬁguration
(Elbanna, 2007), and changes in power differentials within organizations (Ignatiadis &

Nandhakumar, 2007a)4.

The table below presents some additional characteristics of drift: it is purposeful

but unplanned, based on human intervention, occurs while the technology is being used,

 

4 Appendix 1 lists recent IS studies that draw on Ciborra’s understanding of drift.
1 0

and is the opposite of control, i.e. it is emergent. A portfolio that drifts may end up being
more successful as it has been allowed to adjust to suit different actors’ needs
(Holmstrom & Stalder, 2001). The easier availability of substitutes and the multiple uses

to which each technology can be put makes a portfolio fragile and ambiguous (Ciborra,

 

 

 

2000)

Study Definition
Plans developed by organizations to deal with crises and
dangerous scenarios can be modiﬁed locally by those who

Snook (2000) implement them, as they ﬁnd ways to work around aspects of
the plans that impede the ﬂuid performance of their tasks

Ciborra (2002) Process of matching between Situated human mterventrons of
use and open technology

Nandhakumar, Rossi, . . .

and .1. alvinen (2003) Series of purposeful actions wrth un-planned outcomes

 

Counter-concept of control; when organizations encounter
Van F enema and van unexpected circumstances that highlight the incompleteness
Baalen (2005) and possible failure of an initial technological design without
organizations having feasible alternatives yet

 

Table 2: Deﬁnitions of drift

While drift has mainly been explored in the context of individual IS projects
(Appendix 1), this study extends it to examine the modiﬁcations of an IS portfolio.
Portfolio driﬁ‘ represents the unplanned changes in an IS portfolio as systems are
purchased, adopted, resisted, or modiﬁed (Figure 3). I deﬁne portfolio drift as occurring
when an organization’s IT portfolio is modiﬁed, either in terms of systems with different
capabilities from the existing systems being used or existing systems being re-

conﬁgureds. Speciﬁcally, IT portfolios can drift in at least three ways:

 

5 This study focuses on the software components of an IS portfolio. Hardware is usually more embedded in
work processes and thus, more difﬁcult to work around.

11

1) Changes in the systems making up a portfolio: the introduction of shadow systems6
- These systems are put in place when:
a. existing systems lack certain capabilities, or

b. users have experience with or learn about newer technologies, usually outside

work
2) Avoiding the use of systems in a portfolio: the use of workarounds
- Users work around a system when:
a. it is a poor ﬁt for their work tasks,
b. they prioritize different objectives (e. g. convenience) than managers (e. g. control),
c. they want to reassert control over their work
3) Stopping the use of systems in a portfolio:

- Users will stop using a system when, in a non-mandatory use context, the systems

provided for them to accomplish their tasks do not enable them to do so adequately.

Thus, portfolio drift is the collective and longitudinal outcome of individual
responses to information technology. The next section discusses the range of such
responses that can be found in the literature, and the mechanisms by which they affect an

organization’s portfolio.

 

6 Shadow systems are IT purchases that lie outside the formal IT procurement plan, and are thus unknown
to and unapproved by an organization’s formal corporate IT department (McAfee, 2006). The use of
shadow systems may lead to either positive or negative consequences- the different outcomes may
materialize at different levels of an organization and at different points in time.

12

   
   
 

Expected
Information

. Systems Portfolio
\

   

. . Unplanned Change
0 (Drift)

'o.......>f’

 

Figure 3: IS Porifolio Drift
Why Portfolios Drift

While organizations may invest in various types of IT, merely purchasing
something does not guarantee its use. If IT is not used by its intended users, organizations
ﬁnd it difﬁcult to obtain value from their IT investments (Devaraj & Kohli, 2003). Value
is obtained when IT investments are used for accomplishing old and new tasks and for
linking tasks together, i.e. the IT is infused into the organization (Saga & Zmud, 1994).
This goal may not be achieved if the new IT system does not ﬁt the tasks and processes it

is meant to support.

Poor ﬁt may negatively affect performance (Bendoly & Cotteleer, 2008; Gattiker

& Goodhue 2005), and is the result of misalignments between the institutional and

13

ontological structures of the IT application and the organization in which it is being
implemented (Sia & Soh, 2007). Institutional misalignments, such as those imposed by
industrial or national regulations, which lead to missing objects, states, or transformations
are the most difﬁcult to remedy, and usually require modiﬁcations in the software. On the
other hand, misalignments due to organizational requirements which only affect
presentation, access, input or output can be solved more easily by adapting the

organization.

Besides ﬁt, users’ reaction to a new IT system is affected by other factors,

including:

a) Individual factors: the level of control or autonomy users have over their work and
environments (Ahuja & Thatcher, 2005; Beaudry & Pinsonneault, 2005), their
willingness to experiment (Boyce, 2001), the amount of resources available to them
(Pollock, 2005), their perception of the event as a threat or opportunity (Beaudry &
Pinsonneault, 2005), the conﬁrmation or disconﬁrmation of their beliefs after using it
(Jasperson, Carter & Zmud, 2005), the ﬁt of the technology with their identity (Speier
and Venkatesh, 2002), what and how fast they learn (Bendoly & Cotteleer, 2008;
Boudreau & Robey, 2005), their personal experience with the technologies (Mao &
Palvia, 2008), and how dissonant or consonant their use of the system is with their

prevailing practices (V aast & Walsham, 2005);

b) Peer group factors: the social inﬂuence of their peers, especially if users perceive that
the new IT system poses a threat to their status or power relative to other groups

(Eriksson-Zetterquist et a1 2009; Jeyaraj and Sabherwal, 2008; Lapointe & Rivard,

l4

2005; Walter & Lopez, 2008), or if they are inclined to imitate their social peers

(Isaac, Leclercq & Besseyre Des Horts, 2006);

c) Organizational factors: whether there was a mandate to adopt the new IT system
(Jeyaraj and Sabherwal, 2008), the norms pertaining to new technology (Standing,
Sims & Love, 2009), explicit support for change (Kim & Kankanhalli, 2009), the

level of control exerted on employees, and the ﬂexibility of processes;

(1) System factors: the malleability of the new IT system (Kallinikos, 2002; Orlikowski,
2000; Pollock, 2005), its customizability and the legitimacy of its introducers (Kohli
& Kettinger, 2004), its ease of circumvention (Bendoly & Cotteleer, 2008), the costs

and beneﬁts of switching to it and its perceived value (Kim & Kankanhalli, 2009).

Thus, even if an organization invests in an IT portfolio, users may not be willing
to use the systems in the portfolio for a variety of reasons. However, most IT
management studies (e.g. Sarnbamurthy & Zmud, 2000; Schwarz and Hirschheim 2003)
limit users’ scope for action while privileging managers’ intentions. According to this
top-down, managerially-oriented perspective, organizations adopt a new IT system when
managers decide to invest in it, and users are restricted to specifying their requirements,
testing the system, and using it. This top-down view of the introduction of IT in
organizations contrasts with Ciborra’s (2000) argument that IT adoption processes are
characterized by bricolage, and that business-IT alignment is difﬁcult, if not impossible,
to attain because of the improvisations and unexpected outcomes encountered. This is
because the managerially-oriented perspective does not consider the agency of users

(Emirbayer and Mische 1998) in affecting organizational IT portfolios.

15

Because of their agency, users’ responses to new technologies range from positive
resistance, full compliance (acquiescence), neutral, apathy, negative resistance (passive,
active or aggressive), to avoidance (Ferneley & Sobreprez, 2006; Lapointe & Rivard,
2005; Standing, Sims & Love, 2009). A key way in which resistance is manifested is in
workarounds. Workarounds have been recognized as being an important aspect of the use
of information systems (cf. Gasser, 1986; Koopman & Hoffman, 2003). They are seen as
the result of articulation work and are “necessary to meet local resource constraints,
deadlines, conﬁguration limitations, or a mix of technical capacities” (p. 266: Gerson &
Star, 1986). Whether or not a misﬁt of an IT system with the procedure it is meant to
support leads to a workaround, and the extent of the workaround, depends on the

combination of the factors discussed above.

Study Definitions of workarounds

 

Users altering input data or procedures to compensate for system shortcomings,

Gasser, 1986 or using backup systems

 

Result of articulation work; “. .. misﬁts with the idealized representations of
work that requirements have represented”
“. .. necessary to meet local resource constraints, deadlines, conﬁguration
limitations, or a mix of technical capacities”
“. . . often invisible when the end product of development is examined, nor do
they necessarily appear in the documentation of the system.”

Gerson & Star, 1986 “... typically ﬁnd multiple workarounds which are themselves potentially in
conﬂict. . .”
“. .. no way of guaranteeing that two workarounds, each adequate in its local
context, will not recursively prove to be incompatible in a larger context.” (p.
266-7)
“. .. workarounds solve the due process problem only locally and temporarily”

(p. 267)

 

(In ERP) Provide the needed functionality without touching the ERP scripts
Soh, Sia & Tay-Yap, 0 Manual (“by hand” rather than using IT)
2000 - ERP alternative (ﬁnding an alternative way to perform the function with the
package)

 

Table 3: Deﬁnitions and Examples of I T -based Workarounds

16

Koopman & Hoffman,
2003

Table 3 (cont ’d)

a) A procedural change in computer system use intended to compensate for a
design ﬂaw, typically a software behavior that is perceived to be a ﬂaw

b) A procedural change to using a computer system intended to compensate
for a hardware or component failure

c) A new procedure that uses a computer system in a way not originally
envisioned to accomplish a task

d) A procedural deviation to circumvent an intentionally designed-in limit or
constraint on computer system operation

 

Boudreau & Robey,
2005

Reinvention: Work-around system constraints (work processes rigidly
embedded in the software design) in unintended ways; outcome of improvised
learning

 

Pollock, 2005

“. .. represent resistance on behalf of users and the means by which they attempt
to wrest control from a technology or an institution.” (p. 497)

Today, the blurring of the roles of users and designers means that we have to
consider how their existing networks constrain or support (legitimize) attempts
to work-around.

 

Femeley &
Sobreperer, 2006

3 types of workarounds:

o Hindrance: To circumvent system procedures or processes seen to be too
time-consuming, onerous or difﬁcult ,

o Harmless: Does not signiﬁcantly affect workﬂow or the accuracy of
captured data

0 Essential: Essential to complete the task at hand

 

Azad & King, 2008

6‘

a means to decouple day-to—day practices of system usage from the intended
system design” (p3)

 

Bendoly & Cotteleer,
2008

Circumventing protocols regarding: sequence of activities, permissible
activities, data formatting, and source of information 0V0 speciﬁc definition)

 

Examples of workarounds

 

Kraut, Dumais &
Koch, 1989

Users logged on twice to perform two tasks simultaneously and create a secret
note-passing system within the IS; Helped maintain work-rate and social ties

 

Dery et al, 2006

Managers circumvented:

o the new procurement system by using corporate credit cards;

0 the requirement to use e-recruitment in the new HR system by hiring via
the national recruitment center

0 the use of SAP to obtain ﬁnancial ﬁgures since the monthly ﬁgures were
sent to them in hard copy

 

Workarounds have been deﬁned in a variety of ways (Table 3), with the essential

aspect being the circumvention of a mandated procedure to achieve one’s goal. They are

17

situated practices that rely upon the interpretive ﬂexibility of work rules and are

negotiated by social actors (Azad & King, 2008). They are an example of locally-driven

but centrally-unintended adaptations of an organization’s IS portfolio, or what I call

‘portfolio drift ’. Users affect IS portfolios in at least three different ways:

a)

b)

6')

They aﬂect the adoption rate of technologies:

Even in situations of mandated use, users have been able to ﬁnd workarounds for
what they view as the technology’s constraints (Bourdeau & Robey, 2005). Users
could also limit their adoption as an attempt to reassert control over their work. This
could be in retaliation to management’s emphasis on using IT to control how work is
done, which reduces the scope for personal creativity and makes workers more
dispensable and interchangeable (Braverrnan, 1974). Finally, users may ﬁnd the
technologies better suited for achieving corporate-level objectives, such as uniformity
and standardization, than the aims of their business units, such as experimentation and

customization (Gallagher & Worrell, 2008).
They can introduce new technologies as substitutes for the current ones:

Their dissatisfaction with the existing technology could be due to changes in work
practices or organizational control mechanisms brought on by the use of those
technologies (Wagner & Newell, 2006). For example, the introduction of a
collaborative technology could be used by some institutional groups to assert their

dominance over other groups (Hayes, 2008).

They can introduce new technologies to complement the current ones:

18

- Organizations are increasingly adopting new technologies after they have been used
by individual innovators among their staff. Examples include devices, such as USB
thumb/pen drives and personal digital assistants (PDAs) (e. g. the Palm, the
BlackBerry and the iPhone) and communication applications, such as online chat and

voice-over-intemet-protocol (V OIP).

Most of these innovations begin as individual productivity enhancers, and were
adopted by organizations after users had some experience of working with the IT systems
provided to them. They are examples of the evolution of an IT portfolio from the bottom
up, propelled not by managerial mandate but individual choice and technological
improvements. Understanding these processes would help remove the sense of ‘dewc et
machina’ often found in studies of IT adoption. Rather than assuming that the new
technology was inserted into an organizational context by some neutral or uncaring
source, it makes more sense to view the adoption of new technologies as being motivated
by some underlying discomfort with the existing range of technologies, an urge to
enhance one’s work effectiveness by using more advanced tools, or, even perhaps, an

inclination to reduce the burden of one’s tasks in some manner.

The introduction of new IT or the modiﬁcation of existing IT by users points to an
important change in the roles of users in the domain of IT management. Traditionally, IT
management literature has limited users’ roles to testing new systems and providing
requirements to systems analysts and designers. However, there has been a shift recently.
Instead of studying discrete applications or technologies, researchers are more interested
in complex environments that enable organizations to mobilize information and its

sharing (Lytinnen & Yoo, 2002). Macro-level phenomena, which used to be considered
19

to be initiated and driven by the senior management of the business and IT departments,
are now understood to be created and recreated through the micro-level actions of ﬁrm

members (Orlikowski, 2002; Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004).

This is consistent with Lamb and Kling’s (2003) critique that most IS research
relied on a “thinly socialized concept” of the user. In its place, they called for researchers
to view users as social actors, since they are inﬂuenced by their environments,
afﬁliations, interactions and identities. Users exchange information over networks and
across time, and the boundaries around them are fuzzy, as they are ensconced in a
network of relationships and environments. Allowing users a greater role in IT
management shifts IS research away from determinism toward voluntarism, emphasizing

the agency of users (Leonardi & Barley, 2008).

While the dominant assumptions about users’ roles and attributes may have been
reasonable when modern IS research began four decades ago, they are less so today.
Instead of having limited exposure to IT and little knowledge of it, users today live in
environments where IT is pervasive, both inside and outside their workplaces, and they
use IT almost as much as home as they do at work. They are thus more knowledgeable
about and familiar with IT. This has two distinct effects. First, it is more likely that users
today will be able to introduce new technologies into their work environments to
complement or substitute what they have provided. Examples of this would be the use of
online chat to communicate with their dispersed colleagues or to share ﬁles with them.
Second, users start expecting their work applications to be similar to those which they use

outside work, in terms of their features or attributes. They could expect more

20

collaborative features from their work applications, or user interfaces that can be easily

reconﬁgured.

Thus, the experiences and abilities of individual users, which change over time,
interact with the capabilities of IT systems, both those that are ofﬁcially-mandated as
well as those that are not, to produce an IS portfolio-in—use, which incorporates user-
initiated workarounds and shadow systems. As workarounds are repeated over time, they
can become institutionalized (Azad & King, 2009) and difﬁcult to remove from an
organization’s work processes. Thus, when users work around IT systems which are
designed to support their work, the aggregate impact of their individual actions is a shift

in the IS portfolio of their organization.

How Portfolio Drift Occurs

Practice Theory

Research in sociology and information systems has used the idea of structuration
to examine how individual agents interact with social structures and their reciprocal
effects on each other (e.g. DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Giddens, 1984; Orlikowski, 1992).
This interaction reﬂects, sustains and reproduces society’s norms, values and knowledge
(Foucault, 1973) and orders the social world (Bourdieu, 1972). One perspective for
studying such interaction practices is practice theory (Bourdieu, 1977; de Certeau, 1984).
It focuses on uncovering the logic behind these daily practices to ﬁnd out how social

structures are created and recreated.

21

This is a useful lens for this study, since it examines the collective and mutual
impact of individual actions (in this case, workarounds) on organizations. Practice theory
examines how micro-level social interactions have macro-level consequences, in terms of
the emergence and development of socio-structural properties (Bourdieu, 1977; de
Certeau, 1984; Foucault, 1980; Giddens, 1984). The objectivity-subj ectivity divide in the
social sciences is bridged by the understanding that agents are autonomous enough to
transform social structures, while simultaneously being sufﬁciently conditioned to
reproduce and incorporate them into their lived practice (Bourdieu, 1977). Agents are
thus not automata, but interpreters of practices whose reﬂexivity frees them from
mindlessly reproducing their initial conditions (Giddens, 1984). The dynamic relations
between agents and their world are produced and reproduced during everyday practice.
This practice is guided and enabled by social ‘ﬁelds’ (Bourdieu, 1990), which emerge
through human activity. As agents interact in these ﬁelds, they produce different kinds of
capital (economic, cultural, social, and symbolic), and differential access to these creates

a basis for power.

From the practice point of view, IT use is an emergent, dynamic, situated practice,
and leads to a variety of ‘technologies-in—use”, since IT is used in many contexts and for
many purposes (Orlikowski, 2000). Researchers in the ﬁeld of information systems have
used practice theory to study a variety of phenomena (Appendix 2). These include IT use
(Orlikowski, 2000; Vaast & Walsham, 2005), knowing (Orlikowski, 2002), knowledge
sharing (Carlile 2004), electronic relationships (Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004),
organizational change (Boudreau & Robey, 2005), boundary-spanning (Levina & Vaast,

2005), and boundary creation and renegotiation (Levina & Vaast, 2008). These studies
22

explicate the main dimensions of practice. First, practice is emergent, situated, and
recurrent (Orlikowski, 2002; Vaast & Walsham, 2005). Emergent and recurrent indicate
that agents’ repeated actions enact structures, and that changes in practice require
changes in agent’s actions. Situated implies that changes in the situation of agents lead to
adaptations in practice, which may further modify the situation. Second, practice takes
place in a community (Orlikowski, 2002). Agents in different communities act in speciﬁc
ways, since practice is a shared understanding. As individual agents change, changes in
practice emerge collectively but without coordination. Third, practice involves the
intertwining of practices, practitioners, and praxis (Orlikowski, 2002). Practitioners are
those who do the work of developing and executing strategies, praxis is the actual activity
they are engaged in, and practices are what practitioners draw on in their praxis, such as

operating procedures, industry practices and societal norms (Whittington, 2006).

Materiality

Underlying the structuration perspective in IS research is a view of IT as an
ensemble (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001; Orlikowski & Scott, 2008), where the focus is on
the dynamic interactions between people and technology, the appropriation of the
structures embedded in the technology, and the consequences of using a speciﬁc
technology. In addition to the structures embedded in the technology, the material
properties of the artifacts themselves have an impact on how they are used and their
impacts. Thus, studying IT practices encourages us to take the materiality of IT artifacts
into account (Orlikowski & Yates, 2006). Materiality refers to the impact of the physical

attributes of technology on how it is used (Leonardi & Barley, 2008) — in other words,

23

what types of use does the technology favor, shape, invite, or constrain (Zammuto et a1,

2007)?

Recent studies have sought to further reﬁne this understanding. While an artifact’s
material properties do not determine its use, neither is an emergent perspective, where
people’s actions are the result of ongoing interpretation and interaction, solely sufﬁcient
for understanding the impact of technology on organizations (Orlikowski, 2010). The
latter has been criticized for privileging the design of artifacts over their use (Wajcman,
2000), and human agency over technological capabilities (Berg, 1997). The
sociomateriality argument posits that the social and technical aspects are entangled, not
ontologically separate (Orlikowski, 2010). Following on from actor-network theory
(ANT) (Latour, 1987; Callon, 1986), it argues that capacities for action are dynamically
created (Orlikowski, 2010). For example, the focus would not be on how collaborative
practices are supported by IT, but on how integrating IT into the act of collaboration
reconﬁgures it, and what this implies for control and responsibility. In this way,
researchers can examine the interaction between materiality and voluntarism without

privileging either human agency or technological materiality (Leonardi & Barley, 2008).

Portfolios-in-Use

IT portfolios are collections of various technologies, each with their own
attributes and affordances. Individuals interact with them in the course of their work,
simultaneously learning about them and appropriating different features as required by
their tasks. Individuals also introduce into this interaction knowledge, skills and

experiences derived from using other technologies both within and without their work

24

environments. As they go about accomplishing their tasks, individuals decide what
speciﬁc IT to use based on the ﬁt of the tools, the ease of using them, organizational
norms, and other factors. This may cause the enacted portfolio (the portfolio-in-use) to
diverge from the intended portfolio. From a sociomateriality perspective, a key issue is:
how do the attributes of the technologies and users inﬂuence the make—up of the IS
portfolio? Another way of phrasing this question is: since portfolios are heterogeneous

networks of actants (Law, 1992; Latour, 1996), how do they evolve over time?

Sociomateriality researchers usually examine situations where users interact with
technologies. For example, Leonardi (2007) studied how the appropriation of features of
a new IS system by technicians affected an organization’s informal advice network.
However, this leaves out a key role in technology use decisions: decision-makers.
Churchman (1971) discussed how technology use is the result of an interaction between

designers, users and decision-makers]:
- designers determine the features and capabilities of the technology,

- users decide which features to appropriate and how faithfully their use should be to

the designer’s intentions, and

- decision-makers have the authority to inﬂuence, among other things, whether the

technology should be built and whether its use should be mandated.
Churchman’s perspective is in keeping with practice theory, which, in addition to

examining the production and reproduction of social structures, focuses on the role of

capital and the power relationships it leads to between the various parties. The emphasis

 

7 This is in contrast to Simon (1969), who examined the interaction between users, designers and artifacts.

25

on a singular party in sociomateriality research can be seen in Leonardi & Barley’s
(2008) call for studies at the intersection of materiality (physical contexts affect human
actions) and voluntarism (humans have agency). It is important to ask: which parties have
agency, and whose goals are being targeted? This is worth knowing as it affects the
technologies that will be available to users. If an organization’s IS development process
privileges the interests of its senior management or central units, it is possible that the IT
system that is the outcome of this process will not meet the needs of users and managers
in the sub-units. This could also go in the opposite direction: systems could meet users’
needs (e. g. ﬂexibility for dealing with non-routine inputs) while making it difﬁcult for
central systems to monitor their sub-units. If an existing IT application is used differently
from how it was intended to be, it is possible some task in another part of the
organization may not be able to be done. This may make it difficult to use IT to
coordinate work across an organization, because of differences in goals among
employees. Differences in goals are inevitable because of specialization (Dougherty,
1992), and they manifest themselves in the affordances provided to employees by the

different applications (Leonardi & Barley, 2008).

The evolution of an IS portfolio is thus dependent on the appropriation and re-
creation of social and technological structures, the material properties of the technologies,
and the balance of power between users and their managers. The difference between
intended and unintended evolution is a measure of the drift of the portfolio, although the
embedded nature of IT may make it difficult to identify whether and how much drift has

occurred.

26

Consequences of Portfolio Drift

IT managers face this choice: do they forego their portfolios’ stability and adopt
new IT innovations, or do they minimize changes so that their systems remain stable and
easy to support? Those who choose the latter are driven by the realization that portfolio
drift leads to portfolio fragmentation (the proliferation of redundant systems), wasted
resources (the effort spent searching for shadow systems and developing workarounds,
and the paid-for but unused ofﬁcial systems), and a misalignment between business and
IS strategies. While managers are aware of the need to innovate to thrive, managing the
process of adopting new systems to realize business value can be difﬁcult (Fichman,
2004). Controlling portfolio drift is a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel & Weber, 1973), replete
with incomplete and changing requirements, and difficult to resolve because of
contextual interdependencies. The upshot is that IT managers may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to
provide the IT-enabled capabilities required by their organization. In such contexts,

alignment could become a “long, torturous and fragile process” (Ciborra, 2002).

Alternatively, IT managers who are more open to drift could see performance
improvements, because of operational innovations and employees who are more satisﬁed
with the tools they use for their work. For example, Hill et a1 (2006) argue that users will
be more productive if they are able to select and integrate IT services as their needs
evolve, especially if they are involved in artful, as opposed to industrialized, processes,
which are less formalized and dependent on the people carrying them out. From the
exploration/exploitation perspective, drift is closer to exploration, and could be an avenue

for choosing mechanisms to achieve long-term reliability in the face of environmental

27

perturbation, as opposed to short-term stability, which is focused on static efﬁciency
(F arjoun, 2010). Limiting drift is consistent with exploitation as an organization’s

strategy.

Current research suggests that how drift is perceived and what its impact is on
organizations depends on factors such as whether innovation is driven primarily by
management or employees, the proportion of knowledge work taking place, the
dynamism of the environment the organization is operating in, and the IT skills of users.

Chapter 8 discusses these practical and managerial issues in more detail.

28

Appendix 1: Studies that have used Ciborra’s concept of drift

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Study Focus Description/Findings
o Examines notions of ‘success’ and ‘failure’,
and lists of ‘critical success- or failure factors’
0 Implementation is a process of mutual
transformation of organization and technology
Ber 2001 Myths that hamper 0 Only gets off the ground when supported by
g, implementation processes central management and future users
0 Management of implementation = balancing
between initiating organizational change, and
drawing upon IS as a change agent, without
pre-specifying or controlling it
Increase in organizational, 0 Difﬁculty of establishing electronic patient
institutional, political and record systems (EPRs) because EPRs often
Ellingsen & technological complexity conceived as the central, all-encompassing
Monteiro, 2001 affects IT implementation source of information, neglecting the
-) their impact is patchwork-like character of information
underestimated sources
0 Consider technology innovation in relation to

Principles to be followed some-organizational change . .

. . . o Consrder not only the local organizational, but

during IS rrnplementatron I . l d . . l .

Avgerou, 2001 processes Case study of a so the natrona an rntematrona context,
. .’ . o Consrder both the technical/rational decrsrons

organizational reform in . . . . .

Cyprus and actions involved in the mnovatron process
and the cultural, socral and cognitive forces of
such a process

0 ERP systems are open, pasted-up,
uncontrollable expanding infrastructures;
Hanseth, Ciborra & Need for new meanings in 0 Strategic alignment ﬂounders in never-ending
Braa, 2001 ERP implementations tactics andcompromrses,‘
0 Globalization generates srde effects
0 ERPs accelerate organizational drift and
nmaway
o Contradictions in systems developer’s role vis-
a-vis end-users and system sponsors; their
Howcroft and Explore the paradoxes of needs are incompatible
Wilson, 2003 participatory practices 0 Paradoxes: rhetoric of empowerment, rhetoric
of involvement, exclusion of dissent, illusions
of compatibility, and outcome of participation
Nandhakumar, grocess 0f change enacted 0 process of technology-related change is a form
. . tiring enterpnse resource , . , . . .
Rossr, and Talvmen, . of a drift rnvolvmg a series of purposeful

planning (ERP) . .

2003 . . actions wrth un-planned outcomes
implementation

 

Table 4: Studies citing Ciborra ’s concept of drift

29

Table 4 (cont ’d)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0 Integration - unending process; produced
concurrently, episodically
0 Control cannot be studied apart from
technology and context because one will never
Integration of management get to understand the underlying
3?:33:nag%05 and control through ERP ‘infrastructure’
’ systems 0 control in an ERP-environment is not property
of accounting function
0 control - a collective affair; local control
issues in different parts of the organization are
used to create notions of global management
. . o Developed theoretical framework for studying
Georgiadou, Purl StifiallnDEiznllriﬁl’tgfftiizfifies SDls based on three key concepts: the
and Sahay, 2005 p installed base, reﬂexive standardization, and
(SDIs) . . .
cultivation approach to desrgn
o Extends drift argument ﬁ'om focusing on
Improvisation that took technology only to include organizational acts
. of improvrsatron, brrcolage and drift
Elbanna, 2006 place during an ERP Dr'ft tak 1 'th . 'd
implementation 0 r can . e p ace even wr rrgr
technologies like ERP, not just open-ended
technologies
0 Power differentials within organizations
Ignatiadis & Unintended implications of fgaqeggggggign enterprise systems
Nandhakumar, control conﬁguration in an In p d l _ h' . 'd'
2007a enterprise system 0 crease contro — rgh er rrgr rty
o ant = decreased control
0 Enables organizational resilience
Ignatiadis & Enterpnse systems . 0 Control and drift arising from use of an
enablement or constraint of .
Nandhakumar, mana ers’ and users’ enterprise system are outcomes of processes of
2007b . g embedding and disembedding human actions
actions
0 Traditional diffusion models assume projects
Changes in project either accepted or rejected by adopters
Elbann 2007a objectives and conﬁguration 0 ANT-based drift model of diffusion
a, during an ERP o Fate of software implementations depends on
implementation moves made- each move could be either
positive or negative
0 Organizational othering: labeling, stereotyping
Social integration as and categorization of some groups in an
complement to technical organization
Elbanna, 2007b and operational integration 0 This conﬂicts with ERP’s assumption of a
during an ERP smooth organizational social fabric
implementation 0 Othering can also be inscribed into the ERP

system, leading to costly conﬁguration

 

30

Table 4 (cont’d)

 

 

 

o Unstable and complex nature of such systems
Hyvonen Jarvinen Creation of management 0 Use of metaphors inthe political process that
and Pellin en 2008’ control system in accounting information systems pass through
’ multinational enterprise to become established as an enterprise-wide
management tool
Introduction of
collaborative technology 0 in addition to looking at the socio-economic
Hayes 2008 used by some institutional context, institutional change needs to be
’ groups to assert their understood by examining the fme-grained
dominance over other practices undertaken by staff
groups
0 Control and drift elements interacted and their
Tjomehoj and Adoption of software dominance shifted as process unfolded
process improvement tools 0 Control and drift not opposites, but

Mathiassen, 2008

complementary, part of dialectic

 

31

CHAPTER 3: GOVERNANCE AS THE MANAGEMENT OF
PORTFOLIO DRIFT

How should IS portfolios be managed given that they tend to drift? Since the
consequences of drift and the way it is perceived vary across organizations, this section
discusses two alternative ways of framing the management of IS portfolios. First, the
dominant perspective on IS governance revolves around control, which is based on
organizational theory and agency theory (Eisenhardt, 1985). The control literature
proposes that risks are managed by putting in place a structure of incentives and
monitoring. The assumptions underlying this rational decision-making perspective
include: a) known relationships between inputs and outputs, b) well-speciﬁed and
unchanging output measures, c) a monotonic relationship between outcomes and the level
of control, d) the organization’s ability to foresee the consequences of the controls
adopted, and e) the stability of the controller’s and controllees’ goals over time. This
traditional perspective lends itself best to regular, formal checks (such as audits), and, by
focusing on restricting the format and amount of inputs and outputs, it foregrounds
stability.

Alternatively, IS governance can be seen as a dynamic process. This is based on
the understanding that managers and users may not have the same goals, because of their
competing interests, leading both parties to modify the portfolio following a logic of
opposition (Robey & Boudreau, 1999). Their aim is for the portfolio to ‘settle’ at a

32

position which maximizes on the dimensions (i.e. the goals) that are the most pertinent to
them. This dynamism is also driven by the impact of the material characteristics of the IT
being governed on the governance process. Different types and levels of affordances
inﬂuence the ease with which technologies can be governed and adopted. The path taken
by the portfolio when it is being modiﬁed by users and decision-makers is drift.
Managers curtail drift (so as to prevent its negative consequences) or encourage it (if they
believe it beneﬁts their organization) via IS governance processes.

These two perspectives on IS governance can be distinguished in terms of Van de
Ven and Poole’s (I995) mechanisms of change. The traditional perspective is based on a
teleological worldview, in which an organization purposefully adapts towards a desired
end-state. The alternative perspective is based on a dialectic worldview, in which power
is distributed across the multiple agents involved in the activity, and shifts in the balance
of power lead to changes in the status quo. In essence, acknowledging the diversity of
actants in an IS portfolio highlights that the process of enacting IS governance brings up
issues of conﬂict and confrontation.

This distinction is useful as it is closer to the reality of IS decision-making, which
is characterized by bounded rationality, competing objectives, and sequential phases
(Boonstra, 2003). The next sections review and critique the existing literature on IS
governance. The chapter concludes with the elucidation of an alternative perspective on

IS governance, based on practice theory.

33

Prior Research on IS Governance

With information systems becoming more integrated and heterogeneous, and as
access to them is provided to more organizational members, the risks associated with
them have increased (Markus, 2000). This risk is aggravated by the uncertain beneﬁts
and irreversible costs of IT adoption decisions (Fichman, 2004). The increased
susceptibility to risk and possibility of signiﬁcant negative performance impacts has
prompted IS researchers and practitioners to ask: How do businesses ensure that their IT
investments are aligned with or support their strategies? What mechanisms can
organizations use to obtain greater value from their IT investments? How should IT
investments be managed to ensure that they are ﬂexible enough to allow organizations to
explore future opportunities, but also stable enough to keep current operations running
smoothly? These questions have been the domain of IS governance (e. g. Agarwal &
Sarnbamurthy, 2002; Fonstad & Robertson, 2006).

IS governance, broadly deﬁned as the IT-relevant decision-making structure in
organizations, is signiﬁcantly positively correlated with ﬁrm performance (Weill, 2004),
and affects the returns ﬁrms receive from their IT investments (Gu, Xue, and Ray, 2008).
Poor governance can result in ﬁnancial, operational and strategic impairment (Kearns &
Sabherwal, 2006-7). Table 4 lists the deﬁnitions of IS governance from a range of
studies. The common theme is the focus on IT-speciﬁc decision-making to achieve
organizational goals, which privileges the managerial, functionally-rational perspective
on IT management. Studies of IS governance have discussed a variety of structures

organizations can use to manage their IT resources, based on different ways of allocating

34

decision rights across multiple organizational levels and between the IT and business

departments (e. g. Warkentin & Johnson, 2006; Weill & Broadbent, 2002).

 

 

 

Study Deﬁnition
1 Sarnbamurthy & “locus of enterprise decision-making authority for core IT
Zmud, 1999 activities” (p. 105); IT-related authority pattern
Three models for organizing the IT function to boost
Agarwal & . . . .
2 busmess mnovatlon. partner model, platform model,
Sarnbamurthy, 2002
scalable model
IT-related structures, architectures, and associated
3 Schwarz & authority patterns implemented to accomplish IT activities
Hirschheim, 2003 in response to an enterprise’s environmental and strategic

imperatives

 

4 Weill, 2004

Specifying the framework for decision rights and

accountabilities to encourage desirable behavior in the use
of IT

 

5 Peterson, 2004

a) The distribution of IT decision-making rights and

responsibilities among stakeholders, and b) the procedures
and mechanisms for making and monitoring strategic
decisions regarding IT

 

van Grembergen,

Organizational capacity exercised by management to

 

6 de Haes, & control the formulation and implementation of IT strategy
Guldentops, 2004 and thus ensure the fusion of business and IT
Structure of relationships and processes to control the
7 IT Governance enterprise in order to achieve the enterprise’s goals by
Institute, 2003 adding value while balancing risk versus return over IT

and its processes

 

8 Yu & Wu, 2008

Process, structural and relational governance (i.e. behavior
control mechanisms, decision-making structures,
communication processes)

 

Table 5: Deﬁnitions of IS governance

A common theme in this ﬁeld has been the debate between centralization and

decentralization (e. g. DeSanctis & Jackson, 1994), since each option has different

35

beneﬁts and drawbacks in terms of responsiveness and standardization. The diffusion of
outsourcing has expanded the domain of IS governance. The creation of a platform for
supporting organizational activities has been suggested as the key objective
(Sarnbamurthy & Zmud, 2000; Agarwal and Sarnbamurthy, 2002; Schwarz &
Hirschheim, 2003), through the use of relational and integration mechanisms to link IT
use and management. One example is the use of horizontal governance mechanisms to
facilitate cross—unit collaboration (Brown, 1999).

Another stream of governance research has examined the contingencies that
inﬂuence the governance structures chosen (Brown & Grant, 2005). These include the
corporate governance mode, economies of scope and absorptive capacity (Sarnbamurthy
& Zmud, 1999), ﬁrm culture and vision (Brown & Magill, 1994), the role of the board of
directors (Nolan & McFarlan, 2005; Huff et al, 2005), and the level of globalization,
which has made it important to balance local responsiveness and achieving economies of
scale (Weill, Soh & Sia, 2007).

Recently, some research (e. g. De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2008; Debreceny.
2006; Guldentops, Grembergen, & De Haes, 2002; Liu & Ridley 2005; Nicho & Cusack,
2007) has been canied out on the use of externally-developed and rigorously-codiﬁed
ﬁ'ameworks for IS governance, such as COBIT (Control Objectives for IT) and ITIL (IT
Infrastructure Library). These are auditable lists of requirements that organizations are
recommended to adopt, so that their IT systems remain usable and useful, as well as

aligned with their business”. The use of these frameworks increased as concern grew in

 

3 Some, such as ITIL, focus on the day-to-day operational aspects of providing IT services, so as to enhance
their quality. They cover procedures such as providing a help-desk, rolling out software updates and
managing IT security. Others, such as COBIT, take a different approach. Developed by auditing

36

the early 20003 over the lack of internal controls in publicly-traded ﬁrms in the US. This
anxiety led to the passage in the United States of the Public Company Accounting
Reform and Investor Protection Act of 20029, whose Section 404 requires public ﬁrms to
evaluate and report the viability of their system of internal controls in their regulatory
submissions. The Act’s emphasis on enhancing internal control spurred the use of COBIT
and other similar frameworks to enhance the overall level of control of work processes,

especially those related to ﬁnancial and accounting information.

Challenges with IS Governance Literature

IS governance was suggested earlier as a means of managing drift. This section
examines the applicability of the prior literature to this issue. It is divided into two parts:

i) the theorizing of the IS governance concept, and ii) its underlying assumptions.

The Concept of ‘IS Governance’

Three comments are worth making in terms of its theorization. First, IS
governance research has largely focused on the different mechanisms and structures
available. Since an IS portfolio emerges over time as managers and users compete to
decide which goals it should support, an opportunity exists in terms of research on the
process of governance and changes in the IS portfolio being governed.

Unlike variance theories, which focus on how antecedent factors give rise to
particular conditions, process theories discuss the sequences of events that take place

within the context of those factors (Markus & Robey, 1988). The absence of process

 

professionals, these guidelines emphasize balancing the risks and returns of IT use by putting in place a set
of internal controls.

9 The Act is commonly known as “SOX”, after its legislative sponsors, Senator Paul Sarbanes and
Representative Michael Oxley.

37

research gives rise to three gaps in our understanding of IS governance: a) how do the
competing interests of users and managers interact over time to make up a narrative of
organizational IS governance (Robey & Boudreau, 1999); b) how do changes by users at
the level of individual systems impact changes at the level of the portfolio; and c) is the
IS governance process teleological (i.e. the portfolio progresses toward a clearly
speciﬁed end-state) or dialectic (i.e. the portfolio a compromise based on the demands of
groups in conﬂict with each other) (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995)? F leshing out a process
theory of IS governance is useful because it will answer these three questions.

The second comment on prior IS governance literature is that there have been few
attempts to organize the various components of IS governance and allied concepts, such
as IS planning, adoption, assimilation, and project control, into a coherent theoretical
framework (cf. Bacharach, 1989). Doing so will provide: a) theoretical beneﬁts:
expanding IS govemance’s nomological network will improve our understanding of the
antecedents and consequences of different governance practices, and b) practical value:
IS govemance’s ability to enhance the business value of IT investments will be clariﬁed.

Third, similar to scientiﬁc management’s impact on work (Braverman, 1974), the
use of formal IS governance frameworks has reiﬁed IS governance. Although listing and
classifying governance processes into a ﬁxed structure helps IT managers in the
management of their IT assets, the disadvantage is that this approach excludes
governance based on personal relationships. Thus, while governance encompasses both
control and collaboration (Sundararnurthy and Lewis 2003), in practice, it is often
inclined towards the former, not the latter, when applied to IT assets. Formal governance

relies more on monitoring and hierarchies and less on empowerment and peer support.

38

Emphasizing formal governance practices limits the possibility that informal control of
some sort, such as clan control (Ouchi, 1979), could be part of IS governance.

This is contrary to the contention that informal or implicit control systems, based
on shared norms, can be more effective for achieving coordination than control systems
that depend on explicit rules and regulations (Denison and Mishra, 1995). These informal
systems are based on the quality of personal relationships, which have been found to
improve compliance with Section 404 of SOX, as they enabled CIOs to use the
appropriate tactics when working with other managers to implement IT controls
(Braganza and Franken, 2007). The importance of informal governance rises when we
consider that employees today have more leeway to decide on the systems they use when
engaging in their work tasks. Instead of relying on strict controls to enforce the use of
ofﬁcial systems, well—developed personal relationships may be more effective at
preventing workarounds or the use of shadow systems. Although informal governance is
said to be unrepeatable and ad-hoc (Boh & Yellin, 2006-7), its value lies more in the
shared understandings it creates in the working environment than in any explicitly-

deﬁned processes.

Assumptions in the IS Governance Literature

The next part of this section analyzes the assumptions made in the IS governance
literature. First, managers use IS governance to achieve business-IT alignment, i.e. the
harmonization of IT and business strategies. Thus, IS governance is assumed to be
functional or instrumental: it has a positive effect on an organization’s IT portfolio, by

ensuring that the organization is using the right systems and using them well, and IT-

39

speciﬁc risks have been mitigated. However, business-IT alignment may not result even
when an IT portfolio is governed ‘appropriately’ (Ciborra, 2000). On the business side,
managers may be muddling through uncertain environments, and have no clear strategy
for the IT portfolio to be aligned with. In terms of the technology, the effects of
improvisation by the various stakeholders, political battles, and path dependency may
mean that the ﬁnal portfolio may be an unexpected outcome. In contrast to formal and
controlled IS governance, business-IT alignment may be comprised of user-driven
unplanned activities that make work processes less onerous. Thus, IS govemance’s
ability to achieve the very goal it is designed for may be inherently in doubt.

A second assumption of the IS governance literature is that the IS portfolio can be
controlled by management. However, the stickiness of the installed base of IT because of
its high switching costs (Shapiro & Varian 1999), combined with IT’s embeddedness in
social arrangements and conventions of practice (Star & Ruhleder, 1996), indicate that
management’s inﬂuence on the IS portfolio is constrained. Moreover, a focus on control
implies relying on single-loop learning, whereas IS implementations often require
double-loop learning (i.e. revising one’s goals and principles) because of the unexpected
events that occur (Ciborra, 2000).

At the same time, IT’s changed characteristics have enhanced the ability of users
to modify an IS portfolio. Traditionally, users were involved in structuring organizational
systems by offering requirements, testing systems, and evaluating their relevance to their
work (Barki & Hartwick, 1989; 1994). As greater numbers of general-purpose
applications (such as Internet browsers and spreadsheet software) with more powerful

capabilities became available and more broadly diffused, individuals were exposed to IT

40

outside their work environments more frequently. The increased pervasiveness of IT
made them familiar and comfortable with different types of IT. This had an impact on
their role as users of systems, as they were now able to modify organizational IS
portfolios by installing new applications or developing workarounds. In short, they could
decide on the system-in-use, instead of having to use the system as it was presented to
them.

This section has listed some challenges with the extant IS governance literature.
The limited theoretical development and ambiguous consequences brought about by
improvements in IT indicate that this domain awaits some rich theorizing. This study
focuses on the impact of history on the success of IT adoption decisions, the ongoing
tension between managers and users on the type of IT the organizational portfolio should
be comprised of, and the effect of this tension on business-IT alignment and
organizational performance. In such a context, IS governance should be viewed as an
emergent process of formal and informal practices designed to achieve a truce among
management and users regarding the capabilities of the IS portfolio. The next section
sketches out the theoretical scaffolding for this deﬁnition, by relying on the practice lens

of organizational research.

IS Governance as the Practice of Managing Drift

Prior research in IS governance and governance frameworks like COBIT posits
that organizations should choose their IT portfolios by taking their business goals as a
starting point. This will allow business-IT alignment to occur, which should enhance

organizational performance. Moving beyond this instrumental, variance theory approach

41

toward a process perspective requires articulating a post-industrial managerial logic,
where individuals reﬂect on their behavior and adjust their actions accordingly, making
their responses to situations less mechanistic and more emergent (Dij ksterhuis, van den
Bosch & Volbderda, 1999).

This study critiques whether IT portfolio drift can be managed by IS governance.
While formal IS governance processes offer certain advantages, such as their auditability,
comparability across time and with other ﬁrms, and clear links with an organization’s
business objectives, informal governance mechanisms can help overcome some of formal
govemance’s shortcomings, which include high cost, rigidity, and complexity. The
reliance of formal governance mechanisms has been at the detriment of informal
measures, which could complement or even substitute some of the formal ones, since
governance encompasses both control and collaboration (Sundaramurthy and Lewis
2003)

In addition, the practice theory perspective highlights the negotiated process of IS
governance, instead of the top-down imposition of order that the formal governance
frameworks aim to bring about. This negotiation is driven by the stickiness of legacy
systems, the interests of multiple stakeholders, IT’s high switching costs, and the
increasingly malleable nature of IS portfolios. These factors make it difficult to use
abstract frameworks to achieve the objectives management sets for its IS portfolio,
including aligning it with organizational strategy. The existence of a variety of IT
management frameworks underlines the multi-level nature of alignment: projects, users,

management, and directors. As individuals and sub-units negotiate at each level, the

42

compromises they make accumulate and can lead to tumult in the organizational IS
portfolio in terms of drift.

Reacting to the reiﬁcation of IS governance, this study offers a practice-based
perspective for handling drift. This reﬂects the situated, emergent, and recurrent aspects
of governance, and enables it to be understood as a longitudinal process incorporating
both formal and informal practices. The next section provides some background on the
practice perspective in IS research, and proceeds to discuss what a practice-based view of

IS governance would look like.

Governance through a Practice Lens

Using a practice lens to study IS governance emphasizes its socially-situated
nature. Empirical evidence for this includes the use of horizontal governance mechanisms
to facilitate collaboration (Boh & Yellin, 2007; Brown, 1999), the differences between IT
professionals and accountants in the tools used to evaluate IT investments (Bajaj, Bradley
& Cravens, 2008), and the impact of top management’s beliefs on the use of enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems (Liang, Saraf, Hu, & Xue, 2007). Governing IT
portfolios requires behavior control and communication (Yu and Wu, 2008), so as create
a shared understanding. Nelson and Cooperider (1996) found that mutual trust and
interests between IT and business managers had an impact on their shared knowledge,
which in turn inﬂuenced the performance of their IT portfolio. Chan (2002) found that
informal structures played a much more important role in improving IS performance
compared to formal structures. As users and managers engage in these social practices,

they are reproducing governance at different levels of an organization, and recreating

43

business-IT alignment over time. The emphasis shifts from governance to governing.
Alignment is thus not a ﬁxed state but is being achieved continually.

Integrating this with practice theory is worthwhile because of the richer
explanations possible. For example, practice theory provides useful terminology, such as
praxis and practice for explaining how IT managers decide on the type of governance
mechanisms, and symbolic capital, the authority to establish or legitimize symbolic
categories (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), to describe the goal of IS governance. Practice
theory also enhances the deﬁnition of how choices are made in governance: differential
access to symbolic capital affects the ability of agents to strengthen or weaken the level
of governance. This provides an engine that drives the shifts managers and users make
during the search process.

Practice theory highlights that the process of governance itself changes the
structures in which governance takes place. The structures that are the most relevant here
are habitus and ﬁeld. Habitus is akin to culture but is also more than that. It consists of
the principles behind distinctive practices and classiﬁcatory schemes (Bourdieu, 1998).
These principles are used during practice, as well as to generate new practices. While the
habitus exists at the meso level (i.e. between the micro level (individuals) and the macro
level), ﬁelds can be found at the macro level. They consist of groups of agents engaged in
practice, and indicate their differing social positions. This difference identiﬁes power
relations between individuals. As agents act, they constantly shape their ﬁelds of practice
and the boundaries of these ﬁelds. Table 5 below depicts the mapping of practice

concepts to the domain of IS governance.

44

Practice theory

 

 

 

 

 

Definition Application to IS Governance
concept
Emergent, situated, and
. recurrent actions of a) IT use and resistance to adoption
Practice
members of a b) IT governance
communijl
a) Practices: formal governance
Practices: what frameworks e. g. COBIT
. practitioners draw on b) Praxis: actual activities of
Practices vs. . .
raxis durlng praxrs governance- formal and
p Praxis: actual activity informal, centrally-mandated
engaged in and emerging from sub-units,
routine and improvised
Ability to deﬁne:
Authority to classify a) wfllllch corgponents of an IS
S bolic capital certain properties or port 0.10’ an . .
ym b) which methods of acquiring
resources as valuable
them,
are legitimate
Disposition; Principles Underlying logic of an IS
Habitus behind distinctive portfolio, e. g. factory mode,
practices and strategic, support mode, or turn-
classiﬁcatory schemes around (Nolan & McFarlan, 2005)
Organizational space in which
Grou s o fa en ts users and managers interact; their
Field 1’ g differential ability to

engaged in practice

promote/control drift indicates the
power differences between them

 

Table 6: Applying Practice Theory Concepts to IS Governance

The starting point of a practice theory of IS governance is the role of agents as

bearers of capital who are not enslaved by structures (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

However, since capital, especially symbolic capital, is unequally distributed across

agents, agents differ in their ability to achieve their competing goals, leading to drift in

the IS portfolio. These goals are formed on the basis of their habitus- the prevailing ethos

45

that guide their jobs or work units. For example, some departments, such as payroll
processing, may prefer to minimize changes in the IT portfolio, as they are more focused
on maintaining reliability (i.e. Nolan and McFarlan’s (2005) factory mode).

Bourdieu proposed that symbolic capital has both subjective and objective
properties, and is formed through the shared meanings of value and worth. For example,
the narratives of meritocracy, scientiﬁc management, and management scholarship have
supported the value of some particular types of capital, such as schooling and
professional experience, in organizations (Ozbiglin & Tatli, 2005). The symbolic capital
that is pertinent in this study is the ability to decide which components of an
organization’s IS portfolio are legitimate, as well as the authority to determine how these
components should be obtained and managed. In the current functional perspective on IS
governance, IT managers possess this capital, but users do not.

Over time, situational changes affect the possession of this capital. IS portfolios
have become more modiﬁable because of changes in IT, with greater numbers of general-
purpose applications, and IT use, with increased exposure of individuals to IT outside
their work environments. This has reduced the amount of symbolic capital managers had
to deﬁne the IS portfolio and its governance processes. Improved IT capabilities mean
that, while an IT manager could specify these objectives at the higher levels of an
organization, it was difficult to prevent ﬁagmentation at lower levels, which allowed
users to set their own goals for the portfolio.

Users have adapted their IS use practice because of this situational change: they
are more willing to try out shadow systems and use workarounds. Paralleling Orlikowki’s
(2000) distinction between technological artifact and technology-in-use, this situational

46

change has created a gap between the intended IS portfolio and the portfolio-in-use. The
latter differs from the former to the extent that certain components of the former are not
appropriated by users because of a lack of ﬁt with their tasks. If these components are
mandated, users could develop workarounds, so that the portfolio does not interfere with
the completion of their work. The portfolio-in-use could also include components not
present in the intended portfolio, as users and managers introduce shadow systems.

IT managers draw on the practices embedded in formal governance frameworks,
such as COBIT, when engaging in the praxis of governance. Governance frameworks are
conceptual artifacts, which can be ﬂexibly deployed (Orlikowski, 2000). IT managers’
relations with users and business managers are constantly being reproduced or
transformed as technological and organizational changes occur. As users gain in their
ability to deﬁne which applications are legitimate enough to be part of their IS portfolio,
IT managers respond by using their symbolic capital to deﬁne certain types of
governance practices as valuable, and enact them. They deploy this capital to ensure that
the IS portfolio-in-use moves back onto the intended path, thus reducing fragmentation
and business-IT misalignment.

The use of formal or informal control in the praxis of IT managers is a shifting
balance, which depends on their power over users at a particular point in time. Formal
governance mechanisms may, for example, not work well with independent-minded
business unit managers, who are unconcerned with integrating their operations at the
corporate level. In such a case, de-emphasizing formal governance and replacing it with
informal practices, such as ceremonies involving respected outsiders or the intercession

of inﬂuential senior executives, may be a more fruitful approach. Over time, the social

47

structures suggested by these informal practices may be reproduced by reﬂexive business
managers and users, who imbibe and accept the rationale for governance after interacting
with such leading personalities. In that case, such methods may be better in the long run
for enhancing the level of IS governance than the straightforward implementation of
formal frameworks.

At the same time, since IS portfolios are heterogeneous networks of actants, it is
important to consider how the material attributes of the technologies affect the practice of
governance. The material properties of the technologies being used inﬂuence their
amenability to being governed, as well as the kind of governance that takes place. Users
will have a higher capacity to deﬁne the IT they use if the technology in question is easily
circumvented or is fairly malleable. However, if it is well-embedded in their daily tasks,
i.e. it has high switching costs, or is highly symbolic for their organization, such as an
ERP system that represents the organization’s shift to a more modern way of working,
users will be less able to swap it with something else. This leaves them more susceptible
to the IT management decisions of their managers. Thus, the symbolic capital of being
able to deﬁne an organization’s IS portfolio is affected not only by the formal and
informal relationships between users and manager, but also by the attributes of the IT that
is part of the portfolio. In some cases, these interact to inﬂuence the type of governance
practices that occur. For example, an organization’s IT department may be unwilling to
include additional ﬁelds in a core organizational database. Units that have greater
resources, such as more established or creative managers or greater ﬁnancial capital, may
be able to resist this constraint and use their resources to develop their own parallel

database. In contrast, units with fewer resources may not be able to do so.

48

This practice-based theory of IS governance approach integrates portfolio drift
and governance in a single conceptual model. It depicts how both of these processes
interact and why they occur, adding dynamism to the idea of IS governance. This reﬂects
the idea that business-IT alignment occurs both in the short-term, indicated by the mutual
understanding of current objectives, and long-term, seen in a congruent IT vision (Reich
& Benbasat, 2000). This study’s practice-based theory also informs the dynamic model of
alignment (Sabherwal, Hirschheim & Goles, 2001), by expanding the sources of changes
in alignment beyond managerial plans. Finally, the theory presented here contributes by
describing a clear, speciﬁc objective for IS governance: an unfragrnented IS portfolio
which balances the interests of management and users. This interaction between
governance and drift has an impact on the ability of organizations to achieve valuable IS
outcomes.

The practice-based theory presented here provides a deeper understanding of IS
govemance’s role in managing portfolio drift. The dominant perspective on IS
governance uses mechanisms and structures to allocate decision rights and control agents.
In comparison, the practices are the result of the interaction between the: a) allocation of
decision rights, b) relative allocation of power (capital) between position holders, 0)
understanding of agents as to why decision rights are allocated in that way, and d)
reconﬁguration of decision rights over time (as agents in different roles learn). As this
study is one of the ﬁrst to examine portfolio drift, the emphasis is on presenting an initial
empirical analysis of the phenomenon that focuses on describing it and examining its
antecedents and consequences. Future research will then be able to build upon the
ﬁndings here to open up the “black box” of drift by examining the decision-making

49

processes and interaction with governance that take place at multiple levels of an

organization and across time.

50

Appendix 2: Examples of IS Studies using Practice Theory

 

Study Research Focus

Findings

 

o How people’s
interaction with

Orlikowski, 2000 t°°m°1°gles enacts

o technologies-in-practice: sets of rules
and resources (re)constituted in
people’s recurrent engagement with
the technologies at hand

 

 

 

distinctive o structuration with a practice lens:
structures of situated use of technology (--)
technology use facilities, norms & interpretive
schemes (--) technologies-in—practice
0 How do humans 0 knowing not a static embedded
know how to get capability or stable disposition of
things done in actors, but rather an ongomg socral
Orlikowski, 2002 complex accomplishment
organizational 0 global product development. .
work? competence collective and distributed,
' grounded in everyday practices
0 Three properties of knowledge:
difference, dependence and novelty
0 How is knowledge 0 Three types of boundaries: syntactic,
Carlile, 2004 shared and assessed semantic and p ragm atic (from
across boundaries? Shannon & Weaver 1949)

0 Types of processes required at each
type: transfer, translation and
transformation

0 Macro-level phenomena, such as inter-

o How does the use ﬁrm relations, are created and
Sch 111th & of technology affect recreated through the micro-level
Orlikowski, 2004 relationships actions taken by ﬁrm members

between ﬁrms?

0 Using IT to mediate relationships
between customer and provider ﬁrms
changes these relationships

 

Table 7: Examples of IS Studies using Practice Theory

51

Table 7 (cont ’d)

 

Levina & Vaast,
2005

How does a
boundary spanning
competence emerge
in practice?

Boundary spanning emerges when a
new joint ﬁeld of practice is produced
Some agents partially transform their
practices to accommodate the interests
of their counterparts— “boundary
spanners-in—practice

They produce and use objects which
become locally useful and which
acquire a common identity- “boundary
obj ects-in-use”

 

How do work

Practices are reproduced with IT use
when agents experience consonance
between actions, practices and
representations.

 

 

W231; 2005 practices change When agents undergo dissonance
’ with IT use? between actions, practices and
representations, they adapt their
practices and representations to
reestablish consonance
Technology users enact practices from
avoidance and perfunctory use to
How do humans reinvention
resist and reinvent Improvised learning as an explanation
Boudreau & IT systems’ for changes in technology enactments
Robey, 2005 potential to over time
transform their In contrast to formal training, learning
organizations? may be comprised of unplanned
activities that spread knowledge
among the user community
geggﬁﬁgfﬁrtnhZWMR Social objects are signiﬁcant because
. . of the relations that link them, not the
relational View of . . . . . .
practice theories mtrrnsrc features of mdrvrdual
Osterlund & Use framework to glemtents. (Stgwalrtz, 1927)“) d t'
Carlile, 2005 analyze practice rac ice is e ocus or e pro uc ion

theories found in
three seminal works
on communities of
practice

and reproduction of relations
Relations can be classiﬁed in terms of
their differences, dependencies,
changes and power dynamics

 

52

Table 7 (cont ’d)

 

Levina & Vaast,
2008

o How do contextual

differences create
boundaries and
status differences in
offshore
development
projects?

How are these
boundaries and
status differences
renegotiated in
practice to
collaborate
effectively?

0

0

Differences in country contexts lead to
boundaries that inhibited collaboration
Differences in organizational contexts
mediated through organizational
practices that treated vendor centers
and captive units similarly

Some key onshore managers alleviated
status differences and facilitated
effective collaboration by drawing on
their position and resources

 

53

CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH SITES AND METHODOLOGY

A case study methodology was chosen to investigate the research questions. The
data consists of ten case studies on organizational experiences with portfolio drift. A
qualitative approach is appropriate for this study because of the lack of prior research on
portfolio drift and the need to understand the rich contexts within which IT adoption and
modiﬁcation decisions are made (Yin, 2003). In order to appreciate the different aspects
of drift, multiple cases were used. Given that the deﬁnition of portfolio drift (i.e. the use
of workarounds and shadow systems) is fairly easily identiﬁable, a descriptive approach
was used for the case studies (Walsharn 1993). This is a well-established approach for
studying IS implementations (e. g. Majchrzak, et a1. 2000; Sia et a1. 2002; Boonstra, 2003)
and IS governance (e.g. Sarnbamurthy & Zmud, 1999; Schwartz and Hirschheim, 2003).

Episodes of drift were sought out and analyzed to uncover how individuals in
organizations responded to the introduction of new IT systems and the governance
mechanisms that affected these responses. Episodes of drift represent micro-processes of
adaptation which, when observed over time, can help determine which types of
adaptation are more likely to have successful consequences (Barley 1986). In addition,
the context in which IS portfolios develop needs to be examined, so as to clarify the
inﬂuence of context on the evolution of portfolios. Some of the relevant elements are the

adoption context (including voluntary versus mandatory use), desired goals, interactions

54

between users and managers, and the inﬂuence of organizational properties on system use

(Isaac, et a1. 2006).

Sites

The two sites for the cases were chosen after specifying the theoretical unit of interest so
as to produce sufﬁcient variation in the variables of greatest interest (Eisenhardt, 1989).
Ideally, the research sites should have experienced a range in the amount of
fragmentation they had experienced. This would provide sufficient data to understand the
complexities of portfolio drift.

Both of the sites, EduExcel and EduSucceed, are large Midwestern universities
that carry out activities in many domains, ranging from teaching and research to
competitive sports and community outreach. They were chosen because, while they were
similarity in terms of organizational attributes (e.g. size, number and variety of units, age,
level of centralization), their IS portfolios differed substantially (Figure 4). While
EduExcel has traditionally allowed its sub-units much more ﬂexibility in choosing the
applications they needed for their tasks, it was in the midst of planning to move to an
enterprise systems model. EduSucceed, on the other hand, is a pioneer in the enterprise
systems in the higher education industry, and has been running its ERP system for about
a decade. Since ERP systems are put in place to standardize business processes and
support a centralized strategy (Lee, Siau & Hong, 2003), it was expected that the
presence of a ERP system would minimize the amount of drift in EduSucceed’s units

relative to EduExcel’s.

55

During discussions with the manager in charge of change management at
EduExcel, it was revealed that EduExcel had experienced a signiﬁcant amount of
fragmentation in its IS portfolio. It was widely known that many users were routinely
using workarounds and shadow systems to carry out their tasks. This university has
identiﬁed the fragmentation of its IS application portfolio as a signiﬁcant obstacle to its
future development. It thus had an incentive to allow me access to a number of
organizational members from various business units to examine the phenomenon. The
director of the ERP implementation project supported my research as he believed that
some of the ﬁndings would help EduExcel limit the use of shadow systems in the future.

EduSucceed was keen on participating in the project because it had found that
workarounds and shadow systems were reappearing in its business units, even though
many of them had been removed when the ERP system was implemented. It was
currently in the midst of an exercise to remedy this, which it referred to as “rationalizing”
its IT portfolio. The Chief Information Ofﬁcer (CIO) was supportive of my project and
helped me select, as well introduce me to, the interviewees.

This project was submitted for evaluation by Michigan State University’s
Institutional Review Board (IRB). The Human Research Protection Program deemed it to

be exempt from IRB review under Category 1-2.

56

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadow IT , Enterprise Systems Shadow IT
\ J
V
EduExcel
\ j
V
EduSucceed
Time
T1 T2 T3

Figure 4: Evolution of EduExcel 's and EduSucceed '5 IS Pory'olios
EduExcel

EduExcel is a large research-intensive university in the Mid-west with more than
45,000 students and nearly 3,000 faculty. About 30% of the students stay in campus
housing. The largest colleges are Agriculture, Business, Medicine, and Education, and the
smaller colleges include Music, Packaging, and Nursing. EduExcel is very decentralized
administratively, and the central IT department co-exists with separate IT teams in the
various units. While some of its major central IT systems have been rejuvenated, most of
them have not been upgraded for some time. Some systems are nearing the end of their
usable lives (being more than 40 years old) while others are no longer supported by the
vendors who created them. These systems issues have led to problems such as conﬂicting
versions of information, difﬁcult-to-locate data, poor systems integration, and duplicate
data entry.

In October 2006, a decision was made to implement an ERP system that would

replace the existing ﬁnancial, research administration and human resources systems

57

across the university. This project is currently underway and the ﬁrst modules are
scheduled to go live in January 2011. A major goal of the project is that the number of
shadow systems, which are currently prevalent all across campus, will decline
substantially, once the system is operational. Besides that, better-streamlined workﬂows

and a reduction in IT costs are envisaged.

EduSucceed

Like EduExcel, EduSucceed is also a large research-intensive university in the
Mid-west. It has more than 41,000 students, 5,000 faculty and 17,000 staff members, and
spends more than $300 million each year on IT. The largest colleges are Engineering,
Business, Medicine, and Sciences and Arts. There are 15 other smaller colleges, such as
Music, Design, and Information. EduSucceed is historically, like most universities, a very
decentralized institution. There is a central IT department but each college also has its
own IT personnel. Depending on the size of the college, their IT department could have
from 1 to more than 60 employees.

EduSucceed rolled out its ERP system between 1998 and 2000, making it one of
the pioneers in the higher education sector. Other projects in the last decade include a
business intelligence project. In the last two years, EduSucceed has begun carrying out a
multi-year plan to enhance its IT inﬁastructure and services. This involves streamlining
the governance structure and mechanisms and reducing the duplication of IT services and
resources, so as to decide which products and services will be the responsibility of the

central IT function and which will be handled by the colleges’ IT departments. This

58

initiative was triggered mainly by EduSucceed’s budgetary difﬁculties, due to a reduction

in state funding.

Data Collection

Data collection took place between December 2008 and February 2010. The
change management manager of EduExcel and the CIO of EduSucceed provided entry
and widespread access to the business units. Along with their colleagues, they identiﬁed
the subjects, who were then invited by me to participate in the study. The participants
were told that the focus of the study was on understanding why IS portfolios drift occurs
and how it is managed in their units. Participants were motivated to contribute because
they would learn about how their peers in other work units operated with IS portfolios
that had short-comings. In addition, they would ﬁnd out how decision-making on IT
investments and use took place in their own unit across different functions. These insights
could help them identify areas where they could improve their operations by, for
example, putting in place more rigorous IS governance mechanisms.

Both EduExcel and EduSucceed carry out a variety of activities and operate in a
largely decentralized manner. The responsibilities of their business units range from
academic research and teaching and managing farms to operating power plants and
housing students. Both also have signiﬁcant athletics operations. To control for the
confounding effect of the diversity of the contexts, one business unit from each of these
categories was selected for the study: colleges, administrative, facilities management,
student services, and athletics. These units differed on multiple dimensions: in terms of

the size and complexity of both the organization and the IT function and portfolio. This

59

enabled us to collect data from ﬁve case sites from both universities with theoretically
different IS use and governance needs.

Although business units in the different categories have distinct operational foci,
certain activities are carried out at almost all units. These included ﬁnance, human
resource management, IT management, and operations. The interview subjects were thus
sampled from each of these functions so as to enhance the comparability of the data.
Three to four subjects from each of the ﬁve business units were interviewed. The subjects
were managers or supervisors who are involved in and oversee any of these above-
mentioned activities in their business unit. In addition, they use IT applications to fulﬁll
their work responsibilities, and are aware of the IT applications being used by the staff in
their units. The number of subjects ﬁ'om each site varied because some managers handled
more than one function, or because not all functions are carried out at each business unit.
Managers or supervisors who had been with the business unit for less than six months

were excluded, as they may have limited knowledge of the IT systems being used in their

 

 

 

unit.
EduExcel EduSucceed
College- medium IT x 1 IT x 1
HR x 1 Finance x 1
Finance x 1 Operations x 1
Operations x 1
College- large IT x 1 IT x 2
Finance x 1 Finance x 1
HR x 1

 

Table 8: Backgrounds of Interviewees

60

Table 8 (cont’d)

 

 

 

 

 

Facilities Management F inance/HR/IT x 1 IT x 1
Operations x 1 Finance x 1
HR x 1
Athletics IT x 1 Finance x 1
Finance x 1 Operations x 1
Administrative IT x 1 Finance/HR x 1
Finance/HR x 1
Central IT Management 1 1
Total l3 l4

 

In-depth, semi-structured and face-to-face interviews, lasting between one to two
hours each, were conducted with 13 EduExcel employees and 14 EduSucceed employees
(Table 8). In addition, EduExcel’s change management manager and EduSucceed’s CIO
were interviewed twice. The questions were evaluated by an experienced IT manager and
two academic researchers. The table below (Table 9) provides the interview protocol
used in conducting these interviews. The interviews focused on the evolution of IT use,
their perception of the level of ﬁt between the official systems available and the
requirements of their jobs, changes in the political and economic environment of their
work unit, the sources of leadership and resistance in their unit’s IT planning and
implementation efforts, and the roles and efforts of the IT support staff. The interviews
were recorded, with the permission of the participants, and transcribed. This provided a
source of verbatim quotations. F ollow-up interviews were used to conﬁrm or expand on

the evidence collected.

61

 

 

The following structured protocol was developed and used to guide the interviews:

1) Describe your job/role, experience, and current responsibilities

2) Describe your department: number of staff, age proﬁle, main role, levels of hierarchy,
presence of IT support

3) Describe your work process: what are the steps, who do you interact with, what IT
system or systems do you use?

4) Describe each system in terms of the number of people who use it, its age (new/old),
did you receive training to use it, how stable is it, and who ﬁxes it when it goes down.

5) Which of these systems are the ofﬁcial systems for doing your job? Which of these
are alternatives?

6) Describe the process in which you decided to use the alternative (shadow) system:
who was involved, who paid for it, and how did you choose it.

7) What happened after you started using the shadow system? Did you get the beneﬁts
you planned for? Were there any unforeseen problems?

8) Have you stopped using the shadow system and reverted to the ofﬁcial application?
Have you been asked to do so?

9) Do you work-around any ofﬁcial system? Why? What are the beneﬁts and costs of
working around official systems?

10) How common are these practices among your colleagues?

 

Table 9: Interview Protocol

Data Analysis

Each subject and site was assigned a code denoting their functional responsibility
(e.g. HR, Finance, etc) and the site (e. g. College, Facilities Management, Athletics, etc.).
For example, "AthFin" indicates a ﬁnance manager in the athletics department. Each case
describes a business unit’s experiences of portfolio fragmentation. Thus, the ﬁrst step in
the analysis was to use the interviews to create a series of vignettes or short summaries of
each work unit's experiences with their IT portfolio and how they managed it. This
helped identify common themes in the narratives. Although the data is from ﬁve sites, the
aim is to produce analytical generalizations (Yin, 2003), where theoretical concepts and

patterns are being generalized. For each business unit, these vignettes summarized:

62

 

a) Unit demographics (e. g. size of unit, attributes of IT support function, and IT
knowledge of users)

b) The IS applications that were used previously and currently, as well as those that
are planned to be used in the future (e. g. how and why were they introduced, were
they modiﬁed,)

c) IS governance structures and practices (e. g. who has authority to decide on
changes, how are requests for new systems made, what are the relationships
between the central and local IT functions, what relationships exist among peer IT
users across different units, what sort of internal controls are used)

d) Instances of workarounds or shadow systems

e) The conditions that instigated the use of workarounds or shadow systems
These rich descriptions helped to surface important distinctions between

EduExcel and EduSucceed that were being continually produced and reproduced, and to
identify power relations in each of the sites.

The next step was to combine all comments about a particular aspect from each of
the cases into a large spreadsheet. This helped to decontextualize the interviewees’
comments from their original settings and place them in an alternative context (Tesch,
1990). This table was used to compare the ten cases in terms of the changes in IS
portfolios in the different units, the factors associated with these changes, and the
diversity of IS governance processes. This was followed by an open-ended process of
generating themes and patterns by reading the vignettes and interviews (Glaser and
Strauss, 1967). Governance practices and scenarios of drift that were common across the

ten cases were extracted and summarized with various diagrams. This helped identify the

63

contingencies, motivations, and underlying structures that inﬂuenced and were inﬂuenced
by the various practices and scenarios. Finally, these interpretations were described using
the conceptual language provided in the previous two chapters to develop an abstraction

of the phenomena being studied.

64

CHAPTER 5: CASE STUDIES

This chapter contains case vignettes that summarize the data collected by the
interview process. Each case ﬁrst describes the IT portfolio in a unit: what systems were
used in the past, which ones are in use now, and which ones are being planned for.
Instances of drift, either in terms of shadow systems or workarounds, are, if they are
mentioned, presented next. Finally, the IT governance practices in each unit are listed.
These include practices internal to the unit, and those that involve its interaction with
external parties, such as the Central IT function of the university or peers from other
universities. At the beginning of each case, a diagram is used to summarize this
information, and provide an anchor for the upcoming analysis and discussion. Quotations
from the interviewees are interspersed with the case descriptions to provide an indication
of the socially-rich nature of IT management practices. The ﬁve cases ﬁ'om EduExcel are
presented ﬁrst, followed by the cases from EduSucceed. Finally, two interviews with IT

managers from EduSucceed are summarized after the cases.

Case Vignette 1: EduExceI — International Studies and Programs

Recently, EduExcel made ISP a separate university-level department. ISP
integrates all international activities held in EduExcel. This includes supporting the
administrative and social needs of international students and scholars, and coordinating
research and teaching on international topics. One driver of the reorganization was the

need to reduce duplication, and thus, it was accompanied by centralization and
65

standardization in their organizational activities, such as branding, website design, and
the development of educational materials. Like other units in EduExcel, ISP is involved

in the ERP implementation project. It is scheduled to go live in January 2011.

  

Governance
External:

 
      
 
 

internal:
IT manager direct report to unit head; single IT
team; Users encouraged to search for their own
systems; Medium-sized lT team

 

 
     
   
 
 

IT Portfolio
Central:
Data warehouse, grant proposal system,
document viewer, HR systems, student
information database

      
 

 

 
   
   
     
 

Local:
QuickBooks, Excel, Access

 

 

 
 

Figure 5: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel 's
ISP units

IT Portfolio

Past
Previously, each unit was using a different email client, including Eudora, and the

IT staff had to know how to maintain each of them. Databases were also built in a variety

of formats, such as Excel and Access. Similarly, each unit was using its own software for

66

managing its ﬁnances. These included Excel, Quicken, and QuickBooks. Finally, the
websites for ISP’s different units did not look similar.

Everybody was on their own island.

Financial transactions from the university’s fund ledger could not be saved in an
electronic format so that the data could be imported into QuickBooks. IT-savvy
accounting employees downloaded the data from the imiversity’s data warehouse into
Access to carry out their work. Those who did not know how to do so had to wait till the
end of the month, and then print it out before entering it by hand into QuickBooks.

For a guy like me, who’s obsessed with technology and things like that,

it’s very ﬁ'ustrating when you have to put something in that’s already been

done before.

Current

The department has been standardizing many aspects of its IT portfolio. For
example, about a year ago, it mandated that Microsoft Exchange/Outlook would be the
standard e-mail application. Databases were migrated to MySQL, and more than 20
databases on topics as varied as visiting scholars, exchange programs, international
students, and spring break alternatives, were consolidated.

ISP’s ﬁnance director wanted to standardize the accounting on one system to
avoid work being held up if employees left or went on leave. While this had not been an
issue before, he decided to carry out the project as a pro-active measure.

The biggest goal for me was to ensure that somebody could step in

someone’s job if they needed to... We started out saying with my

67

directive- we need to get on one system, so that we can help each other out

better.... That was the mission. I didn’t really care how we ended up, as

long as everybody followed.

He set up a committee to evaluate four different options: Quicken, DepACT (an
accounting package provided by Central IT), the Engineering college’s accounting
software, and QuickBooks. They also looked at a government accounting software but
decided it was too expensive. They decided on QuickBooks because it was user-friendly,
three or four units were already using it, and most of the others were using Quicken (its
similarity to QuickBooks would make the transition easier). They decided not to use
DepACT or the Engineering college’s software because they could not be customized,
unlike QuickBooks. Also, unlike the other applications, QuickBooks enabled them to run
certain reports which they needed.

Although their initial plan was to implement a common system for everyone, they
did not do that in the end. This was because its high cost and the discomfort over
allowing everyone access to everyone else’s data.

We didn’t know how comfortable (everyone) felt. . ., even though we

could put controls in there, so not everybody’s touching the grills and

stuff.

Once QuickBooks was chosen, making it the standard ﬁnancial application in ISP
was fairly easy, although it was a long process. This was because ﬁve of the twelve units
were already using it; the other units were provided with training. This experience has

helped the ﬁnance director plan the impending move to ERP.

68

As his independent study project, a student employee built a web application that
automatically feeds ﬁnancial data from the data warehouse into QuickBooks. The
department was not sure whether the new ERP system would deliver these capabilities
and when it would do so, so it carried out the project even after planning for the ERP
system had begun. The student was especially proud of bringing in some processes that
were not part of book-keeping, such as the budgeting process. His ultimate aim is to map
out all the processes that are connected to book-keeping and implement them in his
system. He was skeptical if these capabilities would be available in the ERP system.

The ERP system is cool and everything, but it’s probably not going to care

about that stuff.

Creating ﬁnancial statements for the entire ISP department is difficult because the
university’s ﬁnancial system does not organize ISP’s units under ISP. Each unit has its
own account, and each unit manages its funds using its own QuickBooks ﬁle. So,
consolidating the data is a manual process. The ﬁnance director uses the university fund
ledger system, a report called the Dean’s List, which includes the year-to-date balances
for the revenue and expenditure accounts that the ISP Dean oversees, and the monthly
ledger, which contains the detailed expenses, to create a ﬁnancial statement in Excel for
all of ISP. They are now considering automating this process along the same lines of the
book-keeping application. However, they were not sure if they would go ahead with this
scheme, since: a) they would be involved with the ERP implementation (which would
take up time), and b) a student employee can key in the information for the report in a

few hours (so it is fairly cheap to carry out).

69

ISP also developed a standard look for their website. They paid University
Relations for a foundation template and the IT department is now converting all units’
websites on the basis of that template. Each unit maintains its own website. The website
project has been around for a long time.

It’s amazing how long these things take.

Even though many HR processes also include manual steps (e. g. reminding
supervisors of overdue staff evaluations and rearranging payroll data to ﬁt local reporting
requirements), nothing similar to the web application was developed. This is because
Central IT refuses ISP’s Finance and Administration (F&A) department access to the
system which contains the raw HR-relevant data.

They have not carried out a similar standardization exercise for HR, nor have they
asked around to ﬁnd out how other organizations are handling their HR IT needs. The
main reason is that Central HR’s IT systems are good enough for their needs. For
example, HR recently replaced many of its paper forms with pre-populated electronic
forms. This took place over the last three to four years as part of the preparations for the
ERP project. Another example is the e-time system for Payroll. Previously, HR processes
were very paper-based. For example, a job posting would require many paper forms to be
ﬁlled up, which were then sent to HR, where they were re-entered into a computer
system. Once the applications had closed, HR would fax the candidates’ resumes to the
department that posted the job, where photocopies would be made for everyone involved
in the hiring decision for that position. This process has recently become electronic.

One issue with HR is that the work of its different divisions is not very

coordinated. For example, when student employees are hired as full-time employees, new

70

I-9s have to be made for them very often, even though they already had one when they
were students. This lack of coordination is even obvious in the new online HR systems.
For example, while Academic HR uses pie-populated electronic forms, Staff HR does
not. On the other hand, job postings by Staff HR are electronic, but academic job postings
are not. The F&A department has mentioned these issues during the requirements
gathering exercise when they met the ERP team.

(I hope) the new system is going to have answers to all of them... (such

functions) should be part of the central system.

One Central IT system that is much-admired and well-used is Contracts & Grants’
grant proposal system. It provides the ability to search for prior proposals, lists the
requirements for grant proposals, and has a salary builder to help calculate salaries for I
grant budgets. Document Viewer is a web-based report creation application managed by
Central IT. It can be used to create and share reports in domains such as accounting,
payroll, student services, and facilities.

The exchange programs office has an Access database for managing student
participation in their programs. Student information is recorded in it and it is linked to the
central student database for billing purposes and for accessing emergency contact
information. It’s also linked to the university’s health center, which reviews the student’s
health form and informs ISP if a student is cleared to go on the program. This link
removes the need for ISP to store sensitive health data, which would mean having to
abide by the strict HIPAA rules. The database is also linked to the exchange programs
ofﬁce’s website, so that it feeds the information about the programs to the website. The
database is currently linked to QuickBooks through the new web application. They would

71

like for its ﬁnancial component (e.g. billing, payment) to be linked to the ERP system,
but 80% of its features do not have a place in the ERP system. However, they are not

listing it in the inventory of systems they are preparing for the ERP implementation team.

Future

They are excited about the ERP system.

There’re a lot of things right now that the corporate world in accounting

would demand, but we’re not providing because of our systems it’s

all fragmented, and decentralized

They hOpe that the ERP will automatically integrate expense statements from the
various units on campus, because this would save them the hassle of getting receipts from
each of the different stores and systems. The ERP system should also make it easy to
track transactions. Currently, Central Finance and F&A may use different numbers to
track transactions, which F &A maintains in a database

We’ll assign something to it, sure, but (they) create their own thing when

we create it... it’s going to be the same transaction... you know it’s going

to be synchronized... the new system we’re going to create will have that

number and it’s going to stay that number the whole way through

Another beneﬁt they hope to gain from the ERP system is for accruals to be
automatically updated when the amount accrued for a certain expenditure is less than that
provided by Central Finance. Currently, the ﬁnance department has to edit the ﬁgures in
its books when this happens. Because of this, they wait for the ﬁnal amount before

entering it into the system.

72

That’s the advantage we’re looking forward to we’ll be able to, as

we’re creating the transaction, do the classiﬁcations down into the

programmatic way that we need it and then at any point in time when that

has been initiated, whether it’s ﬁnal or not, I should be able to go out and

do a report in the system and it should include those amounts as accruals.

The ﬁnance director hopes that the ERP system would not just replicate the
capabilities provided by their systems and would instead be much more relevant to their

needs

I hope that when they do the new system, they are not just focused on “this
is how it was, so let’s build a system so that we can get that”. It was like
that because it was an old system and that was how it needed to be... (the

requirements should be my) dream list, the ideal world.

IT Governance and Management

lntemal

IT management used to be under the F&A department, but was recently made a
separate department. The F&A department takes care of accounting and human
resources. It also ensures that each unit and department within ISP complies with the
university’s policies and procedures on record-keeping.

Over the last two years, ISP’s IT expenditure has been centralized. Previously,
their IT costs were high and they had no way of knowing what their units were doing.

The standardization of the application portfolio was resisted by some units because of

73

fears over job security, an interest in preserving “opaqueness” (because the shadow
systems led to a lack of transparency in planning), and a lack of interest in collaborating
to integrate their data or allocate the budget (which required some compromises).

The centralization has also meant that IT human resources have been consolidated
under one team. Before, each ISP unit included employees who devoted a percentage of
their time to maintaining IT. A signiﬁcant driver of the recent changes to ISP’s IS
portfolio is a student employee in the F&A department. He is an IT—savvy a book-keeper
who suggested signiﬁcant changes and developed many new ﬁnancial IT applications.

For IT purchases, users communicate their requirements to the IT department, and
the latter comes up with its own requirements. ISP’s IT department does not do an IT
audit or inventory, but has been asked by the ERP team to provide an inventory of the
systems and reports being used. The inventory focuses mainly on applications and reports
delivered by Central functions, such as the monthly charge statements from university
storage, Central IT, and the computer store. These statements are currently used as
backups for their transaction records.

An employee from the IT department manages their QuickBook licenses and
maintenance for all of ISP’s units. One of their staff members built F&A’s Access
database and they now have someone working part-time on IT issues. A network
administrator from the IT department helped the different units install QuickBooks.
When users ask for a new feature or system, they contact F&A’s IT person and carry it
out within their own budget. This is in addition to any upgrades or changes carried out by
ISP’s IT department. Besides the student-employee, there are no other power users in

ISP. He developed the web-based book-keeping application on

74

kind of my own initiative, I guess... Trying to make my own life better and

hopefully everybody else will also beneﬁt from it.

The QuickBooks standardization exercise encouraged the ﬁnance director to
reorganize his department by identifying which of his employees should be champions of
certain processes. In addition, he plans to choose a smaller team to be involved with the
ERP implementation. So, instead of having a large number of people involved for 25% of
their time, he could have fewer people involved 100% of their time. This would reduce
the amount of coordination required.

some people in our group . .. are comfortable with the technology changes

and organization and some aren’t... instead of everybody reinventing the

wheel, twice a year, trying to learn this one thing, one person is the

champion of that. .. That person gets to do it twelve times a year, instead

of everybody going through it once or twice a year.

He plans to recruit staff from other units within ISP to be part of his “dream team”
in the F&A department. Since that would involve them having to transfer their duties
from their units to their colleagues before they can transfer to the F&A department, and
because the units may not be willing to release the people he wants, as they might be key
staff there too, he has planned the transition to take place over some time. His goal is to
have his team up and running by the time ERP is operational.

The ﬁnance director is worried that shadow systems will reappear in other units
after ERP has been implemented because older users will be unwilling to adapt. The
director considers himself one of the senior employees after being there for a decade, but

instead of being like the others, he tries his best to learn new ways of working.

75

you’re going to have people (who’ve) been here 20 years or more

saying “this is how we do it” they’re going to take the new system and

they’re going to say “how can I make that how I used to do it?” instead of
saying, “wow, this is cool!”

You got the old dogs out there, don’t want to learn new tricks.

I’m getting close to being an old dog, but I’m different in that I always

like to work smarter, not harder... The world’s our oyster

They consider the QuickBooks standardization exercise to be the ﬁrst phase of the
move to the ERP system, as it enabled them to reduce the number of classiﬁcations they
used and standardize on one set (which are the object codes that EduExcel uses). For
example, each unit might call “international travel” by a different name, e. g. “Intl
Travel”, “international travel”, or “travel-intemational”.

They do not expect their IT costs to fall by much when they move to ERP from
QuickBooks. Their IT costs have increased substantially in the recent past because of
their new projects, such as redoing the website, standardizing the email system, and
providing training on the new systems. Besides these, the recurrent costs have been

stable.

Case Vignette 2: EduExcel - Athletics

The Athletics department manages athletes for 17 sports and their facilities, such
as stadia, golf courses and playing ﬁelds. It is closely linked to EduExcel’s development
office, as it plays a key role in fund-raising. The employees at the Athletics department

are fairly youthful, especially the coaching staff. Each year, 20 to 30 employees leave the

76

department. The biggest change happens when a football coach leaves, since the
incoming coach usually brings in a new team. The workload when the last coach changed
was exacerbated by the move into a new building.

The Business Ofﬁce has 8 staff and handles the department’s ﬁnancial and HR
affairs. The Ticket Office is not under it, as it is under the External Relations department.
The head of the Business Office has worked there for 21 years and replaced her
supervisor when she retired. Besides the head, the Business Ofﬁce has three other full-
time employees (one accountant and two clerks) and one part-tirne employee who
handles payroll. Three of the Business Ofﬁce staff are in their 405 while the other one is
younger. Because of her long tenure in the department, the Budget Office manager has
not had a situation where one of her employees left and took their work knowledge with
them. What she ﬁnds more difficult is explaining the nature of the Athletics department
or the university. The IT manager has been at his job since 1995. From 1989 to 1997, he

was the video coordinator for the football team. From 1995 to 97, he did both jobs.

77

 
       
   
  

Governance
External:
Part of selection committee for ERP
Implementation; peers in other universities

 

     
     
 
 
       
   
  

Internal:
IT manager not a direct report to unit head;
Users rely on IT team for IT support
and purchases; 2 IT employees

 

IT Portfollo
Central:
Dam warehouse, Advance (reporting),
Paciolan, HR systems, security

 

  
   
 

Local:
QuickBooks, Excel, Access

 

 

Figure 6: Governance mechanism, I T portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel's
Athletics unit

IT'PcutﬁaHo

Past

In 2000/01, the Athletics department shifted away from Novell-based servers to
Microsoft-based servers and installed Microsoft Exchange for email/calendars. Novell
was used by Central IT too, and some of the push to shift to Microsoft-based servers
came from them when they began moving in that direction.

When the Business Ofﬁce head began working here 21 years ago, ﬁnancial
transactions were recorded on paper ledgers. They then switched to the system used by
the Ticketing Office, which has an accounting module (DepACT). Since “it was awful”,

they reverted to paper after a year. Next, 15 years ago, they began using Quicken. They

78

switched to Quicken because DepACT, the university-supported system, was not as
ﬂexible as she needed it to be. Speciﬁcally, DepACT could not accommodate the number
of ﬁelds that were needed.

I tried to ﬁnd something that would give us enough ﬂexibility, (so) that we

would be able to set it up the way we wanted to set it up. DepACT, the

university system, couldn’t do what we needed to do. . .It didn’t have
enough ﬁelds basically. Classes, categories, object codes, whatever you

want to call them. It didn’t have enough variables for us.

She asked around for suggestions and someone recommended Quicken. Since
only one user could use Quicken at any one time, their ability to edit transactions was
curtailed. If another user wanted to check something while Quicken was being used, s/he
would refer to the previous night’s backup. If a mistake was found, s/he would have to
wait till the end of the day to correct it.

I worked at night, I waited till the person who was on it got off and then

I’d go in and ﬁx it, because it was easier than trying to tell them what was

wrong.

BLED!

The Business Ofﬁce uses QuickBooks to record and manage its ﬁnancial activity.
They moved to QuickBooks because Quicken can only be used by a single user at a time
even though she does not like some aspects of QuickBooks.

Quicken works better than QuickBooks for what we need to do, because

it’s not as complex... (but) you’ve got to weigh which is better: having

79

multiple people on it at once and not having to after redo everything after

5 o’clock.

They installed QuickBooks by themselves at the end of the ﬁscal year, so there
would be no issues of having to maintain two different sets of books. The QuickBooks
database is backed up every night, so even if it crashed, her ofﬁce would not lose much
data. The application itself is not updated to prevent problems, and the IT manager is
aware of this.

(We do not) install the updates. We may have upgraded versions one

time. .. (If it does) weird things, (we) call(s) up and ask them if they know

why it does it, they have no idea what you’re talking about... we don’t
have any support for it. I don’t count on any support for it.

The business manager has not considered changing to another application because
she could never ﬁnd one that met all her needs. She was quite keen to stop using it when
she heard about the ERP, but now she is reconsidering. Even though QuickBooks does
not meet her needs completely, she would prefer to stick to it than having to deal with
two systems.

(QuickBooks) doesn’t meet all our needs but it seems to be better than

anything else.

In the beginning, I was sure I’d be able to (change), now I’m not quite so

sure... because everyone keeps going “oh, they’re going to have to scale it

back. ..

(Ideally, she would like to) get information out of the university system.

80

Since there are not many payables and receivables, she manages them with an
Excel spreadsheet. She thought this was going to be part of ERP sometime ago, but not
anymore. Her department does not use Access. For Excel, they only use formulas, not
macros. Excel is used for preparing the budgets of the entire department and for
individual areas, because QuickBooks does not permit line-item budgeting (i.e. by
individual accounts). It can only accommodate an overall budget.

(they have to) download stuff from QuickBooks, download into Excel, and

then copy numbers over... (it is) very labor-intensive.

Currently, her ofﬁce does not download any ﬁnancial information ﬁ'om the main
university system. Her staff manually enters everything and reconciles their balances with
those of Central Finance when they receive their monthly ledgers. This helps them
uncover discrepancies. Accruals (payables and receivables) are reconciled annually, not
monthly.

when you get the ledgers and reconcile them, and we’ve entered into our

system just off what we know about, there are always surprises every month.

“how come I don’t even know who the person is”.

When people charge things to your account that you don’t know about, you can

ﬁnd it if was ours or it wasn’t ours.

At the end of each year, her ofﬁce submits a report that goes into the university’s
published ﬁnancial reports in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. This was done by the
iuiiversity’s Financial Analy'sis ofﬁce previously, but is now done by each department.
The Central Finance ofﬁce does not usually require any other report. They sometimes

have to create reports that are requested by the Athletics Director or the heads of the

81

different sports. The Business Ofﬁce uses the “Advance” system and other applications
from Central IT for reporting.

She uses Excel to create the NCAA reports. It is a very time-consuming process.
For example, the numbers in one account may have to be reallocated to two or three line
items in the report, or two accounts may have to be combined for a single line item in the
report. Some of the numbers are in QuickBooks, while others are in other systems.

One problem is that the NCAA report changes every year, and the NCAA
administration does not inform schools early in the year what information it needs. Thus,
the Business Ofﬁce ends up keeping track of the information that was required for the
previous year’s report, which often differs from this year’s report. These reports have
been around for 5 or 6 years, and have changed three times. The ﬁgures are ﬁlled onto an
online form on the NCAA website, which makes it difficult to keep track of what the
ﬁgures are made up of. Because of this, an Excel tool was provided the next year to help
users keep track of how they arrived at their ﬁgures. However, this tool was not linked to
the online form. So, users had to ﬁll up the Excel tool, print it out, and then type in the
ﬁgures into the online form. The federal reports are also web-based. Although the NCAA
reports were ostensibly designed so that users could use the data from the federal reports
when ﬁlling up the NCAA reports, this is not so in reality.

(It) probably takes me 80 hours to put that report together, pulling... I

have to grab things from all different places and reallocate.

They don’t tell you on the front-end what they’re going to change, they

tell you at the back-end. And it hasn’t been around that long, so it’s been

82

changing a lot... people had to develop their own way to get to it, because

they didn’t have a trail.

they have places (where) they made mistakes, so it doesn’t work. I mean it

works, but if you turn it in that way, you’re wrong

Other Big 10 universities which prepare these reports obtain the data either by
downloading it from their university systems or have developed customized applications
for this purpose. She has approached someone to develop a ﬁnancial application for her
some time ago (before the NCAA reporting requirements came out), but did not pursue
this. Discussions on the ERP have been going on for a long time, so she was not sure
when it would actually be implemented. She was concerned that if she went ahead with
her own project, which would involve reorganizing her ofﬁce’s ﬁnancial processes, she
might have had to do the same thing again when the ERP system came around.

There is no speciﬁc person in charge of HR in the Athletics department.
Recruitment is managed by individual coaches (not centrally), and there is no IT system
for managing applications that come in.

HR’s kind of shared between several people here so it’s a come-and-go

thing... HR’s spread over so many people that it’s nobody’s full-time

job, it’s an afterthought for most people. We don’t have an HR person,

whose person is HR... when resumes come in for coaching jobs, they

create notebooks. It’s all manual.

The Business Office uses the HR systems from Central HR. Similar to how they
run their ﬁnances, they use HR’s system to obtain information, and then re-enter
everything into their own system. The Comprehensive Automated Stafﬁng System

83

(COMPASS) is a system from Central HR used for hiring full-time support staff. She
suggested to Central HR that it could be used to hire coaches, who are hired as academic
staff. That way, the process would become electronic, and less paper-based. She has been
told that Compass is linked to the new ERP system but is not sure.

The HR processes in the university are fragmented: there are about ﬁve different
ways to hire people and the Athletics Department uses all ﬁve. Central HR used to have
three ofﬁces but was recently relocated to one location. However, there are still four
different offices handling hiring: a) one for full-time support staff and non-student on-call
staff, b) a student employment office for student employees, c) one for graduate
assistants, and d) the academic HR ofﬁce for professors and ﬁxed-term faculty. Each one
has its own process and paperwork, and IT systems, with one of them being much more
advanced than the others. Some of these differences were at the level of the color of the
form that was handed in. When they moved to online forms, they could not be saved but
only printed. The wide variety of practices made it difﬁcult for employees in the Budget
Office to ﬁgure out which form was required or what the steps were for a certain
procedure. It was especially difficult for new employees.

(I’ve) gotten used (to) it and I know which way to do what. But for the

new person coming in, it’s ridiculous! the aim of ERP is to get it all

together.

They have just developed a new website for their donors. Donors will now be able
to go to the site and see how much they have contributed, what level they are at, and

whether they want to increase their contribution.

84

The department’s Exchange server is managed by AIS as part of a larger
collection. However, they have full control of it. For example, they recently added a
Blackberry Enterprise server since there are about a hundred Blackberries being used in
this department. Coaches use them, especially for recruiting. The IT manager started
offering this service in the fall of 2005. For a three-month period, about a dozen
employees, including him, tried it out. Since they had no problems with it, they opened it
up to everyone else.

When one person sees it, it just propagates.

We said ‘you know what, this is going to work out alright’ and then we

started offering it.

He began exploring it after a few coaches mentioned it to him. He agreed to
implement it, since there were few security issues. For example, the Blackberry
Management server communicates with the Exchange server behind their ﬁrewall,
making the data transfer secure. In addition, if someone loses his/her Blackberry, he can
kill off its email access remotely, removing all personal data from the device. This is not
possible with a Windows Mobile device. It is also easier to administer compared to
iPhones or Windows-based devices- users do not need to reset the passwords on their
Blackberries (unlike the other two types of devices) because he directly links the
Blackberry server to their user IDs. A similar example (of users pushing for new IT
services) was when users moved from their Franklin planners to Palm-based devices in
the 19905.

The ticketing system is run by Paciolan, a vendor, and the site is hosted in

California. The servers are housed in the main Athletics building.

85

Future

The ERP system has been talked about for a long time. Her understanding is that,
while the scope of the ERP system is not shrinking, fewer ﬁinctions will be available
when it is ﬁrst rolled out.

I’ve known the university has had this going on forever.

I think they have too much stuff they wanted to roll out on July 1 2010. ..

they (may) just do this and these other ones are going to be have to be

phased in later.

Currently, these heads and the Director can view the monthly balances of each
account. With the ERP, they will have access to any level of detail they want. This may
inﬂuence how often they ask for reports.

With the ERP, both parties will have to agree to use journal vouchers (i.e. when
someone is charging someone else on campus for something). This should make it less
likely that they will ﬁnd surprises on their monthly balances. However, electronic
document routing is required to make this work well because vouchers are processed
slowly.

A key issue for her is that the ERP system should provide her with the
information to prepare all of the reports required by the NCAA and federal agencies. She
is not sure if it will be able to do so yet. She has informed the project team of her
requirements and believes that if she has the ﬂexibility to set up the new system, she
should have no problem getting the data she requires. However, there is a lot of
uncertainty currently which troubles her

you get a lot of “we don’t know that yet”, “we don’t know that yet”
86

I’m not one of those people who says “I have to keep it this way just to be

sure,” (but) I want to know on the front-end, that yeah, looks like this will

work, and then we’ll wing it!

She believes that Cognos, the reporting tool in the ERP system, will reduce her
compliance workload.

If we can break things down the way we want to, then I should be able to

write reports in Cognos and get the information that I need... But you

know, it’s all a “yes, sounds good” and it should, but it remains to be seen.

Since it will be rolled out on July 1 (the beginning of the ﬁscal year), all
transactions after that date will be recorded in the ERP while all transactions before that
date will be recorded in the old system. She hopes that she will not have to use
QuickBooks and the ERP in parallel after that date.

(that depends on) how comfortable I am when we try to set it up. When

we go through how we structure the accounts and stuff . .. if it’s not going

well, then we’ll have to do them both. I would like not to do them both.
IT Governance and Management

lntemal

Over time, the department has begun to use IT more intensively.

This stuff is getting to be a bigger piece of day-to-day work, day-to-day
operations.

The Athletics department has two IT employees: a manager and his assistant.

They support more than 300 workstations in 10 buildings, and over 200 full-time staff.
87

When the IT manager began in his role in 1995, there were about 50 computers in the
department. Most of the staff who were around then have left, and the new ones who
have been recruited are fairly computer-savvy.

The IT team manages and secures all PC and server applications in the buildings
run by Athletics, including all stadia and ofﬁces. These include ofﬁce applications, email
(Microsoft Exchange) and a web server that hosts content for the website (which is run
by CBS Sports). Speciﬁcally, they install the applications, make sure they point to the
right data sources on the server, and manage the back-ups. They are aiming to retain
between 6 to 8 weeks of data. They do weekly as well as annual back-ups. Every week,
they get calls to restore some data and they manage to do so. The IT manager admits he’s
under-strength but does his best.

We’re a little understaffed. But we make do and with the budget

constraints coming up, we’re doing what we can.

So far, the IT manager has not hired students to help out. One difﬁculty with
hiring students is that they would lack the institutional knowledge required. This was
compounded by the short time they would be able to work for him. In place of students,
he has contracted help from Central IT. He uses them as his back-up when he goes on
vacation, but this has not stopped his colleagues from calling him while he is away.
However, with the impending budget cuts, he thinks he may have to start hiring students.

.. if you have to go out and know all the personalities and everybody
that’s in 10 different buildings, by the time you’ve got that whole thing

ﬁgured out, it’s time to go!

88

He tries to stick to his daily schedule but cannot always do so. While some of the
staff do not bother him with their IT issues, another group is at the other extreme.

Fires have to be put out continually, it just happens... (about a third of

the staff) are rather careﬁil with what they do. They have a good grasp of

systems and don’t get themselves in too much trouble... there are some

you hear from all the time.

He is not completely sure of all the systems the business ofﬁce uses. If employees
learn about some software and want to purchase it for their department, they usually go
through him. He evaluates their request before using his sources to get better prices.

I make sure her PCs and her systems are running so that they can do their

job, but I don’t do their job.

We’ll go through and look, you know, ‘do we really need this? What are

the advantages of this?’, they’re looking for something specialized

He does not get employees replacing the regular applications with their own or
asking for many changes. One major source of differentiation is the different applications
used by the various sports; for example, the golf team has a swing analysis application.
Usually, the officials from each team purchase these applications themselves. Usually,
the software is installed by outside vendors, and the IT team helps them maintain or ﬁx it.
There has been no discussion of moving to open-source applications.

We’re pretty nutsy boltsy with the software we use here. We stick to the

Microsoft Office products... they’re all pretty happy with the applications

we run here.

89

I guess I haven’t really had a reason to change. Nobody’s shown me a

good reason to change.

Users share information among themselves by using shared directories and
sharing their Exchange calendars. They willingly move data from their personal shares to
department shares if someone (e. g. the media) needs access to them.

When employees leave the Athletics department, their access to all data
(department mailing lists, shared directories, etc) is removed. Their email addresses are
kept active for 3 to 6 months, and emails are forwarded to their new address once they
have it. After 3 to 6 months, they expire automatically. However, their email addresses
are not made defunct; they are made inactive and are available to the employees if they
return. This is a common occurrence. He has not heard issues of ﬁles being unavailable to
new employees who replace those who leave.

He thinks the pace of change has slowed down. He aims to keep workstations for
6 to 7 years, on average. All hardware (printers, PCs, etc) is recorded in an Access
database, which he started about 12 years ago. He records IP addresses, serial numbers,
the type of hardware being used, storage capacity, and the type of applications that are
installed. This database is updated daily, allows him to sort by building or user, and he
keeps track of any issues that occur. Only the two IT staff members can access this. He
has not considered using a dedicated application to manage this ﬁinction because this
meets his needs. He does not track the software he purchases using a similar database,
since he usually relies on the university’s site licensing agreements. The licenses are kept

in ﬁle cabinets.

9O

.. it gives me an idea of what’s going on... I put in notes, like ages of

when they were put in, new PC . .. hard drive crashes, notes, so I can tell.

The business ofﬁce employees have not received training on QuickBooks, even
though they do not use many part of it, such as handling payables and receivables, and
printing checks. Her team only uses it for updating account balances and creating reports.
She believes that even though some of the employees of the Athletics department are IT-
savvy, they do not try and do things themselves.

I do nothing in my computer without calling (him)! I mean, (he) even sets

up my home computer... (he)’s pretty easy to work with and people like

that.

External

One way the IT manager uses Central IT is to manage his security, since he does
not have the resources to do it himself.

There are people who work here on campus who do nothing but security.

So, I use them and they do a great job.

Central IT does not mandate any systems, but instead suggests new technologies
that might be relevant to their needs and which they have tested. An example is the
Barracuda anti-virus and spam ﬁlter appliance. He has four layers of virus protection as
part of his infrastructure. What they do mandate are policies, such as the Acceptable Use
Policy. Since the Athletics department is self-funding, it can decide by itself how it wants
to spend its funding. However, since it is part of the university, it has to follow the

university’s policies.

91

There’s nobody over there calling “you’ve got to do this.”

The Big 10 schools meet annually to discuss sports administration issues, such as
the NCAA reports. However, it is difﬁcult to apply others’ experiences as each athletics
department is structured a bit differently. For example, are facilities like the golf course,
stadium or ice arena managed by the athletics department or rented from a separate arm
of the university? Such issues have implications for the way the departments are
structured and the type of information they gather. Improving the reporting process is
difficult for another reason too: the terms used can be interpreted differently. Sometimes,
she manages this uncertainty by asking the NCAA staff responsible for the reports what
they mean by certain items. However, not everyone does this. In addition, some
administrators modify where their ﬁgures go based on how they are assessed by their
universities.

the problem with the report is they don’t give you very good deﬁnitions.

So you could take a set of ﬁnancial information and you could take those

deﬁnitions, and you could give the same information to ten people in a

room and you will get back ten different reports.

there are also places where you would think the information would be

comparable, and people have different interpretations of it. .. this is kind of

why you take the information for what it’s worth because you’re making a

best effort to put it together, but you just don’t know how everybody else

is doing it.

you’ll have some people who’ll report things in a certain place

because their university assesses them a fee based either on revenue or

92

expenditures or something else. ‘Well, I don’t want to show it as an

expenses, cos I’ll get charged a fee on it’, and I say ‘Yeah, you get your

fee charged on expenses and I get my fee charged on revenues’ so I want

the opposite of what you want.

While he has not been involved in the ERP project, the budget ofﬁcer has. For
example, she was on the ﬁrst ﬁeld trip to look at how Indiana University was using this,
which was sometime in the 19905. Her long involvement has made her somewhat
skeptical. She attributes the delay to two reasons: funding and uncertainty over what the
university wanted. Before choosing the current ERP system, the university was looking at
software that was not web-based. Everyone they spoke to told them that they should
spend more time planning, because that was the mistake they committed.

I’ve been on to more meetings than I ever dreamed I would go to. And I

have another staff member that’s gone to several.

It’s kind of one of those where if I still work here when this thing becomes

reality, I’ll be surprised!

(I’m) sure there are still going to be glitches.

The Budget ofﬁce head is not counting on much support for the ERP system.

I think we’re going to have to do a lot of staff training internally.

Case Vignette 3: EduExceI - Facilities Management

The Facilities Management department constructs and manages EduExcel’s
buildings, roads, parks, and other facilities. It also provides heating, cooling, electricity,

water, telecommunications, and trash removal services for the campus. Facilities

93

Management’s employees perform a wide range of roles, including building cleaners,

swimming pool operators, architects, engineers, and bicycle repairers.

 
   
 

Governance
EXELEL:
Part of coordinating council for ERP
Implementation, peers In other universities

 
   
   
     
 

Internal:
IT manager direct report to unit head;
Users encouraged to search for their own
systems; Medium-sized IT team

 

 
     
 
 
 

IT Portfolio
Central:
Locak
FAMIS, Excel, Discoverer, Billing,
Payroll and HR, Overtime Management
System, Skire, Various other systems for
unique activities, AutoCAD

 
       
   
 

 

 
   
 

 

 
   
 

Figure 7: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for EduExcel 's
Facilities Management unit

IT Portfolio

Current

One of the main IT systems Facilities Management uses is the Facilities
Administration Management Information System or FAMIS. It is a facilities management
system, covering functions such as space management, job costing, maintenance
management (work orders), project budgeting and scheduling, and inventory control. It

was purchased from a vendor and is maintained internally. It was recently upgraded from

94

a PC-based system to a Web-based system. Its functionalities will not be in the new ERP
system, so Facilities Management will retain FAMIS and integrate it with the ERP
system.

F AMIS was put in place in response to customer feedback, who wanted more
detailed information as to what they were being charged for (e. g. who came, why
someone had come over, what material had been used). Customers used to call and
complain to the employees who handled billing. Since the IT Director is also the Finance
and HR Director, she heard about the problem from her staff.

An application called Discoverer is used for reporting and analysis. They intend to
integrate it with Cognos once it is installed. E-mail was consolidated in the last few years
into Microsoft Exchange. Previously, different sub-units used different systems. Facilities
Management uses intemally-developed systems for these functions:

- Billing: they bill vendors and EduExcel units for the work they do;
- Payroll and HR: they have to deal with many bargaining units, so their wage structure
is more complex than what the Central HR system can accommodate

Auto CAD is used for designing construction and renovations. The Custodial
Overtime Management System (COMS) was developed because the custodial staff asked
for a separate system to manage their overtime, since it was handled differently for them
than for skilled trades-people and maintenance workers. Finally, there are some stand-
alone systems which do not use Facilities Management’s network, such as the ones in the
Elevator Electronics Shop, which remotely monitor the elevators on campus.

Sometimes, policy changes led to changes in systems. For example, when a new law
made Social Security numbers protected information, reports and forms in payroll and

95

personnel systems were modiﬁed. The personnel database was also modiﬁed to include

the employee ID.

Future

A new project management system, Skire, is being implemented. It will be used to
digitize their business processes, both with their internal and external customers and
suppliers, such as contractors and architects. It will electronically process invoices,
change orders, construction submittals, and requests for information. It will be linked to
FAMIS, and through that, to the ERP’s systems. They use the online print room of a local
printing company to enable contractors to electronically order documents for projects out
for bid. Previously, all of these tasks were handled manually and were paper-based or
recorded on various Excel worksheets.

There was nothing consistent that kind of crossed the whole department.

The move to Skire will improve task and document tracking, enhance
accountability, and speed up document preparation. Also, Skire will help avoid instances
of the organization losing its knowledge of ﬁnancial accounting and individual projects
when their employees leave. However, this is not a major issue, because they work on a
project basis, which means that much of the knowledge is shared by employees. Despite
these advantages, users resisted Skire’s deployment:

People are kind of tied to their old ways, and it’s kind of tough bringing

them along. .. haven’t seen the beneﬁt of it yet

The process of selecting Skire was carried out jointly by two departments

(Engineering & Architectural Services and Campus Planning), as it would affect cross-

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unit business processes. They visited a number of similar organizations that were using it
and used that information to make their decision. In the longer term, Skire will become
available to any organization on campus that has to interact with construction services,
such as Housing and Food Services, Land Management, and other departments within
Facilities Management, like Maintenance and Telecormnunications. These different units
will be brought into the project for the processes that concern them. For example,
Facilities Planning and Space Management were involved in developing the construction
processes. It has not been decided yet whether the system will be managed by
Engineering and Architectural Services once it is launched, or whether it eventually be
managed as a central campus system.

Another system that is planned for the future is a web application for electronic
time-keeping: Although senior management has suggested this for a long time, it was
difficult to implement it because it meant that new electronic time-keeping units would
have to be installed in every building on campus. This is no longer an obstacle because
thin clients have been installed everywhere as part of another initiative. Finally, the
department hopes to put in place an electronic bidding system. Currently, contractors can

view documents online, but still have to physically drop off their bids.
IT Governance and Management

lntemal

The Facilities Management division has about 20 in-house IT staff, who support
the various departments in the division. The departments rely on them for support,

maintenance, and planning, as they do not have their own IT staff. The IT function was

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only created in the 19805 and 19905. The IT director is also responsible for the division’s
HR and ﬁnance functions. Two IT managers report to her: one handles the network,
support and security, while the other is responsible for application and database
development, administration and support. Facilities Management has just hired someone
to handle its communication with the rest of the campus, such as email updates on
construction and updating the department’s F acebook page.

No formal framework/methodology (e.g. ISO, COBIT, ITIL) is used for
organizing the IT management function. EduExcel’s lntemal Audit ofﬁce does not
mandate that any particular methodology be used; its requirement is that all units
establish policies for various IT ﬁmctions, such as versioning control and security. The
audits focus on aspects of IT security, e. g. ﬁrewalls, password policies, etc. IT audits are
not held regularly- the IT Director could only recall one in the past six years.

A Mobile Device Guidance Committee was set up to evaluate mobile devices and
inform users which devices will be supported by the IT department. They have
standardized on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as their browser:

It’s very similar to me to us making a decision to say we only specify a

certain pump, because we know that it’s a good pump, we have the parts

to ﬁx it, we know how to ﬁx it.

Although they have released standards for different aspects of IT, they still allow some
ﬂexibility. Users who want to run systems that are not on the “official list” are not told
that they cannot install those systems. Instead, they are informed that IT support will not

help them if they have any problems. However, they never actually do that:

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You always have to help. Can’t exactly close the door and say ‘tough

luck!’

Training is not formally organized- employees request it or attend it when they
feel a need. Facilities Management recently conducted a training exercise to provide the
custodial staff with basic Internet and e-mail skills, so that they could make greater use of
online applications. Before this, many custodians were not reading their email, which
made it difficult for management to communicate with their staff electronically. Instead
of buying full-scale PCs, they purchased thin clients for the custodial staff, as they were a
quarter of the cost of PCs. This also made managing these assets easier, since they were
distributed across campus. The presence of these thin clients will enable the department
to put in place an electronic time-keeping system and do away with the current manual/
mechanical system.

Because of the diversity of the businesses they are in, Facilities Management’s IT
staff encourages their users to ﬁnd applications that they would like to use for their jobs
and inform the IT department. Each sub-unit has “super-users”, who usually suggest
applications that their department needs. Users in the different departments get together
on a regular basis to share their knowledge and help each other out.

a lot of our staff are self-guided

We have this collection of businesses, and each one of them has very

unique needs when it comes to IT. Because there’s no way we can be all

things to all of those customers, each department tends to have people who

are, what you call super-users. .. Often, they’re the ones who come up with

different things that their department has alone and they manage it.

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Facilities Management’s IT department makes investment decisions by ﬁguring
out what’s the most economical way to meet their to users’ business needs. For example,
instead of buying 120 workstations to support the custodial staff, they purchased thin
clients for a quarter of the cost. In addition, this meant that the applications had to be
web-enabled, which allowed them to bypass the issue of having to access other units’

networks.

External

The ERP project began as a project to upgrade EduExcel’s ﬁnancial and human
resource systems. It later evolved to include a focus on improving collaboration across
campus, through initiatives such as Environmental Information Stewardship. Thus, the
ERP project marked the beginning of a formal structure of collaboration on IT across the
different units on campus.

It doesn’t mean that we’re any less decentralized than we were before but

at least there’s a connection.

The Information Technology Systems Coordinating Council (ITSCC) was created
as an expanded steering committee for the ERP project, and Facilities Management’s The
IT Director is part of it. However, after 1 to 1‘/2 years, the vice provost expanded its role
to drive these newer cross-campus initiatives. Facilities Management’s IT managers
participate in an external body of their peers, the Association of Physical Plant

Administrators (APPA), whom they meet periodically.

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Case Vignette 4: EduExceI - College of Agriculture

Within EduExcel, the colleges of Agriculture and Medicine are the most complex
units. The College of Agriculture has 13 departments and operates 15 experiment
facilities throughout the state. Unlike most other colleges, which have only one general
ﬁind, Agriculture has three sources of funding: the college’s general fund, the
Agricultural Experiment Station (ABS), and the University Extension (UEX). Each line
has its own budget director but they all work together. In budgetary terms, UEX is the
largest department, while the college is the smallest. UEX operates in 82 of the state’s 83
counties, and some of its employees are hired by the university, while others are not.

Those in the latter group are not in EduExcel’s HR system.

 
   
   
    
  

Governance
External:
CIOs meeting

 

  
       
   
 
 
     

Internal:
IT manager a direct report to unit head;
multiple disconnected lntemal IT units,
currently being centralized; users
search for and develop own systems

 

IT Portfolio
Central:
Data warehouse, HR systems

  
    
  

 

  
   
     
   

Local:
CAPS (budgeting), EIS (finance & HR),
CAR (budgeting), QuickBooks, Excel,
Access, 8419, federal funds tracking,
Digital Measures

 

 

Figure 8: Governance mechanisms, I T porq'olio and instances of drift for EduExcel 's
College of Agriculture

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IT Portfolio

Current

UEX uses its own EIS system for ﬁnance and HR, while most departments in the
college use QuickBooks for their ﬁnance needs. The college’s ﬁnance ofﬁce uses a
shadow system called CAPS to run its ﬁnancial transactions. CAPS is managed internally
off their own servers. Its administrator is a dual report to the budget ofﬁcer and the C10.
The ﬁnance office extracts data from the university’s system and then manipulates it in
CAPS to incorporate the needs of UEX and AES. The latter two organizations have
different ﬁscal year-ends and also report to the federal government; thus, many
components in CAPS are not part of the university’s requirements. From what the CIO
can deduce from her meetings, CAPS will still exist after the ERP but might change its
form or function. The costs of managing CAPS are shared among the three lines.

One reason why the main university systems cannot be used by the Agriculture
budget ofﬁce is that the different systems store data differently. For example, one stores
historical data, while the other computes a year-to-date ﬁgure weekly. There are also
differences in how academic appointments are stored. This makes it difficult to create
reports and link them to payroll information.

CAPS is a budgeting tool. Over the past 20 years, it has evolved from being a
DOS-based stand-alone system running on a single workstation, to a Windows-based
system, and ﬁnally to a web-based application. Today, anyone in the department with a

relevant business need can access CAPS, if they have been cleared to do so. Before the

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spread of ofﬁce networks, the data could not be easily accessed by everyone. One way
they overcame that was

to print these books and that would get handed out a little bit, maybe to

the Dean or the Director’s ofﬁce.

CAPS was developed to track the different funding lines, which are allocated in a
very complicated manner- e. g. up to 22 other colleges are involved. In addition,
Agriculture’s ﬁnance office has to prepare a variety of federal and state reports because
of the high level of grants activity in the college. However, some of the human resources
(HR) information they require for these reports was not available to them, as it was
located in systems that could only be accessed by university-level human resource staff.
Since Agriculture staff had no access to this information, they had to build a shadow
system to collect and manage this information that was scattered about:

a lot of bits of ﬁles and information

A third reason for developing CAPS was that ABS and UEX had no mechanism
for projecting activity through the end of the year. That was useful for ﬁnding out which
areas would be in trouble by the end of the year. The university used “money-books” to
do this for its General Fund, but they were unavailable to UEX and AES.

DepACT is a sub-accounting system developed by the university’s Central IT
department for handling ledger and personnel transactions. It was started by a ﬁnance
officer at an Agriculture research laboratory who could not obtain the information she
required from the central ﬁnance systems. She begun developing her own system and
managed to convince Central IT to take it over and make it a system that every
department could use. The College of Engineering broke off from this project and has

103

created CepACT. This is a budgeting and ledger system (without any personnel data)
which other units can use for their own needs.

DepACT and CepACT are used for book-keeping and reconciling transactions
with the university’s ledger at the end of each month. Compared to CepACT, DepACT
can create a wider variety of reports, and goes deeper into the sub-accounts. DepACT is
newer than CAPS, but is not as ﬂexible or useful as CAPS for Agriculture’s needs. Also,
DepACT is a stand-alone system, while CAPS is a networked system that automatically
pulls data from the university’s system. However, CAPS does not carry out
reconciliation.

The success of CAPS has interested other colleges in it. However, smaller
colleges, such as Business, do not need systems as complex as it because their funding
does not come from multiple sources (since their faculty does not receive many grants.)
The few large grants that were received were handled independently. Engineering has a
complex system too but it is used more for sub-accounting. In addition, Agriculture is
also unique in that it has individuals who are on more than one account; that it, their
salaries are drawn from multiple accounts, both within and without the college. Some
individuals are funded by up to ﬁve different colleges.

Agriculture’s budget ofﬁce has also developed the CAR budget system so that it
can examine the budgets of the different departments and funding sources. Since other
colleges do not have such complex ﬁrnding structures, the university has not developed
anything that Agriculture can use.

Other systems used by Agriculture’s budget ofﬁce are: a ledger system for
handling transactions and payroll, an accounts receivable system, a cost-sharing system, a

104

system for handling the transition from annual salary to academic year salary, and an
Access-based system for handling ‘carry-over’, when entries are sent to Central Finance.
Instead of manually keying 1,200 individual entries, this last system generates one large
entry that is sent by FTP to Central Finance. These multiple systems share data among
themselves.

Agriculture’s budget ofﬁce has also developed a system to keep track of how the
federal funds they receive are used. Since costs are shared among the various
departments, they need to know how much effort individuals are contributing to each
department. This web-based system creates a database based on how people are
appointed, and the departments are allowed to modify the percentage of effort that each
individual contributes to each program. This list is then sent electronically to the Central
Contracts and Grants Office. This system saves them the trouble of keying in information
for 300 to 400 people every year.

The budget office hopes to use the research administration component of the ERP
new system to handle some of these tasks, rather than having to adapt the shadow system.
If the (ERP system) could handle that, that will be good, because to adapt
shadow systems to the new system takes a lot of time and effort- ﬁgure out
all the elements of your current state, and map it to a ﬁiture state which is

currently unknown.

A similar system that creates reports for the US Department of Agriculture is
called “the 8419”. It gathers expenditure on any project related to the ABS from the
campus and beyond. To maintain this level of comprehensiveness, the system tracks all
new accounts that are established by the university, so that the staff can decide whether

105

they are relevant for the 8419 report. If they are relevant, the system includes them in the
annual report it generates. This system is also web-based and uses Access on the back
end. They believe this requirement is unique and will not be available in the new ERP
system.

It’s become very popular... a lot of other colleges and universities...are

interested.

The development of the 8419 system helped to arrest a signiﬁcant HR issue.
Before the automated system, collecting the data and keeping track of the new accounts
throughout the year was a massive task, leading to high turnover.

gathering data and somebody spending a lot of time organizing and

crunching numbers and putting stuff together. Because of the complexity

and largeness of the project, people were coming and the turnover was

huge... (it) became a joke. You do the 8419 one year and then you leave.

You never do it again

They are not sure whether other schools generate this report automatically like
them, or manually. Cornell is one exception. It has a mainframe-based system to generate
this report. It is also moving to the same ERP system, but it has a lot more staff and
funding for the transition. Thus, Agriculture’s budget ofﬁce expects Cornell to be able to
move the 8419 to its ERP system, unlike Agriculture.

(we are) skeletally staffed... we don’t have excess capacity in order to

meet the needs of this transition and that’s really what we’re up against.

Most departments are also using databases built in Excel or Access. The CIO has
brought together ﬁscal ofﬁcers from each unit to create an inventory of these databases.

106

(we) just don’t know what’s out there.

One problem with these databases is that when the individuals who manage them
leave the organization, there is often little organizational knowledge on how they should
be used. Agriculture’s budget ofﬁce has discussed the danger of losing important
knowledge if anyone of them leaves, since there is little cross-training. However, they
have not been able to do much about it because they lack any spare capacity. For
example, they have data dictionaries for the 8419 and CAPS, and a user’s manual for the
8419 but no technical manual. The IT department is working on reducing this problem
through documentation and cross-training. Although there have not been any major
problems because of this issue, the CIO considers the controls to be weak.

We’ve tried to document, we’ve tried very hard... It’s just very, very time-

consuming.

An example of a recent project was to web-enable the budget creation process.
They built a budget for the different units using the data from the ledger system. The
units were then allowed to change these ﬁgures and submit their ﬁnal budgets via the
web. This process was previously done on paper. This enhancement helped them to
standardize the way it was done. This project was an internal development

It seemed nright be a good idea for these guys to give it a whirl.

They planned to extend it to the General Fund, but should be shelving that idea
because of the ERP, especially given the shortage of resources.

We would do it if we had the personnel and time.

The College uses a third party system called ‘Digital Measures’ to assess and
report the output of its faculty. This system tracks faculty scholarship, faculty outreach,

107

other activities, publications, and grants received. Since it is a third-party hosted solution,
Agriculture’s IT department is not actively involved with managing it. The IT department
only provides functional administrative oversight.

Digital Measures was purchased almost two years ago, and a pilot implementation
was run at the Food and Research Economics group for a year. It was rolled out to the
rest of the .college in October-November 2008, and the faculty members are currently
entering their data for the ﬁrst time into the system. The College carried out the Digital
Measures project in the midst of the ERP, as the forrner’s functions will not be ﬁilly
available in the latter. The different groups are now meeting to ﬁnd out if they can link
both projects together so that users will not have to enter the same information twice, or
postpone Digital Measures’ roll-out so that they do not duplicate any work.

The last major IT standardization exercise they were involved in was in 1989 (20
years ago) when the Student Information System was set up. About six years after that,
an electronic journal vouchers system was set up for purchasing. However, this is not
used by Agriculture because, even though they were told that the system would
accommodate the requirements of ABS and UEX, it does not. Thus, Agriculture still
prints out paper vouchers which are recorded in an Access database, and emails copies of
these vouchers to those who require them.

It wasn’t standardization. It didn’t work for us. It worked for everyone

else, but not us.

They believe that the system was not modiﬁed to meet their needs because of an

impending deadline. It would have taken too long and too many resources to carry out the

108

necessary changes. That experience has made them afraid that the same thing will happen
with the ERP.

This is a window for us, with this new system, that we fear the same thing will
happen, that they will say, “ok this is the best we can do, and I’m sorry it doesn’t

accommodate you, but we have to move ahead, we have a deadline.”

Future

While there had been plans to incorporate the needs of UEX and AES in the ERP,
these seem to have been abandoned now. The ERP package being implemented was not
developed for a land-grant university, so customizing it to ﬁt the needs of UEX and AES
is difﬁcult. EduExcel would be the ﬁrst campus to attempt it. Even though this is not in
the ﬁrst phase, it may be part of future phases.

As far as they know, the new ERP system cannot handle multiple sources of funds
in a single budget reallocation entry. This has not been resolved yet and has led them to
wonder whether they will have to maintain a shadow system. Also, while Central Finance
automatically allocates funds to each college’s General Fund, the funds for the ABS and
UEX budgets are manually recorded through budget reallocations. Thus, Agriculture
receives its ftmds from both a central and a “local” source. The budget ofﬁcers are also

unsure how this would be handled by the new system.

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IT Governance and Management

Internal

Agriculture hired a Chief Information Ofﬁcer (C10) in October 2007 to oversee
its three lines of business: the College, UEX, and ABS. Historically, the three lines had
very decentralized IT operations. Some groups had one IT employee, some had none, and
others had ﬁve. The CIO, an experienced IT manager from the industry, was asked to
combine these groups and implement an enterprise system. Her hiring was prompted by
the realization that even though three lines were spending a lot of money on IT, they were
not getting much value from it.

there’s got to be a better way of doing this, where some groups have really

great IT and some groups have no IT at all... how can we spread this out

and make it value-add for everybody and actually use technology to meet

our mission?

The CIO’s staff includes:

- a team in Agriculture Hall handling the planning and funding of the enterprise
system;

- IT desktop support teams in other buildings where Agriculture sub-units are located;

- an IT desktop support team in Agriculture Hall; and

— a large web team that develops applications and works with other enterprise
applications, like the Extension Information System (EIS).

The C10 is currently working on revamping the IT service provision model.

110

(most IT employees now are) jack-of-all-trades...(in one day, they could)

ﬁx his printer... work on the website for a little while, then ﬁll the

database in, after that, go and build 3 computers.

Her plan is to build teams of people to handle different services- network services,
web services, Unix services- so that they can attain economies of scale. However, she
does not plan to move to a central helpdesk model. There will still be IT staff in the units.
But, because they would be part of the same organization, they could communicate and
help back each other up in case one of them goes on vacation or is sick. That would
reduce users’ waiting time. She has begun reorganizing her current team in this way by
starting with the formation of communities of practice. Currently, her team supports the
Extension, the Experimental Station, the administrative units, and two or three academic
departments. The other units rely on their own IT staff or have outsourced IT support.
The college has not used external vendors to develop applications or used off-the-shelf
software because they see their requirements as being unique. This is mainly due to users
becoming more demanding. Outsourcing IT services has not been considered- the budget
ofﬁce was not sure why.

One of the new CIO’s ﬁrst projects was to compile an inventory, since it did not
exist, of all the systems within all three lines of business. A tool called ‘Track It’ was
used to record Agriculture’s hardware and software inventory in an SQL database. The
Excel and Access databases were not recorded in this inventory. Another project she
began was to implement ﬁrewalls around each unit, and to put in place best practices for

security. Her team is also creating policies for other issues, such as data security (e. g.

111

using thumb drives). However, since her ofﬁce does not have the authority yet, they can
only make recommendations and educate users, not mandate or sanction any behavior.

Another new initiative she has planned is to offer a “pre-grant” IT service.
Currently, faculty members do not plan their IT requirements when they apply for grants.
This leads to last-minute urgent requests to handle their IT needs when they receive their
awards. The CIO wants her staff to meet faculty applying for grants and discuss what
their IT needs would be if they received their grant: e. g. websites, databases, an
application server, server space, or help with setting up new computers.

The CIO does not use ITIL or anything similar to guide the department’s work.
She carried out an evaluation on this topic when she arrived but decided against it. This is
partly because of the limited success she has had with it before, and partly because of the
small size of the department. Currently, she is using parts of ITIL, instead of the whole
platform.

it seems a little to broad for what we’re doing.

She believes that other frameworks may make more sense; for example, she has
sent staff for project management training and she’s considering a change management
platform. She plans to re-evaluate her decision 5 to 10 years down the road.

The main developer’s position in the budget office did not exist till about seven
years ago. He is the IT support person for all three lines, from writing formulas to
developing applications, and is very important for their operations. Another employee

began as a ﬁnancial analyst but has also expanded his technical IT skills.

112

he’s got the strong IT background, but yet he’s got the ability to

understand the accounting and business components... (he’s a) ﬁnancial

technologist.

Sometimes, users suggest improvements to the budget ofﬁce’s applications. If the
changes can be done quickly and are relatively minor in scope, then they are put in place
without any formal process. A recent example was a request to add a ﬁeld that would be
calculated from existing data, so that users would not have to calculate it every time. This
was a quick job with limited scope, so it was carried out.

Well, that was about a ﬁve minute thing to throw in, so it was just done.

For some systems, the developers meet the users periodically to gauge their level
of satisfaction. When there are major projects, e. g. developing the report for measuring
employee effort, focus groups would be conducted with representatives from different
departments.

We knew what we needed but we tried to get feedback from them to

make it as easy as possible.

There is a process for managing users’ requests for new features and applications,
especially web-based applications. Users have to sit down with either a programmer or an
analyst and ﬁgure out how the information they want would ﬁt into the workﬂow. CAPS’
users have to approach its administrator, who is a single point of contact, if they have any
requests.

(while this is) probably not an ideal process, compared to what I’ve

worked with in other places... it’s functional and it gets things done.

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There are some power users among the researchers, while UEX users mainly use
Microsoft Office applications. The CIO feels that there is a dearth of technology use in
teaching, and would like to see more in the future to meet students’ expectations. Since
Agriculture faculty teach and conduct research globally (e. g. India, China, Aﬁica), many
of them use Skype and similar collaborative/communication tools. There are no policies
as yet to govern intellectual property rights when such tools are used. However, since the

faculty members using these tools are usually not the ones engaged in heavy-duty data
I gathering or analysis, there is less urgency.

There has been demand to install a Blackberry enterprise server, and while it is
functionally possible, the CIO feels that she does not have the manpower to do so yet.
She intends to complete the planning for the enterprise system, and then begin
implementing a Blackberry server, a SharePoint server, and an object server.

The continuous increase in user expectations means that overall IT costs will
continue to rise. Today, the number of projects being planned is greater than their
capacity to complete them.

It seems the more technology is out there, the more complex everybody

wants everything to be.

The CIO would like to implement the ERP’s research administration module to
keep track of each unit’s IT spending. Funding for college-wide systems is handled by
the budget office, not her office. Although she has a fairly clear idea of what technology
is being used in Agriculture, she cannot clearly say why each imit needs, for example,

QuickBooks, or what beneﬁts these systems provide that the current university systems

‘ 114

do not. Removing the shadow systems will not reduce the number of IT staff
signiﬁcantly; instead, the potential savings will be in terms of time spent on data entry.

Right now, I have no idea what people are spending we don’t know,

nobody knows what they’re doing.

The shadow systems were developed as and when the need arose. Based on the
CIO’s experience, she thinks that shadow systems are much more prevalent at EduExcel
than elsewhere. One reason for this has been the inability to obtain the information users
need from the central systems.

there’s no connection there for us to get directly, so we had to have a

system built. I think all the pieces that we use, the reason you guys

developed them, was we couldn’t get them centrally... a lot of operational
expertise (is needed) to get this developed. It took a lot of time to develop

that and all the other systems.

Second, technology decisions have been decentralized across the entire university.
Starting with a centralized system which some departments contributed to, the
development of the PC meant that departments that could afford to purchased them and
hired IT staff to manage them. While some units, e. g. Health, had already gone through
the process of integrating their IT systems, others (e.g. Agriculture) were still doing so,
others may never get around to doing 50. Finally, there is a natural tendency for a high
number of shadow systems since so many decisions are made by individual faculty

members because of their grants, or by departments or units.

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External

EduExcel has chosen a decentralized model of IT governance. There was some
level of central IT governance previously, but it had recently been disbanded. The central
IT component wants to provide very basic services, and allow units to manage their
operations themselves.

That’s the model that has been chosen here. It works, it’s just a different

model than others, doesn’t make it bad or good.

This is probably similar to other land-grant schools, although some, like Indiana
University, have centralized their IT so that there are fewer shadow systems. Although
Indiana’s CIO took a long time to get everyone on board, the community there is very
pleased now. She attributes this to users’ needs being heard. They have a governance
committee which takes input from users, and opens up their strategic plans for comments.

(Other organizations) don’t listen to their user community, (leading to)

very unhappy groups.

The CIO meets regularly with other CIOs from Health IT and Housing and Food
Services. The three of them are similar in that they used to work in environments outside
of EduExcel. They have started to invite other CIOs to their meeting, so that everyone
can be involved. However, not all units on campus have a C10- some have IT managers
or directors, while others have CTOs. Some of the C105 are, like her, new, while others
have been around longer and know the culture better.

Those of us who aren’t so familiar with the culture are more apt to just

charge ahead, (while the others) won’t, they know how to work through

the system.

116

In EduExcel’s decentralized environment, some of the C105 use funding from
grants to implement new systems.

(She would like the units to) move to an enterprise model... what we’re

trying to do is to tell people, if you just wait a little bit and we’ll do it the

right way, we’ll set it up correctly, will be good for everybody.

The CIO has encountered much skepticism with regards to the ERP launch date,
which is smnmer 2010, and she is not sure why people are so pessimistic.

the general consensus is there’s no way it’s going to really happen...

I’m pretty new, so I don’t know a lot of the history... (people have told

her that) things like this always get pushed back, pushed back. people

hear July 1 2010, they just go “oh well, we’ll see what happens in June

2010”

The CIO believes that Agriculture’s users do not have a good idea of the changes
that the ERP system will lead to. For example, she understands that users are not aware
that they will have to give up their Excel and Access databases. Users may have to enter
data twice, and will continue to assume that they have the right to extract the data for
their own purposes.

(they) don’t really grasp what’s going to change in their lives with the

new systems... most people are just ignoring them... until there are

ﬁrm cut-offs, the user will mostly continue ignoring it.

The budget office has been involved with the ERP for more than two years,
although activities picked up only in the last year. Previously, there were more

unstructured meetings.

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playing in the sand . .. to generate some ideas... we don’t want this new

system to simply replicate what we do now

They are uncertain about the ERP’s impact on their work. For example, they do
not know what they should do in Phase 1 when the ﬁnancial transactions module is
operational but the budget module is not. They are worried their current systems will not
work, and believe they might have to retain some of their current shadow systems, such
as the 8419 system. Failure to produce that report will jeopardize their federal funding,
and consequently the jobs of many individuals.

It won’t talk to the new system and vice versa, and what do we do then?

We’re concerned about our current systems breaking during an interim.

We rely on those for our day-to-day (work.)

Another worry is the requirement for them to be become more involved with the
ERP implementation right when they are preparing their budgets. The difference with the
rest of the university is that they have two separate ﬁnancial years; July to June (like the
rest of the university) and October to September (for ABS and UEX). Since the transition
will be time-consuming, their IT staff are not planning to work on any changes to their
current systems. Even if the ERP team sends its staff to help with the transition, the
budget ofﬁcers are not sure how helpful they would be, since they would lack the
contextual knowledge.

...our main responsibility is not that implementation, we have a whole

another set of things to do. And yet, we have to be involved in that

implementation.

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There’s been a verbal pledge of support from the ERP to help us through these
busy times and yet, there’s a learning curve involved... There’s kind of a lot of
underlying knowledge that we’ve received on building blocks that doesn’t just get
transferred to someone at the snap of a ﬁnger... If you just look at the people in this
room, the least amount of time anybody’s been here is about 10 years, and the rest of us
have been here much longer.

Besides the student information system and the electronic journal vouchers
system, there have been no attempts to integrate or standardize systems across the
university, since the central accounting system was set up in 19605.

That again shows why this is such a monumental. We’ve done piecemeal,

we’ve done band-aid ﬁxes, and not really looked at the big thing, and this

one, they’re saying they want to look at the big thing. They didn’t really

know what that meant.

The ERP is not a major item of discussion in the CIO meetings. Since none of the
C105 are on the project, their focus is on ensuring that the needs of their users and
businesses are met, while the functional heads (e. g. ﬁnance, HR) work with the ERP team
to develop their requirements.

(The ERP) will have an impact on our users and our community (and) it’s

a big technological change in the eyes of the users... (However,) the

success or failure of the project doesn’t affect my life.

The ERP system would have been more important for the local unit CIOs if the
ERP project team had stayed with its original plan to forbid the use of all shadow
systems. This is because it would have meant that they would have to understand all of

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the changes that would have to be carried out to ensure that their users’ needs were met.
However, in the last few months, the users were informed that their needs would not be
met when the ﬁrst phase of the ERP is rolled out in July 2010. They would thus need to
retain their shadow systems. With shadow systems still being allowed, the C105 will ﬁnd
it easier to meet their users’ needs: users can work with their shadow systems and the
C105 do not need to understand their users’ needs so quickly.

The university carried out a simple IT audit in 1999 and a more comprehensive
one in 2007. They examined her plans to build an enterprise model, and signed their
approval. They did not do an inventory of the systems being used in the college.

It is difﬁcult for the budget office to share ideas with other universities on
managing their IT systems since they are all structured differently. For example, in some
schools, the Extension service and Experimental Station are part of the College of
Agriculture, unlike EduExcel, where they are part of the central administration. Since
they are also different from other colleges on campus, they have to come up with their
own practices. There are some annual meetings and regional meetings organized by the
USDA where they exchange ideas. For example, this was where the budget ofﬁce’s IT
staff showed off its cost-sharing system. Before building this system, the IT personnel

also called up other universities to ﬁnd out how they were handling this issue.

Case Vignette 5: EduExcel — College of Business

The College of Business consists of ﬁve academic departments, and has more
than 120 faculty and nearly 6,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Unlike the

College of Agriculture, it does not rely heavily on external grants and neither does it have

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extensive facilities outside the main campus. Undergraduate advising is carried out by a

team of 15 advisers, led by the assistant dean of undergraduate admissions.

 
 

Governance
3%
IT Managers meeting

    
    
     
 

Internal:
IT manager not a direct report to unit head;
users search for and develop own systems,
being asked to centralize spending;
Medium-sized IT team

 

 
   
    

Drlf‘l

  
 
     

IT Portfolio
Central:
Data warehouse, HR systems, Degree Navigator,
student information database, A17 (financrel),

  
 

 

 
   
     
 

Local:
Excel, Access, QuickBooks,

 

 

 
 

Figure 9: Governance mechanisms, IT pory'olio and instances of drift for EduExcel 's

College of Business

IT Portfolio

Meat

The budget ofﬁcer at the Business College was hired one year ago. Previously,
she worked in Central Finance, and also spent two years on the ERP project’s ﬁnance
team. The previous person in her position was there for eight years and moved to another

of EduExcel’s colleges. She ﬁnds it advantageous to have him located nearby:

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having that mentor is really very important to me right now, trying to learn

all the iris and outs of this budgeting situation

Her major tasks are reconciling the ledgers for the Dean’s unit every month, re-
setting the General Fund budget every year, managing the faculty raise process, and
informing the Provost whether there are any special needs that they need funding for.
When she is carrying out reconciliation, she uses a database called the Financial Data
Warehouse, which is managed by Central IT. The database was actually developed by
Central Finance. Before the database, obtaining the data was difficult because it was
located on a mainframe. Accessing data thus required programming in 2AD, a mainframe
language. After running the program, the results would be printed out on paper, which the
staff would then enter into Excel.

Someone came up with the idea of writing a program in 2AD that would extract
all the transactions. Later on, when that ofﬁce began working with Microsoft Access,
someone else wrote a 2AD program that extracted all the transactions and imported them
into tables in a database. Working in Access was much easier than working with the
mainframe.

For many years, this Access database was maintained by Central Finance,
separately ﬁom Central IT. Central IT wanted to maintain it themselves, so that the data
would be located in a more secure location, and its programmers could improve the
design of the database, which would make it more useful for the Finance ofﬁce. This
database later became the Financial Data Warehouse.

The programmers there can set the tables up to be more of the ﬁeld names,

things made more sense and we got more information

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She accesses this warehouse, extracts the information she needs, and imports it
into an Excel table where she sub-accounts using Pivot Tables. Her predecessor did not
use Excel. Instead, he imported the data into Access and did his sub-accounting there.
She hopes that the ERP system will encourage more of her colleagues who carry out
accounting operations to become more efficient.

He had a whole system set up where he could sub-account for forms and

processes, and macros and queries, and he would report off that. I do

similar, but I just kind of moved away from Access.

Access has been a savior, efﬁciency-wise, around campus. If units are not

using Access, and units do not have access to this ﬁnancial data

warehouse, they need to and they need to now.

I do have units here that do not have access to that (the data warehouse)...

I’m not real comfortable with that, because... But, the issue is security

with that- if I give them access to the ﬁnancial warehouse, it’s the entire

university’s accounts. Do I think I have professional people on staff who
would not abuse it? Yeah, but I don’t know... When I’ve got office
managers basically printing out their paper ledger and checking it off...
when really they could be getting their data automatically and sub-
accounting in Excel without re-keying in anything. The efficiency factor...

I view (myself) going off to the (ERP system) and having either a

canned report that I run or one that I develop myself. I also envision all my

ofﬁce managers being able to do that. That’s an issue with training I’m

going to have because they don’t do that now. They are at paper checking

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ledgers, and moving from there to here, where they’ll be in an electronic

environment they’ll need to understand how to write a simple query.

Central Finance has not mandated what software she should use. She is debating
over whether she should install QuickBooks, as a replacement for the current A17 ledger
system, which does not allow her to go to the level of detail that she wants. Her
subordinate has informed her that the previous budget ofﬁcer installed QuickBooks, but
never loaded any data into it. If she decides to install QuickBooks, she would have to do
the work after hours, as she will not have time during her regular workday. She would be
more likely to install it if the ERP system is delayed any longer. One beneﬁt of
QuickBooks is that having her data in QuickBooks would make it easier for her to import
it into the ERP system.

Since the A17 system does not have enough data ﬁelds for her to sub-account
appropriately, she has to tag on the additional data ﬁelds manually each month. She needs
these sub-accounts for her reporting. For example, different sums of money in the
General Fund are allocated for separate purposes, such as summer research grants and
faculty retention. She has to keep track of each faculty’s portion of these ﬁmds, but the
A17 system does not allow her to do so. The ERP system’s General Ledger has additional
ﬁelds, which she can use to sub-account on the central system and tag faculty names onto
individual transactions. That way, she could automatically run proﬁt and loss reports on
different units.

It’s going to be wonderful... the issue right now with shadow systems in

my opinion is we just do not get what we need. So that’s why we need

them. . .With the systems, we box ourselves in...

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One issue about having shadow systems is that the same piece of information
from the central system could be tagged differently by the different units when they store
it in their own systems.

There is no control over what he puts on. He does it for his purposes and

what I tag on for my purposes.

Our account numbers have all kinds of intelligence in them, 61-... means

something. So, that range means something, what do you do when you’re

out of numbers? So then you start picking around, what does that do for a

database? You’re just like “ok, how do I know which account number is

for NSF?” So, it doesn’t work very well.”

You have to use and manage a shadow system right now but you have to

start with what the central system gives you, that’s your starting point, if

not, your ending point. What we’d want to do is put a system in that’s
your starting point and your ending point.

I would hope that the majority of data would just come out of the ﬁnancial

system, and the ﬁnancial system would marry up nicely with the Payroll

HR system, because I ﬁnd that that’s right now, even though we have

databases, there are almost starkly different from each other that you have

to do a lot of mashing together... Hopefully... there’ll be a nice key

number that you can constantly link together the data sources.

The Business College’s HR manager uses a range of applications from different
areas: HR, payroll, ﬁnance. Her predecessor used different spreadsheets to manage her

work, but the current manager would like to develop her own, based on her prior

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experience. She uses ODBC to link to databases managed by Central IT. She did not have
access to the ODBC link in her previous role.

Coming from my old department, I had a lot of systems in place that I felt

were effective and efﬁcient had I been able to use (this) before, I

wouldn’t have had to recreate so much of it.

She developed her spreadsheets by herself. She has not asked Central HR for
help.

I don’t think they understand the need for that kind of information as

much as they do the bigger picture.

In her previous role as an ofﬁce manager in one of the departments in the college,
she developed extensive spreadsheets to handle staff expense reports, track scholarships,
and manage the endowment account. Some of her tasks are very manual, in that she has
to extract the data from the university ledgers, as opposed to writing a query to obtain
them from the databases.

all of that was manual, it was a manual process.

The HR Manager also manages the grant application process in the college.
Currently, it is paper-based and manual. The Central Grants ofﬁce has an online system
for submitting grants, but it is not used by the Business College. This is because the
Business College’s faculty do not apply for many grants, unlike faculty from the
Engineering or Natural Sciences colleges. She understands that in the new ERP system,
principal investigators will be responsible for creating the entire application themselves.
This worries her, as it would mean fewer chances to review the material before it goes

out to the Central Grants office. The colleges for whom grants are more important for

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their funding have ﬁrll-time staff handling the grants, and they are not sure whether the
new process will work for them.

The assistant dean of undergraduate admissions uses Excel and the university
systems for her budgeting and HR tasks. They create workarounds using Excel and
Access when they are not able to perform their tasks. However, these databases are not
integrated and there are no standard templates for their designs.

I think all of us are very excited about (the ERP system), because the

accounting system, it’s pretty archaic, and of course, all the systems don’t

talk to each other... often I’ll have different windows pulled up... but it’s
not like that can talk to another Excel spreadsheet. That’s what we’re
dreaming about from the business enterprise system.

I’m trying to think of almost like creating a utility for us or a conduit to

help us... to be able to get from Point A to Point B. . . But then it’s almost

like is the gap wider or more permanent when you do that, right?

they’re not integrated. That’s a really big problem... because there’s

no template, I don’t know if I’m using the right language... People can get

to the same place through different paths... someone may be leaving, a

new person coming, and then a new person says “this design eliminates

potential”, or “we totally missed an opportunity by the design of it.”

Earlier, there were opportunities to suggest improvements to EduExcel’s IT
systems. However, when nothing changed, people started developing their own

workarounds.

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way back, information or opinions about the (EduExcel) systems were

shared, but probably what you’ve heard is that it’s been years... initially,

and along the way, people gave input, and ..., after 20 years, I think

people say “this is what I have to work with”,...we’re going to create our

own workarounds to be able to do the job and deliver within our positions.

This was not true for all units. For example, unlike Central Finance, Central HR
has been much more pro-active.

it’s almost as if HR is anticipating or they hear it right away and act on

it. . .With HR, maybe I create a temporary workaround, and then within a

year, (it’s in their systems). So, there isn’t the frustration and the creation

of (separate islands).

Degree Navigator is an application used to help students ﬁnd out the courses they
need to graduate. However, it is inaccurate, so academic advisors cannot use it for degree
certiﬁcation. Colleges became frustrated and developed their own applications, but this
was resisted by the university.

This is a great example where colleges got so fed up with its

inconsistencies and inaccuracies, College of Engineering actually created

their own... The university was not happy about that and they really tried

to put the brakes on other colleges creating something like what the

College of Engineering did...

The problems with Degree Navigator are related to the fact that it is developed by

a Canadian software ﬁrm, and so is set in their educational system which is very different

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from the US system. The feedback from the users has led the university to develop its
own replacement.

you know they have a 13th year of high school, their whole system is

different, it’s like starting from Apple... It’s like every step of the way,

there was this, it’s like a translation!

They have gotten enough feedback, or maybe too much feedback, from

the academic community that they (the university) actually wrote and

designed their own degree audit And it talks to Degree Navigator and

all this electronic student information system... (the university) can do

incredible things with IT, they should just ignore the software company

and I think that’s interesting how they were successful in... I want a

diplomatic term... kind of damming off, I was picturing a darn, kind of

holding back this momentum by colleges to develop their own, they got
the message and they created a new IT system to basically meet our needs,
and it is incredible.

This new system was “soft-trialed” by the Business College a year ago (i.e. the
paper processes were carried out in parallel with the new software). Last semester, the
Business College did it completely electronically, and now, three colleges have gone in
that direction. However, Degree Navigator has not been left aside. It is still being used
but as an additional check.

Now they understand at least at the state it’s at, it can’t be used for degree

audit. They still want students and advisors to use it, it’s like an informal

check. And they want us to help clean up the curriculum problem. But

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they ﬁnally understand that the activity of certifying a student for
graduation, doctoral or undergraduate, is a very systematic, careful

pI'OCCSS.

Future

The new ERP system should have some ﬂexibility to take into account the
university’s complexity.

It would be nice to have Central (say)... this ﬁeld is this ﬁeld, to maintain

the key ﬁelds... These other ﬁelds... let them be ﬂexible, that’s where we

won’t back ourselves to a corner again, because then we’ll allow each

department sort of be their own culture, which we are. This university is -

we sell ice cream, we have cows, and we have a cyclotron- I mean,

imagine it’s hard to keep everyone in the same culture...

Besides the launch date of the new ERP system, another aspect of the uncertainty
is over what exactly will be available on the launch date. She thinks it may be only the
central accounting system, which may or may not affect her work. If users are not
allowed to use sub-accounts, she would still have to do her sub-accounting on a shadow
system.

you say you’re going to roll the (ERP) system out, so what does that

mean? The entire system, or half of the system? What is it that we’re

going to do? It’s something that I just don’t know yet and will impact me

quite a bit. So, I’m hoping to hear more.

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The HR manager and the budget manager will meet the ofﬁce managers and the
department chairs to ﬁnd out what would like to obtain from the new systems. That way,
they will be able to identify the gap between what they have now and what they would
actually like to have.

there is a lot of information that they currently can’t have access to

because of university security limitations, but with the new system, that

will be gone. So, we’re hoping that as this transitions end they’ll have

an opportunity to have much more information at their ﬁnger-tips.

is it going to be overwhelming?....When you’ve got someone who’s never

worked with general ledger information, to now have (the) full general

ledger data dump, it’s going to be a huge learning curve... there has to be

a desire on the part of the office manager to use the information and on the

chair to want the information.

There is uncertainty about how much the ERP system will change the systems
they use for their work. The budget manager believes that the shadow systems will
disappear because the number of ﬁelds in the ERP system will be enough for their needs.
She expects to be able to use the business intelligence (BI) reporting module and extract
the reports she needs. This is especially so because the Business College is not very
complex. She believes that, over time, supervisors will start asking for more reports as
they ﬁnd out what the BI system can do. However, the new system should still enable her
to ﬁnd what she uses now. However, the IT manager and HR manager do not expect the
introduction of the ERP system to completely stop users from using their Excel or Access

databases. This is partly because they are not sure what the system will offer, and partly

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because the system may not be as customizable as they want it to be. Also, he is not sure
how to identify the users who are currently using the Excel or Access databases, and who
will be in charge of getting the users to drop their older databases.
Everything we’ve seen in demonstrations has been in such a rough format
yet that we haven’t been able to even see what we’re going to be
downloading in. How are we going to be able to download and manipulate
this data? we don’t know what kind of manipulations we’ll be able to
do yet. They couldn’t provide us with a demonstration... No sandbox of it.
(the new system) should be able to give me exactly what I have now in
my database. If I have to lose any of that ability, I will not be happy
because I need to go out and I need to pull (data)...
...it’s about that comfort, and is it generational, or about experience, or
educational... some of us respond more quickly and some of us don’t, and
sometimes we do both systems in tandem for a while . .. to reassure
ourselves. We’ll have to see how dynamic the business enterprise system
is before we let go of our old way, our workarounds.

The budget manager thinks that it took so long for the university to move to a new
system because a), for a long time, Central Finance had no problem getting the ﬁnancial
statements it needed from the current system, and b) IT costs have fallen substantially

at a high, high level, it works very well... much better than at the units... I

worked over there so I would always say, “I get what I’m needing.” When

Access came along, it’s like “this is better, why is everyone complaining?”

I’m now here at the units, I deﬁnitely understand. It’s just not giving me the

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data I need to have.” “...they went “well, it’s working” and everybody seems
to be getting by with it. They’re getting by because they’re hiring IT
people... if I was sitting up, it’s not my problem, they’re having to hire the
people, they’re having to train the people, they’re having to buy QuickBooks
or whatever, great, I don’t see a problem with that. It’s just gotten to a level
where it’s affecting Central I think.

Databases and database systems don’t use as much RAMs or ROMS or
whatever it was. It used to be that was a huge thing... Now that’s not a

problem, we should have all this information.

IT Governance and Management

lntemal

The IT department of the Business College consists of ﬁve full-time staff and nine
student employees (5 undergraduates and 4 graduate students). Most of them are in their
late 205 to late 305. They are in charge of PC support, networks, and the computer
laboratories. The website is run by a separate team (i.e. not part of the IT department).
The IT manager has been in the college for 15 years. In that time, the college has moved
from 100 computers to 800 and 3 servers to 40. He was hired as the second ﬁrll-time IT
employee in the college. A few months after he began, his supervisor left for a better-
paying job. After some training, he took over that position and hired one other person. He
recently hired a new employee to manage the systems administration, so that he can free

up his time for other tasks. He plans to hire more employees in the future.

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We’ve been in maintenance mode for about 3 years, just ﬁx it, ﬁx it, ﬁx

it... there’s no time to go out and be pro-active.

When he began, Central IT controlled and supported most of the university,
unlike today. Now, Central IT offers an outsourcing service

when you have 10 users there or 20 people, it makes no sense to hire full-

time people so they'll contract to them

A large portion of his time is spent on managing projects, such as installing
plasma screens in hallways. One of his current employees is starting to take over some of
the more routine tasks, such as managing the network, the servers, and the labs. However,
the IT manager still takes care of advanced administration tasks concerning the mail
server, and the ﬁrewall and other security equipment.

Some of the major applications his team has created in the past include
applications for tracking the progress of doctoral students, alumni, and IT support
requests. The alumni database is synchronized with the data held by Central IT. The IT
support requests system was ﬁrst developed about 15 years ago and has grown since then.
His team does not develop any databases or applications based on Excel or Access for the
departments. They are usually created by the users themselves or the budget manager. He
believes that the departments would develop more applications if they had more
resources. He does not think there are employees in the college outside his team who
would develop any applications by themselves.

He advises faculty not to ask their students to write any applications, because his

team ﬁnd it difficult to support them when the students leave.

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no-one knows how to support it. Then they call us and we’re “what do you

want us to do about it? We told you to buy this or you should have this

person from us do it”... it’s tough... we try and steer them towards in-

house or canned packages, which would get rid of all those, because you

can just call for support... we tell them, “look you’re wasting your GA or

RA on writing this app. We have one available, or you could buy one for

$500... 95% of the time the light bulb pops on and they go, “Oh yeah!”

This is especially difﬁcult to do with the smaller departments that want to control
their own resources. For example, there used to be a full-time programmer in the MBA
program and a half-time contract person from Central IT in the Accounting department.
Both positions have now been folded into the main IT team. This is also ﬁnancially
efﬁcient as it improves the scalability of the services provided by the IT department. The
IT department receives money from the different departments that need IT-related
services and is able to grow more efﬁciently.

It’s not efficient to have these little people... We’ve actually done well, our

staff size hasn’t really grown, the systems and the people we support has

probably doubled.

He is responsible for all software purchases in the College. These are typically
done on an as-needed basis. His ofﬁce uses an application called SMS to keep track of
the sofMare in use in the college. Statistical software is purchased by his department,
which also does the installation and upgrades. However, they cannot support users who
have questions about using the software. By centralizing all spending, he is trying to
reduce wastage. For example, after buying software for running surveys online, he found

135

that two other departments had purchased the same application and had their own
licenses. So, the college was double-paying.

Now, if you need the software, contact us ﬁrst. First of all, we won’t let

them buy it without going through us.

He does not purchase any ﬁnancial applications. Users connect to Central Finance
and HR over the web. Some use Access and link to the central databases using ODBC.
Some of the office managers in the college use DepACT, a university-developed
ﬁnancial system built on F oxPro. He does not think the number of people using their own
applications has changed much.

We don't have any ﬁnancial application that I'm aware of, that the Dean's

ofﬁce uses. I think even the departments use Excel, Access, web, or a

combination

The budget manager picked up QuickBooks, Access and Excel on her own, and
does not use any IT staff to support her use of IT for her work, besides the regular
desktop support:

It was just working with other people who understood Access databases,

seeing how they did queries. You just looked in there, you were lucky to

work with somebody who knew about it and you tend to say, “ok how did

they do this query” and you learn that way... we’re such a silo around here

just to keep everybody in the know and if others have expanded and gone

off and learned new things. That would be a nice thing to share with

everybody.

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Unfortunately or fortunately, it is myself... I know that there are colleges

around... that actually have a support unit that supports these IT

services... They develop a separate shadow system and they maintain it

for their book-keepers and accountants. The (Business) College is very, I

guess you could say, efﬁcient.

Another reason why other colleges have larger IT support units is the availability
of “soft money”, i.e. funding from grants. Since the Business College relies mainly on its
General Fund, it does not have a separate pool of money it can use to staff to run a
shadow system. This may turn out to be good thing when the ERP system rolls out.

we won’t have this ﬁill systems group that we have nothing to do with. . .,

because now this will be supported by the central (IT)

Colleges with large IT support groups usually set them up because they needed
good tracking mechanisms to manage their grants, and Central IT could not help them.
Since the Business College did not have such grants, it did not have a large IT support
staff. However, one side-effect is that the business college staff are not as efficient as
they could be.

The university may design a better application, but if the users think their needs
are unsatisﬁed, they will still extract the data from the central system and manipulate it
themselves.

there’s always going to be drift for key people in each department because

the systems are never going to do exactly what they want... you can’t

write a single system that meets 100% especially in a university the

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size of this. I talk to people who’re involved- they say it’s a lot better than

what we’ve had.

There is no IT support person in the undergraduate advising department.
However, one of the advisers is more IT savvy than the others and others refer to him for
help for tasks such as building queries and accessing data. They rely on the business
college’s IT support team for desktop support. The head of the department has no issues
about her staff creating new spreadsheets for their work. All shared spreadsheets are
saved on the shared folder. The policy is that the ﬁles should be saved on the shared
folder whenever they are created or updated.

rock on! ...it’s really about management style For me, I don’t want to

micro-manage, I want people to take risks, I want them to do it well, so I

might recommend to them, talk to (the adviser who is more skilled than

the others), he’s really great”

The university’s lntemal Audit department carried out an audit a few years ago. It
lasted for about one week. The Business College’s IT department carried out a “secure
and sensitive data initiative” and found some individuals possessing data that they should
not have on their PCs. The IT team settled one issue by creating a web application so that
the data was secured on their SQL server. Another issue was users storing sensitive data
they did not need to, such as ﬁve-year old credit card numbers. They educated users
about data security guidelines, e. g. sensitive data should not be stored any longer than
required. However, it is difficult for his team to prevent this, because if users want to
download something from the central systems, they do not need to inform the IT

department and thus cannot be stopped from doing so.

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Data security issues are compounded by the widespread use of USB drives and
laptops, which are expensive and difﬁcult to secure. What they do is to rectify problems
when they ﬁnd them. For example, when they found some using storing credit card
information which they did not need to, they converted them to use ‘webcredit’ and
payment cards. The IT manager would like all such data (e. g. ﬁnancial information,
multicard information, and SSN) to be stored on Central IT’s servers, since they have
more resources to make sure the data is secure. They are worried about users storing data
on their PCs. If all data was accessed over the web, then there would be fewer data
security issues

That’s why the (ERP) system will be useful, any centralized system to

prevent this data from leaking. I think what we might do is laptop hard-

drive encryption, thumb drive encryption.

Compared to IT departments in other colleges, he sees the Business College’s IT
team as being slightly above average in terms of its structure and governance. For
example, departments that are more structured and controlled also have many more IT
employees, while departments that are less structured could have more people than they

needed, so controlling them becomes difﬁcult.

External

He is a member of a community that looks at network communications issues on campus.
It’s made up of IT people from across campus and acts like a steering committee, giving
advice to the Vice Provost. It has now broadened its ambit to include service software.

One thing they are working on is a data security guide for people traveling overseas. Past

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projects include guides on securing networks and servers. They also recently rewrote the
university’s Acceptable Use Policy, because the current one is quite weak, as it protects
end-users, not the university. Since the community has no ofﬁcial power, these
documents are only guides. However,

I think it’s lost its ﬁzz.

Twice a year, all budget officers on campus meet to discuss accounting issues.
Central Finance also holds some meetings throughout the year. The budget officer would
like to meet her colleagues more often:

I wish we met more. To be honest with you, I wish there was more

communication, because in many ways, this position feels pretty isolated

sometimes. You are the only person in the college and to have your co-
workers at the other departments, you don’t see them as much... But

other than those meetings, there’s no real get-together to share ideas, to

discuss.

HR managers from across the college meet every month to discuss new policies
that affect their work. The HR manager brings up any IT issues she has at these meetings,
and also asks Central HR for tips or short-cuts.

There are a lot of experts here on campus that know bits and pieces of

information that can help you get to where you need to go much faster. So

as often as possible, I try to use that knowledge.

She discusses her department’s IT practices with other similar units all of which

advise students, both in the college, such as the Hospitality Business program, the

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Multicultural Business program, and the Lear Career Center, and outside it, such as the
University Undergraduate Division:
there may be people outside that have found a really good solution or

workaround that we haven’t come up with

Case Vignette 6: EduSucceed - International Center

The International Center handles administrative issues for international students,
faculty and staff. These include conducting orientations, monitoring their health
insurance and visa status and immigration applications, and sending periodic updates to
the federal government. The center does not handle admission issues, but works with

international students and scholars once they are admitted.

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Governance
External:
Personal contacts with Central IT,

Peers in other universities,
Student Affairs user group

  

  
     
 
 
   
  

Internal:
2 IT employees;
ad-hoc help request process

 

Request tracking
log in Access

IT Portfollo
Central:
ERP (including Sevis module), Business Objects,
PS Query, ODS, Footprints,

  
   
   
 
 

 

 
    
 

Locak
Excel, Access, INS Zoom

 

Figure 10: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for
EduSucceed 's International Center

IT Portfolio

Past

Although the university implemented the ERP program in 1997, the center did not
use it extensively till 2003. From 1997 to 2003, only the associate director and the
ﬁnancial team used it regularly. From August 1 2003, the government introduced its
online Sevis system for keeping track of foreign students and scholars. Before this, blank
paper documents were used and were stored with the organization issuing them. With the
Sevis system, all records had to be kept centrally with the federal government, and many
new events had to be reported. Thus, the center’s employees began using the ERP system
because the relevant data on international scholars was stored there.

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The Sevis module for the ERP system was not ready when the government
announced that it was bringing forward its plans: instead of phasing in the
implementation over ﬁve or six years, it decided to implement it in less than 2 years.
Thus, the government system was not very well developed. The ERP vendor rushed to
complete its module, but could not complete it in time. EduSucceed decided to use the
beta version of the module because it faced a hard deadline and had to modify the module
to make it work. The entire system took a few years to stabilize.

We actually started by implementing the beta version because we couldn’t

wait for the ﬁnal production version. So, that didn’t work very well.

(Central IT) had to make a number of modiﬁcations just to basically get it

to work. So, it was an incredible process just making that transition... I

would almost say a couple of years before they really had stability. It was

very difficult and it was also, you know, we just had to, because we had a

pretty hard and fast deadline, just getting all those records in was very

stressful.

They used to use QuickBooks as their ﬁnancial application, but dropped it and
moved to the ERP system.

. it really doesn’t make sense for us anyway to do that because the
authoritative data is in (the ERP system), you’re taking that and putting it
into another system. It just gets a little complicated and unnecessarily
complicated... I mean I’m sure there are things she may like to do

differently (in the ERP system) but basically things are working out.

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Five years ago, the center transferred a stand-alone F oxPro database that was used
to track whether visiting scholars had health insurance to the ERP system. Moving the
database to the ERP system meant that the center did not have to enter the same data

twice into two separate systems.

Current

The center’s employees use the ﬁnancial module of the ERP system for their
ﬁnancial activities and the student administration module to monitor the students.

They use a few different applications for their reporting, depending on the task
they are trying to accomplish. Business Objects is used for some ﬁnancial reports, while
for the majority of their daily activities, they rely on the ERP system’s native query tool
(PS Query), Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. This is for two reasons: 1) the data
warehouse that Business Objects draws its data from does not contain some of the data
they need; and 2) they need real-time, not historical, data for their reports. The data in the
data warehouse used to be “refreshed” every week, but the frequency has increased for
some of the tables, such as the student data, which is now reﬁeshed daily. PS Query runs
on the production system, and can thus provide real-time data. Queries can also be nm on
the Operational Data Store (ODS), which is a day-old version of the data from the
production system.

They use a commercial package called INS Zoom to produce the documents
required for processing HIB visas, since the ERP system cannot do so. A system called
Footprints is used to keep track of their communications with their clients. Footprints is

essentially a helpdesk application that is hosted by Central IT, and the International

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Center “buys a share” of it for a fee of $200 per year. The front desk staff at the center
log on to the system over the web and assign the tickets to the various advisors. A
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet records the details of students who have not responded or
are having difﬁculties.

A major responsibility is reporting various events to the federal government.
Usually, these events are sent as batch updates to the government’s SEVIS system every
night using an API. However, urgent cases, such as students whose visas expire in a day’s
time and need quick renewal, are handled via the government system’s real-time interface
(only if their visas will be approved.) After that, the student’s status will be updated in the
ERP system, and a process called Master Sync will be run to ensure that the data in the
government’s system matches the International Center’s database. The center has to do
this because the government’s system is a one-way system: it receives data but does not
let data ﬂow out. If the data is not synchronized, the center will receive alerts. A similar
process called Compare Process is rim daily to match the university’s data with the
government’s. Any discrepancies are highlighted as alerts, and the user can decide
whether to update the government’s entire database of EduSucceed students or only the
ones whose status has changed.

They have also set up a log in Access to keep track of student requests, and
whether they have been fulﬁlled. This log is an outcome of the increased monitoring of
international students required by the government after September 11 2001. While the
ERP system was useﬁil for handling transactions, it was not developed to track whether
individuals had registered or fulﬁlled other ofﬁcial requirements. In addition,

spreadsheets were being used to keep track of requests from students, such as requests to

145

renew visas and documents. Employees handling these requests discussed with the
technical analyst how tasks, such as sending out email reminders to students or ensuring
that requests were fulﬁlled, could be automated.

It is just a continuous process that makes things more automated and faster

and better service to the students so we can immediately inform them

when their stuff is done.

The previous example of an Access database replacing an Excel spreadsheet is
part of a broader trend in the organization. The existing spreadsheets are being gradually
replaced by Access databases. The spreadsheets do not duplicate information in the
central databases, and were set up to help with student monitoring, although the new
checklists feature in the ERP system may be able to handle that function. The associate
director uses spreadsheets to keep track of their activities too.

I myself would use Excel sometimes to just ﬁgure out what is going on

with some of our systems and what needs to be done.

For example, the“ government’s SEVIS system does not have a very useful search
feature- e. g. it can provide a list of people that meet a certain criteria but only displays 20
records per screen. Thus, the associate director has to manually copy the data and paste it
in a spreadsheet if she wants to match the records to other data from the ERP system
using a vlookup ﬁinction. She is unhappy about having to do this.

At every conference I say, do you know how much, how stupid this is.

The international center’s data is stored on a server which they share with Central
Student Affairs, and is maintained by that unit’s IT department. The center uses shared
folders so with differing levels of access so that documents and data can be shared with

146

different staff members. There is no speciﬁc checklist specifying which employees or
roles are responsible for or are allowed access to which documents or ﬁles.
We don’t have a speciﬁc on boarding and off boarding, it’s more in
people’s heads, but you know we really should write that down... I think
that’s something that units can always keep working on. I mean, we’re
continuing to work on things like doing better, procedures manuals, etc.
But, that’s kind of a continuing process, you will never get a perfect ﬁrst

draft.

Examples of drift

Student request tracking log

Before the request tracking log was set up as an Access database, the international
center’s staff asked Central IT whether the ERP system could provide the required
functionalities. They mentioned that a checklist feature was available, but would take
some time to customize. Thus, they were agreeable with the international center
developing its own Access database. However, the international center’s staff has agreed
to integrate the database with the ERP system if new features that made it a viable option
appeared in future versions of the ERP package.

What I think we will be doing is certainly keeping an eye on whether there

are opportunities to move some of that over to the mainframe. As (Central

IT) upgrades to newer versions,. .. sometimes there are new options and

some things that might be more laborious in the new version, there is an

possibility. I would say, “yes, we will always keep that in mind.”

147

IT Governance and Management

Internal

There are two IT employees: a technical analyst, who creates and maintains
queries and databases, and a website administrator. The technical analyst used to work
for Central IT. The technical analyst creates Access databases as requested by staff, with
one recent example being the log for tracking student requests. Although the web
administrator and another staff member are proﬁcient with Access development, only the
technical analyst develops such databases.

The center’s associate director also has a higher-than-average level of IT skills.
This is because she was one of the earlier employees of the department (she has been
there for nearly 20 years) and volunteered to set up their systems when they began since
no one else was interested in IT then.

I mean it had something to do with “ok, I’ll organize it” but I kind of just

learned it, exactly, from guys like you.

Little formal training on IT is canied out for non-IT employees. When the center
moved to the ERP system, employees with more IT sawy helped those who were less
conﬁdent of using the system.

I think that it’s true that some people were comfortable and some people

were less comfortable, one of the things we do and we, the international

student scholar team, they work really well together as a team and people

will just informally help them... a lot of people prefer to just learn a little

148

more informally... they grab a book or they look online or whatever so I

think a lot of it is stuff like that.

Because of the greater use of IT, applicants for new positions in the center are
quizzed about their IT proﬁciency, unlike before.

When I was hired, this is a slight exaggeration, but no one cared whether I

could add, subtract, multiply. But now, we’re really looking. So we ask

questions like what is your comfort level with Microsoft Ofﬁce products,
have you had the experience of working with a database like (the ERP
system) in your previous school?

Users rely on the analyst to help with general IT issues and approach him with
suggestions about improvements to the databases they use. The associate director is the
person employees contact if they have questions about the ERP system. If she cannot
help them, she will call on her acquaintances in Central IT.

For (the ERP system), people who don’t understand why I got this alert,

stuff like that, I am available as well. For some of the things where people

just can’t ﬁgure out what is going on, I would probably try to problem-

solve there. If I can’t do it, then I would call my contact at (Central IT)

and say “My brain just exploded! Could you help me with this?”

Procedures and guidebooks, such as how to deal with certain situations and how
to carry out some common tasks, are saved as documents in the shared folders. However,
they are not very extensive.

Yeah, we haven’t done as much of that as we maybe could, that’s certainly

a good idea... I think the other things are more sort of colleague-to-

149

colleague. So I think that’s something you can certainly always count on a

little more.

External

The international center’s associate director is on a mailing list for the higher
education users group of the ERP package. She also interacts with companies that use the
same ERP package. She thinks that Central IT is an innovator in using the ERP package’s
Sevis module.

the people we work with in (Central IT) are in some ways, or many

ways at the forefront of really working with the Sevis functions, the

(ERP) Sevis functions and helping us use them in a pretty sophisticated

way. So I would say, a lot of times, we are more contributing to that list

than any other really. And that’s always good to know.

The international center’s business manager is not part of the ﬁnancial users
group that meets with Central IT every quarter, but is part of the student affairs group.
The web administrator is part of a group of her peers on campus. Besides these two, the
international center is not part of most of the other IT advisory groups on campus.
However, this has not left it out of new developments.

We are not actually formally part of those groups, but because we work

very closely with them (Central IT) on the Sevis system, so I do have

informal contact with a lot of people there so I don’t think it’s an issue

there that they would not be aware of. It’s more time and resources.

150

The International Center has worked with Central IT on various projects, when
the central systems did not meet their needs. However, they do their best to minimize
this.-

Overall, if we can do something in a central system, we’re trying to do

that... I think their time is limited so I know whenever we have an idea

like that we would present it and make a request and some of the things

we are able to get and some of the things we aren’t. Our overall

philosophy is use central systems when we can. But if we have a need and

it doesn’t look as though (Central IT) is going to accommodate that in the

near future that we will develop our own.

The main contact person for such interaction is the associate director, not the
technical analyst. This is partly due to the fact that the associate director has access to the
real-time Sevis system, while the analyst does not because there are only ten slots
available. She received the slot because she is familiar with the relevant regulations. The
Sevis user community has asked for additional access slots for technical staff, but to no
avail. So, she is the intermediary between the analyst and other parties:

right now, (the analyst) doesn’t have access to the government system

so we’re kind of working back and forth which is a little harder because

you don’t have access

The associate director passes on ideas for improving the ERP system from her
users to Central IT, even if she thinks they are not likely to be implemented because they
beneﬁt only the center, not other units on campus. However, Central IT has carried out

some projects that were speciﬁcally for the center.

151

Case Vignette 7: EduSucceed — Athletics

The Athletics department at EduSucceed supports athletes in 17 sports at both the
intercollegiate and recreational levels. Its activities help with fund-raising and keeping
alumni connected to the university. In the past (20 years ago), the department was a
separate corporation from the university, and had its own checking accounts and assets.
The ﬁnance team of the department consists of the Chief Financial Ofﬁcer, the ﬁnance
director, an administrator, and three assistants. All of them have been around for at least

10 years.

 
   
  

Governance
External:
Monthly ERP liaison meetings with Central IT,
personal contacts with Central IT,
peers in other universities

  
     
   
  

     
     
 
 
   
   
   
 
  

Internal:
IT manager not direct report to unit head;
ad-hoc help request process;
Small IT team

 

IT Portfolio
Central:
ERP, Business Objects, ODS

     
   
 

Locak
Excel, Filemaker, Paciolan,
NCAA compliance software

 

 

Figure 1]: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for

EduSucceed 's Athletics unit

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IT Portfolio

Past

Before the ERP system, the ﬁnance department used a variety of locally-
developed applications- a general ledger, a procurement module, etc. These systems were
used for about 11 to 12 years, and were all replaced by the ERP system. Since then,

we’ve strictly utilized the central system. (Before the ERP system,) I think

a lot of people felt that the reporting was not sufﬁcient to properly budget

and evaluate results on a regular basis.

Current

The ﬁnance department uses the ERP system for most of its activities, e. g.
processing payment vouchers, purchase order requisitions, procurement, etc. They also
use Excel and Word. Business Objects is used to develop reports- data is obtained by
querying the data warehouse and is manipulated in Excel. However, the ticketing ofﬁce
does not use Business Objects or the ERP system. Its employees download data from
their commercial ticketing application into Excel to prepare reports for the ﬁnance
department.

ODS, a module in the data warehouse, stores canned reports, and the ﬁnance
department has its own set of customized reports within it. Examples of these reports are:
monthly budget reports for its 25 sports and 13 facilities and administrative units, balance
sheets and income statements, and endowment fund reports. The canned reports are
output as Excel ﬁles. While Business Objects is refreshed weekly, ODS is refreshed

daily.
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They do not use Microsoﬁ Access, although they used to use FileMaker before.
One area that still uses it is home game management. During the football season, 600
temporary employees are hired as users and ticket-takers. The supervisors in that group
are paid using the standard temporary appointment option in the payroll system. The
larger portion of this group is paid $12-$15 as a stipend to reimburse them for their out-
of-pocket expenses. They are paid as volunteers through a process in the accounts
payable system. The ﬁnance director downloads the information from FileMaker, imports
it into an Excel template, sorts it and saves it as a DAT ﬁle, which is then sent to Central
Accounts Payable. The checks are generated overnight and sent out. The same process is
used for ticket refunds, as this helps avoid the need to set up individuals as vendors,
which would require every individual’s social security number.

The ERP system for Athletics was installed about 2 years after the rest of the
university had gone live. This was because of historical factors- the Athletics unit was
constituted as an independent organization with its own board, bank accounts, and
policies. That meant that moving it to the ERP system was more complex than other units
on campus. So, once the other units had gone live and the system had stabilized, the
project implementation moved to the Athletics unit. Athletics gained substantially from
this delay- the bugs in the system had been removed and the system implementers had a
better idea of how to run the project.

Consultants from Anderson Consulting carried out the implementation. Before
deploying the software, they helped Athletics re-engineer its business processes. That
was a very useful exercise, because it made them think about how they wanted to

structure their organization and variables so they could

154

have effective reports and effective ways to slice and dice. (Today,)

each team, each facility, each administrative unit (has) its own budget, its

own P and L that we distribute monthly... I felt very lucky that we were

able to have those resources.

Since then, the processes have remained largely the same, although there have
been some changes. For example, some processes are now web-based, which supports
tele-commuting. There are no shadow systems now, according to the ﬁnance director, but
there are workarounds:

The PeopleSoft can feel a little clunky for some of the things we do and

there are a lot of pages to go through to get something completed... it can

seem like it’s a little clunky and that there are a lot of steps to get things

processed... there are some tricks that I don’t know too much of because

my assistants do it every day... The end users who are actually inputting

the data are actually ﬁnding the little short cuts to the extent that they’re

available.

The ﬁnance director prepares reports for the NCAA and federal government (e. g.
Department of Education), using the data warehouse and his own reports. He has a
customized tool that helps him come up with the numbers he needs for his reports, which
is linked to his ﬁnancial statements. These ﬁgures are entered into a Department of
Education website and a similar report with some differences is entered into the NCAA
website. The compliance director uses a compliance application from the NCAA for her
work, and the ﬁnance department has no access to her data, which includes squad lists,

ﬁnancial aid, and scholarship lists.

155

The ticketing and marketing department has undergone some signiﬁcant change
in the last decade. From an almost totally paper-based system, it has now shifted to a
system where customers can buy their tickets online, print out their barcodes at home and
bring them to the game as proof. These changes have taken place without having to lower
their head-count. Previously, many staff members were involved in handling telephone
calls from customers or in manning the “will call” booth. Now, these employees carry out
more tasks and projects, especially in collaboration with the university development and
gift ofﬁce, such as processing donations. The development ofﬁce uses a separate package
that is linked to the ticketing application, so that they can access the ticketing data.

Over a period of time we have had the ability to take on more

responsibilities and not initially add any staff just because we’re move

productive, more efﬁcient, and technology has allowed us to do that.

Moving online has also enabled the ticketing ofﬁce to support ticketing for many
more events. Traditionally, only football, basketball and ice hockey tickets were sold.
Now, tickets are sold for baseball, wrestling, softball, and many other games. They are
planning to further reduce their costs by stopping the mailing of paper re-order forms and
sending out email reminders, which would save them nearly $20,000 in postage alone.
They have 300,000 emails in their database.

After moving online, the next change was the shift to using bar-codes and
scanners, which took place about 4 years ago. These developments were supported by the

enhanced capabilities of its software vendor, Paciolan:

156

It basically evolved because there were companies out there, our software

company, Paciolan, basically offered the upgrade in technology to allow

this stuff to happen.

They last had a tender for the software ﬁve years ago. Paciolan’s competitor,
TicketMaster, acquired it a few years ago. However, the government has now asked

TicketMaster to divest Paciolan since it is merging with LiveNation.

Future

The department is currently in the midst of carrying out an RFP to purchase an
automated compliance system. The current system is paper-based and very labor-
intensive- student athletes ﬁll up forms on their training schedule, the forms are collected,
approved, compiled and audited. They would like the students to ﬁll up the information
online and make the entire process and workﬂow automated. That would help arrest non-

compliance issues earlier.

IT Governance and Management

Internal

The department has an IT manager who reports to the CFO. He handles desktop
support, and is not involved with application development. Since the ticketing application
is hosted outside the university, the local IT group does not maintain it. One employee in
the ticketing department is a more advanced user than others, and she is the one the
manager turns to when he wants to know whether the application will be able to offer any

particular functionality in the future. There are frequent requests to enhance ticketing.

157

Some of these requests are from employees. They inform their managers about their
suggestions, and the managers in turn pass on the ideas to the software vendor.

there’s all sorts of ideas people want us to do, whether do this, do that

or sell this or sell that. Well, a lot of it depends on can we get it done in

the right time frame.

Sometimes, they try and push the application’s abilities. However, the ticketing
manager could not provide an example.

Sometimes we really want to do something and we push the envelope and

I’ll push it and I will really challenge my tech people that we want to get

this to happen and they can make it happen. Paciolan can make it happen.

It’s just a matter of whether it’s worth making it happen.

I can’t think of an example right off the top of my head. I mean I know

over the years we’ve done different things that, you know, we try to make

it happen.

A recent internal audit examined their internal controls for IT- e. g. passwords for
folders, sharing, Excel ﬁle construction and modiﬁcation rights, etc. Since they have a
very small ﬁnance team and very little turnover, they have not put in place sophisticated
policies and procedures, and thus do not have any documentation on these controls. For
example, their password has remained the same for the past 10 years. Finally, they also

do not produce a large quantity of ﬁnancial reports.

158

External

The ﬁnance director is involved as a unit liaison for the ERP system with Central
IT. The employee show handles payroll participates in a payroll/timekeepers meeting,
and the director’s assistant is part of the accounts payable group. These meetings discuss
changes in policies and systems, and provide guidance on using systems. The director
thinks these monthly meetings are more useful for disseminating information than for
bringing up requests for changes to systems.

I think the meetings are good for information passing information, and

making those contacts, but when units have signiﬁcant problems then they

go out of the meeting room to the people and say these are the things that

we need to address. That’s what I would do, and I’m pretty sure what

most of the (unit liaisons) would do.

When he has any issue with the ERP system or with the reports, he calls or emails
his friends at Central IT for help. There is no formal procedure for making suggestions
for improving the technology. He relies on his contacts at Central IT, whom he has
worked with over the last ten years. They are from a unit called CPU (central processing
unit).

Although he has some ideas for improving the reports he obtains, he does not
bring them up, because he believes that Central IT is doing very important work that has
a broader impact, and that thus, he should not impede their work:

There may be a hesitancy on our part to ask for some of the littler things

that would be nice, but they’re not compelling, their more cosmetic... I

hesitate to take up their time with trying to do some of those things
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because they seem to be a very hard working group. They’re working on

big, important projects that are university wide. I wouldn’t say they

haven’t helped us when we asked, but it’s more of hesitancy on our part to

ask them for some of the more minor things.

The ﬁnance director meets his peers from other colleges every summer. They
discuss mainly policy issues; IT is not a common issue discussed among them because
they are constrained by what is offered to them by their university. One issue they face is
ﬁguring out how to get everyone to answer the NCAA reports in the same way, because
different schools classify things differently.

Sometimes, the ticketing ofﬁce meets its vendor to learn more about the
application’s capabilities. For example, the ticketing manager is attending a Paciolan
conference this year, where

users like us will have different ideas on how to do something different

and they’ll improve it. (The athletics department) may have done that

(customized the application) a few times, (but) it’s expensive so you just

want to stay away from that, but they do have that capability, if you want

to tweak the system with a speciﬁc need and desire.

However, the extent they can change their operations is limited:

they have different ideas on how to make something better... so this all

comes down to can you make it work? We do it this way because

technology helps us to do it this way. We can’t really change it, unless
you change technology, had some times you can, sometimes you can’t. So

in many respects you’re kind of, not that they have you in shackles, you’re

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driven a little bit by what they want you to do and the people out there that

have developed this stuff over the years, and make it more efﬁcient, and it '

has become more efﬁcient.

Training on the system requires either ﬂying the employee to California or ﬂying
a trainer in from there. So, when new employees are hired, they are expected to learn by
doing the work or by asking their colleagues.

The ticketing manager meets his Big 10 compatriots once a year, but they do
more of their discussion over the phone outside the meetings:

you talk to them all the time and get ideas from them and what they’re doing

Case Vignette 8: EduSucceed - Facilities Management

Facilities Management (FM) has 1,600 employees, and is the biggest division in
the Facilities and Operations (F &O) wing of EduSucceed. FM has many responsibilities,
which include running power plants, maintaining 5,000 ﬁre extinguishers, and managing

building environments and a ﬂeet of vehicles.

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Governance
External:
IT Commons, IT Steering Committee,
Business 8. Finance user group

  
   
   
  

     
     
 
 
   
      
 
 

Internal:
multiple disconnected internal IT units;
Monthly project review meetings,
ad-hoc development request process

  
     
   
   
     

Electronic
time clock,

 

HR Dashboard

IT Portfollo
Central:
ERP, Business Objects, HR Metrics

Fire extinguisher
management
system

 
 
   
   

Locak
F-Max, Payroll, Crystal Reports, Excel, Access,
Various other systems for unique activities

 

 

Figure 12: Governance mechanism, I T portfolio and instances of drift for

EduSucceed 's Facilities Management unit

IT Portfolio

Current

FM’s IT systems include:

- A system for metering power and reporting usage;

- A system for managing door readers and badges;

- An employee awards program, which tracks staff recommendations;

- A tracking system to ﬁnd out who is present in each building, so that they will
know where their employees are in case of an emergency.

- A building monitoring system called Apogee from Siemens

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- An Excel-based project tracking database

- A subscription database that develops indices of universities’ operational costs.

Many of these systems are Microsoft Access databases. Other activities are managed
with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (e. g. keeping track of ﬁre extinguishers) and
applications are being developed to replace them. Central HR has just asked them to
work together on a new job posting system. Crystal Reports is used to create reports from
the data in F-Max. FM’s operations department recently hired a consultant who showed
them how to use Pivot Tables in Excel. This provided them with useful information for
their restructuring, such as where their staff had worked, for how long, where there were
overlapping job classiﬁcations, and how the areas of overlap can be addressed to save
money.

FM’s most signiﬁcant application is a work order tracking system called Facilities
Max (or F-Max), which has been used since 1998. Requests to the help desk are recorded
in work orders and routed to the appropriate department. F-Max also tracks materials and
equipment purchased through work orders and employees’ time. This data is sent to the
ERP system as a batch ﬁle every few hours. Purchase order (PO) numbers are issued by
the ERP system and manually updated in F-Max.

Integrating F ~Max and the ERP system is difficult, and they have been working for
the past few years to improve the links to make activities more streamlined and easier to
audit. One example is purchasing- they want to be able to create a purchase order in F-
Max and pay the bill in the ERP system.

Our challenge becomes how do we run the two in parallel and there isn't
any way that (the ERP system) would do what we do within the work

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order system. But at the same point in time, F Max isn't capable, it doesn't
have the universal transfer to the outside world that (the ERP system)
does, (in terms of) ﬁnancial documentation, invoicing...
(The integration team hasn’t) run out of work yet with this (current)
restructuring that we're going through, it's probably worked through better
processes to get goods and minimize the number of activities it takes to
do it. I actually don't see that group going away any time in the near
future.
There's a lot of clerical support time that goes into (purchasing), more so
than we've ever had before... to really dot all of our i’s and cross all of our
(’3... people are really going back to the old school where the purchaser
needs to be separate from the person receiving, which needs to be separate
from the guy doing the installation and nothing wrong with that but it's
just an awful lot of activity that's going towards buying the proverbial
widget... paying them electronically is great but all of a sudden you
realize that if all the X's and O's don't line up you've got a bigger problem
than before when you were just missing a service ticket and you called the
manager and said “fax me a copy of the service ticket so I can sign it and
get you guys paid.”
FM has stayed with the same facilities management systems provider for the past
decade. A few other vendors offer a similar package, and there have been discussions

about moving to another application. However, F-Max has been heavily customized, so

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moving would entail a signiﬁcant amount of development. FM’s involvement with
software vendors, such as F-Max and Siemens, has been advantageous.
a lot of the features of the product were incorporated because they were
working with us
we're pretty strongly aligned with FMax as a company in developing
the software. So, we generally have the ability to tell them, “hey, this isn't
working,” or “how do I get this functionality out of the system.” And I
think it helps that we’re probably a big enough customer that we'd
probably get some level of support from them with resolution.
a lot of times Siemens will actually come to us and ask us how is this
working and we can provide them direct feedback and they as a company
take that back and then implement changes on the national or world level
that literally come from some of the interface that they have with us...
However, such ﬂexibility by the vendor also has its downside: they cannot
upgrade to use the application’s new features and are locked in to the vendor. One option
would be to use the basic version of the application without the modiﬁcations, which
would require re-engineering their business processes.
We’ve gone so far down the road of using it differently, that there’re
features in the product that we can’t take away.
Within the F-Max product, they actually have a ﬂag in the application
speciﬁcally for us to cause the application to work differently than it does

for every other customer.

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(They) couldn’t upgrade to the next version (of F-Max) because there
were just too many custom agents.

reloading the software but not adding all the customizations that we’ve
done and using it the way it’s meant to be used.

An example of a problem is that FM tracks costs, not the quality of its work.
(We) can tell you where every penny went, but we can’t necessarily tell
you how well we did that work. We track very well our costs, but not our
work effort and our efﬁciency at what we do... (In the future,) we’re
going to be focusing more on what we do and how we do it... we need to
change how we enter data into the system.

Central IT currently provides FM with its email and ﬁle storage services.
if doing it on your own doesn’t give you some competitive advantage
over your customer or some beneﬁt, then you shouldn’t be doing it. . ..
There is nothing I could do with an email system that would provide value
to my users... why would I have my own ﬁle share servers? That doesn’t
make sense. So it’s ﬁnding that balance.

\For all of my networking infrastructure, I pay (Central IT) $40,000 a year.
I can’t even hire a person for half of that. So there’s you know the value I
get is well worth what I’m paying. But for other things it’s not. So that’s
when we go off and do it ourselves.

Hence, it is important for FM to run a work order system, but not a time clock

system.

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(F -max) provides our users with more ﬂexibility. When anybody asks for

data, we can provide much more data than the (Central IT) systems can...

So, I think there’s value added in that situation.

(The time clock system is) one of those where it makes sense but at some

point we’re going to look back at this and go ‘why did we do that?’

The HR staff use the ERP system, the reporting application within it, the portal,
and Business Objects. They also use spreadsheets, because they are better at manipulating
data, relative to other report-creation tools. Some employees use Access; they intend to
use much more of it in the future. Two of the ﬁve employees are power users, e. g. they
use formulas and pivot tables in Excel.

Creating the reports is not real user friendly. The interface I’ve gotten

used to it, but I wouldn’t say it’s intuitive. And then the data that comes

out, unless you’re dumping it to Excel, you can’t really customize it, and

you can’t really create the forms.

Although the HR ofﬁcer used Business Objects in her previous job, she did not
download the data into Excel that often.

there were a lot of standardized reports that were created for everyone

in HR. Whereas here, at the University, everyone does their own thing.

Another issue is that different databases have different values for the same item.

This is because if some ﬁgure is corrected, only some databases update their past
ﬁgures to take those changes into account. Thus, she has to reconcile the ﬁgures from the
different databases. She has asked the payroll ofﬁce to develop an error report or a

conﬁrmation report for salary discrepancies, but was denied.

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It’s not a big enough discrepancy that I worry about it too much, it’s just it

kind of hurts credibility... I just do a kind of a once over to see if anything

jumps out at me

In response to these issues and requests from some HR and Finance staff, Central
HR’s IT team developed a dashboard reporting system, HR Metrics, about 1 or 2 years
ago. It draws data from the same data warehouse as Business Objects, but is more user-
friendly and the data is refreshed.

I’m hoping they don’t take it away because you can build your own

reports, you can do canned reports, and it does refresh... I love it...

(However, not many units are using it; maybe because, it’s just because

it’s one more system you have to learn.”

Examples of drift

Time clock

A major issue with integrating F -Max and the ERP system were errors in a 28
character string that was sent between the two applications. Most of the errors could be
traced to FM’s employees who were taking shortcuts. To prevent this, the new time clock
uses employee ID tags:

all of a sudden, completely eliminates a lot of the data errors... becomes...

a fool-proof process that gives us greater accountability.

Currently, the ofﬁcial time document for employees is a signed timecard. F M is
developing an electronic time clock for its employees even though Central IT has one,
because it did not meet their requirements: a) the data from the Central IT clock goes to

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the central payroll system, while F M wanted to route the data to its own payroll system,
b) Central’s time clock only records when users punched in or out, while FM wants it to
display work orders assigned to employees and messages to employees from supervisors.
FM wanted to get a dump of the data, so that it could use Central IT’s clock, and the
vendor told them that could be easily handled. However, Central IT was unwilling to set
up the FTP server to handle that.

when we look at some of the other systems offered by central services,

you have to more conform your business to what their policies and

systems are. Our users don’t want to do that.

they’re trying to sell a speciﬁc product and their goal is to not customize it

for a bunch of different folks, so that just wasn’t going to work for us. . ..

I’m being recorded, so I will say it was a very frustrating situation

It would have been nice if there would have been a little more partnership.

They were willing to, you know what, we could maybe make some

customizations, but maybe you have to make them or you know, but it was

kind of an all or nothing.

You know, here we are again doing our own thing. You literally could go

to some place in the University and see the (Central IT) time clock, and

right next to it ours. That’s just, it just looks -- it just doesn’t feel right.

...it’s one of those things you just don’t feel right about it. You just know

down deep in your gut this isn’t the right thing to do. You know, but it

makes sense, the costs are certainly cheaper doing this. The ﬁmctionality

of the features we get will be far greater than what we would have gotten.

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And maybe that’s how we get into these situations is that we look at these
situations in the micro, in the short terms and yeah we do this and we’ll be
getting more data than anybody else. But you know if everybody does
that and you end up with all these little things there needs to be somebody
at the central system saying well we can include that and then everybody

could take advantage of it.

fir—egxtinguisher management syst:em

A new system was put in place for tracking them, but users did not stop using the
older one. So, they had to support both, and are now looking for a new one.

It’s kind of a micro problem of what the central system is. It’s kind of the

same thing. We have these systems and we don’t use them. We have

systems that other groups don’t use.

HR dashboard

The HR ofﬁce found out that F M had obtained a quote for a dashboard. She asked
them to wait until she had checked with Central IT. They told her that they had a similar
product. FM is holding back now, but not because they are working with Central IT.
Instead, they are planning to work with the vendor who is rolling out the new version of

their work order system, F -Max.

Payroll
Unlike the other departments in F &0, FM has its own paper-based payroll system

based on F-Max. This is because F M pays its staff according to a work code, and the ERP

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system does not have enough levels of detail to support that. The HR ofﬁcer uses it to
check for discrepancies with the ofﬁcial payroll. FM’s payroll system also reports error
messages, which are useful for her. The previous head of Central Finance (who has
passed away) was not aware that F M used its own system, and only found out recently.
She was planning on doing some research on it, before she passed away suddenly. The
current heads of Central Finance and Central HR are aware of it. However, attempts to
resolve it have been pre-empted by a shared services model review that is being

conducted now.

IT Operations 8. Governance

Internal

FM’s experienced IT manager has been with FM for 18 months. His department
consists of 20 people. F M’s IT department handles all the operating systems, hardware
supports, database administration, and custom programming needs for their work order
tracking system. It also runs a help desk that supports the PCs. There is also a team in
charge of infrastructure (servers, etc) and some employees who ﬂoat between the help-
desk and infrastructure teams. A few people handle the development of the work order
tracking system, and two permanent employees and three contractors take care of web
development. All work carried out by departments in the university is charged back to the
departments that requested the work. This applies to the 3 groups within FM’s IT
department.

We spend a lot of time ﬁguring out which pocket to take money from.

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Last year, they audited who had administrative rights to their PCs because there
were no controls for that. From now on, managers will have authorize annually which of
their staff members can have administrative rights to their PCs and state that that there is
a justiﬁable business reason for them to have these privileges. That exercise reduced by
about half the number of individuals who have administrative rights to their PCs.

FM’s sub-units have their own IT departments and often source their own IT
themselves. While the IT manager is trying avoid duplication, the sub-units see the IT
department’s job as helping them implement applications they procure themselves. All
requests for collaboration are ad hoc, via e-mails or telephone calls. An example was the
new application chosen by the ﬁre extinguisher management team. When they informed
him of their choice and asked if he had any issues, he discussed their requirements with
them and found that FM already possessed applications with similar functions.

Another example is the IT department’s experience with the utility department.
They had found their own application, and called in the IT department at the last minute
to tell them that they needed hardware for the new application. When the IT department
found out what the application was doing, it told the utility department that the
functionality was available in F -Max. This surprised the utility department as its in-house
IT employee had told them that it was not possible. The IT department then showed them
how F-Max could meet their needs. It also told the utility department that they were
willing to support them with either option.

just like we don’t necessarily use the central systems and follow their

plans, I have groups that don’t report to me

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the same way I’m not collaborating with (Central IT), the pockets

underneath me are not collaborating with me

It’s one of those things we don’t want to slow people down and tell them,

you know, you can’t. But at the same time if we already have two

products that want to do what you want to do, why should we run a third
one?

If you’re a department and you can go pick your own application and you

can manage it, you think you’re going to get something better than using

the central system. If not better, at least it’s under your control.

It could work differently and it just doesn’t, I don’t know why... we don’t

cooperate, but it’s not that they’re an extension of us or we’re an extension

of them, it’s they’re out doing their thing, we’re out doing our thing...”

Where they could be building things that we might have already built or

we have currently insight, so there’s a lot of loss. . .We’re not keeping each

other informed and saying, “hey you know we already have something
that does that that you can use.”

The underlying issue is that IT purchase decisions are decentralized to the sub-
units. The IT manager sees this as inefﬁcient because even though departments want their
own IT employees, they often end up approaching the FM IT team for help when they
face a problem because they lack the experience.

at the same time I can’t just say you’re on your own... We have to do

what we can to help them

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He would prefer a more structured system where the F M IT team was given full
responsibility and funding to manage these systems. That way, he could put in place a
service-level agreement and handle any issue appropriately. He has suggested that the
departments give up their IT employees, but that idea was not been accepted. He believes
that the various FM departments set up their own IT teams because they were not being
well-supported by F M’s IT team. The same approach has had an impact on F M now- all
units on campus can seek external bids for the services that FM offers because some of
them were frustrated with FM’s service level or costs.

Unlike the HR and Finance staff, some other users from, for example, the utilities
department, are more likely to source IT independently.

it’s interesting, you know, I didn’t really think of that before but the areas

where we have pockets of IT are where we have people that have a more

technical background. . .. so I guess having nontechnical users is better.

He believes that there is a ﬁrndarnental lack of understanding at FM of how IT
can help it organizationally. When he came in, an F-Max upgrade was a few years behind
schedule, and development work was still being carried out. The project was delayed
because the IT staff did not have experience in deploying applications of that size and did
not realize that they had a problem.

part of the problem was not recognizing there was a problem.... they just

thought if they continued down the road they’d eventually get there.

Which I don’t think would have happened. . .we were nine releases behind

by the time we went live.

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He managed to deploy the system by the target date, and although there about 20
problems, none of them were critical. But, when he met FM’s director, all he was asked
was whether they could be ﬁxed by the next week.

you build a spaceship and you show it to me and I say what kind of

mileage does it get... it was disappointing that after all the effort and

everything, and it wasn’t his fault, he just doesn’t understand IT.

He thinks that the director saw the list as akin to a list of defects for a building
after it has been inspected by an inspector. However, some of the problems with the
project were issues with the application that could not be ﬁxed.

(In) most organizations, IT is a strategic partner. They are represented

high within the organization. Within Plant, we’re kind of buried down in

the organization. I don’t really think there’s an understanding of what it

takes to do IT. I don’t think I’ve necessarily been able to communicate the

value that we can bring with technology. And what it takes to do
technology.

The IT manager thinks that non-IT FM employees wonder what they are getting
with their 20-person IT team that costs millions, especially when the IT application do
not do what they want. This frustrates the IT team.

He is trying to formalize the procedure for the departments to submit their ideas
for new projects by setting up a project request website. Currently, it is very informal. To
prioritize the projects, he has a meeting every two weeks with the various departments.

There are projects that have been on this list for ﬁve years. And . .. they’re

just not a priority and they never get to the top of the list... We had it half

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way done and we just can’t have it a priority. With everything that

everybody wants, it just keeps falling down on the list... they’re focused

on their higher priorities. So it’s not a high priority for them, and it’s not

for us. So it’s just on the list... I met with their management about a

month or so ago and said, “hey good news, we’ve got these ﬁve projects

done.” They were like, “what about this one”... you can’t win.

The project review meetings are more of a one-way process of him presenting his
ideas. He understands their reticence.

If I was in their shoes, I may not want to present what I’m doing because

we might come back and say “well, you shouldn’t be doing that”.

One of his ﬁrst projects was to develop a list of all the projects, applications and
servers his team supported. His next aim is to develop a one-page list of each user’s rules
and responsibilities. This would help clarify responsibility and avoid frustration.

The F M IT manager is not a believer in using methodologies, such as ITIL, in
organizations.

I’ve seen too many of them fail because organizations try to adopt too

much too fast... they’ll try to adopt it, you know, the big bang approach.

And it typically fails because I think with an organization you have to

evolve to that...it’s the stuff if you’ve been in IT you know to do for a

long time.... (His former colleagues) spend more time ﬁlling out forms

and reporting statuses to people that are going to turn around and re-report

their statuses than they are working out there. But I see that happen in

organizations like that. There is value in process and structure, but you

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have to balance that with productivity. And if you get to the point where

you’re spending all of your time ﬁlling out forms, something is wrong.

He prefers an approach that recognizes what is available, so as to avoid
reinventing anything, and then looks at what makes sense given their context. For
example, FM needs to improve its planning and expenditure tracking. This will help build
trust with his users, as he will be able to tell them what they received in return for their
expenditure.

He currently has a list of 380 outstanding requests for changes to F-Max, which
range from bugs to custom reports. He believes his department is very responsive because
change requests are fulﬁlled within two weeks, even though only three people are
handling them. He was thinking about expanding its IT group previously, but the current
pressure to consolidate IT from the central administration means that is not going to
occur.

While the process for making IT requests is still very ad hoc, the new IT
consolidation policy from Central IT is an opportunity for reﬂection. This is similar to
what happened when they launched their energy-saving campaign. It prompted them to
reduce the number of server rooms on campus, which required year-round air
conditioning, by outsourcing them to a vendor so that “everybody's money ahead.”

When you're knee deep in alligators, you’re worried about what's going on

around you. You're not so much looking out there at what's happening...

(the new policy) creates a thinking type process for anybody about

what can we being doing differently... introspection or looking inwards at

what we're doing.

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External

FM’s IT manager is still persevering with his efforts to work with Central IT- he
is currently negotiating with them about providing Linux and Oracle support as his staff
do not possess the required level of skills and as back-up in case one of his employees
fell sick. Working with Central IT now would help him obtain employees who are not
foreign to his environment. He is also asking them to take over some systems, such as the
badge reader system. But, they are not doing that yet as they can only provide services
such as hardware virtualization, not application support.

I have contacted (Central IT) several times to start moving forward with

potentially using them to provide some of the services that we do, and

they’re just not ready.

His supervisor is part of the university’s IT Steering Committee, while he sits on a
committee with other IT managers that advises Central IT. Externally, he is involved in
an F-Max user group. He uses that for obtaining advice on issues such as deploying
handheld mobile devices. He has also given presentations to other universities that want
to know more about the work order system: what issues he has had, which product he
selected, and why.

One example of decentralization is that there is no central authority on campus
that manages the entire network. Central IT manages part of it, but within each building,
there can be local administrators in charge of network ports in the building. That made it
difﬁcult for him when he was setting up the security badge readers. He wanted to rent

ports in each building, but he found out that Central IT could only do that for some

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buildings. Others were managed by other IT units, such as the engineering department or
the medical centre.

it was frustrating that I couldn’t go to one organization. I would think

for like your network that would be the place you would have one

(organization). (Someone told him) that the university is basically a

collection of nine schools with a common football team... to me, when

you deal with infrastructure, that you don’t decentralize. .. I have my

driveway and I manage that and I can do what I want. And when I go on

the freeway, they’re all the same.

The HR manager has talked to Central IT about improving the integration and
usability of the systems she uses. Although she can reconcile the data manually, it is very
time-consuming. Central IT is aware of the data issues and mentions it during training.

you may have two different datasets, both of them have compensation

listed in them, but if you pull from one versus the other it won’t align.

And there’s no way that you can remember all that stuﬂ”.

HR Metrics has been transferred from HR IT to Central IT for maintenance. If she
has any future requests, she asks HR IT, and they communicate with Central IT to handle
the request. If employees have ideas for new systems or reports, they can either approach
her or approach Central IT directly; there is no structured process. Because of this, users
may create reports that may be useful to her, but she may not be aware of them. Although
all the reports are shared, their titles may not necessarily be clear enough to merit sharing.

When someone asks her for a new HR system, c. g. a dashboard for managers to
monitor HR activity, she approaches the HR IT staff in Central IT to see if they have

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something she can use instead of buying a new application. If she needs a new report and
thinks others would be interested in it, she brings it up at the monthly meeting. If it is
something that only she needs, she will contact one of Central IT’s HR staff. Users in the
F&O units who want a particular report or new application can either approach her or
their own IT team, or even Central IT. F M’s IT team provides IT support for her
department.

some of the ones that I have a relationship with I might call them up and

say “hey, I’m stuck on this, do you understand it?”

She participates in monthly meetings with other HR and Finance managers from
across campus, together with Central IT, to discuss how they can streamline processes.
There are some differences across units, mainly in how they monitor: some use Excel,
others Business Objects, and so on.

I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know if it comes ﬁ'om another report,

or if they constantly track it... Some people only dump into Excel and

that’s the way they’ll only use it, and someone else will create a report for

them... for me, I’ll go and I’ll use a canned report, but then I’ll change it

to what I need and hope it runs okay... It’s all over the map, and we all

use different reporting data.

Over the past 5 years, she has found more HR users sharing tips.

“hey, here’s a spreadsheet you might want to use, don’t recreate it.”. ..

We’ll talk about them in projects we have and somebody will say “hey

I’ve got that already set up, I’ve got the formulas set up. Let me just send

you my spreadsheets and start all over” or I’ve even had people say “1’11

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send you my Business Objects reports, and you’ll just run it for your

department.”

There is no formal procedure for Central IT to ﬁnd out what business and ﬁnance
(B&F) personnel need for their job in terms of IT. The process is very ad-hoc: Central IT
does not ask B&F users what their requirements are on its own, and B&F has not
presented Central IT with a consolidated list of similar reports that the entire community
uses. However, they do present their collective requests to Central HR’s IT team. For
example, they needed data on new hires. They informed HR IT what they needed, and
they receive a spreadsheet with a Pivot Table whenever they need it. The B&F users were
not able to develop this report themselves because they do not have access to some of the
data. It is still being reﬁned as it is fairly new. She’s not sure how or how frequently HR
IT and Central IT interact, although some Central IT staff work on HR IT projects.

F M’s IT staff provide with reports if she has no access rights to the data. For
example, she needed a consolidated report that showed everybody’s sick time. F M’s IT
gave her a huge print-out: it did not aggregate the sub-department details into the major
departments. She then worked with someone from Central IT to create the same report
using the data in the ERP system. However, F-Max has more detailed codes than the ERP
system.

I just wonder is that a duplication in the skills set, because what I get from

the database people in Plant is not as user ﬁiendly as what I get from

(Central IT). . .. one of our unions that got paid time off. They don’t have

sick or vacation, just one big pool of paid time. Now I can ﬁnd that in the

(ERP), but Plant actually codes it vacation and sick, behind the scenes.

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Other organizational issues

The purchasing process at the university is very slow- the IT manager tendered
for a new security camera system and only received one bid after 5 months. When PM
was about to award the vendor the contract, the vendor stopped contacting them because
it had lost interest. He believes the university purchasing system is overwhelmed. He has
re-initiated the process, and part of the delay comes from the need to use the purchasing

ofﬁce as an intermediary for any communications to or from vendor.

Case Vignette 9: EduSucceed — College of Engineering

The College of Engineering has about 8,000 students and is one of the largest
colleges in the university. There are 11 departments within the college. It nms its own
network which connects to the university’s shared backbone. This is because: a) relative
to the other colleges, computing plays a central role in engineering teaching and research,
and b) the college’s size makes this viable.

what makes us different from other schools and colleges is the

importance that computing has for engineering... with simulations and so

forth the campus cannot afford to provide the level of networking that

we can provide... we upgraded to giga-bit networking way before

anybody else did, we updated ﬁber to 10, 20, now 40 gigabit and the

campus doesn’t on the other hand, campus is not prepared to do (so).

Why would they do that for the art museum? it’s. . .big enough (that) we

think we get some efﬁciency in scale.

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Governance
External:
Personal contacts with Central IT, monthly
meetings with Central IT, IT Commons,
Peers in other universities, various user groups

 
      
   
 

  
     
       
 
   
  

Internal:
IT manager direct report to unit head;
multiple disconnected internal IT units;
collaborative; structured and ad-hoc

- request process; faculty liais. '

IT Portfollo
Central:
ERP, Business Objects, CLearn, E-recruit

  
   
 
  

  
   
 

Locak
Excel, Access, Filemaker, SharePoint

 

    
      
     
      
      
   
   

Drlf‘t

Check of students’
course of study

Research expertise
database

 

Position management
database

Faculty performance
measurement
system

Faculty promotion

 

Figure 13: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for
EduSucceed 's College of Engineering

IT Portfolio

Current

While the college uses the ERP system as the ofﬁcial record of its ﬁnances, day-

to-day accounting transactions are can'ied out using Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access,

or Filemaker. This is because the ERP system does not support encumbrances or

budgeting at the level of detail required by the colleges. In addition, while the ERP

system can handle commitments, it does so in a convoluted way. The ﬁnance ofﬁce is

currently working on using Access to develop its own budgeting application. This would

enable it to handle multi-year and multi-unit commitments, which are more easily done in

a database than a spreadsheet.

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The ERP system is not able to act as an accounting system for the college because
of the administrative cost of maintaining the large number of different codes colleges use
to allocate the funds. The colleges have codes for grants and projects, which they
reconcile with the higher-level codes in the ERP system. Finally, many faculty members
have split appointments (i.e. they are paid by different units on campus), which makes
payroll complex. Accounting packages, such as QuickBooks, are not used in the college.
The ﬁgures in these shadow systems are reconciled with the monthly updates the
departments receive from the ERP system.

(The ERP system is) intended to support the institution so that it can do

compliance, large scale budgeting allocations and so forth but the day-to-

day level, when you’re doing like procurement it’s that kind of small

business budgeting that they don’t support... they are trying to get better

at that. They are trying to get rid of these shadow systems but there are

still a lot of them out there.

Some units consider their shadow systems to instead be supplemental systems,
because the information they contain is not available in the central databases. However,
the information they contained took a long time to get on the general ledger. Thus, the
ﬁnance department is encouraging the college’s departments to drop these systems and
carry out their business in the main ERP system, using the new real-time fmancials
feature. The smaller colleges and units have probably done so- they lack the staff to
handle alternative systems, so they were literally forced to do so. One drawback of doing

so would be the loss of an additional check on the accounting numbers.

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most people agree that it’s been very well streamlined, it’s been much

more accurate, things are moving into it much faster than they used to. So,

the bottom line ﬁgure is one that can be counted on... one problem you

deﬁnitely have when you rely on a single database is that if there’s an

error, there’s nothing to check it against. If the ﬁgure that is in the central
database, the general ledger is wrong, in the old system, you were

checking it against your own data. you could say, “Oops, there’s not a

match there!” Just because it came out of a computer, that does not

mean it’s right. That’s a mistake we make at our risk.

Another process that uses a shadow system is graduate student admission. Unlike
undergraduate admissions, faculty members are much more involved in this because they
are recruiting assistants for their projects. There is a long-term plan that these systems
will be integrated into the ERP system, although this will be difﬁcult because of the
differences among schools.

To assist the users of these shadow systems, the IT department downloads the
data from the central server and saves it in a local database. One of the IT employees is
proﬁcient at working with Oracle databases. The users use this copy of the data to run
their analysis and reporting. The tables in the central data warehouse are refreshed at
different rates- daily, weekly or monthly. The Engineering IT department downloads the
data at the same frequencies.

Business Objects is used to query the ERP system’s database and extract data,
which is then manipulated in Excel. A recent upgrade of the software meant that the

“canned” queries had to be redone.

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Currently, faculty and graduate student hiring activities, even though they are
initiated by the department, are only entered into the ERP system centrally. This is
because the ERP system is difﬁcult to navigate- there are many screens, unfamiliar terms
and confusing policies. For example, for some people, a certain element may be used to
denote X but for others, it denotes Y. Because of this, the HR director thinks it is
important that HR expertise be consolidated. While student services and ﬁnance data are
entered at the source, the same thing is not done for HR data. The HR department is
getting ready to deploy E-recruit, which is part of the ERP system.

The college’s IT department provides storage services for its users. It does not use
the service provided by Central IT but purchased its own ﬁle servers for the purpose. The
shared folders are part of the standard desktop image so that they are automatically
installed on users’ computers. A course management system, CLearn, is used by faculty.
Both the ERP system and CLearn are supported by their respective central teams.

The budget, HR and planning department are very data-oriented, which is partly
due to the background of the department’s executive director.

The data guru, the institutional research person reports to me as well.

We always want to make sure we are handing out good data, and when we

report for... national things, whether its ASEE or US News, we want to

make sure it’s accurate so we do a lot of ofﬁcial reporting... We’re a

pretty data crazy group... we do pull a lot of data from activities in the

college, that tends to be a focus in my area... I personally, because of my

background as a department administrator, have a lot of hands on

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experience in pulling data and analyzing data and downloading to Excel

and doing a lot of massaging in Excel.

Moving to the ERP system was a difﬁcult process. Two main problems were: a)
the data conversion exercise did not know how data was used in the units; and b) the
approach. However, a major beneﬁt was that it provided much more data and access to
data. Over time, it has also become easier to work with the data. There is also a gap
between the effort required by clerical staff to input the data even for simple transactions
and the value of that data to managers.

That was a painful, painful process for several years, and you did have to
rethink everything... In the past of course, you could only get the data that
somebody prepared a report for. And I know when I was in the medical
school, I used to get a fair number of reports, and when I ﬁrst came here,
many years ago, the departments didn’t get those ﬁnancial reports. They
didn’t even know why they should distribute them... Had I started in
engineering, I would never have even known what those reports are of,
and now of course now once you have access and you become
comfortable with the system, you can pull all sorts of data now. Of course
you can pull a lot of wrong information if you’re not careful. And we
always had standard information before, but it was limited, so now it
really is a whole different world.

The ﬁrst instantiation of the central data system we didn’t use Business

Objects. I’m trying to think of which system we used. I can’t remember,

but it wasn’t as friendly. So it’s really gotten much more sophisticated.

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Some of that wonderful data that I talked about is only available because
there is a lot to each transaction... To do a PO, you used to write a few
numbers on a sheet and send it in, and you would get your stuff. Now,
you’ve got to go to 16 screens and then put in the data. On the end of the
person who’s just looking up data, it seems better. On the end of the
people who (have) to input that, it’s more cumbersome, there’s no doubt
about it. Your staff have to have a lot more skills, you have to train them
and retrain them...

Even with the better data management systems today, users still have to spend

time to ensure that the data they draw out from the system is good quality data.

you can talk to (the HR director) about the clean-up issue because our
HR data has to get cleaned up a lot. Jane, (the institutional data
researcher), when she pulls student data, does a lot, a lot of checking to
make sure she’s getting correct data. A simple issue, like if you had a
graduate student who started as an undergraduate here, it can really mess
up your accounts and things. So there’s a lot you have to do. You can’t
just pull the data and say “here”. You spend a lot of time making sure you

pull the correct data.

Examples of drift

Check of stu_dent§’ cogrse of sum

This used to be carried out by an employee in the Dean’s ofﬁce on her desktop
PC. However, the report was too long and confusing and it was difﬁcult to keep the data

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synchronized with the central database. The college was also informed by Central
Student Services that they could not make a copy of the data. This led to a discussion as
to why the College was doing so.

The college’s IT department responded by reorganizing the report into a single
page, accessing the data remotely, and caching the report locally to reduce the waiting
time. This solution has been working for the past two years. However, the current
solution is still not optimal, as the data from Central is a combination of XML and binary,
making it very complex to parse for the reports. This issue is faced by all colleges. The
college has asked Central IT to change the data format, and is waiting for them to do so.

Although other colleges have a similar problem, it is hard to standardize the
engineering college’s solution across campus because a) degree requirements differ
across colleges (making it hard to customize the report), and b) a complex combination of

IT skills is needed to operate the solution.

Research expertise database

This was created because of a request by the development ofﬁce. There was
increasing interest from corporations in working with faculty, but they could not identify
who they should write to. Since this issue was not a focus of Central IT, the database was
created locally. Now, it has to be maintained by the college’s IT department in the long
run. This is very costly, but has to be done because it is very important for the college

overall.

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Faculy performance measgrement svstem

Currently, this is being done in Excel. There has been demand for a separate
system for this purpose. When developing it, they had to bear in mind that it would be a
signiﬁcant change for the faculty and staff in terms of how performance evaluations are
conducted.

Thus, they built their own system which is much simpler and meets their needs.

Each year, it is incrementally enhanced.

Facug promotion system

It is a complicated workﬂow: faculty have to collect different documents from
various sources (colleagues, funding agencies, etc) to create “promotion books” that are
sent to the college, the provost and the library. The college is moving incrementally to
modify the process. It is standardizing the steps in the workﬂow across departments and

has moved from paper documents to PDFs and from manual to electronic signing.

Position management database

The aim of this database is to link positions with budgets, so that they can ﬁnd
out: which positions are funded by which budgets, what the turnover rate is, and what the
head count is? Currently, the data is not related. The HR department in the college asked
its users what reports they were using and decided to develop an Access database that can
answer these questions. That would also help remove these reports and the shadow
systems that created them. They did not ask Central IT to assist or for advice.

This speciﬁc functionality does exists in the ERP system but a) it is very complex

and b) using it would mean asking every unit to change their business processes. Hence,

190

it is not used widely, and different colleges have come up with their own plans, with

some using the ERP’s module.

FacuItLrecruiting svstem (under developmenﬁ

One of their departments wanted to roll out this new system. The HR director
asked that it be demonstrated to herself and a clean for approval. After they approved it, it
was demonstrated to Central IT and the college IT ofﬁce. Although they thought that it
was a good system, it was low in priority, so they didn’t move forward. It was then
shown to HR directors from different departments; some Of them were keen to take it up
and were allowed to do so. The IT director is gathering the internal requirements for such
a system and will ask Central IT if it is interested in developing the system. If not, the
college’s IT director will have to decide how important it is to have such a system is

locally.

Examples of workarounds

Cheat sheets

The HR director prepares cheat sheets for the departments in the college.
“they tell you to do this, but you can get by doing this”... to make another
little path, but they’re pretty minimal and inconsequential, and it’s to save

them thirty seconds.

Data aggrggation
The college has departments which have sub-departments. The ID ﬁelds are set

up such that the values in the sub-departments can be aggregated to come up with a value

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for the overall college, but not for the departments within the college, or other sorts of
groupings (e. g. academic vs. administrative). Thus, the department ID ﬁelds in the ERP’s
databases do not “roll up” in a way that is useful for the Finance and Planning

department. This is done manually in Excel using look-up tables.
IT Governance and Management

Internal

The college’s IT department operates its own network, maintains a Linux cluster
for research computing, runs a walk-up help-desk, provides IT support for the college’s
administrative building, and maintains engineering applications across the college. Its
annual budget is $5 — $6 million, and the network connects about 800 computers.

In addition, each department in the college has its own IT support staff, with the
smaller ones having one or two employees and the larger ones having a small team each.
Although these IT employees report to their department’s chair, not the college’s IT
director, the two sets of IT personnel work together.

They are totally separate... We work closely with them a lot of things we

do in coordination so the relationships there are pretty good but there is no

reporting relationship. So we try to organize things so they support things

that are unique to their departments when working directly with faculty

they do desktop support, that kind of thing.

Consolidating the different IT teams is an issue that is brought up every year.

Although it is being considered with increasingly seriousness, it has not occurred yet

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because of concerns over service control. The IT director is trying to overcome this by
focusing on the division of responsibilities, not on who manages whom.

We talk about that every year, and every year they get more serious about
doing that. Cost. (The) department chairs are reluctant to see the loss of
control. What we’re trying to do is not worry so much about who manages
that individual what we’re trying to do is change our work structure-
what do they have to do? And then that’s one issue where you won’t be
giving this up. We’re making progress on it. Every year, we’ll get a little
bit better. But it’s a long struggle.

Although Central IT uses ITIL, the engineering college’s IT department does not
use ITIL or any other similar guidelines for its operations.

We do not, and this is a weakness of ours. We don’t do the job we should

in terms of change management We do it for some things. Our data

network, we do a pretty good job at that. That gets goofed up, everything

(goes) So, we focus on that, but a lot of our software updates, we don’t do

a good job as we should.

The college’s IT department has designated a staff member with a PhD in
engineering as its faculty liaison. He interacts with faculty members who request new
software for their teaching needs. A recent example was a request to install Microsoft
SharePoint, which was required by an auto manufacturing workﬂow package that the
students were learning.

They will call either me or him directly and they’ll say, “Look, we want to

do this. We would like to do it for next fall. Can you do it?” And then,

193

we’ll we do our best to do it and, in this case, we did, it did work out. But

that’s the kind of thing we do spend a lot of time with. That was for a

engineering course, and we try to be as ﬂexible as we can and that was a

recent example.

While Central IT purchases licenses for software used across campus (such as
Microsoft Ofﬁce and Oracle’s database), the college’s IT department purchases licenses
for the engineering applications that are commonly used in the various departments.
Sometimes, some very speciﬁc applications will be purchased by researchers using their
grant funds.

Being engineers, the users in this college consider good design to be important,
and are unwilling to work with applications that are badly-designed. A recent example
was the shift from paper to electronic time-sheets. This increased the burden on faculty,
as they had to go online and approve the time-sheets. This led to a workaround:
department assistants print out the sheets, faculty sign them, and the assistants then enter
their approvals online.

It’s the engineering way, the engineering mindset- “this is a bad design
why would I want to use it? I’m too busy!”

The college’s IT director is part of the Dean’s Cabinet, which consists of senior
management from different parts of the college, such as research, undergraduate
education, business operations, development, and corporate relationships. This group
meets every week to discuss a different issue each week. Examples are graduate student

recruiting, publications, and websites. Two projects the IT director is involved in now are

revamping the faculty recruiting process and developing a faculty research expertise

194

database. The latter was driven by the development ofﬁce, so that corporations would
ﬁnd it easier to hire faculty as consultants. Before initiating a project to develop a new
application for these domains, the IT director asked Central IT whether they will be able
to assist the college with it. Central IT could not help with the database as Central HR did
not keep track of this information. Thus, a local database was created. The faculty
recruiting project was still ongoing at the point of data collection.

We basically developed a web-based database where somebody could

come to the research page and type in a keyword, and they would get back

a list of faculty with links to their respective lab homepages... And that is

a big shadow system, because we now have to maintain and keep it

current... That’s a very expensive product. It’s also viewed to be very

important, and so we did it. And that was a decision locally. So I said, “to

do this, will take this many months of (manpower) out of this job here.

The developer will have to, someone will have to have the business

owners do this twice a year They reviewed all that and said “Yup, the

Dean guesses it’s important, big project..” Because it’s very important for

the faculty here, they like the consulting opportunities, they want to be

sure that if a business wants to ﬁnd them, they can... we are maintaining

that as a big effort.

The IT director is conﬁdent the other large colleges, such as business and sciences
and arts, are also doing something similar. However, the smaller schools may not be able
to do so because of the lack of database expertise and the absence of a corporate relations

department to initiate and drive the project.

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There is a wide range of IT expertise among the college’s staff. For example,
some users are very comfortable with the ERP software and develop their own
spreadsheets without relying on the IT staff, while others have problems remembering
where they saved ﬁles. In the ﬁnance department, some of the “power users” also
conduct training for their colleagues. These sessions are very effective since they directly
discuss how the technology can be used in the users’ contexts, not some generic
organization. To minimize the problem of users losing their ﬁles, the college’s IT
department asked the users to use the shared folders. However, since it lacks the authority
to make this mandatory, they have made it part of the new standard image for desktop
computers using Windows 7.

So, with this new Windows 7 image we have, it’s predeﬁned that your

desktop documents are linked to the server. They’re just going to be there.

That’ll make things much easier. We didn’t have that in XP or Vista, but

with Windows 7, we’ve ﬁnally got it all ﬁgured out. That’s what I’m

running now; it’s actually kind of nice. I don’t have to worry.

The ﬁnance and planning department does not mandate a particular accounting
program for the College’s various departments. The ﬁnance director only looks at the
ﬁnal ﬁgures in Central Finance and decides based on those.

We didn’t dictate a single program, a single bookkeeping system, and

even today here, I only get involved if they’re not doing it very well. Then

we might tell them how to do it. If they don’t have problems that I can see

from the Central- that looks good- and they are following our general

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rules, so we can look at their general data, then we don’t have a single

system here we dictate.

External

Every quarter, IT personnel from across the college meet with Central IT for two
hours to share information and have training sessions on various issues, such a security,
printing, and storage. Generally, the college’s IT department has a good relationship with
Central IT.

in my case, because I do have a lot of relationships over there, it’s easy

for me we do that a lot with networking. So, for example... I have good

relationships with the campus level network, so if somebody here is going

to run some big experiment, they have a big bandwidth requirement, it’s

easy for me to give them the heads up it works out pretty well.

Over time, Central IT has become more responsive to requests from users for
changes in the ERP system. One example of a change they have requested is for the
inclusion of more codes to the ﬁeld for faculty on leave, because it does not distinguish
between types of leave, e. g. medical, sabbatical, and so on. Earlier, there was uncertainty
about why some changes could not be done.

you beg and they tell you that next time they do an update they’ll

consider it. I would say over the years they have been responsive, but

sometimes it’s taken some time. Everybody blames everybody else. You

hear that there is a limit of the software. That the software wouldn’t allow

it. We can only customize so many things at once.

197

So in some of the early years, you got what you got, and you forget asking
for anything different... I will say that they struggled a lot in the
beginning just getting through. I would say now they do a good job of
resource groups... I think there’s a lot more partnership in designing the
next applications and software or upgrades. We talk about what we need,
how it will interact with our systems, how we collaborate with the data so
that it’s optimally useful to everybody.
However, some of their concerns with Central IT’s systems do not get escalated to
management, leaving the issues unaddressed and ﬁxing the workarounds in the unit.
(The CIO) asked the dean how things were going and he says this
whole timesheet thing is awful. It was the ﬁrst time she had heard about it,
and it was quite a thing none of her staff had reported up to her that there
was this kind of issue... (this was) some months (after the event), so that
speaks to I think the issue. I think that, even if we tell some of the staff
over there does it really (get reported to their managers?)
I don’t know (whether I will mention the roll-up issue to Central IT at the
next meeting), I guess I have just gotten so used to it that I don’t think so.
I used to bring that (the need for more codes for the leave ﬁeld) up, but I
guess we just do look-up tables and we have to live with it.
I think if you take a bunch of really busy people, who have a system good

or bad, it works.

198

One reason that Central IT was perceived as being unresponsive was that it did
not have a single user “voice” to interact with. Thus, it carried out changes as and when
requested by various user groups, without evaluating its value to the overall organization.

A lot of them were the difﬁculty or problems with as they called it “it was

always (the ERP system’s) fault”... what I found was that the people from

(Central IT) were really helpful but what they had been doing, because the

research community didn’t speak with a single voice, was that if anybody

would come to them they would try to develop what they asked for. Some

of it you would think, I don’t know why anyone would want that.

Whether the person had a good idea or a bad idea, they were trying to

respond to that. They couldn’t judge if it was good idea for the research

administration. So they were just trying to be helpful, but sometimes they
were solving a non problem or there was another way to solve the problem

already in the system... So they have been very helpful, but they need a

constituency to give them a target... that is the route they would like to

take. They would like to ﬁnd a system that works well and expand it rather

than start from scratch or start from something that no one would know if

it really meets your needs.

Another challenge was that there was little recognition that because multiple units
had a stake in the IT portfolio, the teams implementing the projects needed to be more
diverse. This ﬁnally occurred after some poor implementation experiences, such as the

previous e-recruit software.

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. we’re ﬁnally, after ten years, ﬁguring out that there are three big
players: there’s the units, there’s IT, and there’s the central functional
office, whether it’s HR, ﬁnancial or students. And those three together
always have to be on the same page, and the last two years we seem to be
moving in that direction and getting there, and it’s starting to come
together nicely. Prior to that, it was tearing my hair out.
I think the big change was several really bad implementations that (had us)
up in arms saying, “why did you spend money on this? This is useless
to us, we don’t have what we need, we really need this”... for people to
ﬁnally say “wait a minute, let’s all sit down and talk about what’s really
important. Here’s our list, here’s your list, let’s go thru and prioritize” and
talk about what we can reasonably do and do well.
the last recruit and hire that we appointed two or three years ago was a
disaster of an implementation. And in my limited view, maybe that was
what was the best out there at the time. I don’t know, I wasn’t on the team
back then. Maybe it was the best decision they could make then, but... it
did not work for the University. . . and when that happens, when the Dean
ﬁnds out that their staff are spending hours and hours doing something
that is simple, they get upset.
the people working on the team were great. You had the nurse
recruiters sitting next to people like me who are talking about recruiting a
whole different population, and saying, “well, I don’t need that, but if you
really need it go ahead and I won’t take this because this isn’t that

200

important to me”. It was one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with, it

really was, and I think we’re going to have a good product with the

modiﬁcations that we’ve come up with. I think it’s going to be really
good. It was a good team effort.

The IT director believes that, previously, Central IT did not do a good job
previously at evaluating whether there was any commonality across the shadow systems
on campus. However, the recent reorganization of Central IT and the appointment of a
CIO should help to alleviate that, and other issues, such as the increasing costs of IT.

Things are becoming, I’m sure you know, more complicated. Not just the

administrative systems becoming more complicated, the engineering

software is becoming more complicated, because an engineer now has to
do design, analysis, different kind of analysis and they like to do it. So
the software is becoming bigger and more complicated, the staff have to
keep up. It’s complex; sometimes I’m surprised it works! Our costs are
generally trending up, so we’re trying to ﬁnd efﬁciencies where we can
and make better decisions about what not to do. That’s what motivating
both at the campus level, the college level and department level-
redundancy is bad. .. the campus should come to us and say “here are your
options”, can’t just tell people to quit doing things, got to say “do this
instea ”. That’s what a lot of the challenge is. I think people are alert to it.
I think highly of (the CIO). .. I think she’ll get it. I feel very positive about

her.

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One thing that he would like Central IT to do is enable users to create their own
ﬁelds in the central databases. This would stop users from downloading central data,
adding the few ﬁelds they need, and storing the data as a separate shadow database. One
example would be to add the ﬁeld “key research interests” in the faculty records. He
believes Central IT is reluctant to do so because they are concerned that providing that
kind of access to local units would compromise data security.

if we can get the data managed, then everybody’s on their own from

then on (to develop) other business logic applications at least getting

the data centralized, would be a big help for us

This is a perennial issue, but is a consequence of the difﬁculty of providing one
database for all units in the university. Central IT has improved in this regard and now,
many ﬁelds have been created because of requests from units. However, they still control
the ability to modify the central system, which is a point of contention with the users.

The central planning was never very good at acknowledging that we have

ﬁelds that we care about. That made the transition very difﬁcult because

we still needed our own system and it made keeping things up to date very

difﬁcult because every time you downloaded the new data you would

wipe out the old data and you would still have these seals that you wanted

that they didn’t care about. So we used to beg for them to leave some

empty ﬁelds and that hadn’t worked so well. I would say that they are

better now about including ﬁelds. They include it whether anybody
popular likes it or not. There are ﬁelds in database that I can’t imagine

who cares about it. I never had queries on it. . .I think you have to be very

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careful about those things, but it is one of the true challenges of having a

single database across such a large institution.

But we don’t have the ability to make changes to the central system. We

have to wait until they see the light.

A unique example of a change going the opposite way (i.e. beginning with the
departments and diffusing to the university) is the scholarship matching system.
Developed by one of the ﬁnancial managers in the College’s administrative department,
it compressed a weeks-long process into a single day. She created an Access database
that matched the criteria for the different scholarships, with the students’ attributes (based
on the data collected from Central Student Services). The project was so valuable that she
won awards from the college and was featured in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
Central IT has now taken over the application and maintains it for all the colleges on
campus that are using it.

In the past, Central IT has had some mishaps with the roll-out of new
applications. While these experiences made users wary about working with them
previously, they seem now to be keen to cooperate. For example, while the ERP system
was not very useful for transactional purposes earlier, the ﬁnance ofﬁce is now
organizing workshops for the college’s sub-departments to teach them how to use the
ERP system’s new functions, such as real-time ﬁnancials and commitments. These
workshops are conducted by employees of Central IT and Central Finance.

for example the research database. They didn’t even use employee ID,

they were still using social security numbers, so they were no key between

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the (tables)... and so we’ve gotten past those things... they do a lot with
meetings, groups, task teams, key users.

.. maybe we’re just like Microsoft in this respect, the university has a
tendency to roll out things that are kind of half done. In the database for
example, the unit-deﬁned commitment was initially rolled out a number of
years ago and it didn’t work very well at all. And I think partly, they think
users out there can help them make it better. But also what happens is
users try it and think, “well, this is funky” and they quit using it, they
don’t try it again... (Central IT) does look at improvements. We have to
train ourselves to go back and look again. The unit-deﬁned commitments
are probably pretty good.

They (Central IT) are haunted a little bit, in my opinion. They
throw things out too fast, too early, they don’t always explain to the user
why this is good for you, what will this improve in your life... You’ve got
to do more if you want them to adopt it

.. we have been trying to get people across the college— we have been
running some workshops here - so use the real-time ﬁnancials, to use the
unit-deﬁned commitments. . ., they do look at it. I have asked the staff here
to look at it... They have to use it, or get into the habit of using it...

I have asked all of the departments to send their ﬁnancial people to see if
they can’t adapt the real-time ﬁnancial and rely less on their own systems,
to the extent their own systems are duplicating. If they’re just data

entering something that they typed a requisition for, and it went directly

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into the general ledger, why are we doing that? I think people are really
struggling to keep up these days...
We do our best to leverage what we can get out of the central system... I
do think it’s part of the emphasis on bench marking and improving our
administrative efﬁciency. We probably will do more of that.
.. one of the reasons I wanted to do the workshops we do here is we do
like it, we do want them to adopt it. But just saying, “0 Susie you really
ought to use this new system,” when she’s barely keeping up is not
realistic. I would say that there’s more of a push because there’s a feeling
that we are very inefﬁcient in the IT area and that this is something that
we could do much more efﬁciently.

Another tactic employed by the college administration is to encourage users to
test whether the data in their systems was similar to that in the ERP system, which was
the “book of record”. This was to make them “comfortable” with the ERP system.

some shadow systems have gone away and some others have probably

either stayed around or been developed... for quite a long time after the
implementation, there is the comfort level. So, getting people past the
comfort level....we spend a lot of time trying to convince people where
there’s redundancy get rid of it... Your fmancials should tie out to (the

ERP system), and if they don’t, then there’s a problem. Your shadow

system isn’t matching, there’s a problem, you have to ﬁx it. You have to

ﬁx it so that (the ERP system) is the deﬁnitive source. So, over time when

they’ve got comfortable, “yes, this is working”, untying out some of those

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shadow systems. .. not all of them went away but some of them went

away.

One tactic Central IT uses to encourage local units to use its services (e.g. ﬁle
storage) is to indicate that users who do so will be in compliance with various policies
(e. g. HIPAA and FERPA). Thus, while there are no mandates and units can run their own
services if they want to, they would, if they do so, also have to handle compliance issues.

That has encouraged us to use such services as they have. All along,

FERPA, all these issues, have become more and more

burdensome. . .That’s one of their strategies I think to attract people to use

Central things. “If you use this, check the box.”

Sometimes, it is hard for users to understand why Central IT decides to be more
restrictive on some issues versus others. For example, the HR director would like more
the interface for the ERP portal to be simpliﬁed, as it causes many errors and would save
a lot of time. In addition, it is widely used, which means that it would be easy to obtain
buy-in from users. However, it is not high on Central IT’s list of projects.

ITS has the score card that they use, and it has all their projects on it and

the impact and how they determine what gets done, and sometimes there

are things like just changing the look of a page or a portal, or making the

functionality better for a search, and for my mind that is a little thing, but

maybe there is something deeper technology wise that makes that
important. Or maybe there’s an indexing issue that I don’t know about so.

To me it seems a little bit backwards, but I think they just learned over the

last ten years that units usually know best how to do their business, and

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what the role of IT is and HR is to give us good systems and good

guidance, and good policy, and oversight based on what they know our

needs are.

The HR department occasionally works with Central IT to develop speciﬁc
reports. Often, when they build new reports or complex queries, Central IT is informed so
it can then customize these objects and make them available to other units, making them
into ‘canned reports’. These developments are broadcast to other users via an email list.
One example is the research administration domain. These reports are important for
complying with regulations, and require data from the HR and Finance databases to be
integrated into a single document. Other large colleges also share their reports with the
rest of the university.

The IT director is part of the IT Commons, which discusses topics like Active
Directory, Exchange and SharePoint. Central IT attends this meeting and informs them
what it is carrying out currently on those topics. Another group, which reports to the C10,
is more formally-organized and discusses broader issues, such as cost models and
schedules for ﬁrture upgrades. This group only consists of the IT directors of the major
units on campus, both service (such as student housing) and educational. Besides these
administrative groups, other members of the college’s IT department are part of cross-
campus groups on different interests, such as cluster computing, web development, Macs
and Windows administration. These groups are less policy-oriented and more concerned
with hands-on management. The ﬁnance department’s users are also active in various

groups on business intelligence, institutional research, and development.

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They have their own communities of interest. They kind of get together

pretty well.

The ﬁnance director meets annually with a network of her peers in other
universities across the US. They mainly discuss budgetary issues, but have expanded to
IT somewhat. For example, they talked about their IT staffing.

I think we feel we are more heavily staffed in the speciﬁc IT areas and not

evenly distributed throughout the college... we thought in our own small

group we might be more successful in doing that because we might ask
questions like what’s done centrally, what do you have to rely on yourself

for, that kind of thing. .. (we are) actually pretty good in terms of what we

have available and the kind of data you can pull for yourself.

Internally, she is involved with the budget administrators group (BAG), which is a
large group hosted monthly by the Provost. She is also a member of “Big Bag”, which
groups together the larger schools. There’s also the “Small Bag” group, which groups
together small schools.

The HR director is part of the HR unit liaison group, which meets monthly. It
discusses policy changes and their impact on processes and on how data is stored. This
group is closely involved with the implementation of the new recruiting system. She is
also part of a HR Metrics group, which is coming up with indicators for measuring
faculty performance. Since she used to work at Central HR previously, she often relies on
her contacts there to ﬁnd out what they are.

I have my peers, people that I work with, people that I know. I pick up the

phone and I say “what are you using”? I can go and look at and say “oh

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that’s nice, oh that’s nifty”, and we come back with two or three ideas of

what to do and what not to do based on what we saw.

Audits are carried out by the university’s internal auditors on different aspects of
the college’s IT environment. An upcoming one is on data management.

that is a big issue on campus, because we know the data is all over the

place

with all the security issues, we’re going thru our ﬁles and determining

who should have it and shouldn’t even be there. Do we even use it enough,

or do we need this column or is it something we’ve always had and we

really don’t need it? (this) been ongoing for probably more than a year

The ﬁnance and planning department are very keen on being involved in Central
IT’s planning of new systems.

all of us tend to be fairly active in various central university programs

that are interested in management university systems. We want a lot of

input to speak up for how the new systems are managed... because we’re

very data-conscious here at engineering, we have a lot of very skilled staff

we are either asked to be on committees, or if we know about it ourselves,

and nobody has asked, we ask to be on it. We want someone representing

our interests on this... the central staff of the College of Engineering are

by and large are recognized as pretty savvy users and are often asked to be

part of these.

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The increasing pervasiveness of IT in organizations means that hiring an

employee requires an assessment of their IT skills, ﬁnding out what systems they would

need to access for their job, and the type of training they would need if they were hired.

Case Vignette 10: EduSucceed — College of Business

The College of Business has more than 150 faculty, and about 1,000 graduate and

1,000 undergraduate students. It is made up of nine academic departments, and is a

highly-regarded business school.

 
     
 
  
 
 
   
     
 
     
 
  
 
  

Governance
External:
Personal contacts with Central IT, monthly
meetings with Central IT, IT Commons,
peers in other universities, various user groups

    
 

  
 

Internal:
IT manager direct report to unit head;
single lntemal IT unit; collaborative;
structured and ad-hoc help request
process

 

IT Portfollo
Central:
ERP, Business Objects, CLearn, student
admission system, teaching performance
measurement system

 
 
 
 

 

 
 

Local:
Excel, Access, multiple student systems,
lectu re capm re system

    

 

      
    
     
     
     

Drlft

Checklist of students'
course of study

Course evaluation
system

Facilities reservation
system

Course evaluation
system

 

Figure 14: Governance mechanisms, I T portfolio and instances of drift for
EduSucceed 's College of Business

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leWonmoﬁo

Past

In the last 10 years, EduSucceed changed its IT proﬁle: from having 40 to 50
systems that were not integrated to an ERP system. This change has been accompanied
by a shift in workload from central units to local units. For example, a decade ago,
purchasing would be handled by central units- they would engage vendors, process
invoices and make payments. Today, with the ERP system, these activities are carried out
online by staff in the local units- they make requisitions, approve orders, and fulﬁll
payment requests.

(it went from) not being very advanced to being very, very advanced...

different schools & colleges with their own ﬂavor for whatever they need
to do. ..

there’s been a major work shift from Central units to academic units. . ..

that changed the nature of staff work in academic units

Man;

The business college sees itself as an IT innovator. For example, its admissions
SYStem was the basis for an internally-developed social networking site for students. The
Personal data that students entered into this site supported the creation of a career services
SYStem, with features such as a resume-builder, job postings, and job matching. When
these students graduated, this same information was used to develop an alumni

management system. Finally, the data in these systems is used as the basis for a business

intelligence system.

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When the university moved to the ERP system, the business school stopped using
the admissions and alumni management systems as these functions were now handled
centrally. However, these systems were still used internally with the data names being
drawn from the ERP system. Currently, there is an initiative to close that down and move
the business school completely to the ERP system.

The IT department has built many applications for the student services department
for tasks such as course bidding, student advising, and job interview bidding. These are
used to manage internal transactions, and once the tasks are complete (e. g. the students
have selected their courses), the data is extracted as an Excel ﬁle and uploaded to the
ERP system. The law college has a similar system for its students. The student services
director does not think a university-wide system will be built for course selection,
because it will be too complicated.

A degree audit system was built by Central IT and the business college
volunteered to test it, since it does not offer majors or concentrations. The student
services team used it behind the scenes and tested it repeatedly to improve it. However,
when they informed Central IT that they wanted to release it publicly to students, it was
stopped. To overcome that, they put up a simple checklist that students could use. They
were quite unhappy when they learnt that the arts and sciences colleges had built one and
released it to their students, especially since their degrees were much more complex. The
student services director of the business college would have preferred it if every unit was
using a central system.

The current ERP system is very useful for activities within functions, e. g. ﬁnance

staff performing ﬁnancial transactions. However, working across functions is much more

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difﬁcult, and this is reﬂected in the system’s features. For example, the data is structured
such that the same element means different things in different tables. The report interface
is designed to run transactions within a particular domain, not across domains. This issue
is due to differences between users and system designers over the ERP system’s role: it
was designed with transactional needs in mind, but today, some users are asking for more
information analysis features. Central IT is working to close this gap by asking users
what their needs are.

as soon as you start working horizontally across the organization,

that’s when the system really starts to fail... you can have the same

element in a variety of tables within the same universe... if you pick the

wrong place, you could come back with highly misleading data... if you

want to see a snapshot or a summary your enrolment activity in one

place, you can’t

gets back to that whole Visioning thing and where we want to be when

we grow up... trying to guess what people want, we don’t know where

we’re going... the (Central IT) organization (has) to try and guess where

the university is going and where they should put their resources, and they

do that by interviewing deans and directors and put(ting) together a virtual

strategic plan based on what people are thinking.

The ﬁnance director feels that, while the systems have changed signiﬁcantly, the
users have not. Most users still see their work as being transactional, and are not aware of
the beneﬁt of analyzing the information available in the system. This is slowly changing

across the college.

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Now we ﬁnd ourselves with this rich data collection that we've built up
over 20 years and we have data that the university doesn't have.
the question is how much those people have continued to grow in using
that as opposed to just how much they’ve changed the nature of how they
did their old job from manual to technology. We are probably industry
leaders in higher education. from an administrative systems point of
view.... (but) the culture is still .. years back... we came from a
transaction-based world that was all paper. All those transactions were
then changed to appropriate technology but the output and the information
derived from those transactions hasn’t... become part of our culture. We
have a transaction culture- everybody puts information into the system,
things get done. reports get generated, but we haven’t yet embraced
how we can really use this data to (be) more proactive. and to seek
opportunities...

Recently, some enhancements have been made to the ERP system’s reporting
application. For example, users can now schedule reports to run automatically at the end
of every month, and can specify “current year” instead of having to type in speciﬁc dates.
While these features have always been present in the system, they were not made
available earlier because they were not considered a priority by senior management and
Central IT.

It took a lot of pushing from expert users to say, “This will make life a

lot easier, we know you can do it, we know the technology is there,

Business Objects tells us it’s there, can you do it, can you do it?” It took

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over 6 months to get current time period, previous time period, current

ﬁscal year, previous ﬁscal year, but it’s going to save a vast amount of

time... Now, those seem like little things, those are not high strategy kinds

of issues, but yet they are the kinds of things that enable you to get the

information pushed out once you do get it together... There’s been a lot of

push at lower levels Up at your level, Jim, I bet you never once gave a

thought to “Gee, I wish I had the current ﬁscal year ability!”

However, even within the business college, some departments have ignored the
ERP system. For example, the IT department kept its paper-based, manual process. They
would do the minimum required to adhere to guidelines regarding the use of the ERP
system- c. g. they would enter transactions but manage their activities using spreadsheets.
The ﬁnance department has helped them by deveIOping queries so that they can extract
the necessary data from the ERP system and import it directly into Excel.

they’d type into an Excel spreadsheet and manage... color-coding,

lining them up, retyping into journal entries... There’s just kind of like no

right way to do it, and so everybody’s history, tradition, everybody’s

culture determines how it is done.

Previously, teaching performance was analyzed locally. It is now managed
centrally. The college’s IT department extracts data from Central IT’s stafﬁng system for
business intelligence purposes, such as examining teaching loads and performing

historical analysis of courses and faculty.

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£1an

The student services director believes this feature is available in the ERP system
but has not been switched on yet. They would like a system to automatically update a
student’s course of study when she registers for a new course. Currently, the two
ﬁmctions are separated and students have to update them manually. In addition, they ﬁnd
it difficult to plan for their courses without knowing when they will be offered and who
will be teaching them. The director would also like this to be integrated with the course

registration.

Examples of Drift

The college’s IT manager is not a fan of the phrase “shadow system”. According
to him, the college does not persist in using a system if the same function is available I
from a Central application.

I don't like the word 'shadows'. Shadow system to me means that we’re

doing something... and we're using something as a replacement. When the

university does something that matches up to what we've done, we

generally don't do ours anymore.

Use of Excel for ﬁnancial reporting

Excel is widely used to prepare ﬁnancial reports for three main reasons: the lack
of certain types of data, the lack of data at a required level of granularity, and the
complexity of the existing reporting tool. Central IT has been meeting the local units to

understand their reasons for using Excel, so that it can overcome those issues and move

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everyone to the central reporting application. Central IT has also deployed a new
reporting application that is easier to use.
(Central IT) has had a big push to try and understand why they do this, and
to close the gaps... they are listening, some of it’s taking a little while, but
they are deﬁnitely and they have added functionalities like being able to
put in unit—deﬁned commitments so you can really plot things out
(the new reporting tool is) limited in its scope but really easy to get
(data)... make(s) more data visible at a time so that you’re not having to

click click click all the way down...

Facilities reservation system

This has historically been a functionality handled completely locally. However,
the university now wants to make better use of its facilities, and is urging all units to
cooperate on a new central system. Central IT realized that any system it built would not
meet the needs of all units on campus. Hence, it has built a load processor into which
units can upload their information. This has been much better accepted by the local units.

(the space management system is) a good shadow that works very well for

us, but they have no idea what we’ve been doing... (more accurate to call

it a) supplemental system... supplemental systems are useful, they take

authoritative data and mix it with local authoritative data, so there’s not a

lot of redundancy.

it’s a local system tied to the central system and everyone in the university

is very comfortable with that... there’ve been a lot of overtures out there

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saying we want or Central wants to work with schools and colleges to
understand that local-central data connect... (since) there’ll be local data
that does not belong in Central at all... the issue then has been getting the

local IT support, the players, to want to play with Central.

ourse evaluation svstem

While the rest of the university is using a central system for this purpose, the
business college is using its own system. This is for two reasons: a) the faculty have some
issues with the statistical properties of the central system, and b) by keeping it local, the
college has greater control over when it is switched on and off. This is even though the
central system is well-integrated with the ERP system and the learning management
system, CLearn. However, another reason for the faculty’s reluctance might be that the
central evaluation system crashed the ﬁrst time it was run and lost data.

the course evals lead to faculty tenure and what. So nobody wants to be

the one to say this is the year we’re switching to the university one... They

just don’t want to go there. What’s wrong with us keeping using this? In

fact they were very, very anxious when we switched from paper to

electronic... Because there’s a lot of research that when you do electronic,

the response rate was down. So, you know, how do we coerce, persuade,

automatically email students and you know if you have ﬁve classes you

get ﬁve emails and you do one you get four, just too sensitive to that. . ..

So, of course they lost huge credibility. You told us this was better...

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IT Governance and Management .

Internal

The business college spends $5 million out of its $130 million budget on IT. Their
IT department, with 35 employees, supports the college’s research and teaching needs,
while the college’s administration relies on Central IT for its systems. The college’s IT
department used to focus more on administrative systems, but has moved away from that.
However, it does maintain and develop many student services applications, such as the
course bidding system and recruitment system.

The IT manager sees himself as being an innovator. Some examples of where the
college has been ahead of the university include adopting Wi-Fi in 1996 and setting up
lecture capture systems in all classrooms today. Currently, the different colleges are
experimenting with different software solutions, and perhaps over time, this
experimentation will lead to a common solution. The professional schools are more
innovative than the other schools, probably because they have students with work
experience who know what is available in the commercial or industrial sector.

5 (I try to) stay ahead of whatever that demand curve is (and then) sell (the)
idea(s) to the deans and faculty and departments... If you don’t do it at the

right moment, you can go too early, you can pick the wrong thing... if

you’re too late, you’re behind the curve. You see, the hard part of my job

is that you never know what the incoming class is going to be like, you’re

never know what new technology is going to hit in the year between

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September and September... If you don’t observe that, you don’t prepare

for that, then you have this crush of demand.

An example of Central IT being innovative was the adoption of CLearn, the
learning management system, a decade ago. The business college was asked to test the
prototype and the library staff worked with the faculty in putting up the material online.

That’s a great example where the campus was ahead of the curve. It’s

pretty rare. I’m not saying that as a slam. You’re rarely ahead of the curve,

that was one was where we were really ahead of the curve. It really helped

a lot, because otherwise what you would have seen was departments, some

would have gone out and bought Blackboard, some would use SharePoint,

some would have and then we would have this real mixture...

The college’s IT department is very focused on the students’ experiences at
various stages: recruitment, enrolment, and collaboration. The IT department runs a
“white-glove care” help-desk seven days a week. In addition, it also handles network
engineering, software development, video production, classroom support, research
computing, and training small numbers of staff in collaboration with Central IT. The
department works with faculty on an ad hoc basis. It does not use ITIL or other
methodologies because it is too small to implement them. However, Central IT uses ITIL.

you know, they have 49 guys for every 1 guy that I have, and so they

can spend time on these deep conversations and we just can’t. But we
don’t ignore it, we just do it in smaller ways, there’s not a system we

designed that doesn’t come with documentation or we don’t review a data

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structure before we implement it. It’s not the Wild West; they’re not just

making changes to the data. We just have to do it in a simpler way.

There are no regular meetings within the business college to discuss how IT can
play a role in school strategies. This is reﬂected in the uneven development with regard to
IT within the college. Some units are more advanced than others, because some
departments and employees are unwilling to let go of their old systems. Another reason is
that the college’s success has made it more resistant to change. In addition, some of the
staff responsible for managing IT in the departments who see their jobs as more about
ensuring their users can do their work, than deploying new technology. Finally, some
departments have been more vocal with their demands and have managed to get their
needs met that way. For example, when some faculty members repeatedly asked the dean
for funding for some databases, he gave in to their request and they have now created a
separate research computing function with 10 to 15 staff.

unequal is the word I’d... use to describe our history.. the squeakiest

wheel made the loudest noise and got the most response... I’m thinking of

Admissions where the feeling is that their need for information is so

speciﬁc and bizarre need to be able to cut things 7 different ways as

opposed to the 5 we can get from the system... we also have the people

who do have some responsibility for dealing with the technology who

basically ﬂat out say, “I am about supporting the program, I am not hired

to do this kind of stuff, that‘s why I don’t look at these things on a

regular basis...” So, some of that may just be “that’s not what I’m here

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for”... It’s hard to change we’re good enough, right? Jim Collins, you

know, what’s the barrier to great? Being good.

One beneﬁt of the college’s lack of centralization in terms of IT is that it enables
individuals with strong opinions to drive change within the organization.

.. an individual who is considered the expert and has the drive to pull
together a group of people or coalition can actually effect signiﬁcant
change, because you can bring together a set of voices that say “we need
to do this” and because there’s no one point of leadership for that
particular area, then you can cause things to happen.

There used to be an Information Support unit within the college, whose role was
to help the different constituencies- students, faculty, and technology- make better use of
the data that was available. This was closed down when a new dean took over.

The student services director is very focused on constantly improving her
department’s business processes and asks her staff to write down narratives describing
their roles and activities. Her department has a “team calendar” spreadsheet that lists all
responsibilities by position and by date. New employees quickly learn their jobs because
all they need to do is ﬁlter the spreadsheet by their name, print it out, and access the
shared folder under each topic. Each shared folder is organized by process numbers and
contains instructions and sample emails.

Her team is also very savvy with Excel, and works hard to improve its data
analysis procedures and skills. They do approach the software support person in the IT

department once in a while for help with SQL.

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Some times forcing people a little bit beyond their comfort level to say, no

we will be using these tools to do this. I know you can print 30 things out,

study them and highlight, but we could query that too.

Everybody on my team right now, I just say, “Well, you can do that, just

use your v-Iookup and do it.” And they can do it. Other units will be

doing it correctly, but maybe not as efficiently. ..

Unlike most other business schools that are considered its peers, EduSucceed’s
business college has not adopted a “best of breed” strategy. The IT manager sees that
strategy as problematic because the organization ends up with a non-integrated collection
of systems. He has followed a path of building all the systems the college requires off a
single database. That way, they are integrated from the start. Operationally, this strategy
means that EduSucceed employees have an integrated view of their clients; for example,

ﬁrms have more than one role as they are seen as donors, hirers, and a source of students.

External

In EduSucceed, Central IT does not make anything mandatory. This can make it
difficult for employees in the units to plan for the long term, in terms of what information
they should collect, and impedes their continued evolution.

(Central IT is more into making) suggestions... nudging, pushing... we’re

not big on mandates... consistency across academic units is not something

that Central has been very effective at requiring or demanding or

mandating. That’s just not how (EduSucceed) does things.

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We haven’t crossed the chasm from teenager to adult. We’re struggling

with that because we’re so decentralized. There’s no overseeing body that

can say..... everyone’s kind of doing their own thing, their own impetus,

based on their own resources, leadership, proclivity.

(It is) hard to manage ﬁ'om the middle... without clear direction from the

leadership on what the goals of the program are... 2,3,4,5 years out...

it’s really difﬁcult to provide the information that might be used

The business college is involved in various university-level discussion groups on
IT. These include a strategy-level discussion group and monthly unit liaison meetings
between Central IT and functional staff from various departments in the college, such as
the ﬁnance, HR, research administration, and student administration. During these liaison
meetings, Central IT informs users about new developments in the university’s IT
infrastructure, and users do the same from their point of view. There is also a Business
Objects user group for those who use the reporting application. It has hundreds of
members, and is not very useful because of the wider range of skills and knowledge
within the group. This made the users frustrated- the training was either too easy or too
complex. This led some of the advanced users, including the business college’s ﬁnancial
accountant, to set up their own Expert Business Objects user group. This group has also
created “Business Objects Television” to help train less-experienced users.

It’s people like myself (the student services director), academic unit leads

and people from (Central IT) regularly will come to that and say “these are

our projects”. We think these are the priorities and one or two times a

year they will say, “The provost wants us to work on this. This is an

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enhancement we need to make. (The ERP vendor) is coming out with

version...something and that means we have to do modiﬁcations. So we

don’t have inﬁnite time, we programmers, to give to you, but these are
ideas you’ve been tossing at us and telling us. Let’s sit here as a group and

(ﬁnd out) what interests are the most...”

In addition to these formal links, many users use their personal relationships with
Central IT staff to ensure that their needs are met. However, if a unit’s employees are
less-skilled or less demanding, it is possible that that unit will have less inﬂuence on
Central IT.

(It’s a) quid pro quo system... when we’re moving in a new system, I’ll

move all my stuff in and work in your testing environment and you can

check through everything, and in return, I want, when I say I’ve got an
issue, to be able to get somebody looking at it more quickly than perhaps
just working through the helpdesk.

if one of us isn’t generating that interaction or that prodding that we

should get involved with this group because it’s going to affect (us a)

few years down the stream...

we are pretty savvy about using what is there and then pushing back to say

we need my team actually has done things like say it’s too bad this data

element isn’t in the dataset and will push back to the ITS and say do you
have plans to add that data element? If not, can you give -- some times

it’s there but it’s not there for us to have.

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when we tell them the convoluted ways we’re going around to get what

we need, we were able actually to persuade them to make something a

query that before they were delivering as a ﬂat report that you couldn’t

ﬁlter, sort or do anything with.

The IT manager is part of the IT Commons, which groups together IT managers
from across campus. It has been around since 2002, and the original intent was to help
Central IT plan the infrastructure needs of the university, so as to avoid the tragedy of the
commons. They formed some permanent working groups for areas such as wireless
networking and networking hardware. By laying down minimum standards for things
such as the type of ﬁber that should be laid, the type of distribution layer switch, and the
thickness of the conduit, they helped prevent users buying the cheapest devices they
could ﬁnd. They also changed the costing structure, so that it is now shared with Central
IT and the local units. These activities took place between 2002 and 2005. They next
shifted their attention to shared services, such as learning management systems and
email. Their progress there is shown in the decline in the number of Microsoft Exchange
servers from 8 to 3, and in the merging of their Windows Active Directories into a single
one. This group is informally linked to Central IT.

So they gather input from us, we tell them where the pain points are, and

together we say well,1 these are the top 3 points, and that’s where we go

off...

Now, they believe they have gone as far as they can without Central IT becoming
more involved in planning the university’s infrastructure. The current IT rationalization

exercise taking place across the university is an outcome of this. Its objective is to

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develop a new governance structure to decide at which units and at which level different
IT-relevant decisions should be taken. The IT manager is concerned that this should not
prevent innovation by the local units. However, commodity activities like email should
be handled centrally or be transferred to a vendor as part of a cloud computing initiative.
When this has happened in the past, the IT manager has managed to avoid laying off his
staff by converting them into newer roles. One example of the IT manager’s preferred
outcome is what he would like to see happening with Microsoft’s Ofﬁce Communication
Server. This is currently running out of the business college but is supporting 12,000
users from across the campus who are running Microsoft Instant Messenger and Live
Meeting. Such applications should be transferred to Central IT once they have taken off
and become a shared service across campus. However, there is no such mechanism
currently.

so we're coming up with a governance structure, but not a governance

structure that prevents innovation at the edge. That's the challenge. We

don't want to kill that engine in law and business and medical school who

are probably are leaders...

This is where we miss it today. There’s nobody in central campus for here.

We can’t even petition to say “we’ve done as much as we can do with this.

The business school shouldn’t be running Ofﬁce Communication Servers.

This should now be a shared service. You take it.” That’s where this new

governance structure comes in... then they should be able to take the

same, decide now something is a commodity, take it to a cloud... But there

are funding issues with that, it’s not going to be easy.

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The business college’s IT department is willing to approach other units to get
more information about an application it is planning to install, but this is not common
behavior. Sometimes, they share applications they have developed with Central IT. For
example, they passed the source code of an earlier version of a business intelligence
system they developed to Central IT.

We typically don’t do that. We don't take a turf survey and ﬁnd out,

“Well, they’ve got a bit, they've got a bit, let’s start from there”

While some parts of the business college are known for being very independent,
others are respected for their collaboration with other units across campus. There are no
guidelines or norms in this regard from the college’s senior management.

there’s not a lot of consistency across (our sub-units) because our

own inconsistency then ﬁlters right up to interactions with Central (IT)

some people think we’re the University of (the name of the Business

College), you know, there’s nothing else, in other cases, there are some

pretty good examples of where we can be leaders. There isn’t a lot of that

consistency out there. . ..there has not been a top-down in this school to
press that.

The business college at EduSucceed is part of the Association of top 25 Business
Week-ranked business schools. Within that structure, employees from different
universities who are in the same function interact with each other. This leads to “chimney
interactions” among these higher education institutions, not little high-level institutional
interaction. The IT managers in this grouping often survey each other via email when

they are planning some new IT implementation. For each application, they ask each

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other: what do you use, why do you use it, who does it serve, how much does it cost, do
you like it, and what would you do differently? The person asking the questions is
responsible for consolidating the information and presenting it to the group. The business
college’s IT manager at EduSucceed used it when deciding what to use for the lecture

capture system.

Other Interviews: EduSucceed - Senior IT Manager, Local IT

The IT manager of the largest college in EduSucceed has worked at the university
for more than 20 years in many different jobs. In that time, he has been involved in a
variety of major IT projects, such as the shift from mainframes to distributed computers,
the Windows 95 roll-out, and moving networks from Novell/Netware to Windows NT.
His current college has 19,000 students, 5000 staff and faculty, and 10,000 computers.

He has been the IT director at this college for the last ﬁve years, and reports to the
operations director, who reports to the associate dean for budget, who ﬁnally reports to
the dean. This hierarchy is similar to the positions of other IT directors on campus. Only
the IT managers of the business and engineering colleges report directly to the dean. This
distance from the dean concerns him, although it may be changing. For example, he is
meeting the Dean for the second time in his ﬁve years in this role. He attributes this
change to the current IT rationalization exercise.

One of my concerns in my role is that I am buried deep in the

organization. When I talked to other CIO’s, their concern is that I don’t

hear enough of the business issues in my role and I agree with them. I

have said tactfully and diplomatically to the people I report to that I would

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like to hear more about the strategic challenges that the Dean sees I
don’t think I hear enough of that frankly because I am too low on the
chain... There’s not a direct reporting line that’s changing. I am starting
to have more communication directly with the associate dean for budget...
We all know each other really well, I talk to (the IT managers of the
business and engineering colleges) all the time. They have heard my angst
about being buried a little too deep... me with my IT, I hear these issues
and I can go away thinking, “how can IT help?” And that’s what I’m

trying to do.

IT Portfolio

Current

His college uses some centrally-provided software: the ERP system for ﬁnance,
HR and student administration, instructional software, and Microsoft Exchange and
IMAP for email. A local shadow database is used to monitor the key performance
indicators (KPI) of staff and faculty. SharePoint is a collaboration application that was
rolled out in the college about two years ago.

The departments in his college use Quicken or Microsoﬁ Money to track their
budgets. This is because the central system is not up-to-date, i.e. it does not have real-
time data. It is more useful for the overall university.

If you want to know what’s in the checkbook, people will create their own

local system. It’s more of a balance and check system for themselves.

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IT Governance and Management

Internal

This college’s IT budget is $6 million: $2 million is for salaries, $2 million is paid
to Central IT for the college’s use of the university’s network, and the balance is spent on
hardware and software for the college. This college pays for a large part of the costs of
the university’s network ($2 million out of $7 million) because it has the most users. The
IT manager provides the 70 departments in his college with funding to upgrade their
computers, based on the total number of employees they have. His department does not
determine how the money is spent; it only mandates that the computers be no more than
four years old.

. The departments make their budget requests in fall, and ﬁnd out by summer
whether or not they have been approved. In the last ﬁve years, almost all requests for
additional funding have been rejected, and he looks for ways to help them by ﬁnding out
if other departments have the resources they want and are willing to share them. These
resources range from servers, applications, cycles of spare processing time, server rooms,
and staff.

He has thirty full-time employees and about ten temporary student employees.
Some of them run the college’s help-desk, while others are in charge of research
computing, networking, security, and Windows servers. Another department handles
instructional computing. Although he does not oversee them, he meets their director
every week to discuss their plans. Currently, they are talking about the impact of social

networking, such as Facebook and Twitter. There is also a separate Management

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Information Systems department, which manages the KPI database and is closer to the
budget and ﬁnance department. Centrally-provided applications, such as the ERP system,
are supported by Central IT. An application called “Keyservers” is used to track the
college’s software licenses and the number of machines. However, once in a while, they
will ﬁnd some computers that are not in the database, because they are only switched on
irregularly.

He has no direct authority to mandate that the departments in his college use
certain applications. He negotiates their choices with them, and uses a different approach
for different issues.

Just like the University, we’re decentralized. Even though I work at the

college level, the (X) department can tell me no. We will have a

discussion then. I’m trying to persuade them to cooperate with the college.

They want to do something that will beneﬁt the (X) department. We may

let them do it. If I feel strongly enough about what they’re doing, I will

build them their own separate shadowing system. I can bring in the

pressure- “Dean’s ofﬁce muscle” as we call it. I don’t try to do that too

oﬁen. Typically we try to work these things out. Usually the (X)

department or (Y) department has a good reason for doing something

differently or separately. At other times they need to cooperate, so

we have those discussions.

Twenty of the seventy departments in the college have their own IT teams,

comprising about sixty staff. They report to their department heads, not the college’s IT

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manager. He has some limited informal oversight over them, and works to increase their
cooperation. One way he does this is by having social meetings every two weeks.
the reporting line to me is a dotted line. It is not formal, they can
tell me no. If they tell me no, I can go to their boss and pose pressure...
because I work at the college level that there is a sense of being defensive,
that we don’t respect them enough because they don’t work at the college
level. It is my job to assure them that we value their skills and that they’re
one of us. But, they don’t always believe that. We have professional
disagreements and sometimes it gets intense. My job is to always work
that out and I tell my folks we’re in a marriage here, there’s no divorce.
We have to get along.
We regularly meet once every two weeks and not everyone can come. It’s
opt in, opt out. We try to build community and relationship with folks.
We have email groups where we talk frequently. I meet face to face, one
on one. I’ve started with the really big units a bi-monthly meeting. I
brought them together, we go out to a restaurant, sometimes have beer.
Purpose of just building a relationship to help when we’re working
together day to day... We actually get along pretty well. Like a family, we
have arguments sometimes, we yell. We’ve created quite a good system.
He is concerned about security, especially with the shift to laptops and portable
thumb drives. So, his team is slowly moving toward encrypting laptop hard-disks, and
reminds users not to place sensitive data on portable devices. There was an instance when

a member of the public found a thumb drive with sensitive data about the college.

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Luckily, the ﬁnder mailed the thumb-drive to the Dean, who proceeded to use it as an
example in his discussions with the other college’s senior administrators.
We don’t want to be in the newspaper about a major security breach...
That story resonated through the college and we use that story when we

talk to the faculty and staff.

External

While users approach Central IT if they have any issues with the central systems,
the IT manager takes a longer-term and broader perspective in his role as an intermediary
between the college and Central IT. He collects feedback from the department chairs and
Deans about the central systems, and presents an anonymized summary of their responses
to the leadership of his college and Central IT. One concern faculty often mention is the
overwhelming administrative burden they are placed under, with the various systems they
have to use- instructional support, grant proposals, grade management, email, and so on.

how can we make the work we do at (the university) simpler? That’s

what I hear all the time. When we go into (the ERP system), why does it

look so different from (the instructional system)? Why does email look so

different from those two things? Can’t we ﬁgure out ways to make things

more similar?

He is part of the IT Commons, a grouping of IT managers from across campus. It
was begun by a former university CIO about six to seven years ago. The aim was to build
a community and to coordinate the work of the IT managers. They meet once a week for

two hours and were not integrated with the rest of the university’s leadership. Before the

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current CIO, they used to be de facto in charge of the university’s IT. The current IT
rationalization exercise will change this, as one objective is a new governance structure,
where IT and functional leaders will be integrated. One of the biggest achievements of
the IT Commons, according to this IT manager, is the reduction in the number of email
servers. Now, almost all units use, or are planning to use, the Exchange server provided
by Central IT.

Other improvements have been a shared help desk system called Footprints, and a
shared IMAP email service. He hopes the same will happen for other applications, such
as SharePoint, a document collaboration application. His college began running it 2 years
ago, and currently, he is supporting about 10 other units that are using SharePoint off his
servers. It is not offered by Central IT, but he hopes that it will soon be, so that he can
reduce the burden on his staff.

Before, each was building IT in our environment without respect for what

others were doing. We were making huge redundant silos- we had email

servers in every college. We had separate domains, separate networks- in

fact, we were competing with each other for who could build the best and

the greatest... our CIO said, “We’re wasting a lot of money doing this

redundant work. Can we try to work together a little more?”

What I’ve been trying to do in my area is get my IT people to focus on

things that add value to what we do. If someone else can provide, why

should I provide it? Something that’s unique to (my college) is probably

the research computing that we do. Some of our administrative

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processes. . .- we do things a little different in some areas from the rest of

the campus and I need to focus on those.

I want to use SharePoint, but I don’t want to run it. Just like email, I want to use

it, but not run it... This IT rationalization project that is underway will reassess

what I should be providing and what (the CIO) should be providing.

The different groups in his department (e. g. servers, cluster computing etc) meet
their peers from across campus weekly or less often. There are also several email lists,
including one for IT jobs on campus, as the IT managers would rather hire someone from
within the university.

rather than losing the really good people to the outside world, we’ve created a

mail group on campus IT jobs. There’s value in that. I would rather lose one of

my guys to someone to another area on campus, keep them in the company... the
longer you’ve been there the more you know the culture. That’s invaluable and

that can take awhile to get familiar with.

Other Interviews: EduSucceed - Senior IT Manager, Central IT

This IT manager has been working with EduSucceed before the ERP system was
implemented more than a decade ago. She is currently in charge of the ongoing IT
rationalization exercise, which was put in place partly because of a decrease in ﬁmding
from the state government.

EduSucceed is a very decentralized organization. There are few common policies
across units and unit leaders make almost all of their decisions autonomously. This makes

it difficult to introduce university-wide systems. Each unit has its own IT team, and these

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teams do not report to Central IT. This structure has remained the same since before the
ERP system was installed. The Central IT function was also divided into a few different
units (infrastructure, ERP, and instructional IT) and these are in the midst of being
combined.

EduSucceed was one of the pioneers among higher education institutions in using
an ERP system. The motivation for the project was the lack of a single authoritative
source of inforrnatiOn. One consequence of this was that different units would end up
recruiting the same student. To overcome this problem, a governance committee
composed of information stewards was set up. These stewards were individuals from
different domains across the university who used particular sets of data, e. g. admission or
purchasing. This committee was not based on the university’s hierarchy or organizational
structure, but on job responsibility. The project was ﬁinded centrally, and units that
provided manpower were repaid. The Provost insisted that all of the Deans had to support
the ERP project publicly so that he could hold them to their commitment to “one way of
doing business”. However, this was not very helpful because each of them assumed that
the “one way” would be their way. During the implementation, units that asked to leave
the project were not allowed to. Instead, their concerns were addressed by customizing
the software. The result is that the ERP package used by EduSucceed is highly-
customized, and has high support costs.

Now, the university is attempting to integrate its IT infrastructure to reduce
duplication. For example, there are three separate networks and multiple Microsoft
Exchange email servers. Central IT is attempting to measure the cost of this redundancy

and is working on creating a governance structure that would help decide which pieces of

237

EduSucceed’s infrastructure would be centrally-maintained and which would be locally-
maintained. Another area of concern is the duplication of applications. One example is
local reporting systems. The ERP system’s data is the “book of record”, but many units
are extracting data from the data warehouse and saving it in local reporting systems.
Central IT feels that this function can be provided centrally. Upon investigation, it found
that the main reason for the proliferation of local systems was that the central systems
only had end-of-month ﬁgures while users needed more up-to-date information. Central
IT corrected this and is now asking users to show them the reports they are using so that
they can recreate them centrally and close down the local shadow systems.

Another example of duplication is a customer relationship management (CRM)
application for student recruitment. Central IT found out that four units were interested in
such a function and convinced them to write a joint business case. However, the ﬁmds
were not approved by the Provost. Since the units are autonomous with respect to their
funding decisions, they decided to go ahead and deploy them on their own. Today, three
years on, there are 6 CRM packages running in EduSucceed. This issue is exacerbated by
the continuing presence of IT staff in the local units. Once the ERP system was installed,
these IT employees built new local systems. Central IT is encouraging the units to adopt
commodity services like email by informing them that they can give up a certain number
of individuals if they adopt the central solution, and use the same individuals to take care
of discipline-speciﬁc software.

Enhancements to the ERP system are decided by a governance structure where the
IT team presents to each domain (e. g. admissions, ﬁnance, human resources) the requests

their members have made, the effort required for each request, and how many of the

238

requests can be fulﬁlled. This prompts the domain members to inform Central IT which
requests are more important and should thus be a higher priority for development.
Requests for new modules for functions that are not available at present, such as
managing ﬁmd-raising, go through this procedure: users interested in this domain must be
brought together so that a community can be built, a business case must be written by
these users, and ﬁnally new capital funding can be requested. This ensures that the users
of the software are committed to it, and are involved from the start with its selection.

Such structures did not exist for IT infrastructure. Central IT staff and IT
managers in the different units do not meet to discuss such issues. Although they are all
members of a cross-campus group, it has no authority and is more of an informal channel
for sharing ideas. If someone had an idea, he or she would put together an ad hoc group
to work on it, and others could join them if they were interested. An example is the
learning management system. It was developed by a faculty member and offered to
others. When the dean of the largest college mandated its use by his faculty, its user base
increased tremendously, despite the absence of any production support mechanism or
governance structure. Central IT wants to run it with the same level of structure as the
ERP system, while still allowing the faculty to continue innovating. This was unlike
managing the ERP system, where the focus was on “keeping (the) trains running on
time”. Another example of a domain that requires more structured governance is research
technology.

EduSucceed is part of a consortium of €105 of research-intensive universities in
the Midwest who are now collaborating on developing applications for the cloud

computing environment. Since most universities are not comfortable with this

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environment, their model is “above the university and below the cloud”, so that
universities can use these applications without handing any data over to vendors. One

example is book digitization; they are now planning data storage for research computing.

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CHAPTER 6: ANALYZING PORTFOLIO DRIFT

The purpose of this chapter is to answer this research question: why and how does
portfolio drift occur? When the data collection was initiated, EduExcel was expected to
have a higher level of drift in its IT portfolio compared to EduSucceed. This was because
EduSucceed had implemented a centralized ERP system a decade ago, and this system
was being used by all of its units. EduExcel, on the other hand, is in the midst of its ERP
implementation, and has not carried out major IT projects led by its Central IT unit in
many years. Figure 15 depicts how the two institutions’ IT portfolios have evolved
differently. Thus, while both universities are decentralized in terms of their organization,
they differed from each other in terms of the level of inﬂuence their respective Central IT

units had on the overall operations of their institution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadow IT Enterprise Systems Shadow IT
\ J
V
EduExcel
k J
V
EduSucceed
Time
T1 T2 T3

Figure 15: Comparative T imeline of IT Evolution at EduExcel and EduSucceed

241

Surprisingly, EduSucceed was found to have a considerable amount of drift in its
IT portfolio. Although its ERP system was still used by every unit for their ﬁnancial, HR
or student services needs, other aspects of its IT portfolio were less standardized. Many
units had developed or purchased their own reporting applications to complement or
supplement the one that was offered by the Central IT ﬁmction. Other applications were
deployed to support collaboration, customer interaction and performance assessment,
since these functions were unavailable from the applications Central IT provided. Finally,
there were instances where local units installed their own systems, even though similar
functionalities were available from the applications offered by Central IT. This situation
was one of the triggers for the IT rationalization exercise that was currently being
conducted.

With EduExcel, in contrast, the challenge was in deﬁning drift. Since there were
very few central systems, there was in some sense no “original portfolio” from which the
ﬁve units in EduExcel had to drift away. Their IT portfolios consisted of various shadow
systems that had been developed over time to deal with the lack of appropriate or useful
central IT systems. There had also been little attempt by Central IT to manage the
proliferation of local IT systems until the current ERP implementation project. However,
there were units that were trying to minimize portfolio fragmentation within their own
units- some were succeeding, while others were not. All of these took place in a context

marked by continuously declining state contributions to higher education.

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Patterns of Drift

In the previous chapters, portfolio drift was deﬁned as locally-driven but
centrally-unintended adaptations of an organization’s collection of IT assets. In addition,
drift was said to comprise workarounds of ofﬁcially-mandated applications and the
implementation of alternative ‘shadow’ systems. During the interviews, it was fairly easy
to identify examples of shadow IT and obtain information on the reasons for their
existence and the roles they played in a particular organizational unit. However, it was
much harder to obtain data on workarounds. This was for at least two reasons. First, the
interviewees were managers, and thus, many of them did not carry out the routine
transactions of their units. Workarounds are usually more familiar to the employees who
carry out such transactions. Only in one case was a list of workarounds formally recorded
and distributed. Otherwise, knowledge of workarounds was said to be transmitted
informally within work groups. Second, the managers had a greater awareness of the
different systems that were present, both ofﬁcial and non-ofﬁcial, because they were
usually involved in approving the purchase or development of these systems. In contrast,
workarounds do not need to be approved by managers before users carry them out.
Hence, it is likely that managers will not be aware of the workarounds being used by their
staff. Despite the lack of detail on workarounds, the existence of shadow systems is
sufﬁcient evidence that IS portfolios do drift.

Portfolio drift refers to the ongoing, macro-level outcome of the micro-level
actions of various agents. The practice theory perspective adopted in this study, along
with the focus on examining IT artifacts as ensembles, focuses the analysis of portfolio

drift on these three elements: the appropriation and re-creation of social and technological
243

structures, the material properties of the technologies, and the balance of power between

users and their managers. These elements were used to differentiate the abstract patterns

of drift that surfaced from the inductive examination of the data. Table 10 summarizes

the instances of drift and their antecedents and consequences. This analysis revealed that

the various instances of drift could be aggregated into at least three categories. These

categories are discussed below, along with examples from the data.

 

 

 

 

 

Shadow systems Antecedents Consequences
7 A "I. y , EduSucceed 7 I 7
Periodicity of data in the Central changed
central system different periodicity (monthly to
from what was required- weekly)
unable to get up-to-date Surveying local units to
. information learn about the reports they
Budgeting and . . .
. Faculty apporntrnents splrt are usrng, so they can be
fmancral . . .
mana ement across different unrts- not re-created 1n central
. g . reﬂected in the central application
applications ,
system Users reluctant to grve up
Lacked required ﬁelds - own applications because
need to record information they are a check of the
not captured by the central amounts in the central
system ledger
Users share reports/queries
Reporting Users do not like features after building them
applications in central reporting Users build reports in
application Excel after extracting data
from data warehouse
Multiple email servers and
. . . . applications
E-mail & Drssatrsfactron wuh. Difficult to share calendars
. exrstrng IMAP email . .
calendaring . . Email servers being
applrcatron

consolidated- not
coordinated by Central IT

 

244

Table 10: Antecedents and Consequences of Drift

Table I 0 (cont ’d)

 

Functionality exists in ERP

 

Position system but very complex Duplication- applications
management and would require every with same functionality
database unit to change their built by multiple units
business processes
t fr ’
Research expertise £33223 pgi'rtlngfsllege S Has to be locally
maintained at high cost-

database

Useful for development
ofﬁce

not a focus of Central IT

 

Faculty recruiting
system

Requirements differ across
colleges and departments

so difﬁcult to build
standard system

Developed by department
within a unit

Used in some departments,
not by unit or Central - low

priority

 

Faculty promotion
system

Paper-intensive system,
with complicated workﬂow

Incremental improvements
locally- e. g. standardizing
steps across departments,
paper to PDF, and manual
to electronic signing

 

Fire extinguisher

Users requested new
system to replace

Users using both new and

 

 

 

management system spreadsheet being used old tracking systems
now
Eggglrnttoﬁproached Sub-unit stopped work on
HR dashboard HR ofﬁcer found out that project, but not working
Central IT had similar wrtl:l Central IT- strll vvrth
product ven or
Functionality Of ERP Used as a check on the
system lirnited- does not ofﬁcial a 011 ﬁ es
Payroll handle level of detail in (3 tr a1 1:1 If d FE?”
work-codes required by on an rnance
sub-unit not informed
Collaboration Requests from users to use One unit, not Central IT’
application Sharepoint supporting users from ten

units

 

245

Table 10 (cont’d)

 

Student course

E duExcel ' '

Vendor’s application did
not meet local

Central IT responded by
building its own

 

 

checking tool speciﬁcations :jeilalcseemsenlteaepﬁllcatron
Functionality of ERP
system limited- wage
Payroll ﬂexierzgﬁggxbﬁb Duplicate systems
what is available in central
system
Functionality of central
system limited:
I did not have required
number of ﬁelds
I did not support 0 Multiple applications being
Budgeting and budgeting used
ﬁnancial I did not support split 0 Difficult to discover
management faculty appointments or applications and reports
applications funding being used- quandary for
I did not have required ERP implementation team
periodicity of data
No link between university

system and local ﬁnancial
applications

 

Making a Truce

This type of drift is the result of a negotiated agreement to preserve the balance of

power at many levels: between users and managers, between central and local units, and

between IT and other functions. From a Bourdieuan perspective, the relative positions of

different agents in a ﬁeld are determined by the types and amounts of capital they hold.

In addition, different forms of capital are both the weapons and objectives as agents

struggle to dominate other agents in a ﬁeld.

246

The ﬁeld here is the social space in which different units interact to decide on IT
investments. While both the local and central units possess the means of developing new
applications, which is a form of economic capital, only the local units can pronounce
which application provides the authoritative information they require. The latter ability is
a form of cultural capital. Units rich in this ﬁeld-speciﬁc capital of authoritativeness
dominate the ﬁeld. They excel at resisting efﬁciency-driven requests to use pre-existing
applications. The dominated central unit cannot enforce a mandate to use pre-existing
applications because declaring a system as being authoritative has consequences for the
clients whom only the local units interact with. These clients could be the government,
students, or the senior management of the local units. The resistance of the local units
compels the central unit to deploy its ﬁnancial resources to modify its portfolio. Although
ﬁnancial resources are also a form of economic capital, they play a limited role in this
ﬁeld. This is partly because the local units are fairly autonomous in how they manage

their budget.

Thus, the attempts to ﬁll a gap in the organization’s IT portfolio play out in a
series of offers and counter-offers between both parties (Figure 16). The negotiations as
to which application ﬁts conclude once a decision is arrived at, but can be re-visited by
the local unit if the functionalities of the pre-existing applications change. Three

examples of this type of drift are presented below.

247

 
  

 
     
 

  
 

Central

Central
function

Central
function

Central

function function

 
   
   
  
 

 
 
  
   

    
  

Proposal Counter- Modiﬁed
Proposal Proposal ----

     

Local Local

function

Local
function

Local
function

function

      

 

T1 . T2 T3 T4 Time
Figure 16: Drift Category 1- Making a Truce

Example 1: student request tracking log

After September 11 2001, the federal government required universities to monitor
their international students much more closely. The International Center was the
department responsible for this at EduSucceed. At that point, there was no mechanism to
track whether students were fulﬁlling their administrative responsibilities, such as
registering for classes, or whether their requests were being answered appropriately. The
ERP system was used to carry out transactions, but not monitor them for each student.
Student requests, such as visa renewals, were listed on an Excel spreadsheet.

The new federal mandate led the International Center’s senior manager to ask
Central IT whether it could meet her requirements with its existing systems. They
informed her that, while the ERP system had a checklist feature, customizing it would
take some time. The center’s manager and Central IT then agreed that the center would

build an Access database for this purpose, but would move the database to the ERP

248

system once the checklist feature became a viable option in future versions of the
software.

Example 2: course checking application

The various colleges in EduExcel required an application for students to
determine which courses they needed for graduation, and for student advisors to check
the students’ programs of study. The university contracted with a Canadian software
vendor to develop this application. However, it was inaccurate because the Canadian
educational system was very different from the US system. This frustrated many
advisors, even leading one college to develop its own application. This was not
acceptable to EduExcel’s Central Student Services unit and it attempted to stop it.

The vehement feedback from users led to Central IT developing its own
application for the same purpose. This new system meets the colleges’ needs and is
currently being rolled out. It is also linked to the original Canadian application, as the
university wants to use that as an additional check.

Example 3: financial accounting systems
Although EduSucceed’s ERP system has been used for a decade, many units are still
using various shadow systems in addition to the ERP system, such as QuickBooks or
Access- or Excel-based tools. The reasons for this include: a) a lack of data ﬁelds- units
need to record more information than what the central system captures; b) different data
periodicity- the units are unable to get up-to-date information; and c) the inability to split
up faculty appointments across different departments.

After surveying the local units to ﬁnd out their needs, Central IT made some
changes to the ERP system. For example, it changed the periodicity of the data from

249

monthly to weekly, and re-created some of the reports they were using in the central
reporting application. However, local users are reluctant to give up their own applications
because they act as a check of the amounts in the central ledger. This issue is part of the

current IT rationalization exercise.

Co-creating the Portfolio-in-Use

This type of drift results from local units developing their own applications to
resolve issues in their work processes. Such activities are not planned by either the
management of the local or central units. The IT that emerges here is the result of user-
driven, unplanned activities to make work less onerous. These technologies are usually
fairly innovative and are, unlike the applications in the prior category, introduced with
minimal interaction or negotiation with Central IT. This reﬂects the difference in the
dispositions (habitus) between the local functional units and Central IT. The former were
keen to adopt new technologies, if they reduced their workload and if their functions
were fairly resilient to technology failures. In contrast, Central IT was focused on
avoiding any disruption to the organizational IT portfolio and keeping it stable. This
reﬂected the classic tension between short-terrn reliability and long-term effectiveness.

In addition to being motivated by the goal of lowering the burden of their work,
individual users also engage in these activities when the material properties of the IT
systems they are creating allow them to do so. Since they were building new systems,
there were no pre-existing systems embedded in the work processes. However, this does
not imply low switching costs, because they often act as a bridge between existing

systems. These new systems are often built using ﬂexible platforms, such as Microsoft

250

Access or Excel. This made them much more controllable and adaptable to the needs of
local units.

Finally, as these innovations appear over time, they gain credibility and
respectability when other units begin using them, in addition to the unit where they were
ﬁrst developed. This process makes them more salient in the IT portfolios of the local
units, bringing them to the attention of Central IT. Over time, the local units which
introduced these innovations ask Central IT to take over their maintenance, because it
becomes too burdensome for them. This process was referred to as “ofﬂoading” by one
of the interviewees, which reﬂected a common strand across many interviews. While this
type of drift is praiseworthy, because it beneﬁts the broader organization, formal
mechanisms are required to ensure that, as the innovations became more commonly-used,
local units would be able to use them without being concerned about having to run them
too.

Three examples of this type of drift are presented below, and this category is

summarized by the ﬁgure below (Figure 17).

Central Central Central Central
function function function function
My
Local Local +
function function NIT"
1'1 T2 T4 'nme

Figure 1 7: Drift Category 2- C o-creating the Portfolio-in- Use

 

 

T3

251

Example 1: scholarship matching system

The College of Engineering at EduSucceed awards scholarships to students if they
meet certain criteria. These criteria cover a range of attributes, such as academic
achievement, income, community work, hometown, and degree major. Since the
individuals who endowed the scholarships wanted to see the funds used to support the
causes they had identiﬁed, matching students with scholarships was a very time-
consuming process that used to take multiple weeks. A ﬁnancial manager in the college
developed an Access database that was linked to the Central Student Services database,
and reduced the process to a single day. As other colleges began asking to use this
application, Central IT took it over and maintains it.

Example 2: learning management system (CLearn)

CLearn was developed by a faculty member of EduSucceed. As the software
became more popular, more colleges began using it, and its user base increased
tremendously. However, it was not supported by Central IT- there was no governance
structure to decide how new developments would be agreed upon, and there was no
distinction between the production and testing servers. Next, it became the basis of a
collaborative project with other universities. More recently, it is supported by Central IT
but is still not part of the common IT management structure.

Example 3: document collaboration application (SharePoint)

The largest college in EduSucceed began offering this application to its users two
years ago. Since then, ten other units have started using it, and are accessing the college’s

server. The IT manager of the college is not keen on operating in this manner, and would

252

 

like Central IT to replace his department in supporting SharePoint. He would like his

team to focus on supporting applications that are unique to their college.

Going it Alone

The third type of drift refers to a situation where local units attempt to involve
central units in developing applications, but central units do not reciprocate. This occurs
even though the applications may be of use to other units. Here, a central challenge is
uncovering the rationality underlying the actions of the different agents. Their reasoning
may not be limited to economic logic, but instead may encompass a wide range of other
functions and ends (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1984).

Even though both the central and local units are part of a ﬁeld, their struggle for
dominance should not be viewed in the context of this interaction alone, but should
instead be seen from the entire sequence of interactions. From that perspective, examples
of drift from this category may be strategic moves made in response to or to prompt
actions in other domains of interaction. For example, Central IT’s refusal to cooperate
with the Facilities Management unit in the second example below could be traced to prior
interactions where Facilities Management did not accede to Central IT’s requests.

Agents have a sense of what the appropriate response should be when they make a
particular move. When the response does not ﬁt their understanding, they recognize that
the other party has made a misstep of some sort. For example, local units expect Central
IT to prefer the re-use of existing applications, not the development of duplicate ones.
This understanding defers to Central IT the right to manage changes in an IT portfolio.

When Central IT does not meet that expectation, local units adjust their perception of the

253

structures that guide Central IT’s actions. To achieve their goals, local units could then
accept that they can operate under fewer constraints, or they can examine other moments
of interaction to assess whether such a response is warranted or typical.

Two examples of this type of drift are presented below, along with a diagram
summarizing them (Figure 18). The costs of going it alone include the long-term costs of
maintaining an application, and the difficulties of moving to a shared application in the
future. Moreover, there may be a more vehement response later by Central IT to a “going
it alone” strategy. What sources of capital would the local unit need to deploy then to

maintain their position in the social space?

Central Central
function function

   

 

No response
Local Local Local +
function function function ”I?”
T1 T2 T3 ﬁme

Figure 18: Drift Category 3- Going it Alone

Example 1: course checking application

Previously, this procedure used to be carried out in EduSucceed’s College of
Engineering by an employee who downloaded the data from Central IT and ran a report.
However, the report was very long and confusing. In addition, the college was informed
by Central IT that it could not make a local copy of the data. This information triggered a
discussion with Central IT as to why this procedure was being carried out in this manner.

Following that, the college’s IT department developed an application which accessed the
254

data remotely and produced a report that was easier to understand. However, this is still
not a complete solution because the data from Central IT is a complex mixture of binary
and XML formats, making it difﬁcult to parse. The college’s IT department has asked
Central IT to remedy this. The complex format of the data means that colleges need staff
with advanced IT skills to develop the course checking report. Thus, colleges who do not
have such employees will ﬁnd it difﬁcult to create the reports. The reports cannot be
shared across colleges because of the differing degree requirements.

Example 2: electronic time-clock

EduSucceed’s Facilities Management (FM) department was interested in
migrating from a paper timecard system to an electronic one. This would reduce data
errors and increase accountability. Since Central IT had an electronic time-clock, the IT
manager approached Central IT about using it, even though it lacked some of the features
he wanted. He asked Central IT to provide him with a dump of the data so that he could
insert it into F M’s payroll system. Even though the software vendor agreed that this could
be easily done and that other organizations had done so before, Central IT refused to set
up the FTP server so that F M’s IT manager could obtain the data. This pushed him to
develop and deploy his own electronic time-clock. He was very ﬁ'ustrated and
disappointed by the experience- for one thing, one could now go across campus and ﬁnd

many locations where both electronic time-clocks were placed beside each other.

Comparison of Drift Categories

As beﬁtting the deﬁnition of drift, all the three categories were initiated by local

units. However, each category had a different trajectory, a result of the interaction

255

between different forms of capital, the distinct dispositions of the various agents, and the
availability of opportunities for these dispositions to be actualized. The diversity of the
different agents inﬂuenced the resources they could draw upon to affect their own and
others’ actions in the ﬁeld, the results of which enable and constrain future actions.
Understanding this interaction will help develop a process theory of drift, which is
undergirded by temporal interconnectedness, embeddedness and a search for holistic
instead of linear explanations (Pettigrew, 1997)

Table 11 depicts the differences between the three categories of drift in terms of
the concepts from the practice perspective. All episodes of drift begin with a request for a
new functionality, such as the ability to adjust time periods easily or show greater detail
in ﬁnancial reports, or the ability to communicate efficiently with employees who are not
familiar with e-mail. IT departments in the local units see their role as meeting the needs
of their users. Sometimes, they want to stay ahead of their users, so that they do not have
a chance to complain. Thus, they are, or at least try to be, well-connected to their users.
This is important to them because meeting their users’ needs enhances their credibility
and reputation within their units. In addition, providing their users with what they want
also makes it easier for the IT department to manage its IT portfolio, since it knows
exactly what systems are being used. Failing to satisfy users runs the risk of users
purchasing their own applications, which often leads to paying more for systems that are

difﬁcult to maintain and integrate with the rest of the portfolio.

256

 

 

 

Patterns Appropriation Material Balance of Power
. Properties of (Valuable Examples
of Drift of Structures .
Technologies Resources)
Making a Habitus: e Legacy e Economic EduSucceed:
Truce a) Central IT: systems capital: - Request
increase use (central IT a) developing tracking
of portfolio portfolio) IT- local and log
b) Local IT: easily central units; - Accounting
enable users circumvented b) budgets- application
to provide e Flexible and autonomous S
accurate adaptable e Cultural EduExcel:
information . Data capital: - Course
to external portability declaring checking
clients- to . Shadow information to application
be . systems can b6 ‘ Payroll
legitlmate be swapped authoritative- - Accounting
0) Local with central local units applications
functions: systems
distrust of easily- low
Central data switching
costs
C0- Habitus: Innovative IT 0 Social capital : EduSucceed:
creating a) Central IT: Flexible and a) lntemal - Scholarship
Portfolio- maintain a adaptable reputation- matching
in-Use stable, . No legacy local IT system
relatively systems, but department - Leaming
unchanging shadow keeping up with manageme
portfolio systems IT demands of nt system
b) Local IT: integrate employees and - Document
improve central and students collaborati
users’ local b) External on
pI'OdUCtIVIty applications- reputati Ol'l- ' HR
become local units dashboard
embedded- a suPport other
necessary units on their
bridge- own servers
high without
switching charging them
costs

 

Table 11: Categories of Drift

257

Table 11 (cont’d)

 

Going it Habitus: 0 Legacy 0 Economic EduSucceed:
Alone at) Central IT: systems capital: - Electronic
demonstrate (central IT a) developing time clock
authority portfolio) IT- local and - Course
b) Local IT: easily central units; checking
meet circumvented b) ﬁnancial- application
requests 0f 0 Highly- autonomous - E-mail and
local users customized budgets calendaring
0 Relatively 0 Cultural
expensive and capital: logic
difﬁcult to underlying the
move to IT systems
central 0 Social capital:
systems- high local IT’s
switching reputation
costs within its unit

 

Since their budgets are independent of the Central IT unit, local IT units may or

may not approach it when faced with the need to implement a new functionality. If they

are aware that Central IT has a system with a similar feature, they may request it.

However, if it is a new product or innovative functionality, they will go ahead by

themselves. This is because they are aware of Central IT’s reluctance to introduce new

technology, as well as the slow speed at which it does so. The latter is understandable,

given that it has to work with all of the units on campus to implement something.

Moreover, if the central systems that are currently being used can be easily circumvented,

it is more likely that local IT departments will acquire their own systems.

Central IT’s response to a request from a local IT department depends on a few

factors. For example: has the local department been cooperative in the past? how likely is

it that the local department will install a shadow system, given its budget and IT skills?

258

ll

will this shadow system duplicate the existing functionalities of a system being managed
by Central IT? what is the possibility of this system being used by more than one unit in
the future? is the information provided by this new system required for internal
consumption or for external parties? Besides these questions, Central IT also needs to
assert its authority as the low—cost provider of essential, common systems for the
organization. Thus, it has to ensure that its IT systems are being used by the local units to
avoid inquiries over its budget and IT management skills.

Central IT’s replies to these and other questions leads to different trajectories
being followed when a request for a new feature/system appears. Figure 19 summarizes
these trajectories, and how the habitus of the different agents, the type of capital they
possess, and the material features of the technology under consideration lead to different
types of drift taking place. For example, the “Making a Truce” trajectory occurs when the
local IT department possesses more of a different type of capital (cultural capital) than
Central IT. This provides the local IT department with the ability to authoritatively decide
which system should be used to meet its users’ needs. However, since similar
functionalities are available in the central systems, Central IT negotiates with the local IT
department to come to an agreement on what system will be used. This decision can be
reversed in the future, because the shadow systems that are implemented are ﬂexible and
their data is easily portable.

Different concepts inﬂuence which trajectory transpires in each context. In the
second trajectory, “Co-creating the Portfolio-in-Use”, the material attributes of the
technology are more inﬂuential. Here, this trajectory comes into play when the

technology in question is innovative, as that attribute determines Central IT’s level of

259

involvement and the efﬁciency impacts of the technology on users. lmportantly, the
innovativeness of the technology also has an effect on the local IT department’s
reputation.

The third trajectory, “Going it Alone”, also highlights the importance of taking
into account a technology’s material attributes when looking at its potential for drift.
Although it is similar to the ﬁrst trajectory in that the central systems can be easily
circumvented, the difference between the two trajectories is in the level of customization
involved in implementing it. The “going it alone” trajectory usually ends up with systems
that are costly and difﬁcult to move to the central portfolio because they are very
customized. This outcome further strengthens the divide between the local and Central IT
units that inﬂuenced the choice of this trajectory. Compared to the second trajectory, the
shadow systems are strongly embedded in that case because they act as a bridge between
existing systems, and are thus a valuable supplement. When a local unit “goes it alone”,
the system it creates usually duplicates or is very similar to a pre-existing system. Thus, it
is not adding much value to the overall portfolio. However, since it is heavily
customized, removing it becomes a challenge, and the system itself becomes an object

over which the different agents struggle to impose their authority.

Process Theory of Portfolio Drift

The preceding section has shown that portfolio drift is not simply a linear causal
process, but must be understood holistically. Process theories are useful for examining
such phenomena. They are relevant here because portfolio drift is not a sequence of

events or states that can be produced by manipulating certain causes; instead, the

260

outcomes depend on a number of conditions that are necessary but not sufﬁcient for the
outcome to occur (Markus & Robey, 1988). In other words, even if the conditions are
present, the theorized outcome may not occur. The different outcomes are also viewed as
being qualitatively different, not just different degrees of one particular dimension.
Finally, process theories are useful because they retain empirical ﬁdelity, while allowing
some measure of generalizability. This enables the creation of predictive, testable
theories, without having to decontextualize social phenomena.

Figure 20 illustrates a model of a process theory of portfolio drift. It is depicted as
a decision tree, and the end-points consist of the three different types of portfolio drift
and a decision not to drift (i.e. to use the centrally-provided, official system). The theory
starts with the tension between the local and central IT units, based on the differences in
their dispositions over the IS portfolio. While central IT wants to preserve its authority as
the agent with the ability to deﬁne the IS portfolio, the local IT unit is focused on meeting
the needs of its users, which may involve changing the portfolio. The ﬁrst condition that
affects the resolution of this tension is the level of switching costs: how painful is it for
the local unit to stop using the centrally-provided system and switch to a new one it
acquires or develops itself?

The subsequent decisions depend on the types of resources the agents possess,
and the relative amount of each type of resource. If switching costs are low, but central IT
possesses more economic capital than local IT, the theorized outcome is for the local unit
to keep using the official systems. The same result is predicted if switching costs are high
and social capital is irrelevant in that context. If both economic and cultural capital are

relevant when switching costs are low, local IT should negotiate a truce with central IT.

261

This is because, while the local unit may possess the necessary cultural capital to decide
whether the data or the logic of the system are appropriate, the central unit may be able to
develop a better system because of its economic capital, in terms of its development
experience. When switching costs are high, the local unit can deploy its cultural and
social capital to overcome this barrier. For example, it may draw on its social network to
share the development costs, so that the switching costs are less of a burden.
Alternatively, developing a costly system may be worth it if the local unit enhances its
reputation with its clients and/or its peers.

The drift of an IS portfolio lead to a variety of consequences for the different
parties who have a stake in it. Users, for whom drift of any of the three kinds is
equivalent to their requests being answered, are more satisﬁed with the systems they use
for their work. For example, the staff of the student services department of EduSucceed
were overjoyed when the course checking report was modiﬁed to ﬁt their requirements,
because this meant they did not have to carry out any more manual workarounds. In
EduExcel, the managers of the Facilities Management department were very pleased with
the electronic time clock application, because it meant they could communicate better
with their employees as well as increase their accountability. While drift may be
beneﬁcial for users and managers from the various functions, it often turns out to be an
additional burden for IT managers. They will have to maintain systems that may not be
well-integrated with the rest of their portfolio, or may not be well-understood within their
organization because they are new in the market. If other units want to “piggy-back” on
the new applications, IT managers will face even higher maintenance costs. For example,

EduExcel’s IT manager was not pleased about maintaining the faculty research expertise

262

database or the student course checking application, because they were difﬁcult to set up
and maintain, especially the latter because of the data issues. However, he had no choice
but to do so, because they were very important for his department in its dealings with its
corporate clientele.

Drift can affect the quality of decision-making if the data in the different systems
cannot be integrated. So, for example, the International Students and Programs unit at
EduExcel had to mandate the use of QuickBooks as the standard ﬁnancial application
because its Finance Manager was unable to consolidate his unit’s budgets without falling
back on manually computing them in Excel. Finally, when drift results in software being
developed to ﬁll gaps in an organization’s portfolio, such as two databases not being
linked when a report requires data from both of them, the “gap-ﬁlling” application will,
by its presence, accentuate the gap and make it even more permanent. In other words, the
shadow system’s raison d’étre as a workaround becomes obscured as it merges with the
other legacy systems in an IT portfolio. Such developments make adaptability even more
difficult, as the growth of legacy systems makes it harder to dislodge them to make way
for new applications that handle multiple functions, such as ERP systems.

Apart from these immediate consequences, the type of portfolio drift that occurs,
or does not occur, can reinforce or weaken the volume of resources possessed by the
different agents. It also affects their disposition towards the IS portfolio: will they be
more inclined in the future to support changes to it or to keep it as it is? The creation of
new systems has an impact on the relative switching costs of the central systems. If the
new local systems can exchange data easily with the central systems, and have similar

interfaces and ﬁmctionalities, then moving to central systems will be easier in the future.

263

On the other hand, if the new systems do not have counterparts in the central portfolio,
then users will ﬁnd it difficult to leave them if they are asked to during rationalization
projects. In turn, these changes in resources and dispositions inﬂuence future occurrences
of portfolio drift.

To conclude, the mechanisms that explain the different patterns observed in the
data are the material features of the technologies, the different forms of capital that are
drawn upon, and the dispositions of the various agents. The structures that inﬂuence the
relationships between the different agents in the ﬁeld are constantly created and re-
created. As drift takes place, the material attributes of the artifacts that are created
inﬂuence future trajectories. Moreover, the success or failure of each episode of drift in
meeting the needs of a local unit’s users affects the resources the unit’s IT department
can deploy in the future, as it competes with Central IT to determine which IT artifacts
are legitimate. Since “practice is inseparable from temporality” (Bourdieu, 1990), it is
important to keep in mind the trajectories through which drift takes place. Although the
agents may operate in seemingly-static structures, these structures are patterned,
emergent phenomena, existing in the midst of many sources of constraints, both social

and material (Dyke, 1999; Zammuto et al, 2007).

264

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CHAPTER 7: ANALYZING IS GOVERNANCE

The purpose of this chapter is to answer this research question: what are the
implications of portfolio driﬁ for IS governance? The chapter begins by illustrating the
governance practices found in the cases. The practices in the two organizations are then
compared to highlight their similarities and differences. Next, the presence of these
practices is explained using different perspectives: agency theory, a practice lens, and
materiality. Examining the data from these perspectives will uncover how power,
subjectivity, materiality, and changes in them inﬂuence how governance is practiced.

Before answering the research question, it is important to understand how the IS
portfolios of EduExcel and EduSucceed have changed over time (Figure 21). The
horizontal axis indicates the progress of time, while the vertical axis depicts the different
type of technologies in a portfolio, based on the speciﬁcity of their usage. Examples of IT
software that can be considered infrastructure are e-mail and network management
applications, while software that is speciﬁcally intended for local units include
applications unique to the operations of a particular unit, such as a work-order
management system for the Facilities Management unit and the ticketing application for
Athletics. The small black circles represent individual IT systems, and the brackets

indicate the domains each organization is traversing.

267

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268

At this point in time, EduExcel has a fragmented portfolio across the entire range
of IT systems. It is moving towards reducing this fragmentation by introducing an ERP
system which will consolidate many of the functions of the existing disparate
applications. As shown by the small black circles outside the ERP box at T2, some
applications will not be incorporated into the ERP system because it does not offer their
functionalities. EduSucceed, on the other hand, carried out this shift about a decade ago.
However, since then, it has found that a number of new applications have sprung up
outside the ERP system. This is indicated by the greater number of small black circles at
both the speciﬁc and infrastructure ends of the scale at time T3. Some of these are
sanctioned by the Central IT department, while others are not. Over and above these new
shadow systems, what is difﬁcult to detect and may not be easily discovered is the extent
to which users are working around the systems. Can the preponderance of shadow
systems in a department or unit be a proxy for the extensiveness of workarounds? Or are
other factors, such as the IT skill levels of employees, a better approximation?
EduSucceed is currently carrying out an IT rationalization project to examine why its
portfolio changed in this way, and whether and how these changes should be remedied.

Though both organizations are similar in size and in the level of operational
decentralization, their IS portfolios have been governed very differently. However, a
constant aspect has been the persistence of drift. Comparing their governance practices
will help uncover why this outcome occurred in both organizations, despite the effects of

path dependency and the situational nature of IT use.

269

Governance Practices

Formal governance structures

Both universities have put in place a variety of formal mechanisms (Figures 22
and 23). They include:

a) quarterly training and information-sharing meetings between IT personnel from
across campus and Central IT;

b) user liaison groups for different functional areas, such as ﬁnance and HR, which
consist of individual employees who are appointed as stewards for their units;

c) user interest groups on topics such as cluster computing, web administration, Apple
computers, and wireless networking, for staff of the local IT units;

d) town hall meetings to communicate news of major changes in IT policies and
investments; and

e) cross-campus IT Steering Committees.

Within the local units, the formal governance practices included monthly project
review meetings, regular strategic review sessions with senior management, and the
hiring of faculty liaisons as intermediaries between the IT and academic departments.
The sophistication of the mechanisms used in the local units depends on the unit’s size
and the complexity of its operations. Compared to EduSucceed, EduExcel has fewer
formal governance mechanisms that link the local and Central IT departments. This can
be attributed to the lack of an enterprise system and the limited development that has

taken place across these levels in the past two decades. This means that most IT

270

 

management activities in EduExcel, such as IT acquisition, maintenance, and

performance evaluation, take place within local units.

 

 

 

 

 
 
   
 

 

  
  

    
 
 

 

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271

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Figure 23: Governance Mechanisms in EduExceI

Informal governance structures

The cases provided examples of governance as being both formally-established,
with speciﬁc controls and structures, as well as informally-developed, with emergent
norms and mechanisms. These informal mechanisms were oﬁen based on personal
relationships at various levels, as shown in Figures 22 and 23. These personal
relationships existed for at least two reasons: a) some users had worked in the Central
functions before moving to the local units, or b) users built bonds with their peers in other
units and in the Central functions while interacting during the formal meetings.

Some of these informal mechanisms became more structured and formalized over
time. One example is EduSucceed’s IT Commons, a weekly meeting of IT managers
from the various units. These meetings, which sometimes include a liaison from Central

IT, discuss topics common across units, such as new collaboration applications and email
272

management, which are not under the purview of Central IT. Their goal is to focus their
investments on the parts of the IS portfolio which add value or are unique to their units,
thereby reducing unnecessary costs. Some of their achievements include consolidating
the number of Exchange servers, moving to a centrally-managed help-desk system,
converging on a single instance of Microsoft Active Directory, and creating an email
listserv of open IT positions on campus. The Commons also tries to get its members to
think outside their units’ interests and consider the wider consequences of their actions.
That way, for example, units would not try to save money by buying cheap PCs or
network switches, because there are long-term costs that are borne by their unit and

others.

 

Another example of a mechanism that emerged over time is the Business Objects
Expert User Group at EduSucceed. This off-shoot of the original, Centrally-organized
Business Objects User Group caters to the needs of expert users, who found that the
original group was not very useful because of the wide range of user skills. This expert
user group has now created “Business Objects TV”, an online video guide to help users

with simpler issues, such as opening queries and logging on to the system.

Comparing IS Governance in EduSucceed and EduExceI

Table 12 consolidates the ﬁndings from the ten cases. The governance practices
employed in both institutions are categorized on two dimensions: i) were they formal or
informal? and ii) were they directed internally (i.e. governance within the local unit) or
externally (i.e. governance mechanisms that connected the local unit with Central IT,

other local units, and external peers)?

273

The formal internal governance practices used in both institutions were largely
similar. The major difference between the two was that the budgets and operations of the
local IT units in EduExcel were more centralized compared to the IT units in
EduSucceed. Despite that, the IT units in both institutions did not use any formal
frameworks for managing their IT operations and assets, such as ITIL or CoBIT. While
some IT managers were skeptical of their usefulness, others claimed that their
departments were too small to need them. However, some of the larger units expressed
interest in implementing some version of them soon. IT assets were inventoried in both
institutions, with asset registers being created for software licenses and hardware. Some

units used speciﬁc systems for this purpose, while others used generic spreadsheets or

 

databases. IT projects were initiated either on the basis of requests from users or the local
IT department itself. Some units in EduExcel augmented their departments by borrowing
staff from Central IT, while this was not practiced in EduSucceed. This hints at a possible
source of the informal relationships within EduExcel. Some of EduSucceed’s units had a
more structured manner of managing their projects, with monthly review meetings and
faculty liaisons.

There were substantial differences between the two institutions in terms of their
formal external governance practices. EduSucceed had regular town hall meetings,
liaison groups for functional users, interest groups on IT operations, and joint training
and information sharing between the Central and local IT departments. The institutions
were similar in terms of the periodic meetings their IT managers held with their peers
from across campus and from other universities. From the viewpoint of the overall

university, both institutions had steering committees, although EduExcel’s was newer.

274

Finally, while EduSucceed had some measure of central IT planning, that was not
observed in EduExcel.

Both institutions had a substantial number of internally— and extemally-oriented
informal relationships. For example, there were informal user groups and meetings of IT
managers. Users willingly and frequently shared knowledge with their colleagues, and
power-users sometimes initiated projects. Requests for IT development projects were
made both in an ad hoc and a formal structured manner. There were also signiﬁcant
personal contacts between the Central and local IT departments, based on prior

collaboration or shared work experience.

Explaining governance from the agency theory perspective

IT governance covers a variety of responsibilities. A useful categorization is
provided by the COBIT framework (ITGI, 2007), which divides IT governance into four
main areas: plan and organize, acquire and implement, deliver and support, and monitor
and evaluate. CoBIT is widely used by IT practitioners and auditors to assess how well an
organization is governing its IS portfolio. Frameworks such as CoBIT have an underlying
agency theoretic perspective. They prescribe controls and mechanisms to align the
incentives of users, managers and the IT function, so as to reduce information asymmetry
and risky behavior by agents. CoBIT advocates that formal procedures and policies be
established to:

1. Determine the organization’s technological direction and information architecture,
2. Acquire and maintain IT resources,

3. Manage service levels, and

275

 

4. Monitor compliance, internal controls and performance.

The formal governance structures observed in the organizations are based on a
certain set of assumptions. First, they share CoBIT’s agency theory worldview, which
implies a divide between principals and agents. The formal mechanisms rely on the
capacity of the Central IT unit to create and enforce guidelines and standards, and invest
in IT infrastructure, including common applications, such as the ERP system. The role of
the local units is to offer information and implement these decisions.

Central IT’s organization of the structured meetings in EduSucceed reminds the
local units that Central IT possesses a substantial amount of economic capital (such as
funding for IT investments, IT human resources, and bargaining power with vendors) and
is willing to use these resources as an incentive for the local units to align themselves
with its plans. In addition, these mechanisms purportedly help Central IT reduce its
information asymmetry, as it ﬁnds out what the local units are planning when it interacts
with them. However, this depends on the local units being willing to disclose this
information. The situation is similar in the local units. The local IT departments use their
resources to enforce compliance with their policies. For example, when the departments
within their unit make their annual budget requests, the dean’s ofﬁce asks the IT
managers to approve the IT portions. When a department is unwilling to cooperate on
some policy and the IT department needs them to do so, it brings in the “Dean’s ofﬁce
muscle”.

Second, according to this worldview, responsibility for the IT portfolio and
various IT management roles can be clearly deﬁned and segregated. A corollary .

assumption is that change in the portfolio can be planned and managed by the central or

276

 

local IT units. In the two organizations studied, there is, formally, fairly clear agreement
on which parts of the organizational IT portfolio are handled by Central IT (e-mail, ERP,
reporting tools, instructional IT, networks) and local IT (personal computing support,
research computing, security, classroom IT, local servers, and local applications).
Changes in the portfolio are managed by channeling them through mechanisms such as
user groups. An extension of the clear segregation of responsibilities is that the four goals
of CoBIT are understood to be achieved in a particular sequence. Speciﬁcally, Central IT
selects the appropriate architecture and IT strategy, and then asks users what their
requirements are. It then acquires the IT resources (hardware, applications, or human

resources) needed to meet those requirements. Over time, it assesses how well these

 

resources are performing by regularly meeting users, and addresses shortcomings as they
come up. These processes are carried out regularly and repeatedly.

Fundamentally, therefore, the agency view of governance is of a two-player game
with a single currency that deﬁnes the rules and is used to maintain order. This
“currency” is the economic capital, which is seen as the key differentiator between those
who are governed (agents, such as the local units here) and those who govern (principals,
such as Central IT). These economic resources are used to attain known aims, such as
business-IT alignment, via visible mechanisms, such as the committees and groups
mentioned above. These mechanisms and aims are determined by the principals, who
interact with the agents in pre-deﬁned formats, such as user groups and steering
committees. The users have a limited impact on any decisions made on the object of
interest, i.e. the IT portfolio, which is understood to be mainly determined externally and
managed by the IT department.

277

This is at odds with what the analysis of drift uncovered in the previous chapter.
Each of the pathways through which drift took place was one possible result of the
interaction of organizational preferences and resources, and the material attributes of the
technology of concern. If drift is the unavoidable consequence of these factors, and is an
emergent outcome, then agency theory has limited utility for describing and explaining IS
governance as it occurs in organizations. While an organization that governs its IT assets
on the basis of agency theory may be an ideal state to aim for, the lack of detail on the
process through which it can be attained makes agency theory less useful as a guide for
managing IT assets. Although agency theory claims that control mechanisms, such as
monitoring, are necessary for becoming well-governed, it does not describe how their
efficacy depends on the context in which they are used. Thus, it is difﬁcult to ascertain if
weakly-govemed organizations are in that state because controls have not been well-
implemented, or because of other overriding factors, such as institutional norms. The next
section describes some of the governance mechanisms that were found to exist outside

the formal structure.

Explaining governance from the practice perspective

The informal mechanisms that emerged were as pervasive as the formal
governance structures. These mechanisms could be found at various levels of the
organizations. Thus, business-IT alignment did not take place in a totalizing manner at
the upper levels of the organizational hierarchy. Instead, the agents at the various levels
utilized their competence as participants to steer the portfolio-in-use (i.e. align it with

their interests).

278

Uncovering the informal mechanisms highlights the challenges faced when the
agency-based view is applied to organizations: it does not account for a) the
embeddedness of economic activity in social networks (Granovetter, 1985); and b)
changes in relationships, goals and power across time. Considering these issues in the
context of governance requires a practice perspective, since practices are historically
situated, emergent, and recurrent. From the practice viewpoint, governance is less a
framework for allocating decision rights, and more like a competition between players,
who seek to differentiate themselves by deploying different types of capital, while being
constrained by their dispositions or preferences. Thus, the governance structure we
observe in an organization is not a ﬁxed artifact, but one instantiation of the different
trajectories that are possible, given the distribution of power across agents and their

preferences.

Differences in Dispositions and Types of Capital

The ﬁeld of IT management in EduSucceed comprises various participants: local
and Central IT, and local and Central functional departments. These participants have

different dispositions towards information technology. Central IT is focused on reducing

redundancy so that it is more efficient with its IT investments. The local IT units report to

the management of their units, and thus emphasize the needs of their local functions.

These local functions essentially want to carry out their tasks, whether they are preparing

ﬁnancial reports, registering students, or hiring faculty, as accurately and as effectively as

possible. In addition, the local IT units are also keen on introducing innovations to

achieve these goals. Finally, the Central functions need Central IT to provide systems that

279

 

meet their needs, which are often different from the needs of the local functions. For
example, local functions usually require data at a greater level of detail than Central
functions, which means that they need more ﬁelds in the systems they use and the ability
to “roll up” or aggregate ﬁelds easily.

The differences in the dispositions of the participants are matched by differences
in the types and volume of capital they possess. While Central IT may have substantial
economic resources, it lacks the credibility that the local IT departments have with their
senior management. This is because the local IT departments respond quickly to help
achieve local goals, and they accomplish this with resources provided by the management

of their local units, not Central IT. This is replicated in the large local units- the IT

 

departments in these units struggle to obtain support from the IT staff of the various sub-
units.

These informal relationships and the networks formed through them are a source
of social capital for the local ﬁmctional and IT departments. The information they receive
from their peers in other units, departments and universities is used to obtain guidance on
IT investments. These relationships are also used to develop coalitions to pressure
Central IT to meet shared requirements. Finally, local units use their informal
relationships with Central IT employees to accelerate the fulﬁllment of their software
development requests, by offering “quid pro quo” arrangements. Large local units, which
have substantial economic resources of their own, such as budgets and IT staff, can avoid
joining these groupings because they can either make their own demands on Central IT,
or develop or purchase their own applications. Central IT attempts to gain some of this
social capital and the information that accrues from it by establishing the user interest and

280

liaison groups. Thus, the IT governance structure that is observed in this organization is a
“historically contingent necessity, not transcendental order” (p. 198: Dyke, 1999).

However, this strategy does not offset the economic capital possessed by the large
local units, whose IT departments continue to develop their own applications. Thus, the
source of much of the drift in EduSucceed’s portfolio is not addressed by the current
governance mechanisms. These mechanisms are more useful for controlling the actions
of the smaller units, who are already close followers of the organization’s IT portfolio,
since their budgets do not allow them much leeway for developing their own
applications.

The local IT departments possess cultural capital, in terms of the knowledge of
the objectives of their units, and social capital, in terms of their links with their functional
departments. This encourages the alignment of the local IT portfolio with the local units’
goals. This alignment is carried out by the local IT departments acting as intermediaries
between the local ﬁmctional departments and Central IT. First, they aggregate the
requirements of their users and submit a consolidated report to Central IT. In this way,
they mediate the information ﬂow between the two parties. Second, when their users are
frustrated in their dealings with Central functions, they intervene to moderate the
intensity of the interaction or to prevent the situation from worsening. For example, when
Central IT could not deliver the student course checking application the College of
Engineering wanted, the college’s IT director developed a solution that satisﬁed both
parties.

However, alignment at this level may not indicate alignment at a higher level. For

example, the College of Engineering’s student course checking application is not

281

replicable in other units, because of differences in the underlying logic. This again leads
to fragmentation, as represented by the small black circles at T3 in Figure 17. The lack of
higher-level alignment is indicated by EduSucceed’s current IT rationalization exercise.
This exercise is an attempt by Central IT to overcome its lack of cultural capital by
communicating its own goals to local units, in the hope that they will accept them, thus

usurping local objectives.

Egctices in the Field

EduSucceed’s Central IT unit has developed a set of practices to reduce the
number of shadow systems. These include:

1) Standardizing the data elements in central databases: once they are in a consistent
format, users can:

a.) develop applications based on their unique business logic
b.) adopt the standard data and, based on the ﬁelds provided, deﬁne more ﬁelds
as required. In this way, local units do not need to create shadow databases.

2) Using compliance “carrots”: units that use Central IT’s services (e. g. ﬁle storage)
will be in compliance with various federal policies, such as HIPAA and FERPA.
There is no mandate, and units can run their own services if they want to, but they
would then have to handle compliance issues by themselves, which are
burdensome.

3) “Canning”: customizing objects, such as reports or complex queries, developed by

one unit, so that they can be used by other units.

282

These practices by Central IT involve instances where its economic capital is
recognized as legitimate by the local units, since these practices resolve some of the
constraints they face. Thus, here, Central IT uses its resources to reproduce its norms, and
construct the world according to its vision. The same intent can be seen in the actions of
the IT managers in the large local units. For example, one college enforced the use of a
standard image on all PCs to enforce the rules that users should store data in shared
folders, not on personal desktops, and that hard disks should be encrypted to reduce the
risks ﬁ'om lost laptops.

In other instances, Central IT’s resources do not have symbolic value, and other
forms of capital held by the local units are recognized as being more important. Many
interviewees mentioned that, while there should be fewer shadow systems, reducing them
should not be equated with preventing the local units from introducing innovations. They
felt that Central was less in touch with new developments, and that instead of preventing
local IT departments from implementing new technologies, it should develop a
mechanism for taking over innovations that were widely used across campus but
managed by a local unit, such as Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Live Meeting.

One reason a local IT department would allow its resources to be used to serve
users from outside its unit is that this practice focuses attention on the symbolic beneﬁts
that accrue to it. These include extra clout in its negotiations with Central IT about
replacing local applications with centrally-offered software, which may translate into
getting more of its requests fulﬁlled. Second, supporting other units may encourage
reciprocal behavior from other local IT units. This allows more innovations to be tried

out without the risks of trialing multiple innovations falling on any one particular unit.

283

Many of the informal practices listed in Table 12 pertain to the development of
new systems. Local units and sub-units are willing in both EduSucceed and EduExcel to
develop their own systems, if and when their needs are not met by the centrally-provided
IT portfolio. This is shown by the various instances of driﬁ. In EduExcel, Central IT
attempts to manage this to some extent by suggesting to its units new applications they
might be interested in.

The combination of “power users”, personal contacts with developers in the IT
department, and a tolerance of ad hoc development requests leads to a context that is
quite distinct with the COBIT-like scenario presented by the formal governance
structures. In contrast to the agency theoretic perspective which assumed that changes to
IT portfolios were managed by the central or local IT units, the practice perspective, as
represented by these informal practices, endorses attempts by agents to subvert the logic
represented by organizational rules. This raises to the forefront a core argument of
Bourdieu’s that “social agents are not ‘particles ’ that are mechanically pushed and pulled
about by external forces. They are, rather, bearers of capital, and... orient themselves
either toward the preservation of the distribution of capital or toward the subversion of
the distribution” (p. 108-9: Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, emphasis in original). Hence,
users share knowledge with their peers within and without their units, and create informal
user groups to learn about alternatives to centrally-offered systems, or to develop

coalitions to pressure Central IT.

284

Explaining governance from the materiality perspective

From a materiality perspective, the formal structures in EduSucceed were created
when the ERP system was implemented. They mirror the modules of the ERP system that
are in use- business and ﬁnance, human resources, and student services. In one sense,
therefore, these structures are an example of the salience of the material aspects of the
ERP system. The structure of the ERP system manifests itself in the IT governance
structure of EduExcel.

Since the ERP system is the largest system being managed by EduSucceed’s
Central IT department, the governance structure for the ERP system has become the
natural way of organizing its IT governance for other parts of its portfolio. This can be a
problem when technologies that do not share the same material attributes of ERP, such as
collaborative applications, become widely used. For example, ERP systems require a
stable environment so that transactions can be carried out smoothly. Governance
structures supporting ERP systems stress the need to minimize changes, implying that
employees’ agency is constrained by such structures. In contrast, systems designed for
collaboration require less constraints, so that users can manipulate and modify objects
easily. A second example is the centralizing tendency of ERP applications. The databases
for ERP applications, since they perform transaction handling and data management for
organizations, are usually centrally controlled. In addition, their structures are often
determined such that they meet the needs of the Central functional departments. This may
be in conﬂict with other applications that are local units want to modify, such as the

electronic time clock application.

285

Another governance mechanism that can be traced to a materiality issue is the
predilection of the local units in both institutions for developing their own shadow
systems. This tendency can be traced to the inability of the central systems to provide the
functionalities the local units required. A major cause of this shortcoming was the
structure of the databases. Many of the key central databases had fewer ﬁelds than were
required by the local units. This constrained their ability to use the central systems for
their work, and drove them to create shadow systems, with some even hiring their own IT
staff to do so.

For example, the Central Finance unit in EduExcel was not aware of how crucial
the request by local HR units for more ﬁelds in the database was. This was because of
two reasons: a) Central Finance was able to obtain the information it needed from the
systems, and b) when it asked for data from the local units, they provided it. The latter act
meant that the workarounds and shadow systems at the local level were hidden and not
apparent to the Central units. Since Central Finance was oblivious to the needs of the
local units, it did not seriously consider the case for a new ﬁnance system. EduSucceed’s
local units faced a similar issue. They needed more ﬁelds in the ERP system so that they
could track additional attributes of their sub-units, such as codes for projects and grants.
The Central Finance unit had deemed it administratively costly to maintain these codes.
So, to overcome the deﬁciency, the local units created various spreadsheets and databases
to reconcile the codes they used in their accounting books with those used in the central
system. Thus, in these examples, the material features of the database interacted with the
agents’ interpretation of their roles (i.e. providing the data to the Central units was of

paramount importance) to inﬂuence how the software they used was provided.

286

Trends in IT hardware inﬂuenced some governance policies. For example,
increased data portability in the form of USB thumb drives and laptops meant that the
local units had to put in place data encryption rules. Decreases in data storage costs
helped convince the Central IT unit in EduExcel to add more ﬁelds to the database.
EduSucceed’s informal grouping of IT managers was initially set up to prevent the
tragedy of the commons from occurring in the context of networking hardware. By
coming up with common standards and a shared cost structure, they avoided a situation
where each unit bought the cheapest equipment without any concern for quality.

The reporting applications used in each university present an interesting
comparison. EduExcel’s reporting software was fairly basic- easy to use but with limited
functionality. This encouraged users to create reports in their own spreadsheets and
databases. EduSucceed, on the other hand, had a fairly sophisticated application.
However, when coupled with the wide range of IT skills among its users, this meant that
the business reporting user group was not very effective in helping its members. Some
frustrated expert members broke off and formed their own group, and they are now
helping to create training programs for the less savvy users. In this case, the material
attributes of the application interacted with the characteristics of the users to create a new

governance mechanism.

Comparing Perspectives

The major difference between the two organizations is that EduExcel is in the
midst of implementing an ERP package now, while EduSucceed did that a decade ago.

Figure 21 at the beginning of this chapter is an abstract depiction of the differences in the

287

IS portfolios of the two organizations. These differences led to an expectation that there
would be differences in how their IS portfolios were governed.

This expectation was borne out in the formal structures that were observed:
EduSucceed had more of such mechanisms compared to EduExcel (Table 12). Thus,
from an agency theoretic point of view, EduExcel appeared to be less centrally controlled
than EduSucceed. However, the persistence of drift in both organizations indicated that
there were some underlying similarities in the processes used to manage IT, even though
it seemed like they should be different.

The interviews revealed that a rich set of relationships and mechanisms lay under
the surface in each organization. These were mostly initiated by local users or the local IT
department. Some of these were based on personal relationships that began during the
various formal governance meetings. Thus, even in a context where stronger centralized
control might be expected, the data revealed a multi-lateral game. Instead of a central
principal dominating subordinate agents with its economic resources, many agents were
using a variety of resources (different “currencies”) to negotiate the type of IT systems
they could use. Moreover, rather than the IT portfolio being an external, fairly static
object which agents accessed for their daily work, it was a domain being contested by
users and managers from different functions and at different levels.

The analysis presented here indicates that the practice view of IS governance is
more adequate descriptively than the predominant agency theoretic view. Beyond that,
would adopting the former viewpoint lead to improved outcomes, in some circumstances
at least? In other words, if organizations governed their IT portfolios by using the agency

theoretic view, would they be losing out somehow?

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Adopting the practice perspective means accepting that formal structures,
organizational mandates, and auditable checklists have limited beneﬁt in understanding
how well an organization is managing its IT assets. A necessary corollary of this decision
is that it makes managers more sensitive to detecting the underlying mechanisms in their
organizations, and to investigate their impact on the organization, as well as how they
interact with the formal structures. Assuming that these underlying mechanisms are more
effective at some purpose, since they would not have existed if they were not, uncovering
them allows an organization to assess who is involved in them and what their rationales
are for doing so. In this manner, IT managers will be able to detect possible ﬂaws in their
formal structures and unearth better explanations for problems they have faced during IT
projects. This exercise will be critical in designing more effective mechanisms in the
future. Thus, the practice perspective is beneﬁcial to an organization because it forces a
self-reﬂexive posture. Instead of seeking new ways of imposing increasing numbers of
external structures on its employees when faced with IT-related problems, such as
fragmented portfolios or never-ending projects, an organization that views circumstances
with a practice lens will, hopefully, be able to discover the dispositions of the various
parties it deals with, the histories of their interactions, and the impact the IT they are

using has had on their IT governance practices.

289

 

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CHAPTER 8: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

In the past, the C10 ’s role has been deciding what services and what
software he is going to make available to the users of his network As
users source more of what they use from the Internet, they will use
applications more on an as-needed basis. The CIO’s role must be to ﬁnd
what they need on the Internet and create security systems to be sure the
corporation is not compromised. E-mail is increasingly done on
BlackBerrys... and in airports.... That ’s just the ﬁrst manifestation to
individuals choosing to use one platform versus another and it’s very hard
to stop.

(Clayton Christensen, interviewed in Nash, 2009)

In a report released by IDC in September 2009, some 20 percent of
business users said Google Docs is in widespread use at their companies--
up ﬁom less than 6 percent 18 months earlier. IDC expects this ﬁgure to
reach 27 percent this year... IDC found that (Microsoft) Office is widely
used in 97 percent of companies surveyed most companies use Google
Docs to complement Ofﬁce.

(Fitzgerald, 2010)
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the theoretical contributions of the study,
where I elaborate on the study’s initial conceptual framework and the ﬁndings from the
case studies to propose a conceptualization of IS portfolio drift as a dynamic process of
interaction between practices, resources, and materiality. The chapter then continues by
listing some of the study’s limitations. This is followed with some managerial
implications of the study, further research opportunities in this domain, and some

concluding points.

Theoretical Contributions

Portfolio Change as a Continuous Process

This study’s ﬁrst research question was: why and how does portfolio drift occur?
The data showed that IS portfolios driﬁed even when they contained applications that
have a strong centralizing tendency, such as ERP systems. Therefore, the ﬁrst
contribution of this study is that portfolio drift is likely to be a common occurrence. IS
portfolios are dynamic and constantly in ﬂux because they are contested spaces for
legitimacy and other resources. There are many deep and long-running interactions
between the material attributes of the IT assets in a portfolio and the resources and
preferences of users and managers from the IT and functional departments. The various
agents have distinct preferences for the functionalities and interfaces they desire and
need, and use different forms of capital to inﬂuence which applications are allowed to

enter the portfolio.

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The trajectory of these interactions is affected by the type of resource that is
considered to be symbolically powerful in a certain context, as well as the particular
inclinations of the agents involved in that context. Sometimes, these interactions can
result in productive collaboration, while at other times, they are better understood as a
lack of interaction. Over time, as the portfolio expands and contracts as a result of these
practices, the preferences of the agents and the resources they can deploy also change.

According to this view, organizational adoption of IT should not be seen as a one-
off occurrence, but as a link in a long chain of continuous interactions between
individuals in the IT and functional departments, and the central and local units.
Decisions are made with a view to the future, as well as the past. Power is distributed,
and what counts as powerful and how it is distributed changes over time. For example,
when a experienced EduExcel manager participates in the planning for an ERP system,
she has more credibility within her organization when she argues that the legacy systems
should not be dropped when the ERP system starts operating. EduSucceed managers
offering their departments as sites for trialing new systems gain by being ﬁrst in line
when they need to change some feature of their systems.

Thus, IS portfolios follow a logic more akin to dialectics than the teleology
assumed in standard IT management descriptions (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995), where
organizations move ﬁ'om a collection of disparate systems, to some form of enterprise
application integration with middleware, and then the use of an integrated ERP system.
Unlike this steady progress in one direction, portfolios may be moving in either direction
— toward more or less control —- and may also be changing direction over time. This was

exempliﬁed in this study by the example of EduSucceed, which moved from a diverse set

294

 

of applications to an ERP system and is now working on reducing the diversity which has
re-appeared. It is worth noting that the pace and direction of change depends on one’s
vantage point: from certain points in the organization, the applications used to carry out
one’s tasks may seem to stay constant, while employees elsewhere may be facing more
frequent changes in the applications they use. This could be due to many factors, such as
a higher level of IT skills enabling more self-directed IT development, or a culture of
subversion in some departments encouraging tacit disobedience of organizational
policies. These factors are examples of possible individual and organizational
dispositions and resources.

The view of portfolio drift mentioned in Chapter 2 as the gap between the
expected and observed portfolios is problematic. While it is a useful abstract metaphor,
the frequent modiﬁcations in organizational IS portfolios, even just those which are
publicly acknowledged and recognized as being outside the ofﬁcially-mandated portfolio,
makes it difficult to imagine if it is possible to describe what an expected IS portfolio
would be. With the growth in Web 2.0 applications, it is possible that “invisible drift”
will become more important in the future. This issue is further elaborated in the

“Limitations” Section.

The Sociomaterial Practice of IS Governance

The second research question asked: what are the implications of portfolio drift
for IS governance? The answer builds on the conception of IS portfolios discussed above.
The data showed that IS portfolios are governed as much by informal practices as they

are by formal practices. These practices were initiated by users and managers from

295

 

different levels in the organizations, and relied upon personal relationships, some of
which were established during formal, organizationally-sanctioned interactions. This
situation implies that governance should not be considered to consist only of the
allocation of decision rights and the development of mechanisms to align the functional
and IT departments. Thus, the second contribution of this study is that IS governance is a
reﬂexive and creative activity, and that an organization’s members see it as such.

Governance practices are inﬂuenced by the material attributes of the information
technologies being governed. How governance is carried out and to what extent depends
in some part on what is allowed or enabled by the artifacts being governed. Artifacts
provide affordances to let people do efﬁciently and effectively what they want to do
(Leonardi & Barley, 2008). However, their features also change the attributes of the task
they are used for (Orlikowski, 2010). Keeping an existing governance structure when a
new technology is introduced can lead to ambiguity if the technology’s and the
governance structure’s affordances are different. For example, an organization may
mandate that requests for new ﬁelds in a database be centrally approved. This is to make
it easier to maintain the database and to save storage space. If a new reporting tool is
introduced that allows users to extract the data, users will do so and import it into a
spreadsheet, so that they can create a shadow system with the new ﬁelds they require.
Reporting is now easier and faster, and there are fewer instances of data errors and no
more requests for new ﬁelds in the central database.

While there has been no formal breach of policy, a new system, legitimate in the
eyes of one party but not in the other, has been created. Moreover, the ﬂexibility of the

spreadsheet means that the new shadow system may not even be identiﬁed as a separate

296

“system” requiring access and change controls. The interconnectedness of the IS
portfolio, linking the reporting tool with the central database and the spreadsheet
application, mean that changes in one component can potentially cascade into other
changes. These subsequent changes can be difﬁcult to detect when they originate, and
only materialize when, for example, a major event, such as a database breach, takes
place. This example provides an instance why applying the sociomateriality lens in
governance research will be useful for understanding how IS portfolios, which are
inherently dynamic, affect the viability of an organization’s governance framework.

Integrating IS governance with centrally-unintended IS adoption (i.e. drift in an IS
portfolio) brings with it the advantage of examining the interaction between users,
decision-makers, and designers. Prior research on materiality, IS governance or adoption
seldom considers all three parties simultaneously. This carries the risk of not identifying
important inﬂuences or sources of power on the creation of an organization’s IS portfolio.
Following Churchman’s logic (Churchman, 1971), studies of the interaction of agents
with IT should broaden to consider how managers respond to changes in practices and
how designers’ decisions inﬂuence the interaction patterns. Managers are tasked with
getting work done, so there is a need to understand how they govern IT use to overcome
resistance or unfaithful use, while tolerating or encouraging reinvention (Boudreau &
Robey, 2005). This involves negotiating which party can decide on the legitimacy or
illegitimacy of an IT asset, which means that alignment is on-going and fragile.

The consequences of the dynamism of an IS portfolio can be beneﬁcially viewed
from two different metaphors: should the portfolio be managed as a Roman galley or as a

collection of ﬂoating river-tubes? Roman galleys were streamlined, efﬁcient vehicles that

297

were hierarchically organized. Changes in their operations (i.e. who rowed it when and
for how long) were strictly controlled, especially since most of the rowers were slaves.
River-tubes, on the other hand, are devices that ﬂoat freely down a river, without any
organization or structure. While ﬂoating, the occupants may enjoyably bump into other
tubers, or they may ﬂoat alone down to the river’s mouth. IS portfolios governed like
Roman galleys may gain in terms of efﬁcient operations and less uncertainty, but may
lose in terms of the serendipitous interactions possible with a river-tubes management
style. Conversely, a portfolio managed as a collection of river-tubes may be innovative
and the users may enjoy the journey of experimentation, but may end up being costlier
and more difﬁcult to maintain, since the lack of control leaves open the possibility of
unwanted accidents.

The choice between the two approaches depends largely on the organization’s
context, strategy, and its members’ aversion to uncertainty. Returning to the well-known
exploration/exploitation perspective (March, 1991), the galley approach emphasizes
short-term stability and static efﬁciency (since galleys performed very well in their role
as fast ﬁghting vehicles), and the river-tube management style is closer to exploration, as
its redundancy helps achieve long-term reliability in the face of environmental

perturbation (F arjoun, 2010).

Managerial Implications

ls Drift Good or Bad for Organizations?

One of the key consequences of portfolio drift is portfolio fragmentation. This

refers to an IS portfolio that is populated with a variety of applications that are not
298

coherently integrated or harmonized to remove redundant capabilities. A fragmented
portfolio leads to higher maintenance costs, as additional resources have to be allocated
to support the various different applications. Streamlining a portfolio by removing
redundant or duplicate applications would lead to savings in license fees, as well as the
skilled manpower that was devoted to supporting those applications. Fragmentation also
promotes a limited “view” of business activities (McAfee, 2004). Since different
processes are supported by distinctly separate applications, managers will not be
observing the same set of events or ﬂows. This constriction of information reduces the
quality of decision-making and creates the risk of disjointed responses to environmental
changes.

The second major consequence of portfolio drift is the loss of the resources spent
during the search process. In terms of shadow systems, users or managers spend
substantial time and money searching for the alternative systems, linking them to other
organizational systems or databases, preventing secm'ity breaches, and so on. If
workarounds are relied on, signiﬁcant time is spent on learning how to carry them out,
training others in the same task, and keeping “cheat-sheets” updated. Associated with this
loss of resources is the “wasted” IT expenditure implied by these workarounds and
shadow systems. The unused investment represented by the systems in the ofﬁcial
portfolio that are not used or under-used may add up to a signiﬁcant amount.

Finally, portfolio drift may lead to a misalignment between the business and IS
strategies. While business-IS alignment is a key driver of an organization’s IT investment
decisions, the presence of IT investments driven by local or individual requirements may

dampen organizational-level performance. This is because these alternative investments

299

may prevent the organization from maximizing on the organization-level dimensions it
has selected. When drift occurs, attaining business-IT alignment becomes more difficult
for at least three reasons: a) IT managers may not be aware of the IT assets users have
adopted to carry out their tasks; b) existing IT assets may not be performing their
assigned roles, because of political machinations or changes in requirements during
implementation; or c) business managers may be making decisions based on their IT
systems’ past performance, without realizing that this may have either declined or
improved.

However, at the same time, portfolio drift can have some positive outcomes.
Shadow systems can act as checks on central/official systems, and as back-ups if the
central/ofﬁcial systems do not work as expected. This is especially useful early on in an
application’s tenure in an organization. Once it is established for some time, then
hopefully any problems should have been addressed. However, the challenge here is
knowing when is the “tipping point”- in other words, when is a system safe enough to be
relied upon fully? This is especially difﬁcult to answer when IT systems are becoming
even more important for an organization’s day-to-day operations.

Shadow systems can help overcome the perennial business-IT communication gap
(Basselier, Benbasat & Reich, 2003; Reich & Benbasat, 2000). They are useful because
they can be used as signposts for the IT department to indicate the shortcomings of the
current systems and employees’ preferences for future systems. It is often difﬁcult for
users to specify their requirements in advance, or be aware of different ways of doing
their job because they may not be familiar with newer technologies (Browne & Ramesh,
2002). Shadow systems address this problem because they may act as prototypes of

300

future ofﬁcially-mandated systems. Instead of the organization having to take a risk by
purchasing and installing an expensive new system, the sub-units could implement
smaller applications within the boundaries of their sub-units to see how users react and
what the performance changes are. In a sense, operating a shadow system will be similar
to running a controlled experiment. For example, if a shadow system cuts through
bureaucratic red-tape and users ﬁnd that performance has improved, then the organization
can work towards reducing the red-tape. From an IT manager’s perspective, since users
are closer to the ground, the applications they develop are more likely to match changes
in the operational environment. Thus, shadow systems are “vessels” of valuable
information for IT managers, not just unwanted aberrations.

Shadow systems can help spread the costs of IT development across multiple
organizational units, especially for innovations, whose value may not be obvious when
they are ﬁrst introduced. In that way, shadow systems become an avenue for encouraging
experimentation, while minimizing the costs and risks associated with it. If these systems
are successful, the local units that produce them gain in terms of a higher proﬁle in the
organization, and other units beneﬁt from their effort. In some cases, the overall
organization’s reputation could be enhanced. Given this range of possible outcomes,
managers have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of limiting or encouraging
drift. It may be worthwhile at some organizational levels or in some business units, but

not in others, for the reasons discussed above.

301

Changes in IT Governance

Various formal frameworks for IS governance have been developed in the recent
past, with the most prominent being CoBIT, and their use has signiﬁcantly increased.
This has occurred for at least two reasons. First, the business press frequently features
large IT project failures. Recent examples include the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the lntemal Revenue Service, J .Crew and Netﬂix (Krigsman, 2008). Although these
examples are a biased measure of a phenomenon’s occurrence, as we are selecting on the
dependent variable, they provide a touchstone for managers when they make IT-related
decisions. This heightened public awareness has spurred interest in the use of formal
checklists of best practices for IT management. Second, this trend was given a further
push by the legislative requirement, contained in Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,
that auditors have to test for the existence of material weaknesses in their clients’ internal
controls. IT auditors do so by using guidelines based on COBIT and other frameworks.

However, the use of such formal frameworks prevents managers from evaluating
the presence of any informal relationships through which the IS portfolio is being
managed. This study has shown that IS portfolios are managed with various mechanisms,
both formal and informal. If the informal mechanisms are not made visible, then there
may be challenges if the formal mechanisms do not lead to the expected outcomes. IT
managers would be well-advised to attempt to uncover how their users and managers are
organizing themselves, what sort of relationships exist, and what each agent’s interests
and goals are. In addition, it is important to ﬁnd out the history of these relationships and
to keep track of them in the future. Such informal groupings can be powerful channels for

IT managers to inﬂuence the evolution of the IT portfolio, because they can reveal the

302

invisible power structure within the organization. Such structures may end up being more
effective for managers to gather information on users’ requirements or interests.
Managers should also not assume that top-down frameworks are being complied with.
Finally, before instituting any new governance framework, IT managers should
search internally for any pre-existing processes that they can leverage on. Naturally-
occurring mechanisms may be a better ﬁt for an organization than extemally-imposed
ones, since they draw on existing power structures. If IT managers are interested in
upsetting these mechanisms because they have been deemed to be “inefﬁcient”, then
putting in place extemally-imposed mechanisms would require a different set of symbolic

resources to be deployed to overcome existing arrangements.

Limitations

The study’s unit of analysis was an IS portfolio. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
Ciborra (2000) has argued that “portfolio” is an inappropriate term for describing a
collection of IT assets. In short, he argued that “portfolio” connotes easily separable
components and low transaction costs, two characteristics that do not ﬁt IT assets, which
are often deeply-embedded in work processes and resisted by users to some extent. This
study surfaced other issues with this term. First, unlike static ﬁnancial portfolios, IS
portfolios are generative. Users use the applications provided to them, such as
spreadsheet and database applications, to develop new “tools”, either by themselves or
with IT professionals. These tools are often used as replacements for or supplements to

ofﬁcially-mandated applications. IT enables the creation of many different types of

303

 

technologies-in-use because it is used in various contexts and for many different purposes
(Orlikowski, 2000).

Second, it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd out whether an organization’s IS portfolio is meeting
its users’ needs because: a) there is a learning curve with software, so the beneﬁts
obtained change over time; and b) users sometimes ﬁnd it difﬁcult to articulate their
requirements. For example, when some of EduExcel’s users were asked what features
they wanted in their new ERP system, they replied: “not what we have” or “more than
what we have”. Thus, the value of acquiring a particular asset is difﬁcult to ascertain ex
ante, unlike a ﬁnancial asset, whose value can be assessed in terms of the net present
value of the expected ﬁrture cash-ﬂow accruing from it, or by its market price if there is a
market for it. A related issue is the organizational level at which an IS portfolio is
deﬁned. A frrrn’s collection of IT assets may meet the needs of the employees at one
level, but may not do so for those at a lower level, because, for example, they may need
more detailed reports or more ﬁelds in the database. Thus, the portfolio may be seen to be
stable at the higher level of an organization’s hierarchy, because no changes are required,
while it may be more volatile at lower levels, as the employees come up with
workarounds to meet their needs. This is a limitation of this study, as it was originally
assumed that an IS portfolio would be fairly easy to identify, as would shadow systems
and workarounds.

These challenges in deﬁning a portfolio affect how the level of drift in an
organization’s IS portfolio is assessed. The use of the term “portfolio” implies that there
is a ﬁxed set of applications in an organization. However, the issues detailed above
indicate that portfolios are constantly in a state of drift, and that the level of ﬂux depends

304

 

on the viewpoint one starts from. This viewpoint also affects whether drift is seen as a
positive or negative development; from higher up in an organization, shadow systems
may be unnecessary portfolio fragmentation, leading to higher maintenance costs, while
from the operational level, shadow systems are essential for getting work done. Since
drift is occurring constantly, another challenge is that any assessment of the level of drift
is dependent on the time at which the assessment was made. Taking a snapshot of a
portfolio, or a retrospective overview, may not be indicative of the actual extent of drift,
since different systems drift at different speeds. This implies that the three categories of
drift described in this study are not all-encompassing. Other forms of drift are present and
should be able to be perceived over different time-spans.

The extent of drift that was detected could also be affected by the interviewees.
Most of the employees in the organizations studied were middle-aged, and had a long
tenure in the organization. It is possible that, since younger employees are more familiar
with new technologies (e. g. Web 2.0), they would be more comfortable with using and
creating shadow systems, and that if more of them had been interviewed, additional
instances of drift could have been located.

The sites for this study- two large universities- were chosen because of their
expected propensity for drift. This meant that they could provide a sufﬁcient number of
examples which could be analyzed for the study. The converse of this choice is that the
characteristics of large universities, namely their decentralized organizational structure,
independent sub-units, and knowledge-intensive work, are fairly unique, in contrast to
most other commercial organizations. They are more akin to adhocracies (Mintzberg and
McHugh, 1985; Mintzberg, 1993) than bureaucracies. This structure makes members of

305

universities more inclined to develop informal procedures and relationships that cut
across organizational hierarchies to get their work done. While EduSucceed was more
centralized than EduExcel in terms of its IT management structure to some extent, both
organizations were fairly similar in the overall level of organizational decentralization.
Future research should thus consider examining the extent of drift in organizations that
are differentiated both in terms of their IT management and overall structure. Thus, it
would be interesting to compare the existence of portfolio drift between more and less
centralized organizations. The decentralized nature of universities makes it likely that
their IT governance structure is more similar to a feudal structure, following Weill’s
(2004) framework. In such structures, local unit leaders and process owners have a higher
level of authority than central management.

This points out a concern with using the practice lens: at what level do we bound
the inﬂuences of other agents? This study examined how the habitus and capital
endowments of the central and local IT units interacted to impact the organization’s IT
portfolio. Should future research also investigate how the habitus and capital endowments
of central and local management and functions? Perhaps the level of portfolio drift is also
affected by the state or country an organization operates in— should their habitus and
capital endowments also be accounted for? These issues are worth exploring, as it is
probable that some differences between organizations could be attributed to their
existence in broader ﬁelds. Thus, future research could explore how the intersecting
ﬁelds that organizations and units exist in inﬂuence the level of portfolio drift observed.

While the sites for the study are both universities, the theoretical insights

presented here are not limited to these speciﬁc institutions or others like them.

306

 

Workarounds and shadow systems have been described in research on IT adoption and
resistance to new IT in various contexts (e. g. Boudreau & Robey, 2005; F emeley &
Sobreprez, 2006; Soh, Sia & Tay-Yap, 2000). The inﬂuence of materiality and power on
IT management and use is also well-known in the literature (Markus, 1983; J asperson et
al., 2005; Leonardi & Barley, 2008). Researchers have also argued that changes in the
characteristics of technology and users may lead to shifts in practices and relationships
(e. g. Osterlund & Carlile, 2005; Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004; Vaast & Walsham, 2005).
Future research in other organizations will help to extend the arguments developed in this
paper.

Although the concept of drift in IS research originated from Ciborra’s work on IS
projects, it was adapted here because it encompassed many of the important elements in
governance research- multiple agents, conﬂicting intentions, improvisation, a focus on
control, and a historical perspective. Bourdieu’s version of the practice perspective was
the main overarching framework for this study, and hence the results are conditioned by
this particular theoretical lens. Other analytical lenses that could be reasonably applied
here include organizational routines, discursive practices, and impression management.
Further research is required to examine the complex interplay between the use of
particular words and tactics to inﬂuence the display of multiple forms of power.

This study has been agnostic about the severity of the changes. This was done to
include as many possible examples of unintended changes in IS portfolios to learn more
about the nature of portfolio drift. It is possible that there are differences between gradual
changes and radical changes, such as severe environmental disruptions, drastic
reorganizations, or technological shifts (Lyytinen & Rose, 2003), in terms of their impact

307

on IS governance. The conceptual lens used in this study proposes that agents engage in a
particular form of drift based on their perceptions of the dispositions of the agents
involved in a context, the resources available to these agents, and the material attributes
of the technology of concern. Hence, agents will modify their practices to the extent that
the severity of a change modiﬁes these features or their salience. The time frame selected
for this study is, as discussed above, a snapshot. At the point at which the research is
conducted, changes that were gradual in an earlier time period may have cascaded across
the IS portfolio or the organization so that they appear severe now. Conversely, radical
changes occurring some time ago may be less apparent now, even though they have left
their imprint on the portfolio, the network of relationships, and the resources and

dispositions of the agents.

Further Research

The limitations listed above make it difﬁcult to create a boundary around an
organization’s IS portfolio. This has implications for research in IS governance. First, if it
is difﬁcult to describe an IS portfolio, how can we theorize about IS governance, which is
predicated on knowing what is being controlled? How can we know whether speciﬁc
management techniques have an effect on a portfolio if we are not sure what is in the
portfolio? The ambiguous description of an IS portfolio makes it difﬁcult to do so. Thus,
researchers should careﬁilly specify what they are including in their studies of IS
portfolios, and how they made those decisions.

Second, this quandary is beneﬁcial in that it points out the difﬁculties of

expecting certain management techniques to improve the value an organization can

308

 

obtain from its IS portfolio. This way of thinking extends from the uncertainty created by
the use of the word “portfolio”. While ﬁnancial assets can be easily identiﬁed and
manipulated so that the entire portfolio becomes more or less valuable, the same cannot
be said of IS assets. Thus, researchers should carefully describe the process or
mechanisms by which they expect technique X or Y to affect IS asset Z, and not assume a
vague relationship.

The third and ﬁnal implication is that, because of these challenges, research on IT
management should incorporate broader organizational issues that affect the underlying
motivations for using and managing IT. These include the existence of clan control
within organizations (Ouchi, 1979; 1980), and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
among individuals (Organ, 1988; Van Dyne, Graham & Dienesch, 1994). OCB refers to
extra-role employee behavior that is above and beyond what is required. It contributes to
organizational effectiveness because it increases the resources available to a frrm and
reduces the need for more formal control mechanisms.

This viewpoint is becoming more essential because of ﬁmdamental changes in the
corporate IT environment. Traditionally, organizations have been considered by
researchers to consist of individual users or teams of users, who had little impact on
choice of IT they used at work, either by their own discretionary volition or their
backgrounds. These users were seen to be only software users, with only developers
being able to create software. Thus, the features of each IT were given, and were
appropriated by users as required. Business processes that used IT were seen as being

amenable to be formally structured into computer-managed workﬂows.

309

The current corporate IT environment is different. After nearly three decades of
IT use in organizations, employees are more IT-savvy and more experienced. There has
also been a blurring of the roles of users and designers- IT is designed to be customizable
by users and they thus participate in its construction (Pollock, 2005). For example, users
use ﬂexible platforms, such as spreadsheets and databases, to create applications if there
is no existing application for some speciﬁc purpose. They also co-opt freely-available
online tools (e.g. instant messaging and Google Docs) into their communication and
collaboration practices. The greater use of web-based applications means that it is easier
to circumvent controls on what applications should be used for work activities. This shift
is complemented by the increasing digitization and distribution of business processes
(Luckham, 2002). Finally, “artful work”, heavily reliant on knowledge and creativity, is
becoming more important for organizations, and is more effective when workers are
provided the freedom to choose their own tools rather than being constrained in their
choice (Hill, et al., 2006).

This change in the corporate IT environment has not been reﬂected in research on
IS governance, which emphasizes contingency studies to develop frameworks and
guidelines and the efﬁcacy of internal controls. Future research should consider how
governance is practiced. In addition to testing the usefulness of control checklists,
researchers should study how these controls and frameworks came about and how they
are used, adopted, adapted, and discarded.

Recently, researchers have begun developing individual-level measures to
measure the level to which an information system is adopted (Table 13). It would be

worthwhile to integrate the domains of IS adoption and resistance with research on

310

workarounds and shadow systems to create a more holistic scale. This scale could then be
used periodically before, during and after the installation of a new IT system to evaluate
how users’ reactions to the old as well as the new systems. This data could be part of a
larger project that also assessed changes in relationships, status, and culture as the project
is carried out and is completed. Such a study would integrate research on IT investment
decision-making, projects, adoption, acceptance, assimilation, and governance. It would
be a rich source of data for surfacing patterns of drift, and for testing out the process

theory presented earlier in the study.

 

Lapointe & Rivard, 2005 Femeley & Sobreperez, Standing, Sims & Love,

 

2006 2009
0 Full adoption - Essential workaround ° Acquiescence
0 Neutral - Harmless workaround - Compromise
° Apathy ° Hindrance workaround - Manipulate
0 Passive resistance 0 Avoid

0 Active resistance
0 Aggressive resistance

Table 13: Examples of Terms used to Describe Resistance

Conclusion

This dissertation contributes to the literature on IS governance by offering an alternative
understanding of its core object of study: the IS portfolio. Instead of viewing it as a static,
well-managed collection of assets, the IS portfolio’s dynamic nature has been placed at
the center. This draws attention to the portfolio as being situated in a ﬁeld of practice, and
its role in structuring, as well as being structured by, agents’ actions. By adopting a
practice-based perspective, this study challenges conventional notions of the roles of the
various agents in determining the legitimacy of an IS portfolio’s components. It offers an

explanation for the constant ﬂux found in IS portfolios, and, given this dynamism,

311

suggests different ways of governing it. In speaking to practitioners, this research
questions IT governance policies that emphasize the need for implementing detailed
mechanisms without being aware of underlying social relationships and their histories,

and the affordances of IT assets.

312

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