A charter clarifying the roles of Information Services, UO Libraries and other key university units in delivering technology services to campus is now complete.
Jessie Minton, chief information officer and vice provost of Information Services, and Adriene Lim, dean of libraries and Philip H. Knight chair, recently announced that the provost had approved and signed the charter.
The charter outlines, for the first time, the existing division of technology-related responsibilities on campus, as well as specifying a few services that will move from one unit to another.
UO Libraries will continue providing academic technology, digital scholarship services and library-based systems and environments. Information Services will continue offering most other information technology services. University Communications and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation will each play roles in web communications and research-related IT services, respectively.
“The development of the charter is a major milestone in Transform IT, a process to better coordinate the UO’s information technology resources in support of President Michael Schill’s initiatives to improve academic and research excellence,” Provost Scott Coltrane said.
Information Services and UO Libraries are the central units that lead, manage and provide major components of the university’s information technology infrastructure and services.
“UO Libraries worked closely with Information Services to develop the charter,” Lim said. “We are proud to be a principal contributor to campus technology.”
Lim and Minton thanked everyone who had participated in developing the charter, including Chris Krabiel, who served as interim chief information officer and worked extensively on the charter and Transform IT.
“I am grateful to everyone in the University of Oregon community that provided written comments and asked insightful questions at meetings,” Minton said. “Community input was vital to developing the charter, and I hope to get more community engagement for future phases of Transform IT.”
Minton, who recently started as the UO’s chief information officer, acknowledges that the charter's development may have taken longer than expected, but she adds that the care taken to get to this point has laid a strong foundation for Transform IT.
In the coming weeks, the next steps in that process will include the development of a set of guiding principles that the university will use to make decisions relating to Transform IT, as well as a robust project plan and an implementation overview.
More information about Transform IT is available on a new Transform IT website, which Information Services launched June 9 to provide regular updates about the project.