IT leaders

Higher-ed IT leaders list their top 10 priorities


A Verizon roundtable discussion focused on higher ed IT leaders’ priorities and digital IT trends as they look to the fall semester.

Though colleges and universities are open environments, campus IT leaders face a number of challenges as digital technology use grows, said members of a recent national panel. In other words, BYOD isn’t a problem of the past, it’s still very much the challenge now. Also, security trumps all.

One of the challenges listed over and over again by higher ed IT leaders was that colleges and universities are striving to create secure environments that do not limit use of and access to devices, platforms and other technologies.

Other often-cited current higher-ed IT priorities center around security and education outcomes, with secure campus networks supporting these outcomes and research goals, said Maggie Hallbach, vice president of government and education markets for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, during a virtual roundtable event to discuss higher education’s IT evolution.

“Without feeling secure, it’s really difficult to be able to drive student outcomes, conduct research, and focus on problems that research is attempting to solve–and it’s also very difficult to interact and collaborate in the higher-ed environment if you’re not entirely clear on whether who you are interacting with is trusted,” she added.

(Next page: The 10 IT priorities and digital trends moving into the fall semester)

Hallbach noted another trend becoming more popular is that of collaboration and public-private partnerships.

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“That’s really as we’re seeing today’s generation of learners and their demand for ubiquitous connectivity; the expectation that their devices and applications they need to access through those devices are always accessible, and that they’re intrinsically safe in the microcosm of the university,” she said.

Top Priorities for Higher Ed IT Leaders

These include:
1. Higher education transformation drivers
2. Optimizing educational technology
3. Student success technologies
4. Workforce hiring and retention
5. Institutional data management
6. IT funding models
7. Business intelligence and analytics
8. Enterprise application integration
9. IT organizational development
10. E-learning and online education

Higher-ed digital IT trends include:
1. Advanced digital media capabilities
2. Digital situational awareness and wayfinding
3. Optimized retail
4. Always-connected global workforce
5. Ubiquitous connectivity
6. Comprehensive physical security
7. Data analytics and machine learning
8. Mobile first
9. Wearables and life

“You can still have very secure environments and still have an open and collaborative culture,” Hallbach said. “It takes practice and starts with compliance and governance, knowing where your network is, and where your data is. There are fundamental steps you can take to maintain the kind of openness that makes university communities so great at the same time that you lock down, with proper control, the type of data we know is most vulnerable based on our research.”

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Laura Ascione

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