I constantly refer to EDUCAUSE in my blog, which is the organization that fosters the professional relationship amongst Higher Ed IT leaders. Prior to EDUCAUSE, there were two organizations, one called EDUCOM and the other called CAUSE. EDUCOM was primarily the gathering place for academic computing and CAUSE was for administrative computing. In 1998, the two merged to form EDUCAUSE. If you look at what is happening at EDUCAUSE conferences lately, they tend to be light on administrative systems because administrative systems professionals gather more at the meetings organized by the major ERP vendors – Ellucian Live, PeopleSoft HEUG and Jenzabar JAM. I was pleasantly surprised to hear about a collaborative effort between EDUCAUSE and NACUBO (National Association of College and University Business Officers) to bring together CIOs and CBOs (Chief Business Officers) of about 150 institutions for an Administrative IT summit in Chicago in June.

A report was produced based on the proceedings in the summit, which I have found to be very informative and easy reading. One of the most important things, while obvious, is not stated often enough, can be found in this report:

“Although administrative IT systems and services are essential to the operations of our institutions, most of them do not significantly differentiate one institution from another. For example, hiring and paying employees, handling procurements, and managing budgets are all important—even mission-critical—functions, but they don’t influence a student’s decision to attend an institution.”

I thought it would be nice to review the recommendations from this report and see how we are doing with respect to these.

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