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IT Responds to Five-Year Administrative Unit Review Report Recommendations

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Volume 7, Number 8
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IT Responds to the Five-Year Administrative Unit Review Report Recommendations

by Jeff van de Pol

The Division of Information Technology recently released a detailed action plan and timetable in response to the recommendations published in the Five-Year Administrative Unit Review (AUR) Report on April 29, 1999.

cover of the Administrative Unit Review Report

The 80-page report, which concluded a 10-month review of the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology, focuses on five over-arching themes: Academic Priorities, Delineation of Responsibilities, Institutional Ownership, IT as a Campus Policy Advisor, and Organization and Access. To shape its 43 recommendations, the AUR committee used the feedback obtained from clients, campus constituents, and IT staff through a series of meetings and town halls held during the fall.

Following the report's release, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey directed Jerry Hallee, Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, to develop a plan of action, including a timetable, stating how Information Technology and campus management should proceed to address the report's recommendations. Acting AVC-IT Hallee then met with IT Unit Directors at a retreat on June 15, 1999 to examine each of the recommendations and work out details of the action plan. The official Information Technology response, which addresses all 43 recommendations, was presented to Provost Grey on July 7, 1999.

In a letter accompanying the response, Hallee states that, "while each of the recommendations is important and deserves careful attention, the single most important observation within the AUR report is summarized as follows within the Executive Summary: There is a critical need to develop a common understanding about which levels of the campus are responsible for different types of information technology support."

According to Hallee, IT management is already working with the Deans' Offices of both the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Division of Biological Sciences to address the delineation of roles and responsibilities.

"Our goal is to develop a template that will facilitate future discussions with the other deans' and vice chancellors' offices."

While a number of the AUR recommendations await implementation until the new Vice Provost is appointed, Hallee states that IT is well-prepared to move forward in the interim: "...the Division of Information Technology (IT) has already initiated a number of actions that directly respond to the Review Committee recommendations. IT management and staff have carefully and seriously considered the AUR findings and...have committed to a very ambitious set of actions to improve campus technology support services."

Information Technology plans to make the response, including all subsequent progress reports, readily available to the campus community. The complete response, as well as the original AUR report, can be accessed on the Web at http://it.ucdavis.edu/.