An international perspective 

An international perspective – comparison with EDUCAUSE and ZKI

EDUCAUSE is the equivalent organisation to UCISA in the USA and Canada and has been carrying out an annual survey of the top issues of its members for the past eleven years. Their Top Ten Issues for 2010 are listed below:

There continues to be a set of concerns common to UCISA and EDUCAUSE members. The differences possibly reflect the different national concerns and attitudes.

Funding IT, Administrative/ERP/Information Systems and Security have been the top three issues in various orders in every EDUCAUSE survey since 2003. In North America, the emphasis has shifted from the lack of funding (real or perceived) to how to reduce budgets and increase revenue from technology related activity. The lack of funding is seen as an opportunity across the Atlantic to engage with other senior members of the institution management to discuss institutional priorities. Establishing those priorities iwll need effective IT Governance and so it is not surprising to note that Governance, Organization and Leadership is a growing concern for EDUCAUSE members.

Security has long been a concern in the USA in particular but featured in only one of the four top ten rankings (consuming most resource) in the UCISA survey and then only at tenth. Identity and access management still feature as a top ten issue for EDUCAUSE members but is no longer regarded as an issue in the UK. The use of technology in teaching and learning features strongly in the EDUCAUSE rankings but the use of the Learning Management System (usually referred to as the VLE in the UK) has long been embedded in teaching and learning in the UK and so is not regarded as an issue. The use of new technology and cloud based services still however present a challenge for IT Directors on both sides of the Atlantic with a ranking of fourth in the EDUCAUSE survey and equal tenth in the UCISA equivalent.

There are a number of organisations similar to UCISA in Europe. ZKI is the German equivalent and it is instructive to compare our top concerns with one of our European partners. The German higher education system is a blend of public (predominantly) and private institutions. The list of the ZKI top ten concerns is given below.

Given the global nature of the economic downturn it is not surprising to find that Funding IT is the main concern of our German counterparts. However, the survey may have been carried out before the Federal Government announced increased investment in the higher education sector and so it is possible that funding, which has not been the top concern for German IT Directors in the past, will not endure as the top concern (it did not feature at all in the top ten for 2009).

There are bigger differences between the ZKI and UCISA lists with Staff development and The Bologna process/Campus management ranked jointly second in the ZKI list but not featuring at all in the UCISA survey. The implementation of the Bologna process has not been something that has greatly troubled the UK sector and the issue, even when deliberately included in previous UCISA Top Concerns surveys, has never featured in the top ten from any perspective, let alone the combined listing. This is primarily because UK higher education system has not had to adjust much to meet the requirements of Bologna whereas there have had to be significant changes to the German system. Consequently there has been little impact on student records or course management systems in the UK but greater change in Germany.

Although Training  and development of IT staff was listed as one of the candidate concerns in the UK, it did not appear in any of the top ten listings. Having appropriately trained staff is important in ensuring that you are running an efficient service so it is perhaps surprising that this doesn’t rank in the UCISA listings, especially as training and development budgets are often one of the first to be cut. It is possible that training costs are built into any capital expenditure for projects to upgrade or implement software or that the business case is made on the basis of risk to the institution if the training is not provided.