IT Guiding Principles
The University of Texas at Arlington is complex in both its organization and its technology, requiring that competing Information Technology (IT) needs be carefully evaluated to ensure optimal use of limited resources and alignment with institutional strategic goals. IT Governance must aim for a balance of:
Innovation Stability/Reliability
Standardization Autonomy / Experimentation
Accessibility versus Security / Privacy
Consensus Efficiency in Decision Making
Centralized Services Distributed Services
Proprietary Open Source
IT Principles should define desirable behavior for both IT professionals and IT users. In support of these topics, the following IT guiding principles are recommended:
- IT INVESTMENT: UT Arlington will manage its IT as an investment, utilizing IT industry standards, recommending best practices, and maximizing the value of its resources. Campus priorities will drive UT Arlington’s IT strategies and investments, allocating resources appropriately and accountably to support the university’s mission and strategic goals through the IT Governance Model. When a new system is needed, it is more efficient to ‘buy versus build’.
- IT STANDARDS: Information Technology should be guided by a clear set of policies, procedures, standards, and guidelines to promote a healthy, efficient IT environment in support of the university’s mission and strategic goals.
- SUPPORT OF TEACHING AND RESEARCH: The University’s IT resources should work collaboratively to provide a responsive IT environment that enriches and enhances teaching, learning, and research.
- INTEGRATION AND INCLUSION: Information Technology should help UT Arlington fulfill its teaching, learning, and research mission by allowing members of the campus community to communicate, collaborate, learn, and disseminate within and across disciplines and campus borders.
- SECURITY AND RELIABILITY: Increasingly, the intellectual property and resources of our students, faculty, and staff are in electronic form, requiring that the campus IT infrastructure be stable, safe, and secure.
- UBIQUITY: Information Technology should ensure essential connectivity for all campus users with basic lines of support for all departments as well as providing recommendations and standards for architecture, infrastructure, enterprise solutions, and any other IT service that provides beneficial value from deployment of standardization.
- EASE OF USE: Campus applications, systems, communication devices, and classroom technologies will be integrated and easy to use.
Executive Committee Priorities
Amongst a world of high demand for IT services, it is best for UT Arlington to make decisions on where to excel. In addition to general IT Guiding Principles, the following IT Guiding Principles from UT Arlington’s Executive Committee indicates the greatest areas of importance from an overall campus perspective:
- ENROLLMENT GROWTH: UT Arlington is focused on enrollment growth of all academic programs. There will be an emphasis on IT projects that provide enrollment growth potential.
- RESEARCH GROWTH: UT Arlington has a mission of becoming a major research university. This includes support of research intensive faculty. IT should be an enabling resource for those research projects that require IT services to enhance the university’s ability to compete in the research community.
- RETENTION AND GRADUATION RATES: A critical part of enrollment is the ability to retain and graduate students as well as enhancing their ability to succeed after graduation. IT services should be utilized as a supporting mechanism to improve retention and graduation whenever possible.
- ENGAGED CAMPUS: UT Arlington strives to be a place where students want to attend, graduate, and return; where faculty members want to work, teach and conduct research. All should want to become an integral part of one large family community. IT services should aim to support technology needs, encourage an environment of collaboration and open discussion, and promote engaged research. As we move forward with services that build our community, enrollment growth will be a natural reflection.
- STUDENT EXPERIENCE AND SUCCESS: IT should focus on services that create a more service-oriented culture and encourage retention.
- UT ARLINGTON BRAND: The new UT Arlington brand has been highly successful. IT should strive to maintain momentum of the UT Arlington ‘brand’ and continue to build the program.
- MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL ALLIANCE AMONG NORTH TEXAS RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS: When appropriate, IT services will be used to create and support mutually beneficial alliances among North Texas institutions for collaborative research opportunities and other higher educational initiatives.
As we look at projects, the Executive Committee will interpret the guiding principles and determine the most critical areas to focus IT resources. As an example, if we wish to focus on enrollment growth, where are the best areas to target resources? Financial aid, recruitment and admissions, student IT services like Microsoft Email and wireless access, teaching and learning tools like classroom capture, etc.