Wall-e and 9 movie
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Watch at least two of the following movies:
• Make a comprehensive reaction paper for the two movies in no less than
300 words each.
• Make a comparative ...
13 years ago
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Why are barriers important?
A barrier is an obstacle which prevents a given policy instrument being implemented, or limits the way in which it can be implemented. In the extreme, such barriers may lead to certain policy instruments being overlooked, and the resulting strategies being much less effective. For example, demand management measures are likely to be important in larger cities as ways of controlling the growth of congestion and improving the environment. But at the same time they are often unpopular, and cities may be tempted to reject them simply because they will be unpopular. If that decision leads in turn to greater congestion and a worse environment, the strategy will be less successful. The emphasis should therefore be on how to overcome these barriers, rather than simply how to avoid them. ECOCITY provides a useful illustration of the ways in which such barriers arise, and of how obstacles have been overcome, in case study cities.
What are the principal barriers?
In our work in PROSPECTS, we grouped barriers into the four categories listed below. More recent work in TIPP has demonstrated that failure to adopt a logical approach to the process of strategy development can also impose a barrier to effective planning. This Guidebook is designed to help cities avoid this happening. TIPP also provides a set of recommendations.
1) Legal and institutional barriers
These include lack of legal powers to implement a particular instrument, and legal responsibilities which are split between agencies, limiting the ability of the city authority to implement the affected instrument (Section 3). The survey of European cities in PROSPECTS indicates that land-use, road building and pricing are the policy areas most commonly subject to legal and institutional constraints. Information measures are substantially less constrained than other measures.
2) Financial barriers
These include budget restrictions limiting the overall expenditure on the strategy, financial restrictions on specific instruments, and limitations on the flexibility with which revenues can be used to finance the full range of instruments. PROSPECTS found that road building and public transport infrastructure are the two policy areas which are most commonly subject to financial constraints, with 80% of European cities stating that finance was a major barrier. Information provision is the least affected.
3) Political and cultural barriers
These involve lack of political or public acceptance of an instrument, restrictions imposed by pressure groups, and cultural attributes, such as attitudes to enforcement, which influence the effectiveness of instruments. The surveys in PROSPECTS show that road building and pricing are the two policy areas which are most commonly subject to constraints on political acceptability. Public transport operations and information provision are generally the least affected by acceptability constraints.
4) Practical and technological barriers
While cities view legal, financial and political barriers as the most serious which they face in implementing land use and transport policy instruments, there may also be practical limitations. For land use and infrastructure these may well include land acquisition. For management and pricing, enforcement and administration are key issues. For infrastructure, management and information systems, engineering design and availability of technology may limit progress. Generally, lack of key skills and expertise can be a significant barrier to progress, and is aggravated by the rapid changes in the types of policy being considered.
How should we deal with barriers in the short term?
It is important not to reject a particular policy instrument simply because there are barriers to its introduction. One of the key elements in a successful strategy is the use of groups of policy instrument which help overcome these barriers. This is most easily done with the financial and political and cultural barriers, where one policy instrument can generate revenue to help finance another (as, for example, fares policy and service improvements), or one can make another more publicly acceptable (for example rail investment making road pricing more popular). These principles are discussed more fully in Section 11. A second important element is effective participation, as outlined in Section 5, which can help reduce the severity of institutional and political barriers, and encourage joint action to overcome them. Finally, effective approaches to implementation can reduce the severity of many barriers, as discussed in Section 15.
How can we overcome barriers in the longer term?
It is often harder to overcome legal, institutional and technological barriers in the short term. There is also the danger that some institutional and political barriers may get worse over time. However, strategies should ideally be developed for implementation over a 15-20 year timescale (Section 3). Many of these barriers will not still apply twenty years hence, and action can be taken to remove others. For example, if new legislation would enable more effective instruments such as pricing to be implemented, it can be provided. If split responsibilities make achieving consensus impossible, new structures can be put in place. If finance for investment in new infrastructure is justified, the financial rules can be adjusted. TIPP makes a number of recommendations for longer term institutional change. Barriers should thus be treated as challenges to be overcome, not simply impediments to progress. A key element in a long term strategy should be the identification of ways of resolving these longer term barriers.
Identify barriers to implementation — and strategies to overcome them
Organizations are as alike and unique as human beings. Similarly, group processes can be as straightforward or as complex as the individuals who make up the organization. It is vital to successfully launching a new program that the leaders understand the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the organization or system in which they operate. Try to anticipate barriers to implementation so that you can develop strategies to minimize their impact or avoid them altogether. The following list of common barriers can be used to help your leadership team identify potential obstacles. The list of essential elements for change can help the team brainstorm possible solutions. The lists are a good starting point for a planning session that will be most effective if it also takes into account the organization's unique characteristics (Institute for Health Improvement).
Common Barriers
• Studying the problem too long without acting
• Trying to get everyone's agreement first
• Educating without changing structures or expectations
• Tackling everything at once
• Measuring nothing or everything
• Failing to build support for replication
• Assuming that the status quo is OK
More Barriers to Change
• Lack of such resources as time and commitment
• Resistance to change
• Lack of senior leadership support or physician champion
• Lack of cooperation from other agencies, providers, departments, and facilities
• Ineffective teams
• Burdensome data collection
Essential Elements for Change Effort
• Define the problem
• Define the target population
• Define effective treatment strategies and establish procedural guidelines
• Establish performance measures; set goals
• Define effective system changes and interventions
• Develop leadership and system change strategy
Craft a business plan
To "sell" your program idea to administrators and financial officers, you will need a business plan, which outlines the new program's prospects, identifying both potential risks and benefits. A business plan gives you a format for presenting the work you have accomplished in a professional manner that lends credibility to the project. Here is where you report the findings from your needs assessment, outline your program's goals, and describe its procedures and policies. Here is also where you discuss the implementation process, including strategies for overcoming potential obstacles. Information pertaining to finances, program evaluation, and quality management—topics addressed in chapters 5 and 6 of this toolkit—should also be presented in the business plan.
Before you start writing, gather all the information you want to report in the business plan and then draft an outline.
This checklist will help get you started:
• Organizational description, including name, location, mission, patient population
• Management and organization, including organizational chart, key management, consultants, and advisors
• Justification for a palliative care program, including results from your needs assessment
• Services and implementation plan, including operations plan, policies and procedures, and program evaluation and quality management plan
• Marketing plan, including marketing materials
• Financial information, including budget, reimbursement streams, and other funding sources
It is best to wait and write the beginning of the business plan — the executive summary — after you have written all other parts. While a complete business plan may run 30-40 pages, the executive summary should be no more than two pages; it is the business plan in the most concise form possible. The primary purpose of the executive summary is to entice busy administrators to delve further into the details of the business plan.
http://www.konsult.leeds.ac.uk/public/level1/sec10/index.htm
http://www.mywhatever.com/cifwriter/content/22/4482.html
A barrier is an obstacle which prevents a given policy instrument being implemented, or limits the way in which it can be implemented. In the extreme, such barriers may lead to certain policy instruments being overlooked, and the resulting strategies being much less effective. For example, demand management measures are likely to be important in larger cities as ways of controlling the growth of congestion and improving the environment. But at the same time they are often unpopular, and cities may be tempted to reject them simply because they will be unpopular. If that decision leads in turn to greater congestion and a worse environment, the strategy will be less successful. The emphasis should therefore be on how to overcome these barriers, rather than simply how to avoid them. ECOCITY provides a useful illustration of the ways in which such barriers arise, and of how obstacles have been overcome, in case study cities.
What are the principal barriers?
In our work in PROSPECTS, we grouped barriers into the four categories listed below. More recent work in TIPP has demonstrated that failure to adopt a logical approach to the process of strategy development can also impose a barrier to effective planning. This Guidebook is designed to help cities avoid this happening. TIPP also provides a set of recommendations.
1) Legal and institutional barriers
These include lack of legal powers to implement a particular instrument, and legal responsibilities which are split between agencies, limiting the ability of the city authority to implement the affected instrument (Section 3). The survey of European cities in PROSPECTS indicates that land-use, road building and pricing are the policy areas most commonly subject to legal and institutional constraints. Information measures are substantially less constrained than other measures.
2) Financial barriers
These include budget restrictions limiting the overall expenditure on the strategy, financial restrictions on specific instruments, and limitations on the flexibility with which revenues can be used to finance the full range of instruments. PROSPECTS found that road building and public transport infrastructure are the two policy areas which are most commonly subject to financial constraints, with 80% of European cities stating that finance was a major barrier. Information provision is the least affected.
3) Political and cultural barriers
These involve lack of political or public acceptance of an instrument, restrictions imposed by pressure groups, and cultural attributes, such as attitudes to enforcement, which influence the effectiveness of instruments. The surveys in PROSPECTS show that road building and pricing are the two policy areas which are most commonly subject to constraints on political acceptability. Public transport operations and information provision are generally the least affected by acceptability constraints.
4) Practical and technological barriers
While cities view legal, financial and political barriers as the most serious which they face in implementing land use and transport policy instruments, there may also be practical limitations. For land use and infrastructure these may well include land acquisition. For management and pricing, enforcement and administration are key issues. For infrastructure, management and information systems, engineering design and availability of technology may limit progress. Generally, lack of key skills and expertise can be a significant barrier to progress, and is aggravated by the rapid changes in the types of policy being considered.
How should we deal with barriers in the short term?
It is important not to reject a particular policy instrument simply because there are barriers to its introduction. One of the key elements in a successful strategy is the use of groups of policy instrument which help overcome these barriers. This is most easily done with the financial and political and cultural barriers, where one policy instrument can generate revenue to help finance another (as, for example, fares policy and service improvements), or one can make another more publicly acceptable (for example rail investment making road pricing more popular). These principles are discussed more fully in Section 11. A second important element is effective participation, as outlined in Section 5, which can help reduce the severity of institutional and political barriers, and encourage joint action to overcome them. Finally, effective approaches to implementation can reduce the severity of many barriers, as discussed in Section 15.
How can we overcome barriers in the longer term?
It is often harder to overcome legal, institutional and technological barriers in the short term. There is also the danger that some institutional and political barriers may get worse over time. However, strategies should ideally be developed for implementation over a 15-20 year timescale (Section 3). Many of these barriers will not still apply twenty years hence, and action can be taken to remove others. For example, if new legislation would enable more effective instruments such as pricing to be implemented, it can be provided. If split responsibilities make achieving consensus impossible, new structures can be put in place. If finance for investment in new infrastructure is justified, the financial rules can be adjusted. TIPP makes a number of recommendations for longer term institutional change. Barriers should thus be treated as challenges to be overcome, not simply impediments to progress. A key element in a long term strategy should be the identification of ways of resolving these longer term barriers.
Identify barriers to implementation — and strategies to overcome them
Organizations are as alike and unique as human beings. Similarly, group processes can be as straightforward or as complex as the individuals who make up the organization. It is vital to successfully launching a new program that the leaders understand the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the organization or system in which they operate. Try to anticipate barriers to implementation so that you can develop strategies to minimize their impact or avoid them altogether. The following list of common barriers can be used to help your leadership team identify potential obstacles. The list of essential elements for change can help the team brainstorm possible solutions. The lists are a good starting point for a planning session that will be most effective if it also takes into account the organization's unique characteristics (Institute for Health Improvement).
Common Barriers
• Studying the problem too long without acting
• Trying to get everyone's agreement first
• Educating without changing structures or expectations
• Tackling everything at once
• Measuring nothing or everything
• Failing to build support for replication
• Assuming that the status quo is OK
More Barriers to Change
• Lack of such resources as time and commitment
• Resistance to change
• Lack of senior leadership support or physician champion
• Lack of cooperation from other agencies, providers, departments, and facilities
• Ineffective teams
• Burdensome data collection
Essential Elements for Change Effort
• Define the problem
• Define the target population
• Define effective treatment strategies and establish procedural guidelines
• Establish performance measures; set goals
• Define effective system changes and interventions
• Develop leadership and system change strategy
Craft a business plan
To "sell" your program idea to administrators and financial officers, you will need a business plan, which outlines the new program's prospects, identifying both potential risks and benefits. A business plan gives you a format for presenting the work you have accomplished in a professional manner that lends credibility to the project. Here is where you report the findings from your needs assessment, outline your program's goals, and describe its procedures and policies. Here is also where you discuss the implementation process, including strategies for overcoming potential obstacles. Information pertaining to finances, program evaluation, and quality management—topics addressed in chapters 5 and 6 of this toolkit—should also be presented in the business plan.
Before you start writing, gather all the information you want to report in the business plan and then draft an outline.
This checklist will help get you started:
• Organizational description, including name, location, mission, patient population
• Management and organization, including organizational chart, key management, consultants, and advisors
• Justification for a palliative care program, including results from your needs assessment
• Services and implementation plan, including operations plan, policies and procedures, and program evaluation and quality management plan
• Marketing plan, including marketing materials
• Financial information, including budget, reimbursement streams, and other funding sources
It is best to wait and write the beginning of the business plan — the executive summary — after you have written all other parts. While a complete business plan may run 30-40 pages, the executive summary should be no more than two pages; it is the business plan in the most concise form possible. The primary purpose of the executive summary is to entice busy administrators to delve further into the details of the business plan.
http://www.konsult.leeds.ac.uk/public/level1/sec10/index.htm
http://www.mywhatever.com/cifwriter/content/22/4482.html
This strategy is concerned with articulating the goals, rationale and process for developing the Information Environment. This Information Environment must be fit to serve the needs of students, teachers and researchers in further and higher education into the future. The development of a robust and appropriate platform to provide access for educational content for learning, teaching and research purposes is a key component of the JISC 5 year strategy to: 'build an on-line information environment providing secure and convenient access to a comprehensive collection of scholarly and educational material'.
In moving forward this strategy acknowledges that the Information Environment described here is a component of the national and global networked environment. Therefore it should be emphasised that the JISC recognises the number of significant stakeholders with whom there is a clear opportunity to actively engage and collaborate with in the next four to five years.
The Information Environment is clearly key to the goals of achieving an interoperable distributed national electronic resource. Cognate strategies, recognising the interrelation of activities, exist for Collections development and management, and Communications and are on going for Preservation.
This strategy to develop the Information Environment is underpinned by an evolving Implementation Plan demonstrating how the key vision and goals expressed here will be realised through a programme of targeted investment over the next four years.
It is intended that this strategy will be the subject of a series of consultation exercises with communities in order to move forward in a consensual manner, while providing strategic leadership and impetus where appropriate.
From fragmentation..
An Information Environment can be characterised as the set of network or online services that support publishing and use of information and learning resources. At the moment online services providing digital resources tend to operate in a stand-alone manner. The user is therefore required to navigate a complex set of different websites with different search interfaces in order to locate relevant resources. Similarly the resources offered tend to be characterised by a lack of mediation to provide vital signposts to explain context and relevance to the user. It has been recognised that this is one of the key features limiting take up of digital resources.
..To integration
Therefore the Information Environment as it is proposed here aims to offer the user a more seamless and less complex journey to relevant information and learning resources.
For this reason, it is important that this activity is aligned where possible with other developments, nationally and internationally, and that it makes a leading contribution to the enhanced information use and a true democracy of learning opportunity. It is also important that it works to support and influence institutions as they benefit from and contribute to this environment.
Working in a distributed environment
It is acknowledged that the Information Environment envisaged for the JISC is ambitious. This is primarily because this has evolved to embrace two key concepts which are by nature semantically and technically complex to advance through a process of investment, these are the view that:
• digital resources are inherently distributed and will never be delivered by a single service provider
• users do not all want to access information in the same way but will require a diverse range of views of resources in order to satisfy their needs. A web-based portal or VLE for example may operate as a specific window upon a set of distributed resources
Working with a diversity of user requirements
This inherent complexity is a common feature of the emerging e-learning culture and the national and international infrastructures that are being required brought into place to support it. The Development Strategy for the Information Environment needs to articulate how we can progress this distributed model based upon the foundation of the progress made by the JISC in the past 5 years through research and investment.
For example, the JISC's Information Environment needs to progress in such a way that it fully acknowledges the needs of the further as well as higher education constituency. It needs to be geared up to the delivery, discovery and presentation of appropriate learning materials, and needs to support the submission and exchange of learning objects. It is worth pointing out that the needs of the higher education sector are far from resolved in terms of what the JISC currently offers and much further work is needed. However it is essential for the Information Environment to directly engage with post 16 learning requirements.
Emphasising participation
The notion of the Information Environment also supports the goal that lifelong learning is an inherently participatory process, users of national information environments will wish to access but also to add content or context to the resources they use. The information environment must therefore allow this exchange and sharing to take place.
Harnessing and developing standards to underpin the investment
One of the fundamental methods of building national and international environments for accessing shared educational content is recognising that these activities need to be based on standards for the creation, access, use, preservation and moreover interoperability, of networked resources. In order to progress this process, the DNER office have produced a set of Standards and Guidelines intended to underpin the information environment and to support the activities of the development programmes. It is important to note that these standards were prepared in the context of the Government Interoperability Framework, E-gif, and that the standards framework will continue to evolve as the DNER development group actively participates in the process of sharing and building standards for educational resources in a national and international context.
Goals
The following features are key aspects of the evolved Information Environment:
• Fit to serve all kinds of digital content The kinds of electronic content that the Information Environment must deal with are increasingly diverse, and in many cases are based on rapidly evolving and non standard technologies. For example it must be able to accommodate all types of content from streaming video, to electronic books to new types of learning resources. It must be able deliver these efficiently, and must allow them to be accessed and mediated in a series of useful and satisfying ways which progress learning, teaching and research.
• Fully supporting the submission and sharing of research and learning objects Activity will focus on methods to allow members of the community to build the content that they will access, and to share this in meaningful ways with other colleagues and peers. This activity will build a framework for leveraging our mutual community resource, the significance of which is emphasised in the JISC 5 Year strategy and elsewhere.
• Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials, to enrich and develop the learning and research process This will be achieved through developing new portals services which can fuse relevant content, by subject or learning aim for example, to offer enhanced access and greater relevancy to users. Portals and other services will also be developed so that they can be harnessed and embedded at an institutional level. This will be a component of providing an enhanced presentation layer for the rich content available through JISC funded activity in collections development, the holdings of our national data services, and resources held within our community.
• A collaborative landscape of service providers who work together to seamlessly cater for the needs of the community on a national basis This will be achieved through the developing sophistication of shared services and developments in service infrastructure to enable the providers who work within the Information Environment to operate in a truly joined-up fashion.
• Underpinned by real world interoperability, based upon a common standards framework and common semantic for digital resource description and access It has become clear that enhanced interoperability for users will not be achieved without the agreement of some common semantics to support cross searching. As part of developing the Information Environment the JISC will strive for the cross-sectoral adoptions of standard terminologies, for example for subject, audience level, resource type and certification.
Activity areas and definitions
This strategy presents a vision of an integrated Information Environment with a wide range of methods of accessing information and learning resources suitable for a community with diverse needs, character, and learning, teaching and research demographic. This needs to be fortified by a significant process of targeted investment, that needs to prioritised in logical ways. This strategy is intended to articulate a useful and practical way of moving the JISC's Information Environment forward allowing us through an incremental process to implement what is currently a fairly abstract model, if one conceptually advanced, for access to distributed resources.
This involves the development of: A robust service provider architecture, content submission and sharing mechanisms fusion and portal services, shared infrastructure services, and an enhanced presentation layer, supported by the network infrastructure, Super Janet 4 (managed elsewhere in JISC.)
It should also be noted that, there are a series of pre-existing and forthcoming DNER development programmes and related studies underway in this area. Effort will be directed to ensuring that they are strategically aligned with over all DNER and JISC objectives and that programme results directly support the development of the Information Environment.
Technical Model of the Information Environment
Definition of terms
For the purposes of this strategy and the related Implementation Plan it is important to be consistent about the terminology that is employed and its meaning. It is also recognised that these terms may differ in meanings in other contexts. This usage aims to be as close as possible to that used by UKOLN in their work on defining the abstract DNER architecture.
• Technical Model of the Information Environment this contains all of the elements as indicated above and will termed to have become operational well all elements interact smoothly to provide a seamless service to end users. The Information Environment needs to support both the addition of content to the national resource and its access by end users.
• Provision the storage and delivery of 'content'
• Fusion the bringing together of 'content' from multiple providers either by machine to machine 'brokers and aggregators' or 'portals' which are visible to end users
• Infrastructure Shared Middleware Services which support other activities
• Presentation interaction with the end users in a direct and visible manner to give them access to 'content'
Development process
Essentially building the Information Environment is about how we manage the following stages:
1. Generic Technical Architecture We have, as shown in the above diagram, an abstract technical model for the Information Environment which has been defined in conjunction with UKOLN11.
2. Developing an Information Environment Implementation Plan for 2001-2005 This will define the direction for a series of complementary approaches to funded activity. Investment will comprise, some targeted development funding to experiment with new approaches, to directly involve the community in some programme based activity, and to develop project to service approaches where appropriate. This process will also involve benchmarking the current service providers operating in the Information Environment. We currently have a set of JISC funded service providers who are responsible for providing a range of roles intended primarily to serve educational on-line resources to our community and to support this process in various ways. In order to achieve an operational Information Environment it is essential to benchmark our current services against the model proposed. In this way some investment can be made at a service level to allow providers to operate within the new technical architecture.
3. Building the operational Information Environment To arrive at an operational Information Environment we need to fund and manage the development activity as detailed in the related Implementation Plan. This process is represented diagrammatically as follows:
Implementation plans and studies
Building the Information Environment is a complex and wide ranging activity, therefore it is important to emphasise that this Development Strategy is supported by a series of documents presenting detailed approaches. Some of these are already in place others are under development. (* = already in place.)
1. DNER Technical Architecture UKOLN's work12* on the technical architecture of the DNER. Ongoing work: UKOLN are working to develop this area and to provide a range of studies and supporting specifications which will provide us with a firm technical underpinning for the approaches we take in moving forward.
2. Implementation plan for the Information Environment* The evolving plan encompasses the following areas, it is currently in its second draft stage. Building the Information Environment:
o Content submission mechanisms programme
o Service provider development programme
o Portals and fusion programme
o Shared service programme
o Presentation programme
o Evaluation activity
3. Programme Management procedures and guidance for DNER Development programmes:
o Reporting framework*
o Standards and guidelines*
o Copyright and licensing guidelines*
o Business and exit strategy
Development timescales and targets
The overall timeframe for this phase of the development of the Information Environment is between 2001 and 2005. It is important to recognise however, that this is only the first phase of a longer term process of transformation within environments enabling access to electronic resources. This ongoing transformation will be the result of both the evolution of technology and resulting cultural change within learning, teaching and research.
It is important to note that not all the areas in which we will invest between 2001-2005 will lead to the development of fully operational services by the end of the 2004/5 academic year. For some areas it seems likely that the development trajectory will takes place over a longer time scale. We will need to accept that some activity will result in learning outcomes or enhanced understanding of a particular area and will not in itself lead to an operational service. It is also important to recognise that the Information Environment is an evolving concept and related development plans and programmes will need to be reviewed on an annual basis in order to retain flexibility and to be responsive to change.
The implementation plan for the Information Environment referred to above presents detailed recommendations for moving forward in each area of activity referred to above. The following are the targets we intend to achieve in each area dedicated to building the Information Environment by 2005:
3.1) Content submission mechanisms programme
-to progress access to and sharing of community content through developing and enhancing mechanisms for the disclosure, discovery, deposit and exchange of resources
-to have significantly enhanced access to community collections through the use of these mechanisms
-to have funded and managed a number of community based programmes in order to ascertain the organisational, technical, and business challenges involved in sustaining this area as a core strand of JISC activity
3.2) Service provider development programme
-to have developed a service provider architecture suitable for the realisation of the Information Environment
-to have funded a range of development activity needed to transform 'service vision' into 'service provision'
-to have in place by a sustainable network of service providers whose services are developed to provide the operational Information Environment
3.3) Portals and fusion programme
-to have a fully developed view of the nature and role of portals within the Information Environment
-to have developed and tested a series of demonstrator portals in a range of subject, format based, and community based areas
-to have been able to commit to a strategy for full portal roll out to satisfy the core needs of learner, teachers and researchers in further and higher education
-to have explored the potential of portals as an extendable network of 'gate keepers' to content being generated within a variety of cross sectoral initiatives, and their ability to address a variety of audiences beyond the formal education sector
3.4) Shared services programme
-to have fully ascertained the parameters for the operation of shared services within the Information Environment and to have reached an integrated technical solution that also inter-works effectively with developments in authentication and authorisation managed elsewhere in JISC
-to have undertaken a series of studies, prototypes, and pilots leading to operational services in order to have tested the full range of shared services to lead to a full roll out from 2005
3.5) Presentation programme
-to have significantly improved the usability of JISC Services and resources offered through the Information Environment
-to have established the most effective means of embedding the presentation of resources within institutional, departmental, local and personal environments
-to have established and disseminated best practice where ever possible in design of interfaces to support the requirements of access to diverse types of digital resources
Moving forward in collaboration
The Information Environment development is part of a national and global agenda for developing cognate environments for lifelong learning. Other initiatives for example, the People's Network, National Grid for Learning and Research Grid are, like the JISC's Information Environment, intending to provide information and resources for new generations of adult learners who will increasingly rely on accessing information and training through virtual, networked environments. This is also true of key public bodies such as the British Library and National Health Service who are also embracing the potential of digital access. This strategy recognises that the key to pursuing the development of the Information Environment is in partnership with other agencies who are also looking to find solutions to the challenges of distributed information resources and ways of presenting them to new audiences.
The strategy as it is presented here does not suggest that JISC has found all the answers to the issues of distributing searching and access to relevant resources for life long learning. Technology and paradigms for access are fast moving, and managing this change is an intrinsic part of the process. This strategy is intended to explicate the directions in which it is proposed forward funding will be focussed, which will be refined in consultation with others who have a stake in the concepts and processes that underpin this development.
Character of development activity: from innovation to operation
Development activity is essential for the JISC across all of its various initiatives and programmes, it defines the process of moving forward and allows targeted investment to take place. In this way development activity is clearly pivotal for a leading edge initiative such as the Information Environment. This strategy and the concepts it puts forward, aim to add coherence to the process of positioning the JISC as the provider of an information environment suitable for the next generation of adult learners and teachers in the UK.
Innovation
The information environment as proposed here, is by nature innovative and rests upon a conceptual framework that is in advance of what is currently offered to students and teachers who access digital resources, and the technologies that are in place. It should be recognised at the outset, that while every effort will be made to take on board the research outcomes of development activity, not all current projects will lead us to operational services. Some activity is by nature experimental, allowing us to test our assumptions and proposed directions, and to evaluate them with users. All development activity will exist within a 'business' and organisational environment whose constraints necessitate strategic decisions about ongoing funding.
Cultural change
It should be noted that, these new developments are not only technically innovative they have the power to transform the process of learning and research. By transforming and informing the currency of how information and learning resources are accessed they will bring fundamental change to the process of learning and research. For example, the Information Environment will provide new opportunities for interrogating aggregated resources supporting the discovery, and the presentation of items in new contexts so pushing back the boundaries of knowledge.
Demonstration
Equally however, as it stays ahead of the game, the JISC needs to provide active evidence of what the landscape of the future will look like. The Information Environment is about providing resources to students now, and in ways which appeal to them and those who teach them. The JISC needs to be able to demonstrate the range of significant services and resources that it supports, while providing evidence, particularly to teachers and information mediators, of the validity of new approaches.
Harnessing distributed resources
Development activity is therefore about two different kinds of processes which will need to run in parallel for both JISC and DNER:
-It is firstly about allowing the services and resources that are visible to our end users to be presented to them in such a way that they are actively used and understood, allowing them to become a normal aspect of the teaching, learning and research process.
-econdly development activity is that which allows us to push forward the boundaries of information provision, allowing us to test out new approaches.
Management, consultation and dissemination
Management mechanisms
The Implementation Plan will provide more detail about the range of management processes underway to support the process of going forward.
The development of the Information Environment is being lead by the DNER development team reporting to the JISC Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI). In future it is anticipated that the activity will be overseen by a dedicated Information Environment committee, and will operate within the JISC Executive Development Directorate. Co-ordination mechanisms will embrace input from JISC Committees, staff and stakeholder communities (An informal technical working group is also proposed to orientate this activity more closely with commercial developers of relevant systems and services).
It is expected that the flow of development activity funding will be managed through the following three processes:
-Community calls to directly engage with institutional, domain and user issues in working on projects which directly test, examine and model the role of sharing and exchanging community content within the DNER, for example.
-Funding closely orientated to augment existing service provision and work with JISC funded service providers in achieving an operable environment.
-Project funding to involve a range of players in further and higher education community in order to embrace expertise in developing new approaches.
Consultation process
In moving forward it is important to recognise the role the following groups:
-Representatives of cognate initiatives those developing parallel approaches within a UK and International Context. An appropriate channel for this input will be put in place to ensure ongoing input
-Members of the FE and HE community will be invited to comment on the Development Strategy and related plans, and in particularly to consider the impacts and benefits upon institutions and the users that they serve
Dissemination activities
The communications and dissemination activities which will need to take place in order to develop the Information Environment collaboratively with the user community and stakeholders are given a broader strategic point of reference by the DNER Communications Strategy and the overarching JISC communication strategy planned by JISC Assist.
However within this framework, specific activities, groups and events will need to be planned and prioritised in order to allow team managing this area to target its efforts toward communication and dissemination activities which directly enhance the process of moving forward.
Evaluation strategy
It is essential to consider the role of ongoing evaluation activity, whether formative or summative, its scale, role and funding as a part of the wider suite of activities with which this strategy is concerned. The Implementation Plan makes some preliminary recommendations for the nature and scale of dedicated evaluation activity appropriate to this development.
It should be noted that the formative evaluation of the DNER development programmes (funded in advance of this strategy) has commenced, and is being carried out by the eDNER team. eDNER is led by the Centre for Research in Library & Information Management (CERLIM) at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The existing development programmes will remain the focus of this work though it is hoped that for the remaining period of this activity, some effort can be aligned to feeding into the process of developing the Information Environment and considering its on-going and future impacts upon the community that we serve.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment/stratieds0105draft2.aspx
In moving forward this strategy acknowledges that the Information Environment described here is a component of the national and global networked environment. Therefore it should be emphasised that the JISC recognises the number of significant stakeholders with whom there is a clear opportunity to actively engage and collaborate with in the next four to five years.
The Information Environment is clearly key to the goals of achieving an interoperable distributed national electronic resource. Cognate strategies, recognising the interrelation of activities, exist for Collections development and management, and Communications and are on going for Preservation.
This strategy to develop the Information Environment is underpinned by an evolving Implementation Plan demonstrating how the key vision and goals expressed here will be realised through a programme of targeted investment over the next four years.
It is intended that this strategy will be the subject of a series of consultation exercises with communities in order to move forward in a consensual manner, while providing strategic leadership and impetus where appropriate.
From fragmentation..
An Information Environment can be characterised as the set of network or online services that support publishing and use of information and learning resources. At the moment online services providing digital resources tend to operate in a stand-alone manner. The user is therefore required to navigate a complex set of different websites with different search interfaces in order to locate relevant resources. Similarly the resources offered tend to be characterised by a lack of mediation to provide vital signposts to explain context and relevance to the user. It has been recognised that this is one of the key features limiting take up of digital resources.
..To integration
Therefore the Information Environment as it is proposed here aims to offer the user a more seamless and less complex journey to relevant information and learning resources.
For this reason, it is important that this activity is aligned where possible with other developments, nationally and internationally, and that it makes a leading contribution to the enhanced information use and a true democracy of learning opportunity. It is also important that it works to support and influence institutions as they benefit from and contribute to this environment.
Working in a distributed environment
It is acknowledged that the Information Environment envisaged for the JISC is ambitious. This is primarily because this has evolved to embrace two key concepts which are by nature semantically and technically complex to advance through a process of investment, these are the view that:
• digital resources are inherently distributed and will never be delivered by a single service provider
• users do not all want to access information in the same way but will require a diverse range of views of resources in order to satisfy their needs. A web-based portal or VLE for example may operate as a specific window upon a set of distributed resources
Working with a diversity of user requirements
This inherent complexity is a common feature of the emerging e-learning culture and the national and international infrastructures that are being required brought into place to support it. The Development Strategy for the Information Environment needs to articulate how we can progress this distributed model based upon the foundation of the progress made by the JISC in the past 5 years through research and investment.
For example, the JISC's Information Environment needs to progress in such a way that it fully acknowledges the needs of the further as well as higher education constituency. It needs to be geared up to the delivery, discovery and presentation of appropriate learning materials, and needs to support the submission and exchange of learning objects. It is worth pointing out that the needs of the higher education sector are far from resolved in terms of what the JISC currently offers and much further work is needed. However it is essential for the Information Environment to directly engage with post 16 learning requirements.
Emphasising participation
The notion of the Information Environment also supports the goal that lifelong learning is an inherently participatory process, users of national information environments will wish to access but also to add content or context to the resources they use. The information environment must therefore allow this exchange and sharing to take place.
Harnessing and developing standards to underpin the investment
One of the fundamental methods of building national and international environments for accessing shared educational content is recognising that these activities need to be based on standards for the creation, access, use, preservation and moreover interoperability, of networked resources. In order to progress this process, the DNER office have produced a set of Standards and Guidelines intended to underpin the information environment and to support the activities of the development programmes. It is important to note that these standards were prepared in the context of the Government Interoperability Framework, E-gif, and that the standards framework will continue to evolve as the DNER development group actively participates in the process of sharing and building standards for educational resources in a national and international context.
Goals
The following features are key aspects of the evolved Information Environment:
• Fit to serve all kinds of digital content The kinds of electronic content that the Information Environment must deal with are increasingly diverse, and in many cases are based on rapidly evolving and non standard technologies. For example it must be able to accommodate all types of content from streaming video, to electronic books to new types of learning resources. It must be able deliver these efficiently, and must allow them to be accessed and mediated in a series of useful and satisfying ways which progress learning, teaching and research.
• Fully supporting the submission and sharing of research and learning objects Activity will focus on methods to allow members of the community to build the content that they will access, and to share this in meaningful ways with other colleagues and peers. This activity will build a framework for leveraging our mutual community resource, the significance of which is emphasised in the JISC 5 Year strategy and elsewhere.
• Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials, to enrich and develop the learning and research process This will be achieved through developing new portals services which can fuse relevant content, by subject or learning aim for example, to offer enhanced access and greater relevancy to users. Portals and other services will also be developed so that they can be harnessed and embedded at an institutional level. This will be a component of providing an enhanced presentation layer for the rich content available through JISC funded activity in collections development, the holdings of our national data services, and resources held within our community.
• A collaborative landscape of service providers who work together to seamlessly cater for the needs of the community on a national basis This will be achieved through the developing sophistication of shared services and developments in service infrastructure to enable the providers who work within the Information Environment to operate in a truly joined-up fashion.
• Underpinned by real world interoperability, based upon a common standards framework and common semantic for digital resource description and access It has become clear that enhanced interoperability for users will not be achieved without the agreement of some common semantics to support cross searching. As part of developing the Information Environment the JISC will strive for the cross-sectoral adoptions of standard terminologies, for example for subject, audience level, resource type and certification.
Activity areas and definitions
This strategy presents a vision of an integrated Information Environment with a wide range of methods of accessing information and learning resources suitable for a community with diverse needs, character, and learning, teaching and research demographic. This needs to be fortified by a significant process of targeted investment, that needs to prioritised in logical ways. This strategy is intended to articulate a useful and practical way of moving the JISC's Information Environment forward allowing us through an incremental process to implement what is currently a fairly abstract model, if one conceptually advanced, for access to distributed resources.
This involves the development of: A robust service provider architecture, content submission and sharing mechanisms fusion and portal services, shared infrastructure services, and an enhanced presentation layer, supported by the network infrastructure, Super Janet 4 (managed elsewhere in JISC.)
It should also be noted that, there are a series of pre-existing and forthcoming DNER development programmes and related studies underway in this area. Effort will be directed to ensuring that they are strategically aligned with over all DNER and JISC objectives and that programme results directly support the development of the Information Environment.
Technical Model of the Information Environment
Definition of terms
For the purposes of this strategy and the related Implementation Plan it is important to be consistent about the terminology that is employed and its meaning. It is also recognised that these terms may differ in meanings in other contexts. This usage aims to be as close as possible to that used by UKOLN in their work on defining the abstract DNER architecture.
• Technical Model of the Information Environment this contains all of the elements as indicated above and will termed to have become operational well all elements interact smoothly to provide a seamless service to end users. The Information Environment needs to support both the addition of content to the national resource and its access by end users.
• Provision the storage and delivery of 'content'
• Fusion the bringing together of 'content' from multiple providers either by machine to machine 'brokers and aggregators' or 'portals' which are visible to end users
• Infrastructure Shared Middleware Services which support other activities
• Presentation interaction with the end users in a direct and visible manner to give them access to 'content'
Development process
Essentially building the Information Environment is about how we manage the following stages:
1. Generic Technical Architecture We have, as shown in the above diagram, an abstract technical model for the Information Environment which has been defined in conjunction with UKOLN11.
2. Developing an Information Environment Implementation Plan for 2001-2005 This will define the direction for a series of complementary approaches to funded activity. Investment will comprise, some targeted development funding to experiment with new approaches, to directly involve the community in some programme based activity, and to develop project to service approaches where appropriate. This process will also involve benchmarking the current service providers operating in the Information Environment. We currently have a set of JISC funded service providers who are responsible for providing a range of roles intended primarily to serve educational on-line resources to our community and to support this process in various ways. In order to achieve an operational Information Environment it is essential to benchmark our current services against the model proposed. In this way some investment can be made at a service level to allow providers to operate within the new technical architecture.
3. Building the operational Information Environment To arrive at an operational Information Environment we need to fund and manage the development activity as detailed in the related Implementation Plan. This process is represented diagrammatically as follows:
Implementation plans and studies
Building the Information Environment is a complex and wide ranging activity, therefore it is important to emphasise that this Development Strategy is supported by a series of documents presenting detailed approaches. Some of these are already in place others are under development. (* = already in place.)
1. DNER Technical Architecture UKOLN's work12* on the technical architecture of the DNER. Ongoing work: UKOLN are working to develop this area and to provide a range of studies and supporting specifications which will provide us with a firm technical underpinning for the approaches we take in moving forward.
2. Implementation plan for the Information Environment* The evolving plan encompasses the following areas, it is currently in its second draft stage. Building the Information Environment:
o Content submission mechanisms programme
o Service provider development programme
o Portals and fusion programme
o Shared service programme
o Presentation programme
o Evaluation activity
3. Programme Management procedures and guidance for DNER Development programmes:
o Reporting framework*
o Standards and guidelines*
o Copyright and licensing guidelines*
o Business and exit strategy
Development timescales and targets
The overall timeframe for this phase of the development of the Information Environment is between 2001 and 2005. It is important to recognise however, that this is only the first phase of a longer term process of transformation within environments enabling access to electronic resources. This ongoing transformation will be the result of both the evolution of technology and resulting cultural change within learning, teaching and research.
It is important to note that not all the areas in which we will invest between 2001-2005 will lead to the development of fully operational services by the end of the 2004/5 academic year. For some areas it seems likely that the development trajectory will takes place over a longer time scale. We will need to accept that some activity will result in learning outcomes or enhanced understanding of a particular area and will not in itself lead to an operational service. It is also important to recognise that the Information Environment is an evolving concept and related development plans and programmes will need to be reviewed on an annual basis in order to retain flexibility and to be responsive to change.
The implementation plan for the Information Environment referred to above presents detailed recommendations for moving forward in each area of activity referred to above. The following are the targets we intend to achieve in each area dedicated to building the Information Environment by 2005:
3.1) Content submission mechanisms programme
-to progress access to and sharing of community content through developing and enhancing mechanisms for the disclosure, discovery, deposit and exchange of resources
-to have significantly enhanced access to community collections through the use of these mechanisms
-to have funded and managed a number of community based programmes in order to ascertain the organisational, technical, and business challenges involved in sustaining this area as a core strand of JISC activity
3.2) Service provider development programme
-to have developed a service provider architecture suitable for the realisation of the Information Environment
-to have funded a range of development activity needed to transform 'service vision' into 'service provision'
-to have in place by a sustainable network of service providers whose services are developed to provide the operational Information Environment
3.3) Portals and fusion programme
-to have a fully developed view of the nature and role of portals within the Information Environment
-to have developed and tested a series of demonstrator portals in a range of subject, format based, and community based areas
-to have been able to commit to a strategy for full portal roll out to satisfy the core needs of learner, teachers and researchers in further and higher education
-to have explored the potential of portals as an extendable network of 'gate keepers' to content being generated within a variety of cross sectoral initiatives, and their ability to address a variety of audiences beyond the formal education sector
3.4) Shared services programme
-to have fully ascertained the parameters for the operation of shared services within the Information Environment and to have reached an integrated technical solution that also inter-works effectively with developments in authentication and authorisation managed elsewhere in JISC
-to have undertaken a series of studies, prototypes, and pilots leading to operational services in order to have tested the full range of shared services to lead to a full roll out from 2005
3.5) Presentation programme
-to have significantly improved the usability of JISC Services and resources offered through the Information Environment
-to have established the most effective means of embedding the presentation of resources within institutional, departmental, local and personal environments
-to have established and disseminated best practice where ever possible in design of interfaces to support the requirements of access to diverse types of digital resources
Moving forward in collaboration
The Information Environment development is part of a national and global agenda for developing cognate environments for lifelong learning. Other initiatives for example, the People's Network, National Grid for Learning and Research Grid are, like the JISC's Information Environment, intending to provide information and resources for new generations of adult learners who will increasingly rely on accessing information and training through virtual, networked environments. This is also true of key public bodies such as the British Library and National Health Service who are also embracing the potential of digital access. This strategy recognises that the key to pursuing the development of the Information Environment is in partnership with other agencies who are also looking to find solutions to the challenges of distributed information resources and ways of presenting them to new audiences.
The strategy as it is presented here does not suggest that JISC has found all the answers to the issues of distributing searching and access to relevant resources for life long learning. Technology and paradigms for access are fast moving, and managing this change is an intrinsic part of the process. This strategy is intended to explicate the directions in which it is proposed forward funding will be focussed, which will be refined in consultation with others who have a stake in the concepts and processes that underpin this development.
Character of development activity: from innovation to operation
Development activity is essential for the JISC across all of its various initiatives and programmes, it defines the process of moving forward and allows targeted investment to take place. In this way development activity is clearly pivotal for a leading edge initiative such as the Information Environment. This strategy and the concepts it puts forward, aim to add coherence to the process of positioning the JISC as the provider of an information environment suitable for the next generation of adult learners and teachers in the UK.
Innovation
The information environment as proposed here, is by nature innovative and rests upon a conceptual framework that is in advance of what is currently offered to students and teachers who access digital resources, and the technologies that are in place. It should be recognised at the outset, that while every effort will be made to take on board the research outcomes of development activity, not all current projects will lead us to operational services. Some activity is by nature experimental, allowing us to test our assumptions and proposed directions, and to evaluate them with users. All development activity will exist within a 'business' and organisational environment whose constraints necessitate strategic decisions about ongoing funding.
Cultural change
It should be noted that, these new developments are not only technically innovative they have the power to transform the process of learning and research. By transforming and informing the currency of how information and learning resources are accessed they will bring fundamental change to the process of learning and research. For example, the Information Environment will provide new opportunities for interrogating aggregated resources supporting the discovery, and the presentation of items in new contexts so pushing back the boundaries of knowledge.
Demonstration
Equally however, as it stays ahead of the game, the JISC needs to provide active evidence of what the landscape of the future will look like. The Information Environment is about providing resources to students now, and in ways which appeal to them and those who teach them. The JISC needs to be able to demonstrate the range of significant services and resources that it supports, while providing evidence, particularly to teachers and information mediators, of the validity of new approaches.
Harnessing distributed resources
Development activity is therefore about two different kinds of processes which will need to run in parallel for both JISC and DNER:
-It is firstly about allowing the services and resources that are visible to our end users to be presented to them in such a way that they are actively used and understood, allowing them to become a normal aspect of the teaching, learning and research process.
-econdly development activity is that which allows us to push forward the boundaries of information provision, allowing us to test out new approaches.
Management, consultation and dissemination
Management mechanisms
The Implementation Plan will provide more detail about the range of management processes underway to support the process of going forward.
The development of the Information Environment is being lead by the DNER development team reporting to the JISC Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI). In future it is anticipated that the activity will be overseen by a dedicated Information Environment committee, and will operate within the JISC Executive Development Directorate. Co-ordination mechanisms will embrace input from JISC Committees, staff and stakeholder communities (An informal technical working group is also proposed to orientate this activity more closely with commercial developers of relevant systems and services).
It is expected that the flow of development activity funding will be managed through the following three processes:
-Community calls to directly engage with institutional, domain and user issues in working on projects which directly test, examine and model the role of sharing and exchanging community content within the DNER, for example.
-Funding closely orientated to augment existing service provision and work with JISC funded service providers in achieving an operable environment.
-Project funding to involve a range of players in further and higher education community in order to embrace expertise in developing new approaches.
Consultation process
In moving forward it is important to recognise the role the following groups:
-Representatives of cognate initiatives those developing parallel approaches within a UK and International Context. An appropriate channel for this input will be put in place to ensure ongoing input
-Members of the FE and HE community will be invited to comment on the Development Strategy and related plans, and in particularly to consider the impacts and benefits upon institutions and the users that they serve
Dissemination activities
The communications and dissemination activities which will need to take place in order to develop the Information Environment collaboratively with the user community and stakeholders are given a broader strategic point of reference by the DNER Communications Strategy and the overarching JISC communication strategy planned by JISC Assist.
However within this framework, specific activities, groups and events will need to be planned and prioritised in order to allow team managing this area to target its efforts toward communication and dissemination activities which directly enhance the process of moving forward.
Evaluation strategy
It is essential to consider the role of ongoing evaluation activity, whether formative or summative, its scale, role and funding as a part of the wider suite of activities with which this strategy is concerned. The Implementation Plan makes some preliminary recommendations for the nature and scale of dedicated evaluation activity appropriate to this development.
It should be noted that the formative evaluation of the DNER development programmes (funded in advance of this strategy) has commenced, and is being carried out by the eDNER team. eDNER is led by the Centre for Research in Library & Information Management (CERLIM) at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The existing development programmes will remain the focus of this work though it is hoped that for the remaining period of this activity, some effort can be aligned to feeding into the process of developing the Information Environment and considering its on-going and future impacts upon the community that we serve.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment/stratieds0105draft2.aspx
Presidents are often faced with the challenge of deciding whether to engage an information technology (IT) consultant. In some cases, the need may be obvious, especially if technology seems to be causing serious consternation on your campus, as in the following examples:
• Faculty take every opportunity, even at cocktail parties, to complain to you about the institution’s technology and support.
• Your college or university had to shut down the new administrative information system—the one that cost $5 million—and had to use the old system as a backup during the first effort to "go live" with online registration.
• You and your board feel that this new technology is a perpetual money sink, and there is no apparent plan to moderate these cost increases.
• There is a heated campus discussion as to how IT "ought" to be organized.
• Despite a campus initiative to standardize on a hardware platform, the Art Department steadfastly refuses to give up their Macs.
Is all of this to be expected, simply inherent in the complexities of technology? Or are such scenarios indicative of an IT environment that is not functioning as well as it should be? A consultant can potentially help a campus executive to sort such things through, analyze the situation, and develop plans for action. Although in some cases it may be obvious that a consultant would be helpful, there are times when it is not so clear cut, and these may be the very times when a consultant would be most effective.
Why Bring in a Consultant?
There are several key benefits to hiring a consultant. An external consultant can:
• bring objectivity to the discussion (which often may be laden with strong opinions and campus politics),
• apply knowledge and experience gained from similar or related scenarios at other campuses, and
• help campus leaders explore the role that information technology can play in achieving institutional goals.
Internal campus politics are often daunting, especially if many people have a stake in the outcome, and IT issues often seem to act as a magnet for such emotionally charged reactions. A good consultant can bring an objective point of view that takes internal issues into account without being invested in the institution’s culture, politics, or historical context by offering an independent judgment of the personnel and practices on your campus. For any situation, it may be very difficult to sort out the issues—they are often quite complex, and the fact that they are technology-based can bring out anxiety and fear of the unknown, often exacerbating these reactions.
A good consultant will bring expertise and experience in dealing with similar situations and, in the case of a problematic environment, will be able to distinguish symptoms from root causes. Experience is critical in dealing with technology, and having the right experience at your disposal can mean the difference between stumbling in the dark and achieving your goals expeditiously. In addition to personal experience, a good consultant will bring awareness of best practices and other important research in the field on issues that may range from organizational structure, IT governance, and standards to budget planning, setting priorities, and the allocation of scarce resources. Pursuing new opportunities that no one at the institution is yet familiar with: doing strategic planning for IT; conducting a mandated program review; searching for a new campus information system—these are all projects that can be enhanced with the right outside expertise. And, finally, a consultant’s expertise will often include the ability to bring to bear a results-oriented framework and a sense of urgency through the establishment of a schedule and setting of deadlines.
Such external and independent experience can often assist greatly in making the connection between the institution’s strategic goals and the role that information technology can play in achieving those goals. This responsibility of integrating IT efforts and strategic goals ultimately lies with the president and his or her executive team (which ones hopes includes the chief information officer)—it should never be abdicated to a consultant!1—though a consultant can be a valuable resource in assisting institutional leadership teams in realizing the importance of making this connection. An outside viewpoint can also be valuable in helping senior executives define their leadership role in shaping the institution’s approach and response to technology opportunities. Incorporating information technology into one’s thinking about the institution’s strategic direction is uncharted water for many presidents, and the right consultant can help ease the way.
How Should the Decision Be Made?
The decision as to whether to engage a consultant, as well as the subsequent decision as to which consultant to bring in, should involve the executive team, especially the CIO or person responsible for IT administration on campus. It is important for the team—and the campus—to understand that calling in an outsider is not a reflection on the quality of institutional resources or leadership. Instead, this consultation should be thought of as part of an ongoing process to review and enhance the institution’s effectiveness. Since IT affects everyone, including the entire executive team in the decision making is a way of recognizing that IT transcends the traditional organizational silos.
The decision to bring in an external consultant may be met with eagerness or with anxiety on the part of the CIO. If this doesn’t come as a surprise to this individual and is part of a process that he or she has been involved in, anxiety that this is a "vote of no confidence" will be reduced. The CIO may even welcome such an external voice to reinforce and amplify what he or she has been advocating, perhaps without adequate credibility to be really "heard."
At any given institution, the CIO may be an excellent consultant for other institutions but unable to make himself or herself a credible source because of historical or political reasons. Alternatively, it may be impossible for him or her to be objective in analyzing difficult situations at home or to be an impartial facilitator in the discussion of new opportunities.
In all of these cases, it is critical to recognize that there are personnel and morale implications that the president must be aware of and sensitive to. While a president will want to point out that the CIO and the IT department will be beneficiaries of such an engagement, bringing in a consultant may be a delicate issue, and this needs to be overtly addressed if the consulting is to be effective. This is especially true in situations in which it may appear that the CIO is at the heart of all the problems. It is important to accept the fact that appearances can be misleading, and an effective consultant can help you, and the rest of the team including the CIO, discern the underlying truth, the pros and cons, and other mitigating circumstances.
How Do You Find the Right Consultant?
There is no such thing as the "right person"—someone who is the perfect, ideal consultant under all circumstances. Looking at credentials and experience is important, of course, but it is also important to remember that the "goodness of the fit" depends on the relationship you develop. Using a consultant effectively is largely a matter of trust, so it is critical that you find someone with whom you can build that trust relationship easily. In other words, the chemistry has to be right! This applies especially to the relationship between the consultant and the president but also between the consultant and the team that does the hiring. It is therefore imperative that the consultant clearly knows who has done the hiring and that the expectations for candor, for reporting, and so forth are as transparent and public as possible.
There is simply no better way to find a good consultant than through personal contacts. It is the most informative—as well as the most expedient—way to gain information and begin the trust relationship. With information technology being a key and compelling force throughout higher education, the chances of finding the right consultant by talking with your colleagues at other institutions are excellent. Even if they have not used a consultant themselves, they are usually able to tap into the right places in the higher education network, very likely yielding at least one or two names for you to consider. If you need to go beyond such contacts, University Business magazine publishes an annual directory of consultants, including those who specialize in information technology, although this is not an exhaustive list.
The type of consultant that you are looking for—one who will be dealing with high-level issues—is found in one of three venues:
1. A respected professional or team of professionals with extensive experience as a practitioner in the IT field. This is just like any other campus visiting team.
2. A small company that focuses solely on IT and/or higher education issues. This category usually is made up of professionals who may work either alone for a client or as part of a team but whose professional origins are in higher education.
3. A large, professional consulting organization that may do many other things in addition to consulting, such as auditing or outsourcing.
The per-hour or per-day costs tend to increase as the size of the organization increases, but a good rule of thumb is that you should expect to pay a consultant about what you would pay an attorney or a physician. Considering what the institution spends on technology overall, the expenditure on a consultant is, in a very real sense, an insurance policy designed to protect that investment.
The first thing to verify is that the consultant has experience in higher education; this is a must! A consultant needs to understand and have experience working in the higher education environment, as there are so many cultural contexts that make this kind of an engagement fundamentally different from IT consulting in business or industry. These cultural factors include the pervasiveness of technology throughout the organization; the link between technology’s role and the institution’s educational mission; the nature of consensus-based decision-making, along with the ubiquity of committees; and the special role of the faculty within the institution, both culturally and organizationally. A consultant needs to appreciate, and be sensitive to, this type of organization. A consultant who is not highly experienced with the academic culture is likely to become frustrated and bewildered very quickly. In addition, a consultant who brings along assumptions from the more top-down business world is likely to raise hackles unnecessarily on campus.
Once you have made the initial contact with a consultant, there are a number of questions you will want to ask, in addition to the usual inquiries about background and experience. These questions are all designed to help determine how well this person fits with your needs.
• How does your expertise match what has been described as our situation? This question looks for insight—an extremely important characteristic in an effective consultant. You should watch for signs that the person is leaping to premature conclusions or is inappropriately making your circumstances fit his or her own experience.
• What will your process look like for dealing with us? The consultant’s experience will show here, in that in addition to answering this question, the consultant has an opportunity to demonstrate his or her willingness and ability to treat your situation as unique—another very desirable characteristic a campus should be seeking.
• Will you work alone or with a team? If the latter, what is the added value? If you are dealing with a range of issues, a team approach is often better, but only if the consultant can demonstrate that the team members complement each other without too much overlap. Quite often, the initial discussion should focus on using that individual and, secondarily, on whether a team is better. Because of the comfort campuses often have with the visiting team approach, they seek this essentially as a predetermined solution.
• What deliverables can we expect? What you are really looking for here is, "Will you give us a solution or will you help us find a solution with your guidance?" The answer to this will be an important clue to the consultant’s approach. Either answer can be right for your needs, but one is more likely to feel right for your institution (and for you). You and your team need to know what your institution ideally would like to see and to convey that to the consultant. Are you looking for a list of recommendations, an analysis of the milieu, a set of specific technical responses? Defining these issues up front will lead to a more successful consultation.
• How will you know when your work is done? There are at least two things to look for in this answer: the extent to which the consultant works with well defined objectives, and how likely you and the campus will be urged into additional work as the initial assignment concludes.
In addition to the questions that you should ask the consultant, there are questions that he or she should ask you. These, too, give you a sense of the professionalism and "fit" with a given consultant.
• Are you engaging my services to help with problem solving or to ratify decisions that are already made? A consultant will want to understand this piece of the political landscape before setting out and adjust his or her approach accordingly. If there is a given agenda, the consultant needs to know that and also to explain that his or her role is not that of a "hired gun" prepared to automatically validate some predetermined outcome. Look for indications of independence and individual integrity.
• Do you have a gut feel for what the solution is at this point? The consultant should want to know your perspective and candid instincts on the situation as early as possible. Whether that turns out to be right or wrong, or somewhere in between, he or she needs to begin planning right away about how to deal with your instincts. However, the caveats about independence still apply.
• Are you particularly unhappy with any of the people involved? Consultants really hate to be known as the ones directly responsible for what appears to be a hatchet job. It is important for the consultant to know if the reason for this assignment fundamentally revolves around a difficult personnel situation. The consultant should ask where the problems manifest themselves, with whom, and who are the other officers of the institution with key perspectives that they should seek out. The consultant also needs to know the extent to which these concerns have been directly conveyed to the professionals in question, and how.
• Are there financial resources available to help address the situation, if necessary? The consultant’s recommendations may or may not have a financial impact, but in either case, he or she will want to know what the constraints may be. It is fine to explain about budget pressures your campus may be experiencing, but if you really want an answer (albeit a single consultant’s perspective) as to what needs to be done to correct the situation, imposing an arbitrary constraint on the solution will fail to provide a complete picture of what may actually be needed. However, if there is in fact a fixed budget that is all an institution can afford, a consultant can help the institution figure out its priorities so that they can reasonably stay within this number and have the assurance that the money will be spent wisely. This should be done with the understanding that a more complete solution may not be possible without additional resources.
References are critically important. Even though a consultant may have come to you through word of mouth, you should seek at least three additional references, making sure that you ask the most important question: "Would you engage this consultant again?" Find out whether the previous clients received what they thought they had contracted for, and the reactions that others on campus had to this individual or firm.
If it turns out that you have to have a formal selection process that includes issuing a Request For Proposal, you will likely need to delegate most or all of the operational aspects of the process to the CIO or some other executive, but remember that you are ultimately responsible for the direction, as has been discussed.
Several final concerns and issues should be kept in mind in selecting an appropriate consultant. If you decide to go with a large firm, be careful of the senior partner of the firm selling the job but having a junior person actually do the work. Irrespective of the category of consultants you are considering, be careful if in the initial discussions the consultant works hard to expand the scope of work. Trust your instinct and discomfort if the consultant seems to be asking a lot of questions that have obvious (to you) answers. And finally, step very carefully if the consultant or the consultant’s company provides a wide variety of services and could financially benefit from the advice he or she gives you if you decide to make use of those other services.
How Do You Guarantee a Successful Outcome?
The following list identifies some of the things that the president hiring a consultant can do to maximize the positive benefits for the consulting experience.
Set Expectations with the Consultant
As the assignment begins, the most important thing you as president can do is to assure that consistent expectations are shared with the consultant. Whether the project is large or small, whether it is multi-month or just one day, having a common understanding of the scope of the engagement, the issues the consultant is to address, the consultant’s approach, and the form of the delivery of results is fundamental. If you have particular agenda items that may not be obvious, it is imperative to make them explicit at the very beginning of the consultation.
Set Expectations with the Community
The campus community will no doubt be wondering about the consulting engagement and its potential impact. As the assignment begins, a message from the president can be very helpful in clearing up ambiguity (and in lessening the panic in particularly troubling situations). The most helpful and positive climate for the consultant to work in is one that regards this project as a baseline assessment of technology in preparation for strategic planning. Every institution can benefit from a routine check-up from time to time; this is not a witch hunt, and there is no reason for anyone to see it that way. Unfortunately, there is a tendency on many campuses to fill in whatever blanks are not filled in, so the best way to cut down on these unnecessary rumors is to be upfront in clarifying the goals and purposes of any such visit. You also may want to design into the visit some open time for members of the faculty, students, and other constituencies to meet with the consultant, so that no one can say this was all "stage managed." Such an initial message may well include some of the logistics of the assignment, a list of who will be interviewed, the overall schedule, a target date for when the final report will be available, and so on.
Assure the Needed Contact with the Consultant
Contact between you and the consultant will be necessary during and throughout the engagement. The consultant will likely find it very useful to be able to check back with you for additional feedback on certain items, so some blocked time at the end of the day, or first thing in the morning, can prove to be very useful. The two of you should have the opportunity to verify that you are on the same track during as well as before the visit. A final exit interview at the end of a campus visit is almost always helpful to everyone concerned. Again, you may want to include your executive team here, but you should make sure that they have some private one-on-one time as well so that things that are better not said in a large public group can be discovered in a timely manner, and advice can be given as to how that information is ultimately presented.
Request a Written Summary of the Consultancy
The results of the engagement should always be provided in written form. Many of the things the consultant will tell the campus may be unfamiliar or be in an unfamiliar context, so having a written report to refer to can be invaluable in helping you and the community discuss, and even eventually internalize, the assessment and recommendations. The report should be specific (and sensitive) to your institution. The written report can become an important benchmark about where you are, where you have been, and where you need to go, just like accreditation evaluations and other campus visiting team reports that can be looked back on, providing a campus a longitudinal sense of progress. Such a report should be widely shared within the campus community, especially if the consulting assignment has a strategic focus. With a public report, the more everyone knows about it, the greater the chances of getting buy-in to the things that resulted from the consultancy. Or, looking at it alternatively, if you try to keep such a report confidential, the inevitable leaks will torpedo such a clandestine approach.
Assure Alternate Means of Communication and Advice
In addition to the one-on-one meeting associated with the exit, you should assure that, within reason, there is an opportunity for follow-up, clarifications, and so forth after the actual visit. There are often (if not inevitably) items that should be in a private letter to the president from the consultant. Such a letter might include comments about personnel situations, personal attitudes that might present future problems, and so forth. Such correspondence needs to be kept confidential, but it can provide important insights into the processes and players involved and thus should be encouraged.
Conclusion
We undoubtedly have all heard the old joke that "a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is, and then charges you for it." Whether this is humorous or not is irrelevant, but in fact, this cliché is at least partially true. It is seldom that a consultant tells you anything you don’t already know or that you haven’t heard from others on campus. The value of a consultant is not so much in the creation of new messages for you to hear but in the distillation and delivery of the message, putting it in terms that are meaningful and acceptable to you. It is about validation of various perspectives, about framing choices, and about getting feedback that is not flavored by politics and emotional reactions. These are difficult tasks to accomplish, especially in a credible and widely acceptable manner. A good consultant can give you perspective on your institution’s situation that can have enormous value. Ultimately, a president and a campus may choose to follow some, all, or even none of the consultant’s specific recommendations, but the value of the consulting assignment must ultimately be judged in terms of the nature and depth of campus discussions that ensue during and after the engagement. The real value is not about solutions but about creating common perspectives, criteria for ongoing evaluation, and greater intra-campus trust and dialogue about these critical IT issues.
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EngaginganITConsultantforYourC/157303
• Faculty take every opportunity, even at cocktail parties, to complain to you about the institution’s technology and support.
• Your college or university had to shut down the new administrative information system—the one that cost $5 million—and had to use the old system as a backup during the first effort to "go live" with online registration.
• You and your board feel that this new technology is a perpetual money sink, and there is no apparent plan to moderate these cost increases.
• There is a heated campus discussion as to how IT "ought" to be organized.
• Despite a campus initiative to standardize on a hardware platform, the Art Department steadfastly refuses to give up their Macs.
Is all of this to be expected, simply inherent in the complexities of technology? Or are such scenarios indicative of an IT environment that is not functioning as well as it should be? A consultant can potentially help a campus executive to sort such things through, analyze the situation, and develop plans for action. Although in some cases it may be obvious that a consultant would be helpful, there are times when it is not so clear cut, and these may be the very times when a consultant would be most effective.
Why Bring in a Consultant?
There are several key benefits to hiring a consultant. An external consultant can:
• bring objectivity to the discussion (which often may be laden with strong opinions and campus politics),
• apply knowledge and experience gained from similar or related scenarios at other campuses, and
• help campus leaders explore the role that information technology can play in achieving institutional goals.
Internal campus politics are often daunting, especially if many people have a stake in the outcome, and IT issues often seem to act as a magnet for such emotionally charged reactions. A good consultant can bring an objective point of view that takes internal issues into account without being invested in the institution’s culture, politics, or historical context by offering an independent judgment of the personnel and practices on your campus. For any situation, it may be very difficult to sort out the issues—they are often quite complex, and the fact that they are technology-based can bring out anxiety and fear of the unknown, often exacerbating these reactions.
A good consultant will bring expertise and experience in dealing with similar situations and, in the case of a problematic environment, will be able to distinguish symptoms from root causes. Experience is critical in dealing with technology, and having the right experience at your disposal can mean the difference between stumbling in the dark and achieving your goals expeditiously. In addition to personal experience, a good consultant will bring awareness of best practices and other important research in the field on issues that may range from organizational structure, IT governance, and standards to budget planning, setting priorities, and the allocation of scarce resources. Pursuing new opportunities that no one at the institution is yet familiar with: doing strategic planning for IT; conducting a mandated program review; searching for a new campus information system—these are all projects that can be enhanced with the right outside expertise. And, finally, a consultant’s expertise will often include the ability to bring to bear a results-oriented framework and a sense of urgency through the establishment of a schedule and setting of deadlines.
Such external and independent experience can often assist greatly in making the connection between the institution’s strategic goals and the role that information technology can play in achieving those goals. This responsibility of integrating IT efforts and strategic goals ultimately lies with the president and his or her executive team (which ones hopes includes the chief information officer)—it should never be abdicated to a consultant!1—though a consultant can be a valuable resource in assisting institutional leadership teams in realizing the importance of making this connection. An outside viewpoint can also be valuable in helping senior executives define their leadership role in shaping the institution’s approach and response to technology opportunities. Incorporating information technology into one’s thinking about the institution’s strategic direction is uncharted water for many presidents, and the right consultant can help ease the way.
How Should the Decision Be Made?
The decision as to whether to engage a consultant, as well as the subsequent decision as to which consultant to bring in, should involve the executive team, especially the CIO or person responsible for IT administration on campus. It is important for the team—and the campus—to understand that calling in an outsider is not a reflection on the quality of institutional resources or leadership. Instead, this consultation should be thought of as part of an ongoing process to review and enhance the institution’s effectiveness. Since IT affects everyone, including the entire executive team in the decision making is a way of recognizing that IT transcends the traditional organizational silos.
The decision to bring in an external consultant may be met with eagerness or with anxiety on the part of the CIO. If this doesn’t come as a surprise to this individual and is part of a process that he or she has been involved in, anxiety that this is a "vote of no confidence" will be reduced. The CIO may even welcome such an external voice to reinforce and amplify what he or she has been advocating, perhaps without adequate credibility to be really "heard."
At any given institution, the CIO may be an excellent consultant for other institutions but unable to make himself or herself a credible source because of historical or political reasons. Alternatively, it may be impossible for him or her to be objective in analyzing difficult situations at home or to be an impartial facilitator in the discussion of new opportunities.
In all of these cases, it is critical to recognize that there are personnel and morale implications that the president must be aware of and sensitive to. While a president will want to point out that the CIO and the IT department will be beneficiaries of such an engagement, bringing in a consultant may be a delicate issue, and this needs to be overtly addressed if the consulting is to be effective. This is especially true in situations in which it may appear that the CIO is at the heart of all the problems. It is important to accept the fact that appearances can be misleading, and an effective consultant can help you, and the rest of the team including the CIO, discern the underlying truth, the pros and cons, and other mitigating circumstances.
How Do You Find the Right Consultant?
There is no such thing as the "right person"—someone who is the perfect, ideal consultant under all circumstances. Looking at credentials and experience is important, of course, but it is also important to remember that the "goodness of the fit" depends on the relationship you develop. Using a consultant effectively is largely a matter of trust, so it is critical that you find someone with whom you can build that trust relationship easily. In other words, the chemistry has to be right! This applies especially to the relationship between the consultant and the president but also between the consultant and the team that does the hiring. It is therefore imperative that the consultant clearly knows who has done the hiring and that the expectations for candor, for reporting, and so forth are as transparent and public as possible.
There is simply no better way to find a good consultant than through personal contacts. It is the most informative—as well as the most expedient—way to gain information and begin the trust relationship. With information technology being a key and compelling force throughout higher education, the chances of finding the right consultant by talking with your colleagues at other institutions are excellent. Even if they have not used a consultant themselves, they are usually able to tap into the right places in the higher education network, very likely yielding at least one or two names for you to consider. If you need to go beyond such contacts, University Business magazine publishes an annual directory of consultants, including those who specialize in information technology, although this is not an exhaustive list.
The type of consultant that you are looking for—one who will be dealing with high-level issues—is found in one of three venues:
1. A respected professional or team of professionals with extensive experience as a practitioner in the IT field. This is just like any other campus visiting team.
2. A small company that focuses solely on IT and/or higher education issues. This category usually is made up of professionals who may work either alone for a client or as part of a team but whose professional origins are in higher education.
3. A large, professional consulting organization that may do many other things in addition to consulting, such as auditing or outsourcing.
The per-hour or per-day costs tend to increase as the size of the organization increases, but a good rule of thumb is that you should expect to pay a consultant about what you would pay an attorney or a physician. Considering what the institution spends on technology overall, the expenditure on a consultant is, in a very real sense, an insurance policy designed to protect that investment.
The first thing to verify is that the consultant has experience in higher education; this is a must! A consultant needs to understand and have experience working in the higher education environment, as there are so many cultural contexts that make this kind of an engagement fundamentally different from IT consulting in business or industry. These cultural factors include the pervasiveness of technology throughout the organization; the link between technology’s role and the institution’s educational mission; the nature of consensus-based decision-making, along with the ubiquity of committees; and the special role of the faculty within the institution, both culturally and organizationally. A consultant needs to appreciate, and be sensitive to, this type of organization. A consultant who is not highly experienced with the academic culture is likely to become frustrated and bewildered very quickly. In addition, a consultant who brings along assumptions from the more top-down business world is likely to raise hackles unnecessarily on campus.
Once you have made the initial contact with a consultant, there are a number of questions you will want to ask, in addition to the usual inquiries about background and experience. These questions are all designed to help determine how well this person fits with your needs.
• How does your expertise match what has been described as our situation? This question looks for insight—an extremely important characteristic in an effective consultant. You should watch for signs that the person is leaping to premature conclusions or is inappropriately making your circumstances fit his or her own experience.
• What will your process look like for dealing with us? The consultant’s experience will show here, in that in addition to answering this question, the consultant has an opportunity to demonstrate his or her willingness and ability to treat your situation as unique—another very desirable characteristic a campus should be seeking.
• Will you work alone or with a team? If the latter, what is the added value? If you are dealing with a range of issues, a team approach is often better, but only if the consultant can demonstrate that the team members complement each other without too much overlap. Quite often, the initial discussion should focus on using that individual and, secondarily, on whether a team is better. Because of the comfort campuses often have with the visiting team approach, they seek this essentially as a predetermined solution.
• What deliverables can we expect? What you are really looking for here is, "Will you give us a solution or will you help us find a solution with your guidance?" The answer to this will be an important clue to the consultant’s approach. Either answer can be right for your needs, but one is more likely to feel right for your institution (and for you). You and your team need to know what your institution ideally would like to see and to convey that to the consultant. Are you looking for a list of recommendations, an analysis of the milieu, a set of specific technical responses? Defining these issues up front will lead to a more successful consultation.
• How will you know when your work is done? There are at least two things to look for in this answer: the extent to which the consultant works with well defined objectives, and how likely you and the campus will be urged into additional work as the initial assignment concludes.
In addition to the questions that you should ask the consultant, there are questions that he or she should ask you. These, too, give you a sense of the professionalism and "fit" with a given consultant.
• Are you engaging my services to help with problem solving or to ratify decisions that are already made? A consultant will want to understand this piece of the political landscape before setting out and adjust his or her approach accordingly. If there is a given agenda, the consultant needs to know that and also to explain that his or her role is not that of a "hired gun" prepared to automatically validate some predetermined outcome. Look for indications of independence and individual integrity.
• Do you have a gut feel for what the solution is at this point? The consultant should want to know your perspective and candid instincts on the situation as early as possible. Whether that turns out to be right or wrong, or somewhere in between, he or she needs to begin planning right away about how to deal with your instincts. However, the caveats about independence still apply.
• Are you particularly unhappy with any of the people involved? Consultants really hate to be known as the ones directly responsible for what appears to be a hatchet job. It is important for the consultant to know if the reason for this assignment fundamentally revolves around a difficult personnel situation. The consultant should ask where the problems manifest themselves, with whom, and who are the other officers of the institution with key perspectives that they should seek out. The consultant also needs to know the extent to which these concerns have been directly conveyed to the professionals in question, and how.
• Are there financial resources available to help address the situation, if necessary? The consultant’s recommendations may or may not have a financial impact, but in either case, he or she will want to know what the constraints may be. It is fine to explain about budget pressures your campus may be experiencing, but if you really want an answer (albeit a single consultant’s perspective) as to what needs to be done to correct the situation, imposing an arbitrary constraint on the solution will fail to provide a complete picture of what may actually be needed. However, if there is in fact a fixed budget that is all an institution can afford, a consultant can help the institution figure out its priorities so that they can reasonably stay within this number and have the assurance that the money will be spent wisely. This should be done with the understanding that a more complete solution may not be possible without additional resources.
References are critically important. Even though a consultant may have come to you through word of mouth, you should seek at least three additional references, making sure that you ask the most important question: "Would you engage this consultant again?" Find out whether the previous clients received what they thought they had contracted for, and the reactions that others on campus had to this individual or firm.
If it turns out that you have to have a formal selection process that includes issuing a Request For Proposal, you will likely need to delegate most or all of the operational aspects of the process to the CIO or some other executive, but remember that you are ultimately responsible for the direction, as has been discussed.
Several final concerns and issues should be kept in mind in selecting an appropriate consultant. If you decide to go with a large firm, be careful of the senior partner of the firm selling the job but having a junior person actually do the work. Irrespective of the category of consultants you are considering, be careful if in the initial discussions the consultant works hard to expand the scope of work. Trust your instinct and discomfort if the consultant seems to be asking a lot of questions that have obvious (to you) answers. And finally, step very carefully if the consultant or the consultant’s company provides a wide variety of services and could financially benefit from the advice he or she gives you if you decide to make use of those other services.
How Do You Guarantee a Successful Outcome?
The following list identifies some of the things that the president hiring a consultant can do to maximize the positive benefits for the consulting experience.
Set Expectations with the Consultant
As the assignment begins, the most important thing you as president can do is to assure that consistent expectations are shared with the consultant. Whether the project is large or small, whether it is multi-month or just one day, having a common understanding of the scope of the engagement, the issues the consultant is to address, the consultant’s approach, and the form of the delivery of results is fundamental. If you have particular agenda items that may not be obvious, it is imperative to make them explicit at the very beginning of the consultation.
Set Expectations with the Community
The campus community will no doubt be wondering about the consulting engagement and its potential impact. As the assignment begins, a message from the president can be very helpful in clearing up ambiguity (and in lessening the panic in particularly troubling situations). The most helpful and positive climate for the consultant to work in is one that regards this project as a baseline assessment of technology in preparation for strategic planning. Every institution can benefit from a routine check-up from time to time; this is not a witch hunt, and there is no reason for anyone to see it that way. Unfortunately, there is a tendency on many campuses to fill in whatever blanks are not filled in, so the best way to cut down on these unnecessary rumors is to be upfront in clarifying the goals and purposes of any such visit. You also may want to design into the visit some open time for members of the faculty, students, and other constituencies to meet with the consultant, so that no one can say this was all "stage managed." Such an initial message may well include some of the logistics of the assignment, a list of who will be interviewed, the overall schedule, a target date for when the final report will be available, and so on.
Assure the Needed Contact with the Consultant
Contact between you and the consultant will be necessary during and throughout the engagement. The consultant will likely find it very useful to be able to check back with you for additional feedback on certain items, so some blocked time at the end of the day, or first thing in the morning, can prove to be very useful. The two of you should have the opportunity to verify that you are on the same track during as well as before the visit. A final exit interview at the end of a campus visit is almost always helpful to everyone concerned. Again, you may want to include your executive team here, but you should make sure that they have some private one-on-one time as well so that things that are better not said in a large public group can be discovered in a timely manner, and advice can be given as to how that information is ultimately presented.
Request a Written Summary of the Consultancy
The results of the engagement should always be provided in written form. Many of the things the consultant will tell the campus may be unfamiliar or be in an unfamiliar context, so having a written report to refer to can be invaluable in helping you and the community discuss, and even eventually internalize, the assessment and recommendations. The report should be specific (and sensitive) to your institution. The written report can become an important benchmark about where you are, where you have been, and where you need to go, just like accreditation evaluations and other campus visiting team reports that can be looked back on, providing a campus a longitudinal sense of progress. Such a report should be widely shared within the campus community, especially if the consulting assignment has a strategic focus. With a public report, the more everyone knows about it, the greater the chances of getting buy-in to the things that resulted from the consultancy. Or, looking at it alternatively, if you try to keep such a report confidential, the inevitable leaks will torpedo such a clandestine approach.
Assure Alternate Means of Communication and Advice
In addition to the one-on-one meeting associated with the exit, you should assure that, within reason, there is an opportunity for follow-up, clarifications, and so forth after the actual visit. There are often (if not inevitably) items that should be in a private letter to the president from the consultant. Such a letter might include comments about personnel situations, personal attitudes that might present future problems, and so forth. Such correspondence needs to be kept confidential, but it can provide important insights into the processes and players involved and thus should be encouraged.
Conclusion
We undoubtedly have all heard the old joke that "a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is, and then charges you for it." Whether this is humorous or not is irrelevant, but in fact, this cliché is at least partially true. It is seldom that a consultant tells you anything you don’t already know or that you haven’t heard from others on campus. The value of a consultant is not so much in the creation of new messages for you to hear but in the distillation and delivery of the message, putting it in terms that are meaningful and acceptable to you. It is about validation of various perspectives, about framing choices, and about getting feedback that is not flavored by politics and emotional reactions. These are difficult tasks to accomplish, especially in a credible and widely acceptable manner. A good consultant can give you perspective on your institution’s situation that can have enormous value. Ultimately, a president and a campus may choose to follow some, all, or even none of the consultant’s specific recommendations, but the value of the consulting assignment must ultimately be judged in terms of the nature and depth of campus discussions that ensue during and after the engagement. The real value is not about solutions but about creating common perspectives, criteria for ongoing evaluation, and greater intra-campus trust and dialogue about these critical IT issues.
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EngaginganITConsultantforYourC/157303
The decade of the 1990s was one of constraint for higher education. Declining student enrollments, state budget cuts, decreased funding for research, and increased pressure to limit tuition growth resulted in diminished revenue sources for colleges and universities (Ender and Mooney, 1994). To remain competitive and to improve service in the face of declining resources, higher education has increasingly turned to several popular management approaches, including outsourcing (Jefferies, 1996).
Outsourcing, also referred to as contracting, is a form of privatization that refers to a university's decision to contract with an external organization to provide a traditional campus function or service. The contractor then either takes over the employees of the university, paying the group according to its standards, or replaces the university employees with its own staff (Ender and Mooney, 1994).
Outsourcing assumes that if an institution cannot provide a service or product at less cost than, and of equal quality to, an external provider, then it should purchase the service or product from an external provider. Advocates of outsourcing argue that the private sector provides service more efficiently and at lower cost than the public sector, which is unmotivated by profit (Jefferies, 1996). They point out that outsourcing to a contractor can reduce a college's or university's labor and benefits costs, provide a single point of accountability, and provide predictable costs; the resulting savings allows the institution to focus more resources on its core educational operations -- teaching and research (Ender and Mooney, 1994). Colleges and universities are testing these theories, increasingly outsourcing more of their functions in an effort to reduce costs, increase service efficiencies, and boost income (Jefferies, 1996).
WHAT FUNCTIONS ARE BEING OUTSOURCED?
Outsourcing has traditionally been used to operate campus bookstores and dining services. It has more recently become a legitimate option for additional campus functions, including facilities operation, computer services, security, child care, residence halls, teaching hospitals, remedial classes, and even entire institutions (Goldstein, Kempner, Rush and Bookman, 1993; Gilmer, 1997).
To some observers, there seems to be an announcement every week about a college being among the first to outsource an operation (van der Werf, 2000). For example, the University of Miami recently contracted with Strategic Distribution, Inc., to acquire all materials required for repair, maintenance, and operations at its main campus and medical center; Chatham College hired a contractor to run its library and hire most of the library staff (van der Werf, 2000).
PROBLEMS WITH OUTSOURCING
Critics of outsourcing point out its human resource consequences. Jobs may be shifted from the college or university to the contractor performing the outsourced function, which may result in decreased salaries or benefits (Gilmer, 1997).
A recent experience at The University of North Carolina is a case in point. The University planned to outsource its housekeeping staff; consultants expected the contractors to pay the housekeeping staff less and to provide fewer benefits than the University offered them. The plan ultimately led to charges of racism since, in contrast to other University employees, the housekeeping staff was predominantly African-American (Gilmer, 1997).
Other critics feel that contract staff may have less loyalty to the university than if they were employed directly by the institution and express disappointment with the resulting inadequate service by contractors. Inadequate service by contractors can affect the campus community in myriad ways; uncomfortable teaching facilities, shortages of textbooks in the campus bookstore, and lack of skilled technical staff to manage computer networks are just a few possibilities.
Ender and Mooney (1994) suggest that the greatest barrier to outsourcing is lost jobs and the resulting negative impact on institutional morale. They offer a set of guidelines for mitigating the negative impact of outsourcing:
1) outsource management personnel only,
2) downsize the staff by attrition,
3) involve employees in selecting the contractor, and
4) re-bid the contract often.
Filling senior management positions with contract staff for a defined period of time, they say, can eliminate conflict inherent in outsourcing an entire operation. Existing staff can remain with the university while receiving training that may eventually enable them to move into the outsourced management positions.
OUTSOURCING SUCCESS STORIES
According to Manuel Cunard, executive director of the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, college outsourcing is growing so quickly that there has been very little time to step back and determine its effectiveness (van der Werf, 2000).
The privatization of college services is currently chronicled primarily through anecdotal evidence, and campuses nationwide continue to debate the merits of outsourcing (Gilmer, 1997).
Though research about outsourcing is scanty, anecdotal evidence does make it clear that many institutions have found outsourcing to be an effective means of reducing costs, assuring financial results, upgrading program quality, gaining access to special expertise, increasing customer satisfaction, and obtaining capital for facility improvements (Dillon, 1996).
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville are two institutions that have used outsourcing to advantage. George Mason University is one of the nation's most aggressive contractors. The University has contracts, totaling more than $30 million, for 50 campus services and operations (Gilmer, 1997).
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville contracts for the installation of blinds, carpet, ceilings, fences, and elevator maintenance. The University saves an estimated $565,000 per year through outsourcing all of its custodial services (Gilmer, 1997).
RETHINKING OUTSOURCING
Some institutions have outsourced campus functions only to realize that outsourcing was not the panacea they had hoped it would be. Consistency and cost issues were key in Whitworth College's decision to abandon outsourcing. The College virtually eliminated its communications office in the late 1980s when it outsourced the office, reducing its staff from seven to one. In 1992, a presidential task force reevaluated the situation and the College returned to a centralized on-campus communications shop. Lack of coordination was cited as the major problem with outsourcing, with wide gaps in quality and cost the result. The administration ultimately realized the importance of coordinated communications to the College's success since the communications office was tied into fund raising, alumni relations, recruitment and all other facets of campus life (Schreiber, 1994).
The University of Pennsylvania recently scaled back its contract with the Trammel Crow Company for operations and maintenance of its campus buildings. Professors at the University say housekeeping functions never improved and roofs still leaked. Penn and company officials agreed that the key flaw in the school's outsourcing strategy was that Trammell Crow was asked to maintain buildings in such bad repair that they were essentially unmaintainable (van der Werf, 2000)
HOW WIDESPREAD IS OUTSOURCING?
Statistics about outsourcing in higher education are few, but the need for such data has been recognized. The National Association of College Auxiliary Services has recently opened a center to try to track overall figures for outsourcing in higher education (van der Werf, 2000).
Gilmer (1997) reports that a 1996 survey by American School & University found that colleges and universities are increasingly turning to outsourcing. More than one-half expect to contract for more services in the coming years. Only 5.9% of colleges and universities produce all services in-house; 62.4 % of colleges contract for four or fewer services; 31.7 % outsource five or more services. The most popular outsourced services include food (74.3%), vending (65.3%), bookstore operations (33.7%), custodial work (30.7%), and laundries (18.8%). Recent figures also show that the building of on-campus housing by private companies was a $500 million business in 1999, with no indication of a decrease in 2000 (van der Werf, 2000).
HOW SHOULD MANAGEMENT DECIDE WHETHER TO OUTSOURCE?
Whether or not to outsource a function is not an institution's most important question. Instead, management should examine the full array of options and select the operating and management approach best for the institution. Focusing first on understanding how the functional area in question is currently operated and examining all its strengths and weaknesses enables the institution to make a fully informed choice. (Goldstein, Kempner, Rush and Bookman, 1993). A core set of issues and questions must be explored when institutional management is deciding whether to outsource any function. Rush, Kempner and Goldstein (1995) group these core "decision factors" into six categories:
1) Human Resources - How employees will be affected.
2) Financial - The direct and indirect cost to the institution.
3) Service Quality - How each alternative will meet campus needs.
4) Legal and Ethical Considerations - The level of risk and potential liability posed by each option, any tax ramifications, any potential conflicts of interest.
5) Mission and Culture - The effects of choosing an option inconsistent with the institution's culture and historical mission.
6) Management Control and Efficiency - The likely effect of each option being considered on the institution's ability to control the direction and priorities of the functional area.
The relative importance of these six decision factors will vary with the institution and among functional areas. However, regardless of the institution's size, location or affiliation, and no matter what functional area is under consideration, campus decision makers need to use a structured methodology when making the decision to outsource. Rush, Kempner and Goldstein (1995) also offer a ten-phase methodology for outsourcing which focuses on the following actions:
Phase 1: Identify Key Participants
Phase 2: Develop an Analytical Framework
Phase 3: Assess the Current Environment
Phase 4: Identify Customer Requirements
Phase 5: Develop an Operational Design
Phase 6: Identify Possible Alternatives
(Peterson's Contract Services for Higher Education (1995) provides information on various types of contract and outsourcing services available to colleges and universities.)
Phase 7: Review Legal, Ethical, and Community Considerations
Phase 8: Compare Proposed Operating Alternatives
Phase 9: Select the Preferred Alternative
Phase 10: Establish a Continuous Improvement and Assessment Process
CONCLUSIONS
The growing use of outsourcing in higher education reflects a general acceptance by campus administrators that it will reduce costs while continuing to provide essential university services (Jefferies, 1996).
Successfully outsourcing a function requires careful, comprehensive evaluation and planning by management. The answer to whether or not to outsource is what best serves the institution--not only what is most cost efficient, but also what will provide the most consistency, timeliness and overall quality in meeting the college's or university's goals (Schreiber, 1994).
To outsource or not outsource - strategic decision making
Conventional wisdom regarding the outsourcing decision states that you should outsource your "non-core" business activities. The difficulty with this approach, however, is that it provides no guidance for deciding which activities are "non-core". Ultimately, in many organizations adopting this approach, the discussion about what is "core" and what is "non-core" ends up being highly subjective, and in the end, one person?s opinion ends up prevailing over another?s. A better approach, and the one that Price Waterhouse Coopers typically adopts in advising clients about the outsourcing decision is to look at the decision in terms of a two-by-two matrix, as shown below.
I consider the outsourcing decision along two dimensions. The first, Strategic-Non Strategic, considers how important the activity proposed for outsourcing is to the organization in achieving long term strategic competitive advantage in its chosen marketplace. In terms of maintenance, this will clearly vary from organization to organization, depending on the industry that it competes in, and its chosen strategy for competing in that industry. For example, for a contract mining organization, where competitive advantage in the industry is largely driven by being the lowest cost producer (and in which maintenance and asset ownership costs typically equate to 55-60% of total costs), maintenance clearly is of strategic competitive importance to the firm. Outsourcing maintenance in this environment would, in effect, be handing over control of this potential source of competitive advantage to an external party. On the other hand, maintenance to a hospital may be of less strategic importance, and therefore could, potentially be a candidate for outsourcing. The second dimension, Competitive-Non Competitive, relates to how competitively the function being considered for outsourcing is currently being performed compared to the external competitive marketplace. This relates primarily to the cost of the service, but could also be extended to include service elements such as response time.
Putting the two elements together gives four possible outcomes.
1. Those functions that are of Strategic importance to the firm, and which are currently being performed competitively require no further action - the status quo should be retained.
2. Those functions that are of Strategic importance to the firm, but which are not currently being performed competitively with the external marketplace should not (in the long run) be outsourced. Instead, a better long-term option is to re-engineer them to ensure that they are performed at a competitive cost. It is possible that, as an interim measure to speed the transition process, a tactical decision is made to outsource the function in the short term, but as stated previously, in the long term the function, as a source of potential competitive advantage, should be retained in-house.
3. Those functions that are not of Strategic importance to the firm, and which are not currently being performed competitively with the external marketplace should be outsourced. There is little value in investing in improving this function.
4. The final combination, those functions that are not of Strategic importance to the firm, but which are being performed competitively with the external marketplace is more interesting. A number of options exist for this function, including
o selling the function as a going concern,
o extending the function to provide services to external customers,
o outsourcing the function, or
o raise the profile of the function to turn it into a source of strategic competitive advantage.
The preferred option depends largely on the function being considered. Does a competitive outsourcing market exist?
A second consideration for outsourcing, that is related to the above model, is to decide whether a competitive market for the outsourced services actually exists. In particular, when dealing with highly specialized maintenance services (such as specialized turbine maintenance) or maintenance occurring in remote areas (such as at remote mine sites), once an outsourced maintenance service provider has been selected, this may create large barriers to entry for other potential maintenance service providers wishing to enter into this market. While these barriers may be overcome, by adopting an appropriate outsourcing strategy (such as letting work to two or more contractors, rather than to one exclusively), awareness of this possible outcome prior to establishing the outsourcing strategy is vital if the outsourcing organization is not to find itself "locked in" to a sole provider. How much maintenance to outsource
An important consideration in making the maintenance outsourcing decision is what aspects of maintenance to outsource. If we consider the maintenance management process as consisting of six major steps, as shown below, then a number of options exist.
A World Class Maintenance Management System
In the first instance, organizations may choose simply to outsource the work execution step, while retaining the remaining steps inhouse. This is often done on a limited basis, for example, when employing contractors to supplement an inhouse work force during times of high workload, during major shutdowns, for example. This is the minimalist approach to outsourcing.
An alternative approach is to outsource all of the above activities with the exception of the analysis and work identification steps. In this approach, the contractor is permitted to plan and schedule his own work, and decide how and when work is to be done, but the outsourcing organization retains control over what is to be done.
A third approach is to outsource all of the above steps, thus giving control over the development of equipment maintenance strategies (ie Preventive and Predictive Maintenance programs) to the contractor. In this instance, the contract must be structured around the achievement of desired outcomes in terms of equipment performance, with the contractor being given latitude to achieve this to the best of his ability.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, and the most appropriate approach will depend on the client?s particular situation.
Looking at how maintenance fits into the wider asset management strategy of an organization (as illustrated below) also raises interesting challenges.
For example, one challenge that needs to be met is how the maintenance contractors will interface with the production operators, and the relative responsibilities and duties of each party. Many organizations today are adopting Total Productive Maintenance principles, which encourage Production operators to take a higher level of responsibility for equipment performance, and also encourage them to perform many minor maintenance tasks. There is also a growing realization that the manner in which equipment is operated can have a huge bearing on maintenance costs and the maintenance activities required to be performed if equipment performance targets are to be met. A high level of teamwork between the Maintenance contractors and the Production operators is, therefore, vital to the successful completion of the contract. This leads to the view that an alternative, and possibly better, approach to the outsourcing of maintenance is to include plant operation in the scope of the contract. Hence the letting of Operations and Maintenance contracts, particularly in the Power Generation industry.
Finally, taking things one step further again, there is also a growing realization that maintenance is limited in achieving higher equipment performance by the fundamental design of the equipment being maintained. The best that maintenance can achieve is the inherent reliability and performance of the equipment that is built in by design. There is, therefore, a school of thought that says that the best way to overcome this limitation, in an outsourcing environment, is to also give the contractor responsibility for the design of the equipment. This can be done either by giving him responsibility for ongoing equipment modifications, or by giving him responsibility for the initial design of the equipment, as in a BOOM (Build, Own, Operate and Maintain) contract, which is gaining favor in many infrastructure projects. Establishing an appropriate tendering process
The tendering process for a major outsourcing contract is likely to be different to the contracting process for major capital works in a few key aspects.
Of particular importance will be the explicit consideration of risk at various key points in the contracting process, and the identification of appropriate strategies for managing those risks. These could take the form of either shaping or hedging actions. Shaping actions are those action undertaken to minimize the likelihood of the risk factor occurring. Hedging actions are those actions undertaken to minimize the impact of the risk factor, should it occur. In addition, the evaluation criteria for the selection of an appropriate maintenance contractor are likely to be quite different from those for a major capital project. It is likely that significant work will be required to develop appropriate criteria, and to ensure that sufficient information is obtained from tenderers to be able to make an informed decision.
Establishing an appropriate specification of requirements
The specification of requirement during the tendering process will need to be carefully considered. In particular, for those contracts involving large-scale outsourcing of most maintenance functions, there will be a requirement to ensure that the requirements specification is outcome-based, rather than input-based. In other words, the specification will need to detail what is to be achieved from the contract, not how it is to be achieved, or what inputs will be required for its achievement. In Price Waterhouse Coopers' experience, ensuring that all the required outcomes are specified is a major undertaking. Agreeing how the achievement of all of these outcomes will be measured is also, potentially, a huge undertaking. For example, in one recent outsourcing contract, a desired outcome was the achievement of long-term plant integrity. Deciding how to measure that was a difficult process.
Establishing an appropriate contract payment structure
There are a number of alternative contract payment structures. These include:
• Fixed or Firm price
• Variable Price
• Price ceiling incentive
• Cost plus incentive fee
• Cost plus award fee
• Cost plus fixed fee
• Cost Plus Margin
Each of these price structures represents a different level of risk sharing between the contractor and the outsourcing organization, and a number of considerations will need to be made in determining the most appropriate payment structure. These include:
• The extent to which objective assessment of contract performance is possible
• The ease with which realistic targets can be set for contractor performance
• The administrative effort involved with each payment option
The degree of certainty with which the desired contract outcomes can be specified
Transition arrangement may be put in place to gradually transfer the payment structure from one method to another over time, as a greater degree of certainty over the requirements of the contract, and more accurate knowledge of target levels of performance is established. Establishing an appropriate contract administration process and structure Before the contract is let, the client will need to have decided on the appropriate contract administration process, and the roles and responsibilities of his own staff in managing the contract. He will also need to establish the structures, processes and equip his people with the skills to perform the required duties. We have seen many potentially successful outsourcing contracts fail, simply because the client did not manage those contracts effectively.
Establishing an appropriate structure for the contract document
In our experience, most standard contracts in place at most organizations, are not appropriate for large outsourcing contracts. Many Standard Terms and Conditions are inappropriate for large, long-term service-related contracts - particularly those that are of a partnering or gain-sharing nature. We have found that it is best to combine Special Conditions of Contract with revised Standard Conditions of Contract to develop a new contract structure that is appropriate for the particular contract being let. Managing the transition to the outsourced arrangement
There are many issues to be addressed by the outsourcing organization in the transition to the new arrangements. Among these are matters such as:
• Staff - which will be retained by the organization, which will be employed by the contractor, which will be let go?
• Drawings - who has responsibility for ensuring that drawings are kept up to date, who will be the custodian of site drawings?
• Computer systems - will the contractor have access to the client?s Computerized Maintenance Management system? Will they maintain their own computerized Maintenance records? Who is responsible for ensuring that all data in the Computerized Maintenance Management systems are accurate?
• Materials Management - will the contractor provide his own materials, or will the client provide these?
• Workshop facilities and tools - who owns and maintains these?
Agreeing contract termination arrangements
Another critical issue that needs to be addressed before the contract is let, is how the situation will be managed if the decision is made to terminate the existing contract. In particular, agreement needs to be reached regarding the duties and obligations of the outgoing contractor in handing over to the incoming contractor (or the client organization, should they decide to bring maintenance back in-house).
Conclusion
While these are some of the major considerations for organizations considering outsourcing maintenance, there are many others that cannot be covered in this paper due to restrictions in time and space. Needless to say, the decision to outsource any major function, such as maintenance, is not one that should be taken lightly, and careful consideration of all major issues is vital, if the transition to contracted maintenance is to be smooth and satisfactory to both parties.
http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/outsourcing.htm
http://www.maintenanceresources.com/referencelibrary/maintenancemanagement/outsourcing.htm#section1
Outsourcing, also referred to as contracting, is a form of privatization that refers to a university's decision to contract with an external organization to provide a traditional campus function or service. The contractor then either takes over the employees of the university, paying the group according to its standards, or replaces the university employees with its own staff (Ender and Mooney, 1994).
Outsourcing assumes that if an institution cannot provide a service or product at less cost than, and of equal quality to, an external provider, then it should purchase the service or product from an external provider. Advocates of outsourcing argue that the private sector provides service more efficiently and at lower cost than the public sector, which is unmotivated by profit (Jefferies, 1996). They point out that outsourcing to a contractor can reduce a college's or university's labor and benefits costs, provide a single point of accountability, and provide predictable costs; the resulting savings allows the institution to focus more resources on its core educational operations -- teaching and research (Ender and Mooney, 1994). Colleges and universities are testing these theories, increasingly outsourcing more of their functions in an effort to reduce costs, increase service efficiencies, and boost income (Jefferies, 1996).
WHAT FUNCTIONS ARE BEING OUTSOURCED?
Outsourcing has traditionally been used to operate campus bookstores and dining services. It has more recently become a legitimate option for additional campus functions, including facilities operation, computer services, security, child care, residence halls, teaching hospitals, remedial classes, and even entire institutions (Goldstein, Kempner, Rush and Bookman, 1993; Gilmer, 1997).
To some observers, there seems to be an announcement every week about a college being among the first to outsource an operation (van der Werf, 2000). For example, the University of Miami recently contracted with Strategic Distribution, Inc., to acquire all materials required for repair, maintenance, and operations at its main campus and medical center; Chatham College hired a contractor to run its library and hire most of the library staff (van der Werf, 2000).
PROBLEMS WITH OUTSOURCING
Critics of outsourcing point out its human resource consequences. Jobs may be shifted from the college or university to the contractor performing the outsourced function, which may result in decreased salaries or benefits (Gilmer, 1997).
A recent experience at The University of North Carolina is a case in point. The University planned to outsource its housekeeping staff; consultants expected the contractors to pay the housekeeping staff less and to provide fewer benefits than the University offered them. The plan ultimately led to charges of racism since, in contrast to other University employees, the housekeeping staff was predominantly African-American (Gilmer, 1997).
Other critics feel that contract staff may have less loyalty to the university than if they were employed directly by the institution and express disappointment with the resulting inadequate service by contractors. Inadequate service by contractors can affect the campus community in myriad ways; uncomfortable teaching facilities, shortages of textbooks in the campus bookstore, and lack of skilled technical staff to manage computer networks are just a few possibilities.
Ender and Mooney (1994) suggest that the greatest barrier to outsourcing is lost jobs and the resulting negative impact on institutional morale. They offer a set of guidelines for mitigating the negative impact of outsourcing:
1) outsource management personnel only,
2) downsize the staff by attrition,
3) involve employees in selecting the contractor, and
4) re-bid the contract often.
Filling senior management positions with contract staff for a defined period of time, they say, can eliminate conflict inherent in outsourcing an entire operation. Existing staff can remain with the university while receiving training that may eventually enable them to move into the outsourced management positions.
OUTSOURCING SUCCESS STORIES
According to Manuel Cunard, executive director of the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, college outsourcing is growing so quickly that there has been very little time to step back and determine its effectiveness (van der Werf, 2000).
The privatization of college services is currently chronicled primarily through anecdotal evidence, and campuses nationwide continue to debate the merits of outsourcing (Gilmer, 1997).
Though research about outsourcing is scanty, anecdotal evidence does make it clear that many institutions have found outsourcing to be an effective means of reducing costs, assuring financial results, upgrading program quality, gaining access to special expertise, increasing customer satisfaction, and obtaining capital for facility improvements (Dillon, 1996).
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville are two institutions that have used outsourcing to advantage. George Mason University is one of the nation's most aggressive contractors. The University has contracts, totaling more than $30 million, for 50 campus services and operations (Gilmer, 1997).
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville contracts for the installation of blinds, carpet, ceilings, fences, and elevator maintenance. The University saves an estimated $565,000 per year through outsourcing all of its custodial services (Gilmer, 1997).
RETHINKING OUTSOURCING
Some institutions have outsourced campus functions only to realize that outsourcing was not the panacea they had hoped it would be. Consistency and cost issues were key in Whitworth College's decision to abandon outsourcing. The College virtually eliminated its communications office in the late 1980s when it outsourced the office, reducing its staff from seven to one. In 1992, a presidential task force reevaluated the situation and the College returned to a centralized on-campus communications shop. Lack of coordination was cited as the major problem with outsourcing, with wide gaps in quality and cost the result. The administration ultimately realized the importance of coordinated communications to the College's success since the communications office was tied into fund raising, alumni relations, recruitment and all other facets of campus life (Schreiber, 1994).
The University of Pennsylvania recently scaled back its contract with the Trammel Crow Company for operations and maintenance of its campus buildings. Professors at the University say housekeeping functions never improved and roofs still leaked. Penn and company officials agreed that the key flaw in the school's outsourcing strategy was that Trammell Crow was asked to maintain buildings in such bad repair that they were essentially unmaintainable (van der Werf, 2000)
HOW WIDESPREAD IS OUTSOURCING?
Statistics about outsourcing in higher education are few, but the need for such data has been recognized. The National Association of College Auxiliary Services has recently opened a center to try to track overall figures for outsourcing in higher education (van der Werf, 2000).
Gilmer (1997) reports that a 1996 survey by American School & University found that colleges and universities are increasingly turning to outsourcing. More than one-half expect to contract for more services in the coming years. Only 5.9% of colleges and universities produce all services in-house; 62.4 % of colleges contract for four or fewer services; 31.7 % outsource five or more services. The most popular outsourced services include food (74.3%), vending (65.3%), bookstore operations (33.7%), custodial work (30.7%), and laundries (18.8%). Recent figures also show that the building of on-campus housing by private companies was a $500 million business in 1999, with no indication of a decrease in 2000 (van der Werf, 2000).
HOW SHOULD MANAGEMENT DECIDE WHETHER TO OUTSOURCE?
Whether or not to outsource a function is not an institution's most important question. Instead, management should examine the full array of options and select the operating and management approach best for the institution. Focusing first on understanding how the functional area in question is currently operated and examining all its strengths and weaknesses enables the institution to make a fully informed choice. (Goldstein, Kempner, Rush and Bookman, 1993). A core set of issues and questions must be explored when institutional management is deciding whether to outsource any function. Rush, Kempner and Goldstein (1995) group these core "decision factors" into six categories:
1) Human Resources - How employees will be affected.
2) Financial - The direct and indirect cost to the institution.
3) Service Quality - How each alternative will meet campus needs.
4) Legal and Ethical Considerations - The level of risk and potential liability posed by each option, any tax ramifications, any potential conflicts of interest.
5) Mission and Culture - The effects of choosing an option inconsistent with the institution's culture and historical mission.
6) Management Control and Efficiency - The likely effect of each option being considered on the institution's ability to control the direction and priorities of the functional area.
The relative importance of these six decision factors will vary with the institution and among functional areas. However, regardless of the institution's size, location or affiliation, and no matter what functional area is under consideration, campus decision makers need to use a structured methodology when making the decision to outsource. Rush, Kempner and Goldstein (1995) also offer a ten-phase methodology for outsourcing which focuses on the following actions:
Phase 1: Identify Key Participants
Phase 2: Develop an Analytical Framework
Phase 3: Assess the Current Environment
Phase 4: Identify Customer Requirements
Phase 5: Develop an Operational Design
Phase 6: Identify Possible Alternatives
(Peterson's Contract Services for Higher Education (1995) provides information on various types of contract and outsourcing services available to colleges and universities.)
Phase 7: Review Legal, Ethical, and Community Considerations
Phase 8: Compare Proposed Operating Alternatives
Phase 9: Select the Preferred Alternative
Phase 10: Establish a Continuous Improvement and Assessment Process
CONCLUSIONS
The growing use of outsourcing in higher education reflects a general acceptance by campus administrators that it will reduce costs while continuing to provide essential university services (Jefferies, 1996).
Successfully outsourcing a function requires careful, comprehensive evaluation and planning by management. The answer to whether or not to outsource is what best serves the institution--not only what is most cost efficient, but also what will provide the most consistency, timeliness and overall quality in meeting the college's or university's goals (Schreiber, 1994).
To outsource or not outsource - strategic decision making
Conventional wisdom regarding the outsourcing decision states that you should outsource your "non-core" business activities. The difficulty with this approach, however, is that it provides no guidance for deciding which activities are "non-core". Ultimately, in many organizations adopting this approach, the discussion about what is "core" and what is "non-core" ends up being highly subjective, and in the end, one person?s opinion ends up prevailing over another?s. A better approach, and the one that Price Waterhouse Coopers typically adopts in advising clients about the outsourcing decision is to look at the decision in terms of a two-by-two matrix, as shown below.
I consider the outsourcing decision along two dimensions. The first, Strategic-Non Strategic, considers how important the activity proposed for outsourcing is to the organization in achieving long term strategic competitive advantage in its chosen marketplace. In terms of maintenance, this will clearly vary from organization to organization, depending on the industry that it competes in, and its chosen strategy for competing in that industry. For example, for a contract mining organization, where competitive advantage in the industry is largely driven by being the lowest cost producer (and in which maintenance and asset ownership costs typically equate to 55-60% of total costs), maintenance clearly is of strategic competitive importance to the firm. Outsourcing maintenance in this environment would, in effect, be handing over control of this potential source of competitive advantage to an external party. On the other hand, maintenance to a hospital may be of less strategic importance, and therefore could, potentially be a candidate for outsourcing. The second dimension, Competitive-Non Competitive, relates to how competitively the function being considered for outsourcing is currently being performed compared to the external competitive marketplace. This relates primarily to the cost of the service, but could also be extended to include service elements such as response time.
Putting the two elements together gives four possible outcomes.
1. Those functions that are of Strategic importance to the firm, and which are currently being performed competitively require no further action - the status quo should be retained.
2. Those functions that are of Strategic importance to the firm, but which are not currently being performed competitively with the external marketplace should not (in the long run) be outsourced. Instead, a better long-term option is to re-engineer them to ensure that they are performed at a competitive cost. It is possible that, as an interim measure to speed the transition process, a tactical decision is made to outsource the function in the short term, but as stated previously, in the long term the function, as a source of potential competitive advantage, should be retained in-house.
3. Those functions that are not of Strategic importance to the firm, and which are not currently being performed competitively with the external marketplace should be outsourced. There is little value in investing in improving this function.
4. The final combination, those functions that are not of Strategic importance to the firm, but which are being performed competitively with the external marketplace is more interesting. A number of options exist for this function, including
o selling the function as a going concern,
o extending the function to provide services to external customers,
o outsourcing the function, or
o raise the profile of the function to turn it into a source of strategic competitive advantage.
The preferred option depends largely on the function being considered. Does a competitive outsourcing market exist?
A second consideration for outsourcing, that is related to the above model, is to decide whether a competitive market for the outsourced services actually exists. In particular, when dealing with highly specialized maintenance services (such as specialized turbine maintenance) or maintenance occurring in remote areas (such as at remote mine sites), once an outsourced maintenance service provider has been selected, this may create large barriers to entry for other potential maintenance service providers wishing to enter into this market. While these barriers may be overcome, by adopting an appropriate outsourcing strategy (such as letting work to two or more contractors, rather than to one exclusively), awareness of this possible outcome prior to establishing the outsourcing strategy is vital if the outsourcing organization is not to find itself "locked in" to a sole provider. How much maintenance to outsource
An important consideration in making the maintenance outsourcing decision is what aspects of maintenance to outsource. If we consider the maintenance management process as consisting of six major steps, as shown below, then a number of options exist.
A World Class Maintenance Management System
In the first instance, organizations may choose simply to outsource the work execution step, while retaining the remaining steps inhouse. This is often done on a limited basis, for example, when employing contractors to supplement an inhouse work force during times of high workload, during major shutdowns, for example. This is the minimalist approach to outsourcing.
An alternative approach is to outsource all of the above activities with the exception of the analysis and work identification steps. In this approach, the contractor is permitted to plan and schedule his own work, and decide how and when work is to be done, but the outsourcing organization retains control over what is to be done.
A third approach is to outsource all of the above steps, thus giving control over the development of equipment maintenance strategies (ie Preventive and Predictive Maintenance programs) to the contractor. In this instance, the contract must be structured around the achievement of desired outcomes in terms of equipment performance, with the contractor being given latitude to achieve this to the best of his ability.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, and the most appropriate approach will depend on the client?s particular situation.
Looking at how maintenance fits into the wider asset management strategy of an organization (as illustrated below) also raises interesting challenges.
For example, one challenge that needs to be met is how the maintenance contractors will interface with the production operators, and the relative responsibilities and duties of each party. Many organizations today are adopting Total Productive Maintenance principles, which encourage Production operators to take a higher level of responsibility for equipment performance, and also encourage them to perform many minor maintenance tasks. There is also a growing realization that the manner in which equipment is operated can have a huge bearing on maintenance costs and the maintenance activities required to be performed if equipment performance targets are to be met. A high level of teamwork between the Maintenance contractors and the Production operators is, therefore, vital to the successful completion of the contract. This leads to the view that an alternative, and possibly better, approach to the outsourcing of maintenance is to include plant operation in the scope of the contract. Hence the letting of Operations and Maintenance contracts, particularly in the Power Generation industry.
Finally, taking things one step further again, there is also a growing realization that maintenance is limited in achieving higher equipment performance by the fundamental design of the equipment being maintained. The best that maintenance can achieve is the inherent reliability and performance of the equipment that is built in by design. There is, therefore, a school of thought that says that the best way to overcome this limitation, in an outsourcing environment, is to also give the contractor responsibility for the design of the equipment. This can be done either by giving him responsibility for ongoing equipment modifications, or by giving him responsibility for the initial design of the equipment, as in a BOOM (Build, Own, Operate and Maintain) contract, which is gaining favor in many infrastructure projects. Establishing an appropriate tendering process
The tendering process for a major outsourcing contract is likely to be different to the contracting process for major capital works in a few key aspects.
Of particular importance will be the explicit consideration of risk at various key points in the contracting process, and the identification of appropriate strategies for managing those risks. These could take the form of either shaping or hedging actions. Shaping actions are those action undertaken to minimize the likelihood of the risk factor occurring. Hedging actions are those actions undertaken to minimize the impact of the risk factor, should it occur. In addition, the evaluation criteria for the selection of an appropriate maintenance contractor are likely to be quite different from those for a major capital project. It is likely that significant work will be required to develop appropriate criteria, and to ensure that sufficient information is obtained from tenderers to be able to make an informed decision.
Establishing an appropriate specification of requirements
The specification of requirement during the tendering process will need to be carefully considered. In particular, for those contracts involving large-scale outsourcing of most maintenance functions, there will be a requirement to ensure that the requirements specification is outcome-based, rather than input-based. In other words, the specification will need to detail what is to be achieved from the contract, not how it is to be achieved, or what inputs will be required for its achievement. In Price Waterhouse Coopers' experience, ensuring that all the required outcomes are specified is a major undertaking. Agreeing how the achievement of all of these outcomes will be measured is also, potentially, a huge undertaking. For example, in one recent outsourcing contract, a desired outcome was the achievement of long-term plant integrity. Deciding how to measure that was a difficult process.
Establishing an appropriate contract payment structure
There are a number of alternative contract payment structures. These include:
• Fixed or Firm price
• Variable Price
• Price ceiling incentive
• Cost plus incentive fee
• Cost plus award fee
• Cost plus fixed fee
• Cost Plus Margin
Each of these price structures represents a different level of risk sharing between the contractor and the outsourcing organization, and a number of considerations will need to be made in determining the most appropriate payment structure. These include:
• The extent to which objective assessment of contract performance is possible
• The ease with which realistic targets can be set for contractor performance
• The administrative effort involved with each payment option
The degree of certainty with which the desired contract outcomes can be specified
Transition arrangement may be put in place to gradually transfer the payment structure from one method to another over time, as a greater degree of certainty over the requirements of the contract, and more accurate knowledge of target levels of performance is established. Establishing an appropriate contract administration process and structure Before the contract is let, the client will need to have decided on the appropriate contract administration process, and the roles and responsibilities of his own staff in managing the contract. He will also need to establish the structures, processes and equip his people with the skills to perform the required duties. We have seen many potentially successful outsourcing contracts fail, simply because the client did not manage those contracts effectively.
Establishing an appropriate structure for the contract document
In our experience, most standard contracts in place at most organizations, are not appropriate for large outsourcing contracts. Many Standard Terms and Conditions are inappropriate for large, long-term service-related contracts - particularly those that are of a partnering or gain-sharing nature. We have found that it is best to combine Special Conditions of Contract with revised Standard Conditions of Contract to develop a new contract structure that is appropriate for the particular contract being let. Managing the transition to the outsourced arrangement
There are many issues to be addressed by the outsourcing organization in the transition to the new arrangements. Among these are matters such as:
• Staff - which will be retained by the organization, which will be employed by the contractor, which will be let go?
• Drawings - who has responsibility for ensuring that drawings are kept up to date, who will be the custodian of site drawings?
• Computer systems - will the contractor have access to the client?s Computerized Maintenance Management system? Will they maintain their own computerized Maintenance records? Who is responsible for ensuring that all data in the Computerized Maintenance Management systems are accurate?
• Materials Management - will the contractor provide his own materials, or will the client provide these?
• Workshop facilities and tools - who owns and maintains these?
Agreeing contract termination arrangements
Another critical issue that needs to be addressed before the contract is let, is how the situation will be managed if the decision is made to terminate the existing contract. In particular, agreement needs to be reached regarding the duties and obligations of the outgoing contractor in handing over to the incoming contractor (or the client organization, should they decide to bring maintenance back in-house).
Conclusion
While these are some of the major considerations for organizations considering outsourcing maintenance, there are many others that cannot be covered in this paper due to restrictions in time and space. Needless to say, the decision to outsource any major function, such as maintenance, is not one that should be taken lightly, and careful consideration of all major issues is vital, if the transition to contracted maintenance is to be smooth and satisfactory to both parties.
http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/outsourcing.htm
http://www.maintenanceresources.com/referencelibrary/maintenancemanagement/outsourcing.htm#section1
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