Enabling Data Transformation: Creating Time and Budget for Student-Centric Innovation

For most technology leaders, the overwhelming majority of the IT team’s budget is spent “keeping the lights on”—leaving little room for innovation and strategic campus initiatives. Despite this reality, Presidents, Provosts, and other campus leaders are urging continuous innovation, and actively pursing digital transformation to differentiate their institutions for the difficult decade ahead. IT leaders must find a way to keep pace with the change, or risk being left on the side lines of innovation. In this session, presenters from Oregon Tech and EAB will outline a comprehensive strategy for recapturing and reallocating administrative IT spend into student-centric initiatives. The presentation will include: • An overview of the mandate for change, drawn from EAB’s research findings in conversations with hundreds of Presidents, Provosts, and Chiefs of Staff across higher education; • An introduction to the “agile technology ecosystem” recommended to sustain student-centric innovation through digital flux; and • A deep dive into Oregon Institute of Technology’s IT investment strategy, including methods for sunsetting legacy tech, breaking the dependency on legacy vendors, and their path to investment in technologies that improve and differentiate the student experience.