Looking at IT Through a New Lens: Achieving Cost Savings in a Fiscally Challenging Time

Writing in EDUCAUSE Review, George F. Claffey, Jr. shares some concepts useful to all departments in these difficult times: 

While fiscally challenging times often prompt a retreat into “core strategic services,” we should view this crisis as an opportunity to reevaluate the position, strategies, and politics in play on our campuses. Often we find that we’re doing something merely because that’s how it’s always been done. This challenging economic situation gives us an opportunity to reevaluate what we are doing and how we are doing it, seeking greater efficiency and effectiveness in new solutions.

As we stare across the multiple tabs and hundreds of rows that make up the IT budget serving our students, faculty, and staff, we must realize that the answer cannot be found with basic cuts. We must look at how technology is used — or not used — on campus. To promote greater cost savings, we need to look through a new “lens.” Four broad categories can be evaluated to determine if IT resource alignment is appropriate and if savings can be achieved through change:

• Services and infrastructure: retirement and consolidation
• Personnel: capital, training, research and development
• Evaluation of alternate technologies
• Economies of scale