Slash wasteful IT spend and invest in academics instead – expert

If only we could do it! I am retiring but if not, I would have to waste more time porting material to new software or getting used to new systems. Great article but I doubt that any university has the guts to take on vested interests and sort out IT.

And another academic whining about professional services staff. I doubt Tom Williams has the slightest idea of real-world IT.

Having worked in an IT Department for over 2 decades I agree wholeheartedly with the Professor. The rise of a Project Management model with ludicrous levels of governance has shifted resources away from delivering solutions to administering projects. Rafts of long documents are being created that are read once. The sector are like sheep, when a new solution is needed, the first response is to see how the university next door is doing it. Even when new products are purchased, they are rarely implemented as they should be, rather shoehorned in to accommodate legacy issues as nobody has the stomach to address them. Money is wasted on buying 'shiny' new kit to impress senior leaders leaving nothing for critical student applications. Duplicate systems are purchased as nobody knows what other Departments are using or based on bogus assumptions that the requirements are different, without exploring how the existing system can be configured to meet the new needs. Then there is the growing managerial hierarchy introducing levels of management that just aren't needed ( usually made up of colleagues from the leaders previous institution). There will undoubtedly be a strategic team who duplicate some of the functions of IT ( usually with less experience and knowledge) and promote these archaic textbook practices as something to aspire to. The staff in my Department are amazing, highly skilled and consummate professionals but have no voice in feeding into how change could be managed much better. There is a culture of fear as challenge to managerial ideas , however ridiculous, will end any prospect of promotion. When Professional Services were hived off this was probably one of the worst decisions to happen in the sector as they then started pursuing their own goals rather than those of supporting teaching and research.

I agree with the sentiment, and in particular that co-development of backend systems across the sector makes a lot more sense than every HEI re-purchasing essentially the software to manage the same processes. Also because a huge amount of academic and admin time goes into wrestling against dreadful, user-unfriendly, and incoherent software systems for which we unaccountably pay a lot of money. But this shake-up will itself in the short-term require a large investment in IT and software development teams, not academics. That may be the long-term goal, but as ever a large part of why we're stuck in current unworkable ruts is the precarious finances of the sector blocking investment in anything other than shiny new prestige buildings.