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ITS Strategy

Guiding Principles

Build and Sustain Our Talent

ITS leaders think and act strategically. We support staff members in learning new skills, sharing ideas, and leading projects.

  • Adopt and maintain inclusivity and engagement principals, creating a welcoming and safe environment for ITS.
  • Encourage strong collaboration between ITS teams and other campus groups, valuing collaboration over individual contribution.
  • Encourage leaders and team members to “own” solutions, removing a strict hierarchy approach.
  • Empower leaders and team members to fail and then learn from those failures to grow in their professional career.
  • Encourage professional development, aligning financial resources to invest in skills for the team.

Increase Organizational Maturity

ITS employs proven IT frameworks, tools, and planning activities to optimize service delivery. We increase measurement, analysis, and improvement of our products and services to facilitate data-driven decision-making. We continuously improve processes, tool offerings and utilization, and frameworks to increase the maturity level of the ITS organization.

  • Implement the ITIL service management framework.
  • Expand application of the PMI project management and Lean 6 Sigma process improvement methodologies.
  • Implement the NIST cybersecurity framework.
  • Implement the Agile framework for code/software development.
  • Review and simplify IT applications and product offerings.
  • Review, document, and streamline IT processes.
  • Adopt an API-first approach to data and system integrations as well as data accessibility.

Uplift Infrastructure

ITS builds and maintains a technical infrastructure that is robust enough to support all university missions. 

  • Create a five-year roadmap for replacement of networking, telecommunications, data storage, security, and audiovisual infrastructure.
  • Move to a Unified Communications platform by implementing voice-over-IP (VOIP).
  • Invest in a hybrid methodology that incorporates both on-premise and cloud services for enterprise computing needs and backup.
  • Move third-party applications to hosted solutions when appropriate.

Develop a Research IT Infrastructure

Build out a formal research enterprise support structure to meet the computing and data storage needs of researchers, investigators, and faculty.

  • Develop a research IT plan in conjunction with the Vice Chancellor for Research and research deans.
  • Create a research IT governance model.
  • Build a research/science DMZ (i.e., protected subnetwork) and improve data transmission speeds.

Secure UT Health Science Center Resources

ITS factors information security and risk management into everything we do across the organization. We configure and implement all IT products and services to comply to applicable government, UT Health Science Center, and UT System regulations. We prioritize the protection of UT Health Science Center’s sensitive and confidential data during the lifecycle of the data usage.

  • Expand cybersecurity positions to support mature academic health science center enterprise needs. 
  • Invest in cybersecurity tools that offer significant value.
  • Adopt the NIST cybersecurity framework.
  • Adopt a zero-trust approach.
  • Enable faculty, staff, and students to complete their work within a secure environment.

Expand IT Governance

Formalize the university’s IT decision-making process to ensure alignment of ITS resources and effort with business goals and priorities.

  • Create a Change Advisory Board (CAB).
  • Create an Architecture Review Board (ARB).
  • Develop a Research IT governance model. 
  • Take an active role in the Faculty Senate Computing Committee.
  • Build strong relationships with departmental and college stakeholders.

Provide A Superior Customer Experience

Relationships and collaboration with our customers are key. ITS works closely with the campus community to help define needs and then meet those needs with small, incremental improvements that deliver value quickly.

  • Deploy a new IT service management tool, meeting the needs of an academic health science center.
  • Re-align forward-facing units within ITS to create a unified strategic approach.
  • Plan, execute, and modify products and services that position ITS to provide significant value to the university.
May 7, 2024