PURPOSE

The purpose of the ITS Strategic Plan (ISP) is to define the priorities and investments in technologies, processes, and people that are required for our students to achieve their goals, and for the College to achieve its vision, mission, and strategy.  

ITS VISION & MISSION 

Vision Statement 

We believe that we are here to empower students and the College community to over-achieve their goals through access to superior technologies and exemplary customer service.  

Mission Statement

We deliver prompt, friendly, and effective customer service. Supporting students and their access to instructional and administrative resources is always our ‘number one’ priority. We focus on innovation that improves quality of service while reducing cost. We support the achievement of the College’s strategy, instructional and administrative needs, and the outcomes we promise in our Service Level Agreement. We do this through excellence in work ethic, collaboration with our College stakeholders, and leveraging industry thought leadership.

APPROACH

Our services and projects are driven by the outcomes promised in our ISP. We define the College’s Requirements as the collective needs of the College as defined by the College’s Strategic Plan; the College’s Annual Priorities; Councils, Committees, and Task Forces; instructional, customer service, administrative, and compliance requests captured as tickets in our service desk system; continuous improvement of our ITS Services; and Thought leadership.

The success of the ISP is ultimately measured by its alignment with the College’s Requirements, the human resources and funding made available by the College to fulfil these requirements, and achievement of expected Outcomes. As such, this ISP is created using a process that defines and agrees approved project requests and their intended outcomes. References used in the development of this ISP are offered below.

San Jacinto College’s Strategic Plan

The purpose of the College’s Strategic Plan is to set the overall goals and strategies for the College, and to align the College’s organization and resources to achieve its strategy. We refer to the College’s Strategic Plan to ensure that the ISP is strategically aligned.

Annual Priorities

Based on the College’s Strategic Plan, the Strategic Leadership Team (SLT) works with the College’s leadership and various stakeholders to define the annual priorities for the fiscal year. We refer to the annual priorities as a baseline for defining strategic projects in this ISP.

Councils, Committees, and Task Forces (Groups)

We engage and create a variety of groups depending on the needs of a project. These groups are required to participate in project governance to ensure that requirements are fully captured and translated into adopted solutions. In particular, we engage two (2) internal groups in both advisory and participatory capacities. The Student Success Pathways Council is comprised of student and College leadership. We use this council for access to students and staff to support activities such as requirements gathering, usability feedback during design and pilots, acceptance testing, and ongoing adoption and service level feedback. The Enterprise Applications Committee is comprised of College leadership and staff that are subject matter experts and functional users representing the needs from their areas of specialty. Committee members typically also offer on-the-ground functional and adoption support for Organizational Change Management (OCM) activities. We use this council to help define our future state enterprise architecture vision; review and approve the selection of products and services that meet this vision; and act as governance on enterprise application projects.

Thought Leadership.

Gartner is a global research and advisory firm specializing in information technology. We actively engage Gartner’s analysts and advisory services to provide research in disruptive technologies and anticipated future trends, perform quality reviews of this Plan and our strategy, review our decisions regarding projects and investments in new technologies, perform an annual maturity assessment of our ITS Services, and support the knowledge and professional development needs of our ITS Services team.

ASSUMPTIONS

This ISP is based on the five (5) underlying assumptions of the College’s Strategic Plan that relate to a one-college alignment; resources; institutional research; facilities, programming and technologies; and communication.

In particular, the College’s Strategic Plan assumes “that the College will acquire and utilize appropriate technologies and facilities to support and advance the strategies and initiatives” in the College’s Strategic Plan.

The ISP also assumes the following:

Resources made available

The College will allocate the funding and human resources to support the ISP.

Impacts from changes in the Tech Industry 

The IT industry continues to undergo transformative changes in technologies, cloud services, and consumer adoption. Such changes will impact our service delivery model and drive investment in digital transformation and support in digital fluency, technology infrastructure, cloud service delivery, collaboration technologies, mobile computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), and cybersecurity compliance strategies.

OUTCOMES

The ISP uses two (2) outcomes that measure the success of how we support the College’s stakeholders in achieving their specific outcomes as defined in the College’s Requirements and assigned to them in Individual Performance Plans (IPPs).

Diagram 1: Process for the development of this Plan and Outcomes 

OUTCOME #1: The College and its students will be able to achieve their goals through the successful delivery of projects that implement new solutions, technologies, and services they need.

Our first outcome is supported by our Program Management Office (PMO). The PMO plays both a consultative and controlling role by requiring compliance to processes that ensure that governance, adequate lead time, appropriate levels of resources, Organizational Change Management (OCM) plans, purchasing plans, and approved Budget Allocation Request (BAR) funding are in place before a project can continue. The PMO works with the College’s stakeholders and the Chief Technology Innovations Officer (CTIO) to translate the College’s Requirements into a list of programs of work and discrete projects. Decisions regarding new technology investments and project approvals are facilitated by the PMO and the CTIO with the Enterprise Applications Committee and the SLT.

OUTCOME #2: Students and employees will have access to the technologies and services available at the College to support the achievement of their goals.

The technologies and services available at the College are defined in the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The SLA includes information such as scope of services, priorities and response times, software and equipment standards, references to policies, and security standards.