Principle 22 - Infrastructure -
Emerging technologies
Penn must devote appropriate, coordinated effort to evaluating and piloting
emerging technologies.
 Rationale
These efforts create a base of knowledge and experience that allows Penn to respond
to changing business requirements and take advantage of technological possibilities
that will increase effectiveness in the long term. These efforts assist in keeping
standards up-to-date.
Implications
- Careful coordination of these activities will help leverage limited resources
for technology tracking and experimentation. Penn needs to identify who will
do this coordination, and whether there need to be restrictions on where
emerging technology is evaluated and piloted around the University.
- Strategies must be developed to incorporate "emerging" technologies into "standard" technologies
when appropriate. These decisions should be based on the same criteria as other
information technology acquisition, namely business requirements, cost-effectiveness
and consistency with standards and models.
- Penn needs a funding mechanism to deal with the risk inherent in trying
new technology.
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