Planning Overview
ISC's fiscal year planning, program review, and goals are aligned
with the overall planning direction set forth in Penn's
Strategic
Plan, "Building
on Excellence: The Next Agenda," and the
previous plan, "Agenda for Excellence." The result is an interaction between
University goals and IT capabilities that
improves
operational
performance,
facilitates
community outreach and service delivery, and reduces
administrative
costs, while at the same time helping to secure Penn’s place as one of
the great universities at the forefront of education, research, and scholarship
in the
21st century.
Four themes shape ISC's vision for Penn's IT environment:
Demand for spontaneous, ubiquitous,
contextual computing
Tools for teaching, research, and administration will
increasingly evolve to media-rich interfaces, taking
advantage of the rapid proliferation of computing
devices and of advances in speech recognition, visualization,
high-resolution displays, wireless technologies, and “follow-me” profiles.
With advancements in wireless and convergent networks
(where data, voice, and video
share a single digital path), we will see extended access
to information and services from home, car, and office, along
with “anytime/anywhere” access
through highly portable or wearable systems.
Collaboration within
integrated, interactive, environments
New tools for shared access, as well as tools for integrating
core data, systems, and applications, will enable collaborative learning,
research, and administration. Technology plays a growing role in instruction (including
distributed distance learning), research, and administrative work processes,
minimizing constraints of time or place.
Moving to common underlying databases
will allow greater sharing of resources between academic and administrative
functions in the future. Library resources,
for example, will be incorporated cafeteria-style within academic web sites;
educational activities and administrative functions will be delivered together
seamlessly to students.
Flexibility
within a connected framework
Students, faculty,
staff, and the broader campus community have the flexibility to choose
personal tools and local implementations that fall within a framework
of standards and stewardship designed to ensure a common, secure infrastructure
for communication and collaboration.
Alignment of University
objectives and information technologies
ISC works with the University’s leadership and its technology
community to plan and build the bridge between present and future.
Setting priorities
for investment requires collaboration by academic, administrative,
and IT leaders to explore Penn’s academic and business goals
in light of emerging technologies. There should be no isolated
technology planning, but a focus on overall University
goals. Crucial aspects of information architecture and institutional
presentation cannot be addressed by hardware and software alone.
Our future will require us to embrace change at all levels of research, instruction,
and administrative support. Our plans must reflect balanced investment
across varying levels of time, payback, and risk.
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