SWOT Analysis

Information Technology Services and Enterprise Services

Peralta Community College District

Prepared by Ferrilli

October 2016

SWOT Analysis

In order to begin the strategic planning process, an environmental scan was conducted by each unit within IT and collectively, by the IT Leadership team. Ferrilli also prepared supplemental information contained in the summary below.

Introduction

An environmental scan informs the department of its current position and reviews the external and internal environments. There are many accepted methods for conducting successful environmental scans. Two that are frequently used in Higher Education, are the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and CAS (Council for the Advancement of Standards) methods. For the ITS department, SWOT was utilized to mirror the District’s Strategic plan methodology.

SWOT: This analysis consists of two main scans: the internal scan, Strengths and Weaknesses, and the external scan, Opportunities and Threats.

  • The internal scan should provide planners with an accurate assessment of the division/unit/department’s capability before developing priorities, outcomes and action plans. The analysis allows planners to build upon strengths and overcome weaknesses. Internal considerations may include, but are not limited to, culture, finance, reputation, faculty or staff commitment, skills or expertise, organizational systems, stakeholder expectations, and demographics among others.
  • An external scan considers economic, social, demographic, political, legal, technological, and/or international factors to identify opportunities for growth and improvement, and barriers thereto. Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats allow planners to recognize and address gaps between the division/unit/department’s current status and vision for the future.

Strengths

  • The department’s personnel are dedicated to the District, Colleges and the overall mission. As a whole they have a strong spirit, are industrious and introspective and embrace a collaborative culture. This attitude is one that can and should be utilized to improve the overall quality of service to students, faculty, and staff.
  • For the most part, the IT teams work well together and communicate with one another.
  • The team have a great deal of institutional knowledge and state that they are strong in the face of adversity and able to diffuse difficult situations.
  • Many groups acknowledge the Information Technology Services HelpDesk as providing a strong central point of contact for the district community, and the core functions provide excellent first-tier services and escalation as needed. Footprint Tickets serve as a source of contact and documentation repository for work related requests.
  • Enterprise Services has what appears to be strong partnerships with key functional offices and others within the Information Technology department to facilitate a collaborative approach for the management of the major enterprise systems. Enterprise Services is acknowledged as having a willingness to collaborate and openly communicate with the functional and technical campus community as evidenced by the Campus Solutions Users Group and the Finance/HR Users Group.

Weaknesses

  • IT leadership does not have transparency concerning the IT budget.
  • Through an examination of action items that were presented by the former IT director to Cabinet-level leadership and the Board, it was found that PCCD did not accomplish several of the objectives that it has set out to accomplish since 2012.
  • The Information Technology area is not respected by other areas of the District for their knowledge base, and willingness to assist as needed.
  • There is a weak IT project planning function.
  • The Districtdoes not offer consistent technology to students, faculty, and staff. An example is the variance in classroom and desktop technology across the campuses.
  • There is not a formalized desktop, classroom, or technology replacement plan in place. As such, PCCD is unable to maintain any consistency with these technology platforms. The development of a plan to ensure the desktop, classroom, and network infrastructure environments are kept current will decrease staff maintenance of the network, allow significantly more automated management, and ensure that there is a mechanism in place to support future growth.
  • There is no comprehensive Infrastructure or desktop Configuration Management.
  • There is a lack of policies and procedures. The District needs an IT governance structure to revise and recommend policies on an ongoing basis.
  • There is an overall lack of IT resources.
  • TheIT staff typically solves growth problems by increasing manual processes and managing these by extending or expanding human resources. This trend has created silos of undocumented procedures and knowledge that limit the District’s potential for growth.
  • The Information Technology Department has not made good use of automation for its network and system management. Numerous manual processes increase the need for more staff and add to the complexity of managing IT resources; ultimately limiting user growth potential.
  • There is little to no formalized professional development opportunities within the IT department, other than the occasional request that if funding is available, is granted. There is no mechanism for sharing back information or capitalizing on the training that was granted.
  • The PCCD data center is not aligned with best practices for data centers for an organization of this size. Typical standards for colleges and universitiesfor server consistency, backup, and recovery are not in place. As such, it is highly probable that the data center will not adequately support future growth.
  • While the Information Technology staff is adequately responsive in some areas, there is still dissatisfaction among the constituents with regard to service levels. Users have no way of knowing what the District supports, thus there is the perception that the IT staff supports everything. While conceptually, the District should support a variety of services, no IT department can support everything. The District should be strategic in determining what services should be supported. This issue is believed to be directly related to staffing concerns.
  • The Enterprise Services area is understaffed and positions are unfilled. There is no backup for staff with specific technical expertise. Staff spend significant time on operational tasks and meetings which prohibit them from getting the time to grow and transform. Low morale and a culture reflecting ambivalence are identified. Lack of leadership in terms of management, due to high turnover of executive staff has led to disconnect between leadership and staff. Lack of a skillset inventory has led to not knowing what we need so the gap is not filled when hiring.
  • IT lacks visibility in setting priorities and resource allocations and final decisions for the Finance and Human Resources groups. Lack of alignment to college institutional priorities where Peralta Community College District leadership needs to play a larger role in the Enterprise Services Governance process as functional business leads are concerned about making administrative decisions related that will impact the campus communities. Information Technology requires a structure upon which we can vet and implement enterprise-wide initiatives alongside other work. IT needs to update and align governance, risk, compliance, and cybersecurity policies, FERPA, HIPPA, PCI and Data Classification policies and Disaster Recovery plans.
  • There are multiple information systems used throughout the District to perform important tasks. Those systems include ad hoc databases, spreadsheets and specialized third-party systems. The proliferation of ad hoc systems creates a multitude of issues such as inconsistencies in data integrity, a lack of information security, aging technology, user training, enhancements and maintenance, not to mention the inefficiency of single-use systems, particularly considering the District’s investment in PeopleSoft. Additionally, at this time, the IT department is not staffed to support the variety of ad hoc systems, which creates additional staff burden and variety of improperly managed systems.
  • The District staff is unable to easily access the necessary information to make key decisions. Of the information that is available to staff and administration, data integrity and validity is in question. Therefore, the District is unable to make data-driven decisions.

Opportunities

  • Even though there are weaknesses and threats to the IT infrastructure, the opportunity to align information technology resources with the strategic vision of the District can be accomplished through the creation of a comprehensive infrastructure and data center design.
  • PCCD has the opportunity to manage and meet the expectations of both its campuses and local communities with regard to technological proficiency.
  • The PCCD faculty is receptive to and appreciate being able to use technology in instruction. This strength allows PCCD to focus resources in supporting and accelerating this trend rather than spending a large amount of effort gaining initial support from faculty.
  • PCCD’s IT leadership must provide continued strategic planning, gain administrative confidence and empowerment so the IT team cannot only perform their responsibilities better, but encourage innovation.
  • Staff stated that a centralized Help Desk would be of benefit to students in order to provide consistent standards of service and improved services for students.
  • Student talent may offer an opportunity that helps IT alleviate resource demands and also work to support the College’s strategic goal of a more integrated learning experience for students. Internships and student projects are examples of ways to utilize students as a resource for creative ideas and give students “real-life” work experience. This ties directly to service learning promoted as part of on the academic side.

Threats

  • PCCD IT staff tends to look at future technology acquisitions as a “quick fix” to the problems they encounter, rather than viewing technology acquisitions as a continual delivery of services. Some products and services are acquired or implemented as “knee jerk” reactions to issues.
  • Staff mentioned that they were becoming discouraged and were not involved in the planning process since they were not able to move forward with specific technology items.
  • There is inconsistent IT leadership and turnover which shifts the IT staff focus as priorities are changed under new leadership.
  • The District community often does not involve IT staff in decision making. Failing to involve IT creates support and service issues.
  • Inconsistent services and structure between the District and the Colleges threatens a cohesive experience for students, faculty, and staff.
  • There does not appear to be strong alignment between technology projects and purchases (District-wide), and the strategic vision of the District. This lack of alignment threatens the District in at least two ways. First, it focuses IT projects on the technology itself rather than technology supporting the strategic mission. And, second, it tends to neglect all resources needed to effectively utilize technology. As a result, the staff feel they must do more with less without a clear understanding of the goals they are trying to accomplish.
  • PCCD is limiting its growth potential with its inconsistent academic and administrative technologies.
  • There are a growing number of security threats that expose the organization on many fronts.
  • Any potential disaster, including fire, earthquake and terrorism, are all threats to PCCD’s technology as well as the institution. At this time, PCCD does not have a comprehensive security plan, disaster recovery plan, or a business continuity plan. In the absence of comprehensive plans, potential disasters would substantially hinder day-to-day operations and prevent successful recovery efforts.
  • Communication to IT and from IT is often unclear and misunderstood.
  • Decentralized IT purchasing threatens the consistency of technology purchases.
  • The multiple systems used in conjunction with the PeopleSoft ERP are not maintainable and are a huge risk (technologically and financially) for PCCD.
  • Changing technology is a threat that is ever present in the field of Information Technology. Noted examples of missed opportunities in new technologies were cloud based services, virtualization, support for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) infrastructure, and collaboration tools. Further points were raised about the increasing need/desire from faculty and students to leverage technology to enhance the teaching/learning experience.
  • Availability of new data sources that could be used to improve decision-making in all areas of the District’s purview including teaching and learning, student outcomes, retention, enrollment, and administrative decision-making could help the District to improve the overall experience and education of students as well as reduce costs. Students expect the Colleges to use personal educational data to aid in their academic progress, an attitude that is different from previous generations. The prevalence of cloud based solutions that are being implemented or discussed by departments across campus offer specialized data that is not collected by ERP systems. There will be increased pressure to use advanced analytics to gain insight into data sources that are not traditional. Social media and other unstructured data sources may provide needed information to give the District a competitive advantage.
  • Regarding campus perceptions, a prevalent negative perception threatens our ability to outwardly collaborate and deliver a consistent level of service throughout the campus. Effects of this persistent poor perception negatively impact the ITS staff’s morale. The campus departments lack of confidence has caused some to be unwilling to partner with ITS and others to implement technology solutions in isolation.

Overall Conclusion

The Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis reveals that deliberate changes must be made to meet the expectations of PCCD leadership, students, faculty and staff. While expectations must be leveled to address the current environments, multiple factors impact the ability of Information Technology to work efficiently and effectively and are always a factor in addressing weaknesses or threats. All organizations have “costs” due to inefficient or unnecessary processes, redundancy, and/or bureaucracy that could be identified, eliminated and reprioritized. In addressing strategic priorities, it will be important for PCCD to address the core issues and not just assume it is an IT issue. By recognizing strengths and weaknesses, and factoring opportunities and threats into concrete actions through the strategic planning process IT will be positioned to enable PCCD to become a positive, supportive learning environment.

Peralta Community College District - Enterprise Services

ES SWOT – Strengths

Enterprise Services SWOT Strengths Group Members: Frank Chez, Teresa Chan, Roderick Fajarda, Kyu Lee, Pratiksha Thakor

Knowledgeable and Dedicated Staff

Enterprise Services brings substantial knowledge about their role in administrative systems support. The staff is well aware of their responsibilities, are customer-service focused and have significant experience across a number of areas and disciplines in the PeopleSoft environments. The department’s personnel are dedicated to the district, colleges and the overall mission. As a whole they have a strong spirit, are industrious and introspective and embrace a collaborative culture as defined at Peralta and do want to continually improve.

Partnerships and Collaboration

Enterprise Services has what appears to be strong partnerships with key functional offices and others within the Information Technology department to facilitate a collaborative approach for the management of the major enterprise systems. Enterprise Services is acknowledged as having a willingness to collaborate and openly communicate with the functional and technical campus community as evidenced by the Campus Solutions Users Group and the Finance/HR Users Group.

Systems and Programs

Enterprise Services supports the primary administrative systems which have served the District as proven ERP systems.

Support Services

Many groups acknowledge the Information Technology Services Helpdesk as providing a strong central point of contact for the district community and the core functions provide excellent first-tier services and escalation as needed. Footprint Tickets serve as a source of contact and documentation repository for work related requests.

ES SWOT - Weaknesses

ES SWOT Weaknesses Group Members: Frank Chez, Teresa Chan, Roderick Fajarda, Kyu Lee, Pratiksha Thakor

Lack of Communication

We have silos of information and do not fully share with our internal and external community. Many systems are undocumented and users are unaware of our services and policies. Timely information is not conveyed by external offices informing Enterprise Services of environmental changes that impact system access.

Lack of Enterprise Services Governance

We lack visibility in setting priorities and resource allocations and final decisions for the Finance and Human Resources groups. Lack of alignment to college institutional priorities where Peralta Community College District leadership needs to play a larger role in the Enterprise Services Governance process as functional business leads are concerned about making administrative decisions related that will impact the campus communities. We need a structure upon which we can vet and implement enterprise-wide initiatives alongside other work. We need to update and align governance, risk, compliance, and cybersecurity policies, FERPA, HIPPA, PCI and Data Classification policies and Disaster Recovery plans.

We delay growth and transformation by lack of adequate policy.

Staffing Issues

The Enterprise Services area is understaffed and positions are unfilled. There is no backup for staff with specific technical expertise. Staff spend significant time on operational tasks and meetings which prohibit them from getting the time to grow and transform. Low morale and a culture reflecting ambivalence are identified. Lack of leadership in terms of management, due to high turnover of executive staff has led to disconnect between leadership and staff. Lack of a skillset inventory has led to not knowing what we need so the gap is not filled when hiring.