Martin Wimmer

IT Governance – role of a CIO in German Universities – a Survey by ZKI

During the late 1980s and the early 1990s the role of IT within enterprises changed dramatically. Traditional host systems were replaced and the upcoming of open systems made it possible for nearly every department to design its own IT. Fulfilling specific needs, the challenges for those responsible for the IT management, therefore grew and altered [PHI04, BAU10] Some years ago the primary task of IT management was to take care of a small number of different systems and applications. Themajor skills of IT managers were technology oriented. With the changes mentioned above the requirements shifted to aligning the IT with the business needs and the overall strategy of the whole enterprise. These changes made a C-level position responsible for the entire IT necessary. The major focus changed from technology and applications to supporting core processes with efficient and highly integrated IT systems. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) and later the term IT Governance [ISO08] were born. In the late 1990s the CIO movement reached German Universities. Now, fifteen years of experiences later, is a good point in time for the evaluation of IT Governance models established differently at German universities. The ZKI e. V. (Zentren für Kommunikation und Informationsverarbeitung in Forschung und Lehre, centers for communication and information processing in research and higher education) is the German consortium of higher education (HE) IT service centers and public funded research centers. Members of ZKI are universities, universities of applied sciences and big research facilities with public funding, represented by the directors of the IT centers as well as companies with a high interest in HE IT. Since 2001 the „Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft“ (DFG, German research foundation) in [DFG01, DFG06, DFG10], the ZKI [ZKI03, ZKI08, ZKI12], the rectors‘ conference [HRK13], and others [vdH08, Fer09, Gör11] recommended to establish a general manager for the ICT at universities called Chief Information Officer (CIO). Between 2005 and 2010 some of the German ministries of higher education (Germany has a different ministry of HE in each of the 16 lands) requested the designation of a university CIO. In 2014 the ZKI reviewed the consequences of these recommendations: – Howwas the CIO-concept transformed into practice? – What is good practice? – Is it possible to measure whether the CIO’s work is successful or not?

Strukturkonzepte für die Informations- und Kommunikationsversorgung von Hochschulen

Dr. Markus von der Heyde studierte Naturwissenschaftliche Informatik an der Universität Bielefeld. Nach einem Forschungsaufenthalt in den USA promovierte er am Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik in Tübingen. Nach erfolgreicher wissenschaftlicher Laufbahn in DFGund EUProjekten wechselte er als Leiter des Servicezentrums für Computersysteme und -kommunikation an die Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Das dort etablierte IuK Versorgungskonzept wurde 2008 vom Stifterverband im Wettbewerb „Campus Online“ ausgezeichnet. In den Vereinigungen ZKI, EUNIS und itSMF engagiert sich Dr. Markus von der Heyde vor allem für die IT-Themen Strategie, Service Management und Sicherheit.

Challenges for University Computing Centers. Developments in the European Context

Hans-Dieter Weckmann holds a Diploma in computer science from the University of Bonn. He has worked at the University of Duisburg-Essen as executive director of IT infrastructure. Since 2011 he has been director of the Center for Information and Media Technologies at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He heads the ZKI working group of the university computer centers, chairs the DINI Learning-Spaces project, and is a member of the EUNIS Board of Directors.