Digital Tweed Blog

The 2007 Campus Computing Survey data highlights the continuing challenge of IT crisis management across all sectors of higher education. Part of the challenge, of course, is that here as elsewhere with IT issues, the definitions and demands are always expanding. Because IT now touches almost everything, IT crisis management means not just computing and information technology issues but also, as we saw with the tragic events at Virginia Tech in spring 2007, campus crisis management.

Six years after 9-11 and two years after Hurricane Katrina ravished the Gulf Coast area, a significant number of colleges and universities have yet to develop a strategic plan for IT disaster planning and crisis management. As for fall 2007, roughly 30 percent of public universities, private universities, and public four-year colleges report no strategic plan for IT disaster planning, rising to just over half of private four-year colleges. Given what we know about these events – that it is not necessarily matter if a crisis strikes but more likely when – it is striking and surprising that so many campuses have yet to develop an initial IT crisis management plan, let alone revise plans that may now be two, three, or four years old.

For fall 2007, the newest component of the campus IT crisis management plan involves emergency notification systems and services: how do institutions contact members of the campus community in the event of a crisis? In the wake of the tragic events at Virginia Tech in spring 2007, many campus officials now feel a mandate – actual, implied, or easily inferred – for their institution to acquire notification technologies and to develop a notification plan in the event of a campus emergency.

What do we know about notification planning following Virginia Tech? As of fall 2007, more than two-fifths (44.0 percent) of the institutions participating in the 2007 Campus Survey report a strategic plan for emergency notification services. However the survey data reveal great variations by sector in the percentage of institutions that have developed these plans.

The 2007 survey data suggest that many campuses have “gone to the closet” to see what resources might be at hand in their efforts to create a notification system: across all sectors, the highest numbers for the functional components of the notification plan as of fall 2007 are (not surprisingly) posting messages on campus portals, sending email, and using the campus phone system. Comparatively few institutions have the capacity to provide notification messages to off-campus phones and to cell/mobile phones.

Many campuses are exploring integrated messaging systems to address the challenge of reaching students, faculty and staff. These integrated systems send one message via multiple channels to reach recipients, typically via conventional phones (land lines) and cell phones, text messaging, and email. These systems address the mobility issue among students and faculty: if I am not in an office or a dorm room, tethered to computer or campus phone, how do you contact me in the event of an emergency? (Disclosure: NTI Group and Rave Wireless, two of the many firms offering notification services to colleges and universities, are corporate sponsors of The Campus Computing Project.)

Yet I suspect that purchasing the technology is probably the easy (or easier) part of emergency notification planning on campus. The hard part is implementation: system testing (how fast will the messages be delivered? how reliable is the delivery?), user education for both campus officials and student recipients, having students provide and then update their contact information, decision trees about who activates a notification message and under what circumstances, and making sure that students who receive emergency messages do not view them as spam.

Of course another aspect of planning for and implementing notification services involves money: while overall IT funding has improved in recent years, tapping current campus IT resources and/or acquiring new systems and services to develop an emergency notification system requires money. This is another instance of the rising demand (or requriements) for IT resources and services. It is a fair guess that the instiutions that purchased notification technology systems and services in the months following Virginia Tech did not have this money in their IT (or other) budgets as of fall 2006. Rather, they either “found” the money (year end budget dust?) or took it from some other activity or program.

For all the complaints (and there are many) about how much money campuses spend on IT (about 5-6 percent of total campus expenditures, according to data from both The Campus Computing Survey and the EDUCAUSE Core Data Study), we all need to remember – and remind others – about how much IT really does touch everything on and around the campus.

Background Info: Welcome to Digital Tweed-The Blog. The first Digital Tweed column was published in Converge Magazine in June 1999. From 1999 through 2006, the Digital Tweed column appeared regularly, first in Converge, and later in Syllabus Magazine (which is now Campus Technology). The archives of all past Digital Tweed columns will be posted to the Campus Computing web site in the coming weeks.

Onward. Back to Campus, 2007. The fall rituals of academe now include the annual Beloit College Mindset List, reminding us that this year’s college freshmen, Class of 2011 (born in 1989), share less and less of the historical and cultural experiences and references of their parents and professors. Admittedly, it may be easy – perhaps all too easy – to sniff at this list and view it as yet another indicator of what today’s full-time undergraduates don’t know.

     But what if roles were reversed: what if a student group at some high school (Boston’s Latin School? Bronx Science? Beverly Hills High?) were to issue an annual list of coming of age references and cultural experiences? How would we – as parents and professionals in higher education – fare? Dare we compare?

Coming Soon: WiFi Phones on Campus Networks? No question that the winner of this fall’s “Who Admitted that Kid” contest in admissions offices across the country goes to the smart folks at Rochester Institute of Technology. On August 21st, days before going off to freshman orientation, George Holz, RIT class of 2011, announced on his blog that he cracked the iPhone, allowing, as noted on his new Wikipedia bio, “full functionality with almost any SM wireless carrier without any external hardware.” It should be an interesting moment when the Apple (or AT&T) rep who services the RIT campus meets Mr. Holz. Perhaps they’ll talk tech; maybe they will discuss summer internships. (Mr. Holz is also a successful entrepreneur: his blog reports that he traded his hacked iPhone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones.”)

     But aside from the extended Warhol unit (minutes/hours of fame) that the iPhone hack generates for Mr. Holz, it also highlights the challenge that the next generation of mobile phones present to campus IT and telecom officers. To date mobile phones and campus networks have generally resided in independent, if at times parallel worlds: colleges and universities, as ISPs, provided Internet access for members of their communities. In contrast, mobile phones remained largely a consumer service, provided by the major carriers such as AT&T/Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, among others. The iPhone heralds the coming (first arrival?) of a new generation of WiFi phones that can connect to (wireless) campus networks. The looming question for campus IT and telecom officers involves the emerging expectations among students and faculty who begin to wander campus with iPhones and other WiFi compatible mobile devices in the coming months. On some campuses, the WiFi phone conversation will be a matter of when, not if. Yet other institutions may dwell on the if question, asking if campuses are (implicitly) obligated to open campus networks to devices that are not explicitly linked to the educational mission of the institution. And regardless of the decision – if vs. when to open the campus network to WiFi phones – there will also be will be conversations about costs, security, and bandwidth. DT