[98] in magellan
The over arching strategies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim McGovern)
Fri Mar 19 16:10:09 1999
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 16:09:54 -0500
To: azary@MIT.EDU, ganderso@MIT.EDU, rferrara@MIT.EDU
From: Tim McGovern <tjm@MIT.EDU>
Cc: magellan@MIT.EDU, delivery@MIT.EDU, integration-ptl@MIT.EDU
Susan, Bob & Greg,
Thanks to each of you for allowing the project leaders to provide some
thoughts about the next steps in the 5YP work this morning.
As several of us mentioned in the meeting, the 5 or 6 over arching
strategies that we were talking about might be simpler to state than
we're making it. To pick up on what Reid was saying, strategies at
this level of abstraction have much more persistence than many of the
lower level strategies and initiatives. I believe they have more to do
with the type of organization (or function) that we are, and our
enveloping organization, and less to do with specifically where we are
(MIT vs. Harvard vs. Michigan). Said another way, our over arching
strategies might look somewhat similar to Cornell IT's or Harvard IT's
over arching strategies, although there may be some locally influenced
differences. At some level, organizing all of these
actions/deliverable's, initiatives, strategies, and super-strategies
seems to me to be a classification problem [like biology's species,
genus, family, order, class, phylum and kingdom taxonomy].
I think that there are two sources for our over arching strategies:
1) the specific mission of MIT, and how any particular service
organization <underline>inherits</underline> from that
mission, and
2) the strategies which are necessary to
<underline>sustain</underline> a particular
function, in this case, an IT function, and strategies
which we're <underline>uniquely</underline> suited to do for
MIT as an IT function.
Applying this, you might find these strategies:
1) Support MIT faculty and students with respect to information
technology to make advances in the learning and teaching environment
2) Support MIT faculty and student to conduct research by providing a
modern [leading- or bleeding-edge] computing and communications
infrastructure
3) Support the MIT administration to operate the business of MIT with
respect to information technology by providing a modern business
computing environment
4) Support any other MIT activities to achieve the aims of those
activities with respect to information technology
5) Sustain the organization through the continuous improvement of human
resources, skills and practices in concert with the strategies being
pursued by MIT.
6) Advocate for research in and the development of specific information
technologies, products and services which can be used to support the
learning, teaching, research, business and service mission of MIT.
Thanks again for the chance to speak out. I look forward to a vigorous,
and on-going, debate and discussion of these and related matters.
Tim
