Is the JISI Approach still relevant?
The changes in the HE and FE sectors have made the management of information as a resource much more complex and strategically important. Whilst the basic concepts and component parts of the JISI approach are still relevant today, the pervasiveness of technology and the fast pace of change adds further complexity to the strategic management of information. There is an increasing need for strategic planning processes to take account of this complexity and change. Industry and other parts of the public sector are adopting more modern strategic management techniques to enable them to adapt to change.
John Voloudakis writing in the Educause Review (2005) says:
Having given the subject of strategic planning much thought, many corporations, authors, and academics are moving beyond linear, multiyear planning efforts and are instead focusing on the need for flexibility. The result is the "adaptive enterprise." IBM Corporation refers to "on-demand business." Gartner Inc. describes "the real-time enterprise." Whatever it is called, the essential message is that organizations need to rethink how they plan for the future. They need to focus on their strengths and build capabilities to rapidly adapt to changes in customer demand, market dynamics, shifting technology, and other unforeseen events.'
He concludes that the 1990s 'iterative planning' approach similar to the JISI approach may no longer be appropriate given the need for faster responsiveness, and that educational institutions should consider incorporating the more flexible 'adaptive organisation methods' already being used in industry, into their strategic planning processes.
One such approach known as Enterprise Architecture is currently being explored by several pilot projects in the UK HE sector funded by JISC. The JISC TechWatch Early Adopter Study says that Enterprise Architecture, 'provides an evolving, dynamic way of describing and aligning the functional aspects of an organisation: its people, activities, tools, resources and data/information, so that they work more effectively together to achieve the organisation's business goals'. All the pilot sites conclude that this type of approach is best applied at an institutional level with sponsorship from top level management. (JISC 2009).
This raises the question of whether information strategies without the appropriate leadership can really achieve transformational change.
Senior Management
...that all higher education institutions should develop managers who combine a deep understanding of Communications and Information Technologies with senior management experience
Dearing, 1997
The importance of securing senior management commitment to the strategic management of information as a resource was one of the major issues highlighted in the JISI work. The 'type 42 managers' described by Lord Dearing remain scarce in HE and to a lesser extent in FE (Boys and Ford 2008). A recent JISC study by Duke and Jordan into the integration of technology into institutional strategies concluded 'there are significant shortcomings in the capability of senior management teams in HEIs to identify and exploit the full strategic potential of technology'. The same study suggested that a Chief Information Officer (CIO) role may be beneficial as the senior manager responsible for technology strategy (JISC2008).
In industry many companies have moved to e-business to take advantage of the benefits offered by technology and some of the most successful leaders have been described as 'organizational architects' and increasingly often it is now 'generally technology-smart CEOs or business-savvy CIOs who developed mechanisms to force communication between strategists and technologists' (Sauer and Willcocks 2002).
The continuing difficulty in engaging senior management in exploiting information and information technology as a strategic resource is likely to inhibit the education sector's ability to exploit these resources to the maximum and achieve genuine transformational change.
