DRAFT - UBC IT Plan | Office of the CIO

The UBC IT three-year plan is a culmination of several months of active and enthusiastic discussion and debate within the department. It honours and reflects the extensive community input provided through external reviews, the emerging digital framework, the UBC Strategic Plan, and the perspectives of the advisory bodies that guide our efforts.

At the heart of our plan is an unwavering commitment to UBC students, faculty, and staff. As UBC IT, we have a unique opportunity and responsibility to empower our community with the tools and resources they require to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and research excellence. A strong technology foundation, effective departmental capabilities, and a skilled and engaged IT workforce are all integral to this aim.

While the digital landscape and expectations of students, faculty, and staff continue to evolve, the three-year plan will serve as our compass, providing us with focus and direction while enabling us to continue to shape and adapt to the needs of our stakeholders. We look forward to continuing the conversation and our evolution as technology leaders, service providers, innovation enablers, and strategic and operational partners to the UBC community.

The importance of understanding the IT implications of UBC strategic goals, while anticipating opportunities and risks

Providing a framework for planning and a foundation for action

In early 2023, we introduced efforts to establish an integrated and adaptive planning practice, initiated through this three-year plan, to ensure:

Efforts are intentional and coordinated to support the university’s mission and goals

We apply scarce financial and human resources to the highest priority areas

We are accountable to the community and one another

A note on the planning process

Between February and May 2023, six half- or full-day workshops engaged more than 80 UBC IT leaders to develop the three-year plan. Their contributions were invaluable, reflecting their respective expertise and experience across the university. These leaders collectively defined the department’s objectives and priorities, together with the commitments that guide how we aspire to operate and engage.

Several inputs influenced these conversations, including the UBC Strategic Plan, external service reviews, existing commitments and operational requirements, the UBC IT risk register, and the university’s emerging digital framework. Over the summer, members of the department were invited to provide input via an all-staff town hall and online forums.

Guided by the 2016 “IT at UBC Strategic Framework”, accomplishments over the past several years have positioned us well to advance

Direction and focus has delivered real results

Operationalization of a comprehensive and transparent governance framework that defines the roles and decision-making processes related to university technology strategy and investment. Several cross-representative advisory committees inform cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, teaching and learning technologies, research computing, and enterprise IT services.
Improved information privacy, security awareness, and protection, including mandatory training within UBC IT, introduction of various cybersecurity tools and services, policy development, and a compliance program to help improve our security posture and establish clear accountabilities across the university.
Provision of digital research infrastructure (DRI) to enable world-class research. UBC Advanced Research Computing Sockeye is a high-performance computing (HPC) platform available to UBC researchers across all disciplines. With nearly 16,000 CPU cores, 200 GPUs, and three petabytes of storage capacity, Sockeye is designed to increase the university’s computing capacity and supplement the national DRI platform.
Talent acquisition, reskilling, and upskilling to accommodate advances in cloud-based services, robotic process automation (RPA), Internet of Things (IoT), interoperability and integration services, business analytics, big data, and HPC.
Transformation of existing business practices, such as establishment of the Integration Enablement Centre (IEC) to manage the integrations between applications across UBC, as well as a data governance program and data model to support more effective university-wide practices and analytics.

Four broad themes bring balance and focus

Community Support

Technology Foundation

Team Enablement

Organizational Capability

Each theme is articulated through goals that outline our objectives and each will be operationalized over the next three years through initiatives that together represent our program of action. Specific deliverables will be defined annually to direct efforts and ensure we adapt to the evolving state of technology and demands of the university. Each year, some deliverables will focus on assessment and strategy, and others on mobilization and implementation. This will enable us to demonstrate visible progress and achieve momentum, while being thoughtful and pragmatic about what can be accomplished in any given year.

It is important to note that the plan does not explicitly reflect the operations of a large-scale, complex IT organization (i.e., “keeping the lights on”). We must also continue to commit significant resources and effort to ensure foundational services are supported on a day-to-day basis.

While enabling students, faculty, and staff is at the core of all UBC IT activities, a heightened emphasis on bolstering our team and maturing our internal processes is also required if we are to strengthen and extend our services successfully.

Shared commitments underpin our actions in how we operate, work together and engage our community

Leadership	We inform, anticipate, and understand community needs, helping translate fit-for-purpose technology developments to UBC practice.
Inclusion	We centre solutions around people to help ensure they are appropriate for, successfully adopted by, and accessible to students, faculty, and staff.
Transparency	We maintain decision-making processes that actively engage students, faculty, and staff, regularly sharing information on priorities and progress.
Partnership	We sustain collaborative relationships across the university to strengthen institutional capacity in technology and ensure meaningful outcomes.
Alignment	We coordinate activity throughout the IT function to connect opportunities and pursue common solutions where appropriate.
Wellbeing	We work respectfully with colleagues and make time to develop staff, consistently promoting engagement and accountability.
Resilience	We deliver technology that ensures agility and service continuity, pursuing common solutions where appropriate, always considering fiscal and social stewardship.

1. Community Support

Ensuring UBC students, faculty, and staff have access to the technology they require to succeed in their respective roles is UBC IT’s most visible contribution to the university. Consistent with the UBC Strategic Plan, our goals are to:

Support excellence in teaching, learning, and research
Promote and facilitate effective collaboration across the university
Enable and enrich the student, faculty, and staff experience

Application Renewal	Modernize applications that support education, research, and operations capabilities. The capital planning process provides UBC IT with clear direction on the priorities in respect of replacing and upgrading community-facing applications to remain current and support the core mission of the university.
Hybrid Environment	Develop and implement a technology roadmap to aid effective hybrid environments. To keep pace with evolving models in education and work, we will continue to mature the IT ecosystem to support and balance current and emerging in-person and remote environments.
Process Improvement	Identify, automate, and integrate key UBC processes and workflows. Especially in the current fiscal context, operating effectiveness is a key consideration. As technology solutions in automation and integration evolve, UBC IT has a pivotal role to play in promoting and enabling process streamlining throughout the university.
Data and Analytics	Develop and implement a strategy for enterprise business intelligence. Progress has been made to confirm data definitions and ownership through the Integrated Renewal Program, improving the university’s ability to leverage data consistently and effectively for decision making. This is a key requirement in both the academy administration.
Innovation Support	Identify and facilitate access to technology that enables academic and administrative innovation. As faculty and staff continue their steadfast pursuit of greater effectiveness and efficiency through new ways of teaching, learning and working, UBC IT must support their efforts by understanding, providing leadership, and enabling emerging technologies .

2. Technology Foundation

UBC IT is accountable for establishing and maintaining a robust and secure technology foundation for the university, a task complicated by ever-escalating cyber threats, rapidly emergent needs and spiraling systems costs. Ensuring the solid foundation is critical to the success of UBC operations. Our goals are to:

Strengthen the university’s technical core
Protect UBC’s digital assets
Maximize the value of technology investments

Cloud Adoption	Develop and implement a hybrid cloud service and migrate on-premise workloads. To modernize the IT ecosystem and increase our agility, scalability, and resilience, we will continue to invest in multi-cloud services. Implementation will include such deliverables as defining cloud technology and security standards, processes, and tools to manage resources and services, as well as the transition of select administration workloads to the cloud.
Cybersecurity Operationalization	Define and implement technical security standards that embed practices in IT operations. As cyber threats continue to intensify, we will ensure security practices are integrated across the IT lifecycle, from ideation to delivery and maintenance, increasing compliance with university security standards
Solution Streamlining	Confirm leadership alignment and address opportunities for consolidation and deprecation. To support cross-university operations and manage costs, UBC IT will partner with university leadership to consider application rationalization (i.e., minimizing duplicative solutions and decommissioning legacy systems).
Network Evolution	Establish a technical roadmap for enterprise network infrastructure modernization and maintenance. We must continue to evolve the network to maintain a secure and responsive foundation and keep pace with the changing IT landscape.
Identity and access management (IAM)	Refresh architecture vision and roadmap for IAM services. To stay abreast of the changing security landscape while enabling seamless student, faculty, and staff access to the data and systems they require for their respective roles, we will continue to mature our approach to IAM.

3. Team Enablement

While always important, bolstering the UBC IT team is arguably more vital than ever given the pace of IT change, coupled with a competitive talent market. Supporting the growth of team members, ensuring we have the right resources and skillsets at the right time, and exemplifying the guiding commitments established through this planning process are crucial to retention, recruitment and service delivery. Our goals are to:

Leverage and celebrate the strengths of our people
Hire and retain top IT talent
Foster a culture of responsibility, partnership and alignment

Strategic Workforce Planning	Implement and sustain a framework to align university needs with department capabilities and structure. We will mature and embed our existing workforce planning framework to ensure we have the appropriate organizational model, roles, and skillsets in place to meet the current and future needs of UBC.
Leadership Development	Create and deliver a program to build leadership capacity. To foster opportunities for career and personal growth, we will create an approach to internal leadership development centred on non-technical skills, such as communication, coaching, and critical thinking.
Recruitment	Develop and implement an attraction and recruitment strategy. We will renew our approach to hiring to address the challenges created by the highly competitive talent landscape.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)	Articulate and advance measurable improvements to EDI. To help ensure our work environment is fully inclusive and reflective of the diverse UBC community, we reaffirm our commitment to EDI.
Communications	Consolidate and execute an internal communication and change management plan. As the department grows and our activities become increasingly multi-faceted, it is important to create a structured and consistent approach to internal communications to ensure team members understand our direction, practices, and priorities.

4. Organizational Capability

Given our focus on enabling the UBC community and strengthening the IT foundation, there has been somewhat of a lapse in advancing our internal processes and operations. Growing our organizational capability is paramount to ensuring we are positioned to support emerging needs. Our goals are to:

Optimize department processes
Mature UBC IT practices
Increase transparency and accountability within UBC IT

Planning Capacity	Refine and communicate UBC IT’s approach to funding, governance, and risk management. The university has made strides over the last several years, but we must continue to enhance planning and management efforts to support greater effectiveness and accountability.
IT Automation	Automate transactional and repeatable UBC IT departmental processes. As technology and artificial intelligence allow, we will assess and pursue opportunities to automate our operational activities to create internal capacity and increase efficiency.
Configuration Management Database	Define and implement CMDB capabilities within UBC IT. To enhance our ability to manage risk, increase security, and effectively upgrade and implement solutions, we must improve the management of our assets.
Service Management	Determine and put in place priority service management (ITSM) capabilities. To help ensure resources are appropriately allocated, confirm priority services, and manage community expectations, we will refocus on ITSM.
Business and Technology Resilience	Develop and implement a strategy to ensure availability of critical functions. We will formalize our approach to business and technology resilience to increase security and agility, both of which are paramount in today’s context.

Our Commitment to Accountability

Before the beginning of each fiscal year, UBC IT will connect as a department and collaborate with stakeholders to define the annual deliverables that will progressively advance the three-year plan. These will be championed by sponsors within UBC IT and scoped to be achievable within a 12-month period. This will foster accountability and position us to effectively assess progress against the plan.
The initiatives and annual deliverables will be published within a strategic planning and performance management platform that will help facilitate program management, transparent and consistent communications, tracking, and reporting.
UBC IT will share formal status updates with the Information Technology Advisory Council (ITAC) twice per year and ad hoc reports with additional key stakeholder groups as appropriate.

Next Steps

Socialize the plan with IT@UBC community members for awareness, feedback and opportunity to share practice
Align with operational planning within UBC IT service portfolios (the “keep-the-lights” on work)
Mobilize project and program teams
Launch the planning and performance platform (as the primary system of record for all the themes > goals > initiatives > deliverables that are part of the 3 year plan)
Make the planning and performance platform available to service portfolio owners to track operational planning activities (optional)
“Playback session” in late August with all UBC IT staff as final confirmation of the deliverables

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