2021 IT Benchmarking and Strategic Planning

2021 IT Benchmarking & Strategic Planning

The CIO Division conducts an annual benchmarking analysis to assess our strategy and operations relative to higher education peers and IT units across the University of Arizona. The analysis compares strategic priorities, services, organizational design, personnel, operating and capital expenditures, suppliers, and operational maturity to inform data driven decision-making with university leadership, IT leadership, and IT staff. This information is published in the University’s IT Annual Report to foster transparency and support strategic planning activities.

External Benchmarking

The University of Arizona, a land-grant university with two independently accredited medical schools, is one of the nation’s top public universities in the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) national university rankings. The University is also ranked in the top 20 in research expenditures among all public institutions and is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU). In FY21, UArizona’s IT expenditure was 6.0%, which was the smallest expenditure compared to higher education peers in all other benchmark categories.

Information Technology at UArizona

The University of Arizona’s IT community is comprised of 765.7 professionals across central and distributed job functions that support college, institutional, auxiliary, and enterprise-wide services. The annual expenditure in FY21 for IT across the University was $104.8 M.

View University IT FY21 Workforce & Expenditures

University Information Technology Services

The CIO Division operates and manages central IT services for University of Arizona faculty, staff and students. Within the division, there are 306.8 total IT FTEs represented in 17 UCAP IT job families. The annual expenditure in FY21 for the CIO Division was $68.2M.

View CIO FY21 Workforce & Expenditures

Expenditures

  UArizona ABOR Peers Public AAU USNWR Public 2022 Top 50
Faculty FTE 1 2,863 3,330 3,049 2,800
Student FTE 2 39,479 43,109 36,887 36,548
Research Expenditures 3
(in the thousands)
$734.3M $841.1M $694.6M $639.3M
Total Expenditures 4
(net of hospital)
$2,162.0M $2,895.0M $2,341.9M $2,226.8M
IT FTE 5 782 985 842 810
IT Expenditures 5 $130.5M $204.1M $155.8M $152.8M
IT Staff per 1,000 Students 19.8 22.8 22.3 21.2
IT Expenditure as % of total 6.0% 6.9% 6.3% 6.5%

Sources

1 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPeDS) - Spring 2020 Human Resources Component
2 IPEDS - Spring 2020, Fall Enrollment Component
3 NSF Higher Education Research and Development Survey FY19
4 IPEDS Spring 2020, Finance Component
5 Educause Core Data Service Survey FY20