As part of the University’s financial action plan, it was announced in late January 2024 that information technology staff positions across the institution would be centralized into the University Information Technology Services (UITS) division. The centralization of IT services would lead to cost savings, greater operational efficiencies and stronger information security practices across the institution. This change on March 4, 2024 sparked concern and apprehension among many IT staff. What ideally would have been a carefully planned 12- to 18-month transition instead became an immediate source of anxiety for nearly everyone in an IT role at the university.

Since then, the effort moved from complete centralization into a discovery and planning process about how best to restructure the university’s IT services and staff. In addition to meeting the initial goals of university leadership, UITS leaders focused on the best organizational design to meet the campus community’s growing needs.

CENTRALIZATION TO RESTRUCTURE

The IT Restructure (ITR) effort, which was led by Lanita Collette, Susan Legg, Michael Medina and Darcy Van Patten, worked diligently to identify and define the roles of over 600 IT staff supporting colleges and departments. This effort involved a comprehensive discovery process, conducted on multiple levels, to gain a deeper understanding of the IT work being performed by the IT workforce. This was a challenging task for all involved and UITS leaders were committed to approaching this work thoughtfully and with empathy. It was and continues to be crucial to thoroughly understand the activities and the people involved in supporting IT operations across the university. UITS was dedicated to ensuring continuity in technology support for research, instruction, and business activities during the restructuring process that continued into 2025. Subject-specific workstreams ensured that the many areas of the ITR initiative stayed on task and within timelines to achieve goals.

Organizational Discovery

Recognizing that some IT positions might not fit into an individual’s current job code and description, an opportunity was given for individual staff and supervisors to request a special review and potential remapping of positions that were borderline IT or falling within another job family. This remapping request opportunity took place in late March 2024 before the discovery process commenced.

The first stage of the individual discovery process began in April with meetings including ITR leaders with Deans or Vice Presidents who would be impacted by the restructure. These high-level meetings continued into June.

In late May, an IT Professional Questionnaire was published for all those who were affected by the shift into UITS so they could detail what tasks they perform most often as related to their job code, and whether their actual tasks align to their position.

IT job tasks in smaller units often strayed beyond job titles and position description. The questionnaire helped to clarify the job tasks and IT positions in practice by individual IT professionals.

Questionnaire responses were collected, and the information was used to identify the IT environment before setting individual discovery meetings with IT leadership. Step two of discovery was individual discovery meetings with the IT professional, ITR leaders, and their previous unit’s navigator. These meetings continued into September with great care taken to fully develop and maintain a high level of engagement with the IT professional affected, that person’s previous unit supervisor and the unit’s team as well as their previous unit’s leadership.

FOCUS GROUPS

As the restructure evolved, a CIO listening tour was facilitated by Barry Brummund, CIO of the University of Arizona. Each UITS employee received an invitation to participate in a focus group.

The focus group setting aimed to give voice to employees to share their ideas, concerns, expectations and hopes for what the new UITS organization would look like. The focus group process lasted four months, from late April to August. During these group meetings, 2,070 unique comments were collected.

Prior to the March 4 centralization, the university’s information technology was organized as a large central organization (UITS), and then there were many other small- to medium-sized IT organizations. Each IT organization was different, ultimately leading to divergent perspectives for individuals in each organization. The CIO focus groups were established to gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of the entire university IT organization.

Barry Brummund, explains, “It’s easy to get sidetracked and listen to just the loudest voices. And I really didn’t want to hear from just the loudest voices or have only the top of the organizational hierarchy drive the conversation on establishing our culture and what we as a division want to be.”

The question posed in all focus groups was the same: “What do you want UITS to be?” The responses were recorded anonymously and later synthesized into themes that would become guiding principles to help shape UITS identity, culture, and decision-making. The group structure allowed a small group setting to create safe and open spaces for good discussion, not only with the CIO but also among colleagues in the room.

Tremendous insight was gathered from these focus groups.

One factor that became most visible for Brummund is that the university has the talent to do anything. “Determining how the new UITS is organized, how we work with one another, our processes, how we work with campus colleagues, how we prioritize things, and what technologies we use is a big next step.”

UITS has a lot of talent, experience, and rich diversity that can be leveraged to undertake incredibly complex changes quickly and durably over a long period of time. The focus group journey allowed executive leaders to update that context from across the university and tap into the strengths of all the employees who joined the organization on March 4 as well.

Brummund explained, “There is a lot to do to put the structure in place for UITS to be able to tap into the diversity that we have. But we truly have the ability, we have the talent to do anything from an information technology perspective, which is very exciting.”

64 Unique Focus Groups

493 Focus Group Attendees

THE NAVIGATORS

UITS Navigators have become reliable sources of information that college and department partners know to contact in this big world of information technology. They are one constant in an industry that is always changing. Their exceptional people skills allow them to understand the complexities of technology while serving those who may not understand the tech but need to use it. In this past year of centralization, Navigators continued to be trusted resources who could find the right person to give the answer if they didn’t already have the answer

Campus IT Partnerships (CITP) and the Navigators primarily focused on service continuity, maintaining relationships, and finding opportunities for collaboration and partnerships across the organization, promoting the ONE team concept. Five Navigators serve 76 units across the university.

During the restructure, the Navigators worked with the Service Continuity Team to create an expanded and comprehensive list of services, including those unique to specific departments and enterprise-level services. Working with departmental-focused leaders, the navigators identified risks to services and helped ensure IT support was not negatively impacted.

WORKSTREAMS

Dozens of people within UITS collaborated on specific workstreams designed to support the IT restructuring process. The workstreams were charged with moving specific activities forward. As the restructure initiative was complex and affected many areas of IT, the workstreams created manageable focus on real-time progress for timelines, milestones, risks and issues to track and complete. There were 11 workstreams (including the Navigators) in total which range from data and metrics to IT procurement and work modality and space.

The Data Workstream was created to assist in all aspects of data collection, organization, and analysis for the IT Restructure initiative. This team helped administer surveys and deliver the findings to ITR leadership for insights. The data team examined the discovery data closely and synthesized it using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

The Employee Engagement & Culture (EEC)Workstream fostered a sense of community and positive workplace culture in the division by organizing and coordinating engagement activities. These activities have been designed to facilitate employee connections, enhance employee health/wellness, or provide opportunities for giving back through philanthropic efforts.

The IT Restructure Procurement Workstream focused on creating efficiencies in processes for making IT purchases. Campus IT departments have used various processes and systems for procurement, including purchases funded by non-UITS divisions through central Purchasing and Contracting Services (PACS). The Procurement team was created to define when and how IT purchases should be routed through UITS.

The Metrics for Success Workstream was created to develop and track measurable indicators of success for the IT Restructure initiative. This team, composed of staff from across the organization, developed measures to represent the work encapsulated by the initiative’s categories and goals.

The Organizational Discovery and Design Workstream developed and implemented a plan outlining the strategies and steps for effectively managing the IT reorganization and centralization process. The plan’s purpose was to ensure successful service delivery during the transition period, achieve key organizational goals, and address the needs of all stakeholders.

The Research Liaisons Solutions Workstream analyzed and provided recommendations on issues related to the intersection of the university research community and Campus IT.

The Service Portfolio Management Workstream provided comprehensive visibility and governance of IT services, ensuring the efficient and successful delivery of an IT management strategy that encompasses service delivery, system interoperability, asset management, and risk management.

The UITS Communities Workstream was formed to foster a collaborative, unified IT environment where everyone could feel valued. It also fostered knowledge-sharing across the university community through support of continuous growth, skills improvement, and a sense of belonging through participation in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).

The UITS Staff Hub Workstream delivered a Sharepoint intranet site that was created to allow UITS members to find resources and links to support their needs as employees of the CIO division. Included in the Staff Hub are upcoming events, links to past communications and meeting recordings.

The Work Modality and Space Workstream created an inventory of space, including vehicles and golf carts, used to provide IT Services prior to centralization. The inventory assessment included conducting a series of interviews with IT leaders from across campus to understand the spatial footprint used for providing their services.

WHAT’S AHEAD

As of early September, 61% of the Discovery process was completed, which included meetings with individual IT staff that transitioned to UITS on March 4 as well as meetings with their prior unit’s respective Deans and VPs. The individual meetings helped UITS leadership understand the work the individuals had been performing, the type of work they would like to do going forward, and their thoughts on how to make the future of UITS brighter.

Once all the Discovery meetings were complete, the data collected was reviewed and information on next steps for our future organizational design was shared. One thing ITR leaders made clear is that there would not be organizational changes all at once, like what happened on March 4, 2024. Plans were made for incremental change, over time, to ensure a smooth transition for people and for our customers and the services supported.

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