8CIOReview | | MARCH 2021By Charles Bartel, Vice President for Information Technology & Chief Information Officer, Duquesne UniversityIN MY OPINIONIn a previous CIOReview article I contributed, Moving from the "Office of No" to the "Office of Know", I shared insights from early in my tenure as Duquesne University CIO. I wrote about our plans to move the central IT organization--Computing & Technology Services (CTS)--forward, along the IT Maturity Model.In this article, I am excited to give a progress report and a glimpse of where we're heading, in terms of strategic direction.The year 2020 was unprecedented because of the impact of COVID-19 on everyone. Higher education had to react quickly to the pandemic and, to an extent, IT workers became heroes. CTS completed nearly six months of Digital Transformation (DX) projects in just three weeks to help Duquesne University effectively transition to remote teaching, learning and work. Thanks to the talents, skills, leadership and teamwork from all of Duquesne's CTS staff, this critical transformation was nothing short of a welcome miracle! The pace at which IT continues to work has been compared to "running a marathon at a sprinter's pace," and that pace can eventually begin to take its toll. IT leaders need to develop approaches to balance workload while meeting the needs of our institutions.An overarching theme for CTS is to continue to embrace our "X as Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)" model for introducing new programs that also increase our maturity as an IT organization. Some examples include programs such as Information Security; Identity & Access Management; Secure Integrated Infrastructure; Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, our PPMO (Projects & Portfolio Management Office) and most recently; IT Service Management (ITSM) and the establishment of our IT Service Management Office (SMO). This approach "DISCOVERY AND DELIVERY" ­ AN APPROACH TO IT WORKLOAD BALANCECharles Bartel
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