Re: Centralized vs. Decentralized IT

["Sarazen, Daniel" <dsarazen () UMASSP EDU>]

Thank you for all for your responses. I think this is a useful conversation. 

 

I'm starting to think that it may be best to have a Central IT collaborate with the departmental IT staff to create an 
environment where central is responsible for the network (including firewalls/IDS/anti-virus/wireless, the servers and 
the operating systems) while the departments are responsible for any applications specialized to their areas, including 
security administration. If the Central IT staff was responsible for the servers, they could also create a uniform 
back-up process and be responsible for all back-ups (including applications). Currently 17 departments are responsible 
for their own with backups, with inconsistent results. This would also simplify the DR/BC plans and thereby mitigate a 
few risks there as well.

 

So far the department's I've reviewed have been of the campus services variety (Parking, transit, physical plant), not 
really people who can claim academic freedom with a straight face. Maybe they are better candidates than research 
departments. But I would think even within the research departments this would free-up resources so they could focus on 
their research, and they would still be responsible for their own applications/databases, etc., with all the freedoms 
to fail that come with it (although this still leaves me with a potential SOD issues)

 

I've only worked in the University setting since January, and may be very naïve, but I do think a hybrid with Central 
IT responsible for computer operations and the departments responsible for the applications they run on it, has 
potential.  I come from a finance background, and I've just not seen IT environments like this before. 

 

Thanks Again

 

 

:: Daniel Sarazen, Information Technology Auditor
:: University Internal Audit
:: University of Massachusetts President's Office

:: 508-856-2443

:: 781-724-3377 Cell
:: 508-856-8824 Fax
:: Dsarazen () umassp edu


University of Massachusetts : 333 South St. : Suite 450 : Shrewsbury, MA 01545 : www.massachusetts.edu 
<http://www.massachusetts.edu/> 

 

________________________________

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Jim 
Dillon
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 2:47 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Centralized vs. Decentralized IT

 

Daniel,

 

I hate to join the chorus of "it depends" folks out there, but it really does, on a lot of cultural issues and delivery 
spaces.

 

There are two primary audiences out there from my perspective, and administrative one and an educational one, and I 
think we sometimes don't balance the two properly in HEd.   One needs the leeway to experiment and fail with some 
regularity, the other has regulation and customer expectations that bind it, with little room for failure due to 
obligation and regulation.  Managing those two vastly different user communities within one organization and one 
service model can be problematic as the service goals are different.

 

I'll agree with an earlier comment, when the objectives and goals of the IT service are regular, consistent, well 
understood and procedural, and when they are in support of regulatory or high scrutiny evaluation (lots of reputation 
threat) then there are some good reasons for a more centrally managed support to achieve better control outcomes and 
oversight.  When the requirements are rapidly changing, reactive, opportunistic, etc. (think academic side, not 
necessarily academic administration) then the ability to let something go, work with a prototype, and keep the 
discussion close to the many scattered and unique goal setters  leans towards local management.

 

One thing central IT can provide in the academic environment is a good forum for collaboration and communication.  I 
think our approach at the CU Boulder campus is one area where we are pretty good in that aspect.  The "support 
community" events tend to bridge a lot of gaps and aid in communication.  

 

The chief difficulty I note is that it is very difficult to provide adequate analysis, strategic vision, direction, 
management, evaluation in a highly distributed environment.  The skill sets that succeed in this area are rare, 
complex, and poorly applied in weakly defined functions.  Thus all the "total cost of ownership" and life-cycle roles 
necessary to alleviate risk are poorly met in a distributed model, just due to the reality of total-cost factors.   A 
really successful program will help ensure that the entire life-cycle consideration of any effort is understood going 
in.  What tends to happen is people build things then have trouble maintaining the resultant life-cycle support costs.  
As a result there's a lot of stinky stuff that doesn't work well and that often becomes a burden to the central IT 
function due to criticality and a lack of appropriate support.  

 

This boils down to a broadly used term, "Governance", but I think it is too broad to really address the difficulties 
and complexities.  My take is more central for administrative stuff, less, with supportive building blocks and 
infrastructure (hosting, virtualization, storage, networking) coming from the central org, and some procedural and 
process reality guidance that insists on a good life-cycle cost analysis for anything developed outside central that 
appears to have enterprise criticality or sensitivity.   Easy said, tough to do.

 

Jim Dillon (Until recently IT Audit Mgr. for CU System)

 

-----------University of Colorado--------------

Jim Dillon, CISA, CISSP

Program Manager

Administrative Systems and Data Services

jim.dillon () colorado edu        303-735-5682

-------------------Boulder------------------------

 

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Sarazen, 
Daniel
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 1:28 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Centralized vs. Decentralized IT

 

Hi All,

 

Do you have any leanings between Centralized IT networks (Main IT group responsible for IT services); vs. decentralized 
IT networks (Each department is responsible for their own apps, servers and security (Intrusion detection/prevention) 
with their own IT staff? Has anyone looked at their campus and formed an opinion on the IT governance configuration?

 

Any feedback you can provide is appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 



:: Daniel Sarazen, CISA, Information Technology Auditor
:: University Internal Audit
:: University of Massachusetts President's Office

:: 508-856-2443

:: 781-724-3377 Cell
:: 508-856-8824 Fax
:: Dsarazen () umassp edu


University of Massachusetts : 333 South St. : Suite 450 : Shrewsbury, MA 01545 : www.massachusetts.edu 
<http://www.massachusetts.edu/>