Problem: Too focused on the mundane
Most higher education institutions have expensive, highly varied IT Enterprises that spend far too much on mundane, operational things like ERP, workflow tools, and content management.
Need: Focus on what matters
Institutions need to find ways to shift from this operational orientation to a structure optimized for innovation on things that matter like academic analytics or online learning.
Solution: Open source operational technologies
Institutions should open source low level infrastructure oriented technologies to bring down costs via standardization. Open sourcing should be coupled with proactive efforts to build technical communities oriented around the same problem space that span multiple institutions.
Open sourcing should not be viewed as a magical wand that will fix problems, nor should it be viewed as forgoing revenue that could have been received via software licensing. It should be viewed as a way to create communities and competencies that result in lower operating budgets and higher capacity to innovate.
Open sourcing should not be viewed as a magical wand that will fix problems, nor should it be viewed as forgoing revenue that could have been received via software licensing. It should be viewed as a way to create communities and competencies that result in lower operating budgets and higher capacity to innovate.
