Shared services – a pathway to change 

Technology is constantly evolving. In recent times, higher education has undergone major change in educational models and now faces revolution in the methods of teaching and learning. And yet University IT departments have largely maintained a traditional approach to managing and delivery of IT services. 

Whilst shared services can be an efficient and cost effective approach to provision of Information Technology services, beyond the savings and operational simplification, there is an opportunity to instigate and enable greater change. 

Change is nothing new; however our (IT) change has largely been technology driven and our way to change is via technology. We need to change what we do and how we do it. We have large infrastructure teams managing the complex technology stack – repeated many time across the sector. Our students are embracing IT consumerism, our academics grappling with on-line learning and we’re down in the basement still trying to “break down the silos”. 

Moving email to the cloud is a good start. Both in adopting a new delivery model and in letting go of something unique we owned. It is relatively simple and standalone; and once changed will stay changed. It is also something that can and should be undertaken by a University individually. 

However, in an individual University not all services are of a scale that makes cloud viable; but when aggregated as a sector (or part thereof) the dimensions create a new demand model and new opportunities – aggregated demand and collective acquisition. A new shared services paradigm. 

There is growing interest and activity across the country in exploring what a new shared services model can be. The Victorian Universities have established an initiative focusing initially on data centre and networks and this is a good case study of shared services as a pathway to change.