Committee Members
- Venetria Patton, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Chair
- Rashid Bashir, Grainger College of Engineering
- Danita Brown Young, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
- Brooke Elliott, Gies College of Business
- Aimee Heeter, Office of Budget and Resource Planning
- Mairéad Martin, Office of the Chief Information Officer
- Susan Martinis, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation
- Shari Mickey-Boggs, Illinois Human Resources
- Chrystalla Mouza, College of Education
- Jamelle Sharpe, College of Law
- Claire Stewart, University Library
Charge Letter
Dear Colleagues,
Boldy Illinois 2030 is our university’s collective challenge to “think differently, take risks, be courageous enough to fail and transcend business as usual.” Transcending business as usual is at the core of the Boldly Illinois IT Strategic Plan (Boldly IT) which proposes a campuswide vision for IT to more fully align with our institutional mission, to be more responsive to current and future strategic needs, and to collaborate more closely toward the collective good. Boldly Illinois is our opportunity to transform the university’s IT function to one appropriate for and needed of a world-class, leading institution.
The first priority in Boldly IT is Changing how we work. This priority has three strategies, the first of which is to establish technology governance. Your committee provides a technology governance function for shared decision-making, direction-setting, prioritization, and investment.
Bringing executive stakeholders, faculty, researchers, and technology service providers to the table, our governance structure will consist of an executive committee and a number of subcommittees based on technology subdomains (teaching and learning, research support, data, etc.) with each subdomain having its own portfolio of IT services. A portfolio approach will enable us to have a cohesive view of the services in a subdomain including service providers, platforms, and applications; enable us to assess gaps in our offerings; develop unified strategies; and allocate resources. This approach will support our technology service providers being aligned and focused on a consistently optimal user experience, but most critically to work from a platform of shared vision and goals that are not present today. A portfolio model is particularly well-suited to our environment of multiple and distributed IT service providers.
In Boldly IT Phase 1 (July 1, 2025 – December 31, 2026), the plan is to establish your Technology Governance Executive Committee and one subcommittee for the Teaching & Learning portfolio. (See Appendix A for the Boldly IT Technology Governance Framework.) Maturing our technology governance function is intended to be incremental, and we believe we will be most successful if we keep the commitment light initially, particularly for the executive committee, and work together to evolve the model according to our needs.
Over time, the executive committee will:
- Ensure IT strategies and priorities align with Illinois’ mission and priorities.
- Enable collaborative executive-level sponsorship of IT strategic directions.
- Recommend and provide oversight of IT investments and their impact.
- Support the management of IT and cybersecurity risks across the Institution.
- Resolve issues and proposals escalated from the technology governance subcommittees.
In Boldly IT Phase 1 (July 2025 – December 2026) the executive committee will:
- Assess and ratify the Boldly IT plan and establish a cadence for reviews and reporting.
- Provide feedback on and vet a proposal for the overall technology governance framework and assess its evolution and performance as it becomes established.
- Provide feedback on and vet a proposal for how IT units across campus will integrate more fully.
Thank you for agreeing to serve on this important committee. Your expertise and vision will help ensure that the University of Illinois is prepared to continue to boldly fulfill its mission to serve the people of Illinois, the nation, and beyond.
Sincerely,
John Coleman
Provost