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IT Leadership

🧠 ThinkSpace Synthesis Memo

CSN IT Leadership Discovery Session

Facilitated by Beyond | April 18, 2025 | Duration: 90 mins

đź‘Ą Who Was in the Room?

A cross-section of CSN’s IT leadership team—representing strategy, service delivery, infrastructure, and operational support. Participants brought honesty, reflection, and a clear sense of responsibility to the table.

🎯 What We Set Out to Do

This session was designed to listen deeply and think forward. We asked:

  • What’s working—and not—in IT service delivery?

  • Where are things getting stuck in communication, intake, and governance?

  • How future-ready is the infrastructure?

  • What role should IT play in shaping a modern, student-first CSN?

The goal? Clarity, connection, and a springboard for action.

🔍 What We Heard

What’s Working

  • Collaboration is a strength—leaders are aligned, outcome-focused, and student-centered.

  • The 24/7 service desk is a major win, especially for students.

  • Teams are leaning into automation to free up capacity.

  • There’s a growing ability to anticipate user needs, not just react.

  • People trust IT—they know someone will help them, even if they skip the ticket.

What’s Not

  • Change adoption is slow—many still default to “the way we’ve always done it.”

  • Shared systems (e.g., PeopleSoft) limit flexibility and local control.

  • Governance is foggy—requests arrive from everywhere, timelines are fuzzy, approvals unclear.

  • User experience is clunky—logins, systems, and role confusion (Call Center vs. Help Desk) are common pain points.

🧭 Where We Go From Here

Infrastructure & Readiness

  • On-prem systems are aging—SSO, servers, EOL software all carry security risk.

  • Budget’s not the issue—decision paralysis is. We need clearer value framing.

  • Cloud is solid; future-readiness is about blending on-prem modernizations with smart service layers.

  • The team is curious and open to AI-enabling tools (e.g., Copilot, remote admin).

Intake & Governance

  • Requests come in from every angle—with no intake filters, no prioritization framework.

  • “Governance” has baggage—consider rebranding it as a protocol framework.

  • Call Center is underutilized—empower them with access and agency.

  • Let’s get proactive: rubrics, shared definitions of value, and visible priorities will go a long way.

🌱 Strategic Opportunities

  1. Position IT as a student success multiplier, not just a service org.

  2. Anchor infrastructure investments in future-readiness and strategic outcomes.

  3. Create a culture of early communication and shared ownership—from project intake to go-live.

  4. Design with clarity: one intake path, one governance model, one institutional vision.
    Build momentum—you already have it. Use this moment.

âś… What Happens Next?

  • These insights will inform 1:1 follow-ups and shape the May site visit.

  • We’ll co-design a roadmap and messaging framework to align technology decisions with institutional impact.

  • More than anything: you spoke candidly, and it resonated. We’re here to help you turn those truths into traction.