Information Technology Optimized Service Team (IT OST)

Project Overview

Every single day at Penn State, 1,200 dedicated IT staff experts enable the University’s mission of teaching, research, and service. However, in the current state, they are also constrained by institutional red tape, duplication of efforts, and inconsistency throughout units.

By creating a transformational future state to address these challenges, the IT OST will empower Penn State’s IT staff to deliver the highest level of service to the entire University community and unlock strategic advantages for our teaching, research, and outreach.

In support of the University’s mission, the new Penn State IT unit, developed through the efforts of the OST, aims to:

• provide strategic alignment by maximizing the impact of the University’s investment in IT by optimizing the mix of activities to ensure continued operations and pursuit of areas of strategic importance
• unlock innovation by building efficiencies across IT to create capacity for high value, innovative initiatives that anticipate or solve critical University challenges
• increase cost efficiency to enable a sustainable approach to funding IT that contributes to University goals and enables the needed flexibility to accommodate changing and evolving needs of the University
• recruit and retain high-performing talent and teams by improving opportunities for IT staff to professionally advance within Penn State and increase Penn State IT’s appeal to job seekers

Key Partners

Taking a collaborative approach to these changes, the IT OST is incorporating our community’s perspectives, insights and experiences to develop our future state. The following units and organizations have actively contributed to and helped shape the OST workstream:

OST Leads:

• David Horton, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
• Chris Lucas, Deputy CIO, Associate Vice President, Academic Technologies and Customer Experience

Participants:

• The OST has, is, and will continue to be meeting and working with all units across University IT.

Phase 1: Information Gathering on Current State

In 2022, Penn State identified IT as one of the first shared services to utilize an OST. In the summer and fall of 2023, OST team leads and staff members engaged 64 units across all campuses to create a current state report that inventoried existing IT systems, personnel and contracts. The report detailing this work, which can be accessed below, was delivered to University leadership and shared with IT personnel and the Academic Leadership Council in December 2023.

As part of this process, the OST hosted several drop-in listening sessions with IT staff to collect their feedback and gather considerations and hosted a town hall for IT staff. In addition, progress and findings were presented to the University IT Executive Advisory Council, Academic Leadership Council and Faculty Senate.

The Applied Research Laboratory and the Pennsylvania College of Technology were not included in this assessment.

Phase 2: Developing Future State Recommendations

In the spring of 2024, the IT OST workstream engaged third-party consultant PwC to analyze the current state report, identify and collect any missing data and engage with key University stakeholders.

Building on the current state report, the OST and PwC took an interactive approach to help develop future state recommendations. They surveyed more than 220 IT leaders, held nine open sessions in which 150 IT staff members participated, and interviewed more than 30 students, faculty and staff stakeholders.

In preparation for the next steps and the creation of the 2026 budget, salaries for IT staff in the OST-purview units were transitioned to Penn State IT’s central budget for fiscal year 2026. This change did not apply to the Applied Research Laboratory or Pennsylvania College of Technology.

Consultant Recommendations

Using the current state report and additional information gathering led by the consulting firm, PwC developed 17 recommendations that will help guide the future state of Penn State IT.

Phase 3: Implementation of Future State

The IT OST began Phase 3 during the summer of 2024, considering the PwC recommendations and synthesizing this work into a viable and promising future state.

Aligned with the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program for Commonwealth Campuses, personnel and salaries for IT staff at these locations transitioned into Penn State IT on July 1, 2024. This is a significant step toward unifying technology resources and enhancing service delivery.

The goal of these efforts is to enable a smooth integration process that respects the unique needs and strengths of each Commonwealth Campus while fully leveraging the broader capabilities of Penn State IT. Previously, each campus was fully responsible for the salaries and fringe paid to employees in these positions. By centralizing these employees into the OSTs, the positions become part of the general overhead budget, which will result in further savings for the Commonwealth Campuses.

The OST will pursue the rest of the PwC recommendations as Phase 3 continues.

Among those recommendations is an application rationalization assessment, which should reduce the complexity and redundancies within IT applications the University uses. This recommendation was guided by insights from 100 IT leaders from 62 different units across Penn State during a series of workshops.

Over the span of 10 weeks, the workstream analyzed a portfolio of more than 1,700 applications used by the University to identify opportunities for enhanced efficiency.

As key partners in their efforts, PwC helped facilitate the workshops and University IT employees proposed nearly 200 optimization activities. Meanwhile, the OST identified 40 additional opportunities, including pathways to better support hardware and software inventory management, governance and event management software.

Teams to work on seven initiatives in first half of 2025

The IT OST’s third engagement with PwC began in January 2025 to make progress on seven IT OST initiatives. This effort builds on the application inventory work completed by IT units in summer 2024 and the two previous PwC engagements.  

Members of the Penn State IT Senior Leadership Team and University IT directors are co-leading each workstream. Approximately 60 UIT staff volunteered for open roles on the teams and were matched based on the skills and competencies needed for the work.  

The workstreams are expected to complete their projects in June 2025. 

The teams are as follows:

IT support and services at Penn State to transform into shared service model

Shared on February 27, 2025, Penn State IT will develop a new IT operating model built around a shared platform portfolio, shared mission portfolio and unit portfolios by January 2027. 

IT employees who were identified as in scope during last spring’s position validation process will become part of Penn State IT by July 1, 2025. 

Following this transition, Penn State IT — working with IT employees — will spend 18 months stabilizing the new organization and developing the new shared services model for IT across the University. 

Leading up to July 1, Penn State IT will work with three early-adopter IT units — including Operational Excellence and Human Resources IT, World Campus and Outreach IT, and the Division of Development and Alumni Relations IT — to help inform the process and strategy for July unit moves. The Commonwealth Campuses underwent this transition last summer, as have Student Affairs IT staff members at University Park more recently. 

Following their transition into Penn State IT by July, IT staff members will continue to report to their current unit IT directors. Reporting lines for those directors will change as they will begin to report to members of Penn State IT’s senior leadership team. The entire organization will go through an 18-month optimization period — July 1, 2025, to January 2027 — to develop the shared services model. A transition services team will conduct discovery activities; recommend optimization of positions, process and technologies; and iteratively deploy resources into the new IT operating model. 

While there are no layoffs planned as part of this transition, the new operating model will create new roles and opportunities, and some individual positions and responsibilities could change over time. 

Visit Penn State News to read the full announcement.