IT OST | News Archive

At-A-Glance

• This newsletter is designed to keep our IT staff, leaders, and interested employees informed and engaged during our upcoming transformation guided by the Optimized Service Team (OST). We’ll provide updates on key milestones, upcoming activities, and resources available to support you.
• IT staff are invited to attend various engagement opportunities, including a workshop on “The Psychology of Change” and listening sessions with the OST.
• PwC workstreams are continuing their progress on seven future state objectives.
• If you have questions, we encourage you to reach out to us at ITOST@PSU.edu.

Recent Milestones

Penn State IT welcomed 45 new colleagues. These staff members came from Human Resources IT and Operational Excellence, the University Libraries’ Media Tech Team, and Financial Information Systems in the Office of Budget and Finance, representing another cohort of early adopters to our new operating model. Following collaborative discussions with the unit, the migration for Outreach and Online Education continues to move ahead.

Commonwealth Campus (CWC) information sharing ongoing. Monthly all-staff meetings are being held for CWC employees, including IT, to receive updates and raise questions specific to their roles. The next meeting is scheduled for May 21.

Strategic Partner workshops underway. IT directors participated in an IT Strategic Partner (ITSP) workshop on April 16. These sessions focused on understanding the ITSP role and its criticality to Penn State, providing feedback on the job profile and duties, and identifying opportunities and support needs.

Staff engagements continue this month and beyond. In addition to the ITSP sessions, additional discussions on position validation were held for IT leaders, managers, and Human Resources Strategic Partners. You can review the recording and materials on our Employee Resource page.

All IT staff are invited to attend an upcoming workshop on “The Psychology of Change” held on May 29 from 9 – 10:30 a.m. This workshop explores emotional reactions to change, how people adapt to change, and common behaviors when faced with change. To register for this and other upcoming events, visit our Employee Resources page.

PwC workstreams are advancing future state recommendations. The PwC engagement continues to build a shared understanding of our current state, define our future IT organization, and develop an implementation plan.

Here are brief updates on each workstream:

• IT Governance Framework: Refined intake form and process, based on community feedback. Preparing for workshop on April 30 to discuss processes for initiation, prioritization, and funding with demand managers, ITSPs, select unit directors, and Enterprise Architecture representative.
• Financial Taxonomy for IT: Sub teams formed to accelerate progress. Preparations finalized and workshops scheduled to begin socializing recommendations to broader staff.
• Balanced Scorecard: Presented draft recommendations to leadership, refining based on their feedback. Progress on industry benchmarks, potential value and cost-saving metrics, and coordination with the Change Management team. Through upcoming stakeholder interviews, continuing to conduct a needs analysis and documenting objectives and requirements.
• Enterprise Architecture: Shared first draft of architecture principles, outline of EA office function, and current state assessment with other PwC workstreams. Continuing to draft critical deliverables for the EA target state, including roles, responsibilities, and governance model. Coordinating between workstreams to pilot concepts with the Application Rationalization and IT Governance Framework workstreams.
• Application Rationalization: Stakeholder interviews are underway, beginning with the first set of remote desktop applications. Planning has begun for the evaluation of the Graduate Student Activity Reports (GSAR) system, which has been selected as the custom application for this phase. Interview logistics, sequencing, and alignment are being structured to support consistent and actionable outcomes across all evaluation efforts.
• Solution Delivery: Actively working on both the current state assessment and future state identification. Developing the delivery model containing Waterfall, Agile, and hybrid methodologies within the solution delivery process.
• Change Management: Actively collaborating with leadership, PwC, change management experts, and the other IT OST workstreams to develop tools, templates, and strategies designed to minimize the impact of upcoming changes. We are committed to ensuring our approach aligns with IT OST leadership expectations. Our primary focus is to help each workstream understand how their stakeholders are affected by, reacting to, and feeling about the changes, and to provide resources that these workstreams can use to support their stakeholders throughout the transition.