Information Technology

The Plan for Pitt

Providing technology and solutions that enable the Plan for Pitt:

Advance Educational Excellence
Engage in Research of Impact
Strengthen Communities
Promote Diversity and Impact
Embrace the World
Build Foundational Strength

IT Assessment Report

A study compiled by consultant Deloitte found that, while many core IT services are centralized at CSSD, there are a significant amount of IT services decentralized across campus impacting efficiency, effectiveness, and risk management.

Some examples of decentralization include:

FIS runs and operates PRISM HR and Financials from hardware to applications, resulting in duplicate services, solution selection, and data sharing capabilities
Pitt has over 19 help desks on campus using at least 16 different ticketing systems
With at least four other data centers across Pitt campuses, about a third of all physical servers reside outside of CSSD

Pitt spends over $132M on IT

IT Spend by Budget

41% charged to CSSD
59% non-CSSD

IT Spend on Hardware and Software

48% University-wide
46% specific responsibility centers
6% other

IT Spend

54% goods and services
46% salaries and benefits

Pitt has the equivalent of more than 620 full-time IT staff

37% in CSSD; 63% across non-CSSD units
97 schools and departments have IT staff

Operational Excellence

For innovation to happen, IT must be “hitting on all cylinders.” As such, we are committed to:

Continuous improvement of all IT services
Stakeholder engaged and transparent processes for selection of enterprise systems and services
Service Level Agreements (SLA) with campus on performance of critical systems and infrastructure
Dashboards for community consumption—indicating performance and availability levels of critical systems

Further, we are planning the creation of the following capabilities:

IT Project Management Office (PMO) to bring standards and processes to our projects
Business analysis expertise to lead business process reviews and improvements
Evaluating the feasibility of creating Lean/Six Sigma leaders as further process review resources

However, operational excellence is not just CSSD. We need all staff involved IT:

Committed to continuous improvement of environments they support
Open to training to keep current with technologies that benefit their units
Willing to participate in University-wide initiatives and provide leadership on experimental initiatives

Deloitte Recommendations

Students

Implement IT governance to facilitate effective IT decision making and establish roles and responsibilities over enterprise applications and services

Faculty

Develop and standardize IT career paths to improve talent development and facilitate effective IT staff deployment
Create a University-wide IT culture to foster collaboration, enable effectiveness of IT service delivery, and promote partnership for innovation at Pitt

Campus

Build mechanisms to enable university-wide coordination on IT budget formulation and strategic investment planning
Enhance IT spend management through purchasing policies and purchasing controls to eliminate duplicate IT spend across campus

Community

Adopt a single system for tracking and reporting IT support activity across the University to deliver consistent technology service
Redesign the current service catalog to include non-CSSD services available to Pitt end users—providing a single point for searching, ordering, and purchasing IT services

Region

The University’s data and technology resources must be protected; the privacy of individuals and the integrity of data must be preserved