As Houston Community College moves its Information Technology services forward to achieve the goals set out by the Board of Trustees, Chancellor Maldonado, and Dr. Bill Carter, this report is intended to serve as a road-map and guide of where the institution has been, where it is now, and how to chart a course for the future. Over the last few years there has been incredible growth and change in the college, the student body, and the overall HCC community, as well as the technologies and processes the college uses to serve these populations.

1. 1EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
HCC IT ASSESSMENT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2. 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Acknowledgements
BRG would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their
assistance in completing this project
The students, faculty, and staff of the
Houston Community College System
Dr. Ceasar Maldonado
Dr. Bill Carter
Austin Community College
Fayetteville State University
Lone Star College
Hardin-Simmons University
Maricopa Community Colleges
NC A&T State University
Shaw University
The University of Alabama
University of Houston
University of New Orleans
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Texas at El Paso
Western Texas College

3. 3EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As Houston Community College moves its Information Technology
services forward to achieve the goals set out by the Board of Trustees,
Chancellor Maldonado, and Dr. Bill Carter, this report is intended to serve
as a road-map and guide of where the institution has been, where it is
now, and how to chart a course for the future. Over the last few years
there has been incredible growth and change in the college, the student
body, and the overall HCC community, as well as the technologies and
processes the college uses to serve these populations.
From 2005 to 2018, the time it takes a student to go from Kindergarten
into our classrooms, HCC’s campus infrastructure has more than
doubled, from 2 million to 4 million square feet. The average student
population has increased by almost 10,000. In terms of technology,
these same students have progressed from using desktops, to laptops,
to smartphones, tablets, and mobile technology.
HCC’s Information Technology department has
met each of these changes by rapidly tackling the
challenges they bring, and doggedly pursuing the
opportunities they present.

4. 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

5. 5EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The IT department has done a commendable job expanding its service
offerings to keep pace with HCC’s rapid growth. HCC’s institutional and
technology leadership have provided much needed continuity of service
through these shifting times. The IT department has been successfully
navigating a sea of both internal and external changes since 2005 and
continued to provide core services even as the college environment has
undergone numerous and fundamental transformations.
This report represents an inflection point in the department’s
development. For the last several years the department has needed
to focus on developing new services to accommodate growth, but now
the department has the opportunity to assess how those services
can be matured and improved upon.
Growing quickly means doing what needs to be
done. Now the focus can shift to improvement.
This trade-off between maintenance and improvement is typical in
organizations that see rapid expansion. This report is designed to
provide an in-depth guide that can move the department forward.
Methodology
In order to have a better grasp of how these advances can be of
maximum benefit, this report examines HCC’s IT processes from an
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) perspective, a
stakeholder perspective through the use of first person interviews
and focus groups, and a benchmark analysis that compares HCC to
other, similar institutions. Together, these reviews paint a picture of
an organization striving to further align its operational IT assets with
its institutional mission, provide more services focused on student
success, and enhance its customer-centric environment.
Each of the Directors in the following departments – Application
Development, Systems Support, Customer Support, IT Security, Network,
IT Administration, and Construction Project Management were interviewed
in detail. A representative sample of all the employees within these
departments were also interviewed on a 1:1 basis. A detailed document
request from each of these different departments along with these
interviews enabled BRG to get a current assessment of HCC’s IT
systems. BRG then compiled all the findings and observations into the
following areas – IT Governance, Service Strategy, Service Design, Service
Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement.
Information Technology Infrastructure Library - ITIL
ITIL is a globally accepted standard for examining IT operations and
helping to move them from a back-end support function to a major
driver of institutional innovation and service improvement. In the
1980s as IT began to rapidly develop, many organizations adopted an
ITIL framework as a means to seamlessly incorporate IT into their
operations and elevate IT from an internally-focused functional role,
to a customer-oriented innovation role.
The ITIL process outlines goals that align with
HCC’s needs and boundaries and sets a timeline
to implement those goals, all the while making
sure that the focus remains on the end user and
service provision.

6. 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
We can think of IT service provisioning the way we do a restaurant to
gain a clearer understanding of what ITIL is about. In a typical restaurant
setting, the food a customer orders doesn’t show up until after they’ve
seen a menu. The cooks don’t begin preparing the food at the grocery
store. The waiters aren’t responsible for ordering supplies, and the
stove isn’t kept in the freezer. Unless each element of the kitchen,
food, staff, equipment and operations are executed in the right order
at the right time, a meal never arrives at the table. ITIL considers IT
from this same perspective – breaking down the steps and processes
of providing services and measuring how well they are executed.
ITIL also creates transparency for managing IT operations. By examining
IT as a process that provides services the same way a restaurant
provides and serves food, you can always pinpoint issues and take
actions to correct them. Management can also anticipate and plan for
increasingly more efficient and effective service delivery. This increased
level of transparency makes management of the IT infrastructure more
stable and thorough.
Because ITIL looks at IT as a process that develops over time, an ITIL
maturity score indicates the current state of IT progression. For instance
an aspect of IT that is informally used without documentation or a
standardized format, would be considered as “ less mature” whereas
as a formal process that is subject to revisions for improvement would
be considered as “highly mature”.
The ITIL framework uses a 5 point score to indicate a processes’
maturity. It is important to note that a function’s numeric score
does not indicate “good” or “bad”, only the degree of that function’s
formalization. This metric helps establish the progress of an IT offering
in supporting and optimizing the end-user experience.

7. 7EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

8. 8 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Stakeholder Perceptions
To measure the perceptions of stakeholders, the report also includes
observations from separate focus group discussions, key informant
interviews, and quantitative polling. These findings are based on the
experiences of end-users in navigating the IT environment. Groups of
faculty, staff, and students were each separately interviewed at various
HCC campuses and asked to provide feedback on their experiences
with IT. These lay perspectives are useful in establishing a base-
line for services and determining areas for end-user improvement.
It is worth bearing in mind however, that across the spectrum of
organizations end-user sentiments often reflect non-technical
understanding and are predicated on instances where users required
assistance. In other words, users generally only contact IT for help
when something has gone wrong.
Benchmark
A benchmark comparison has also been included that compares
and contrasts HCC’s IT services to those of 13 other colleges and
universities. Each of these institutions submitted an assessment of
their own IT departments including the overall size of their school’s
IT footprint. This comparison helps place HCC alongside its peers
and provides a snapshot of how HCC’s IT offerings compare to those
of other schools. Out of respect for the participating institutions,
school specific data has been scrubbed from the comparison.
Taken as a whole, these three review processes cover the technical,
the internal end-user, and the external industry placement for HCC’s
IT, and leads to three overarching conclusions.
Each of these areas are directly related to both the core function of
service-driven IT, as well as building a customer centric model of
service delivery, and a technologically superior means of achieving
optimal IT and data system management. Progress in each of these
areas involves several steps and lower level recommendations
ultimately leading to the full transformation of IT services into a
driver of student-focused, college-wide innovation.
In order to move its IT offerings forward in
support of HCC’s institutional goals the areas of
service maturity, organizational design, and cloud
migration, need to be addressed.

9. 9EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ITIL Observations
Raising the overall ITIL maturity level will take a concerted effort to
develop policies and procedures that build a culture of documentation,
improvement, and cross-discipline and cross-functional communication.
Enhanced service management is the most essential element in raising
the maturity and sophistication of HCC’s IT. IT offerings across the college
would benefit from a tighter focus on:
• How those offerings are executed
• The best ways to integrate IT offerings with instruction and other
core college functions
• How to standardize the implementation of those offerings
• How to communicate and share information about the offerings
• How to manage continued review and improvement of offerings
Laying a foundation that values service management is the critical step
towards maturing HCC’s ITIL processes.

10. 10 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The focus of better ITIL management is concerned with five major processes, each of which considers IT as a distinct part of the service life-
cycle. Beginning with service strategy where services are conceived, through their design phase, to the implementation, operation, and review.
The five major phases are:
• Service Strategy - IT planning
• Service Design - Creating IT services that are supportable and
deliver the desired functionality
• Service Transition - Actual deployment of IT services and processes
and answers the question, “How do we implement this”?
• Service Operation - Direct interaction with users including
accepting inbound requests and issues, keeps users fully informed
• Continual Service Improvement - Improving service quality on
an ongoing basis
In order to mature these service-focused processes, HCC will need to bolster the strength of the IT department’s human resources.

11. 11EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Organizational Design
As is to be expected from an institution of its size, HCC’s IT services
are legion and support all aspects of the college ranging from finance
and administration, to instructor technology, to student e-mail. In
essence, HCC runs on IT.
Because so much of the school’s ability to function
rests on its IT capabilities, IT assets and personnel
should be optimally deployed to create transparency,
responsiveness, and synergy.
HCC’s IT has enormous responsibilities, and refocusing some
organizational attention towards easing that burden means shifting
reporting structures to better align with service delivery. HCC IT needs
to consider alternative ways of structuring its organizational design
to build a stronger sense of unity, service, and collaboration.
Do you expect your full-time IT staff to:
*Compiled results from the Benchmarking Survey
The sheer size of HCC’s IT department has grown sufficiently large
to merit the creation of additional executive oversight to provide
direction and guidance in specific service areas. HCC should
create three additional technology leadership positions, each with
a distinct focus area and reporting directly to the Vice Chancellor.
These individuals would provide leadership and direction for Project
Management, Customer Technology, and Instructional Technology
Operations. These focused positions will raise the capacity of HCC’s
IT to provide smoother support for end-users, more efficiently utilize
resources, and better manage internal processes. This additional
leadership can also highlight and prioritize Clear communications,
cross departmental training, service management, and other
important areas.
Current reporting structures show IT personnel working across the
college campuses with a focus on servicing the unique needs of
different campuses. While this is absolutely necessary for a college
that uses MRI machines to instruct future nurses at one campus and
advanced TIG/MIG welding equipment at another, certain functions
are the same across the spectrum. IT specialists with campus and
college-specific expertise should focused on using their intimate
technical knowledge to provide end-user assistance. However,
rather than reporting to their unique institutional hierarchy, they
would be better able to collaborate and contribute to the overall HCC
system by transitioning to a reporting structure that helps them stay
connected to their IT colleagues. Directors of College Educational
Technology should be elevated to the senior management team
with direct access to the newly inaugurated leadership position
responsible for Instructional Technology.

12. 12 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

13. 13EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Creating positions to explicitly manage IT projects from inception to
completion, separate support roles for Finance and Human Resource IT
functions, and the addition of front line service staff for the Help Desk,
as well as the consolidation of PeopleSoft and Database administrators,
will add much needed strength to core IT functions that support HCC’s
overall operations and mission. This additional capacity will also
further the creation of a customer service focus, cross departmental
cooperation, a commitment to documentation, constant and clear
communication, and building a culture of measurement - each a
key element in advancing the overall maturity score of HCC’s IT.
Complementing this increase in man-power is a forward thinking
approach to actual IT data management.
Cloud Computing
HCC should have a cloud first strategy for application and data
management. As this multi-year migration takes place, an Oracle
SuperCluster is the preferred bridge for maintaining serviceability
in the IT environment. Current capacity is an issue as systems are
reported to slow considerably during peak times (such as student
enrollment) causing great frustration for both end users and business
function owners. Efforts to expand the capacity of the underlying
hardware that supports PeopleSoft is under investigation, and several
options are being considered, including an Oracle SuperCluster as
well as cloud-based options for other services.
Oracle’s SuperCluster Engineered System is a powerful hardware and
software solution designed specifically to run Oracle applications at
optimized levels. The SuperCluster can replace dozens of traditional
servers with one high-performance, highly available system that
reduces maintenance and administration time considerably, while
increasing reliability and responsiveness. Utilizing this option will
help HCC successfully transition to a cloud model.
Making the move to a cloud option has become commonplace and
is no longer an untried method for system development and data
management. However, a managed transition to cloud computing
means adopting a long term view that should transition services
slowly. HCC should formulate a careful strategy for moving to the
cloud at a pace which allows for full and complete confidence in
the cloud ecosystem. Organizations that refuse to recognize cloud
computing as the new reality will find that the longer they wait to
move to the cloud, the more difficult the transition may become.
Cloud computing will soon be the norm for all
organizations, from education, to healthcare, to
business.
Due to the absolute centrality of IT to HCC’s daily
operations, the burden for monitoring, providing,
and executing IT services should be supported
through reorganization and addition of key staff.

14. 14 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
To put this transformation in perspective, an organization that relied solely on hard
paper files stored in cabinets, was an overburdened anachronism by the 1990s. If
that same organization had begun to adopt digital solutions to their information and
data management needs (as they became mature processes), they would have been
a much more lean and competitive entity. This is the situation facing organizations
as they contemplate cloud computing. By 2020, a corporate “no cloud” policy will
be as rare as a “no Internet” policy is today1
. The move towards cloud computing
is one of the most significant technological innovations of the last 30 years and will
soon be an undisputed technological reality.
Does your institution take advantage of cloud computing to support academic,
administrative, and community services?
*Compiled results from the Benchmarking Survey
Higher education as an industry group is clearly heading in the direction of cloud
computing for data management. While no institution has yet made the complete
transition to the cloud, that is the intention and the future. HCC would be wise to
utilize an Oracle SuperCluster as the bridge to cloud computing and thereby mitigate
any potential risks the new technology poses while also tracking a disciplined road
map for its eventual implementation.
1 Predictions 2016: Cloud Computing to Drive Digital Business 08 December 2015 G00292047 Analyst(s): David Mitchell
Smith | Ed Anderson | Yefim V. Natis | Jay Heiser | Thomas J. Bittman | Douglas Toombs | David W. Cearley | Jeffrey Mann
| Neville Cannon | Gregor Petri

15. 15EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Recommendations
To help achieve these over-arching goals, the report also describes an additional 35 subject areas with over 200 specific, discrete
recommendations. Each of these is a step in the process towards achieving the primary goals of building a student centered and
customer focused institution.
Create Technical Leadership Positions
Consolidate all IT to report to CIO
including campus technology staff
Create a Program Management Office
Increase Help Desk Staff during first
Phases of ITIL maturation process
Strengthen Incident Management
Improve Problem Management
Develop Knowledge Management
Prioritize Change Management
Further mature Security Management
Develop Service Catalog Management
Improve Event Management
Integrate Financial Management
Prioritize Service Level Management
Enhance Service Asset Configuration
Management
Enhance IT Service Continuity
Management
Mature processes for Request
Management
Review Transition Planning and Support
Support Strategy Management
Support Demand Management
Support Capacity Management
Increase Availability Management
Refine Identity & Access Management
Refine Release & Deployment
Management
Enhance Design Coordination
Build Business Relationship Management
Increase Service Validation and Testing –
Increases reliability of Service Transitions
Change Evaluation – Increases maturity
of Change Management Process
Supplier Management – Increases
maturity and effectiveness of Service
Level Management
Service Portfolio Management – Increases
maturity of governance and strategic
services deployment

16. 16 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Recommendations in the report are presented with observations to help explain what is driving them, the recommended course of
action to address the issues observed, the desired outcomes of the actions, and metrics that can be used to indicate when progress
has been made.
Taken together these recommendations are the primary steps that HCC should undertake to move forward with its goals of creating a
student, customer, and end-user focused IT department that thrives on constant service improvement and change. Creating a culture
that supports service improvement through ITIL, and increasing the degree of executive IT leadership and management, combined
with a transition to cloud data management, will be crucial in accomplishing the college’s institutional goals.

17. 17EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Transformation 2020 and Beyond
These are the targeted projects moving forward that will help to achieve the goals described in the report. Combining people, process, and
technology will create an improved structure for Houston Community College as they pursue a more service oriented focus on IT operations.