Modernising traditional IT frameworks is a major challenge in the private sector. Furthermore, in the public sector there’s an expectation that budget constraints can stymie efforts to fully engage with digital transformation.
Higher education is typically seen through this lens: slow to adopt new technologies, traditionally inflexible, and held back by a lack of funding. At Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, a quiet revolution is underway that subverts these expectations. The college is a publicly funded, two-year higher education institution serving Pima County and beyond, with an annual student body of almost 38,000 served by almost 2,500 faculty and staff.
Led by Isaac Abbs, Assistant Vice Chancellor for IT and CIO, the college is undergoing an extensive IT transformation that has unlocked immense value through bold, visionary leadership. Crucially, it is being achieved without a major increase in budget. “If, as an IT leader, you become a truly innovative partner and move the organisation forward, the dollars are there,” he asserts.
Establishing IT as a Strategic Partner
For Abbs, bringing IT forward as a strategic leader and key innovator for the wider institution has been essential to delivering the college’s much-needed digital transformation, and it’s a challenge he has relished.
“I personally believe CIOs need to lead from the front. That’s always been my philosophy. I can’t sit back and wait for the business. I have to be out there leading, often pushing the business,” he says. “As IT, we are so ingrained in the business that it’s becoming a natural transition, a comfortable transition. It is a new day, a new world, and it presents a lot of opportunities for CIOs who are willing to embrace it.”
He jokes that those with IT-heavy backgrounds may not naturally fit the mould of a people-facing, C-Level leader, but it’s a leap that can reap dividends. “I am definitely more of an introvert, but I’ve had to get comfortable with being the face of IT and building those relationships both within and outside the organisation. When people want me to come and talk I have to be willing to go because it all contributes to IT getting the support needed to do what we need to do.”
Laying the groundwork for Digital Transformation
Jack Satterfield, Chief Technology Officer at Pima Community College, has been a key ally in Abbs’ digital transformation strategy. On Abbs returned to the college as CIO, he found preliminary groundwork in full swing thanks to Satterfield’s efforts.
“I have to really give credit to Jack,” Abbs explains. “He came to the college a few years before I came back. He really understood and believed that we could be leading-edge when it came to our infrastructure. We had the right budget, but not the right technology, so he spent the past three, four years overhauling everything.”
In one major modernisation effort, the college adopted Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). This helped position it for the wider digital transformation and its transition to the cloud. In step with that change came a network overhaul that has had powerful effects upon security and redundancy.
“We previously had four different network vendors in our environment,” says Abbs. “We standardised on one and have built a state-of-the-art network that is fault-tolerant and has high bandwidth. When Jack first came to the college, the network was going down almost weekly. In my three years here, I think we’ve had one outage, which wasn’t even our fault.