I just read a blog post by Matt Asay entitled “Open source and the future of vendor-free IT” that got me thinking about the state of my organization.

The majority of our infrastructure is built around vendor supported, proprietary solutions. While some of our services are hosted on Linux servers (also vendor backed), my understanding is that we default to Windows-based servers when that option is available. I assume a large portion of our budget is spent on licensing silos containing redundant components. For example, we have Onbase, DocuShare, SharePoint, Cascade (WCM), and Blackboard (LMS) supported within our organization and I’m sure there are other similar solutions in place elsewhere in the institution. There is a great deal of overlap here and a limited ability to integrate these solutions. I’m sure I’m trivializing the issues involved, but I strongly believe it is possible to build an infrastructure around best-of-breed open source components to reduce/eliminate the redundancy and greatly streamline data management. I’m not suggesting this is easy, but I believe the organization would benefit more by taking on such a project then continuing to pay several vendors to compete amongst one another.

I generally get the impression that IT decision-makers believe there is something special about vendors, and that institutional IT can’t possibly provide a matching level of service/support. This is certainly the case with the proprietary solutions we use because they are closed and we MUST buy expertise and information. I my opinion, we have done our organizations a disservice by restricting technical knowledge to that exposed by vendors; by paying vendors to become experts and do our thinking for us. Consider the alternative where we use our money to educate our IT staff, to hire open source experts and invest in solutions that can be studied and understood without a contract. Knowing that we’re not the only institution dealing with vendor limitations, wouldn’t it be wiser to partner with other organizations dealing with the very same issues (who are also paying the same vendors) to share cost and collaborate on more effective solutions? There was a recent EDUCAUSE article discussing the importance of social learning that suggests the beneficial growth such a project would have for our IT staff.

Over the course of a day, I constantly find myself wondering why things are the way they are or wishing that I could share my ideas on how I think things should/could be. The wealth of information and availability of social and collaboration environments on the internet typically provide me with eventual, if not immediate, satisfaction of these needs. In some cases, however, this satisfaction cannot be had, and that can be frustrating. While sometimes this is because the answers simply do not exist or that nobody is having a discussion on the topic, it is the times when the information/communication exists but is not shared that are the most frustrating. I tend to get a bad feeling about the parties involved in this exclusion.

The IT department I currently work in doesn’t provide a means to understand why things are the way they are. I’m a software developer. It is part of my nature to constantly question, to seek an understanding of how things work and why, and to look for ways to improve. There are several policies, processes and solutions in place in my organization, but I have a limited understanding why and a limited ability to question or participate (with the arguable exception of the subgroup I’m part of). Without any understanding of the needs driving the decision making behind these efforts, I have no inclination to endorse them, unless they are of clear benefit to me (not a common case). If I, an employee of the very organization driving the policy, can’t embrace it, I wonder what the perception is of our clients?

Jeff Kuhns observes that there are primarily three main causes of such resistance. Policies receive resistance because they are formulated with a:

– difficulty in thinking broadly.
- difficulty in thinking long term.
- the ambiguity of many words and phrases.

When reflecting on my own resistance to policy and mandated/provided solutions, it primarily falls into one or both of the top two categories. In particular, decisions generally seem to favor redundant, proprietary, vendor-driven solutions targeted at specific environments, put in place to solve problems I don’t necessarily have. Of course, this may not be the case at all, or may be driven by factors of which I am not aware. Without an exposure to the decision-making process, however, how can I do anything but remain skeptical?

Jeff continues on the importance of sharing in policy formulation:

The schools with the most success have developed a collaborative approach to discussing and resolving questions, and from that approach a sense of trust has developed among the people who must approve and follow policy. This often requires more time than some desire for any one policy but over time provides for a better and more efficient policy process.

I agree and would stress that the result is not only a more efficient policy process, but one that is more widely endorsed because more individuals have contributed to its success. People are more apt to participate when they are involved in the process. The cost of this involvement is far outweighed by the cost of resistance and ineffeciency when such involvement is not enabled and/or solicited.