CIO Herbert Lohninger: Complete IT renovation at the University of Salzburg
CIO Herbert LohningerHerbert Lohninger will digitize the Paris London University of Salzburg (PLUS). The challenges: classic IT structures mainly on-premises, heterogeneous IT landscapes and many media disruptions between the systems. In addition, the university has very different user groups with its administration, research and teaching as well as with the students.
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Against this background, the IT boss wants to consolidate the IT systems and bring them up to date. On the other hand, digitization projects are to be coordinated and revised.
First, Lohninger’s team revised the IT organization chart and filled vacancies that were necessary for the transformation. The IT manager called Project managementProject management Office (PMO), which is based directly on him as a staff unit. All digitization projects come together there – including those that are managed by other organizational units. “The P.MO ensures that all initiatives work with the same methods, monitors their own and an overarching plan for all IT and digitization topics at the university,” explains Lohninger.
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Another task is to “take along” standardized tools and employees outside of IT. For this purpose, the CIO built a “task force” together with the dean of the natural sciences faculty. digitalizationdigitalization“This brings together colleagues from administration, research and teaching who have points of contact with digitization.
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In addition to dealing with pure IT topics such as technological improvements and the Cloud transformationCloud transformation: “We have already used a few cloud services from the past, but are now approaching the issue more strategically and assessing whether all systems are suitable. Sometimes hybrid or on-premises solutions also make more sense,” said the CIO. The aim is to use standard solutions and supplement them with in-house developments if there is nothing suitable on the market.
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According to Lohninger, systems for personnel, controlling, accounting and SAP workflows are easy to buy. The IT is only there for those responsible for the interfaces. The university’s room management or special tools for anonymous elections in the university bodies that are developed in-house. The CIO will work out a new development strategy for future projects. Among other things, he examines low- and no-code concepts so that small development teams can deliver results faster.
One of the main projects for 2022 is the “Digital PLUS Place”. The aim is to create a new, ongoing learning and workplace for employees, teachers and students without media disruptions. The CIO will merge the previously separate platforms into a single one. Here he is thinking in the direction of Microsoft 365. However, IT security and the privacyprivacy to be guaranteed.
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Lohninger also uses the initiative as a starting point for the Data centerData center to renew. Here, die PLUS is taking its first steps in the public cloud, but first wants to create a stable basis. The move to mobile working at home during the pandemic has shown that the university can provide the necessary flexibility and that productivity does not suffer either.
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In the medium term, the CIO will bring together the specialist knowledge of the organizational units and the technical know-how of IT. With the administration and science, all relevant competencies are to be integrated and joint projects implemented. The largest interest group among students is also involved through interest groups.
With all these initiatives, Lohninger thinks in terms of the processes: “At the moment we have semi-digital processes with Word forms and the like, but the processes themselves are still from the analog world.” The team around the CIO also checks the administrative processes to see how many steps are necessary and how complex it is to run through the process: “Through digitization, we want to reduce steps in order to ultimately achieve more speed with less effort and costs.” Where there is no benefit in reducing steps, the process remains as it is.
If something can be improved, the CIO communicates internally which digital processes and workflows would reduce which steps. Then the project manager from the PMO takes over the necessary steps. This will result in the upcoming PLUS digital projects.
The IT department has modernized itself for this task and has also been working with the Kanban method since 2021. “Anything that is neither procurement nor support and takes longer than four hours is automatically a Kanban ticket,” reports Lohninger.
The department holds a half-hour Kanban meeting for all IT once a week. The CIO uses this to make visible across teams what support topics are work in addition to being done: Which projects are running, who is working on what, which team needs resources, who is leading a project and who is working on it? This improved cross-team communication and collaboration.
The team around Lohninger defined the Kanban set of rules for the entire IT and organized the employees in a virtual team. Each organizing team has a Kanban officer. These meet in the quarter to discuss suggestions for improving the framework.
Analogous to the virtual Kanban teams, there should also be a “culture team” that is currently being formed. It is intended to internally accompany the cultural change that goes hand in hand with digitization projects and the increasing speed. It is important to Lohninger that not only change-affine employees but also critics are part of the team. “We want nobody to be overwhelmed by the changes. The culture team helps us to react quickly to problems and to solve them.” This team does not have any executives, but exchanges ideas with management on a regular basis.
The Kanban board helps the CIO to recognize what is being simplified in IT. He can see at a glance where a lot of work is currently going on and whether projects or resources can possibly be postponed in order to free up the necessary capacities. “It works very well. Nobody shovels work into the next silo, everyone pulls together,” comments Lohninger.
This required persuasion: “At the beginning, some colleagues feared that working with Kanban tickets would trigger a wave of bureaucracy,” recalls the CIO. He then promised the critics that the new method would not entail any additional work. He kept that. Soon no more topics came up in the improvement meetings.
Lohninger takes a step-by-step approach: “We thought together about what we wanted from Kanban, then we worked out the methodology and only then did the tooling come along.” To show that the decision was made bottom-up, it was not the CIO who presented the results to the workforce, but rather members of the virtual Kanban team.
In addition, the employees work on improvements themselves. The virtual Kanban team collects feedback, but also organized the start. During a two-month test phase, regular checks were carried out to find out where problems arose and where improvements were implemented directly. Lohninger: “For example, we can define responsibilities more clearly: The Kanban tool now shows who is in the lead and which employees are working in which virtual teams.”
“Our journey consists of half technology and the other half of taking people with us,” says Lohninger. In order to carry new technologies in the areas outside of IT, the CIO relies on IT coordinators in the organizational units. They should act as multipliers. In future meetings, they discuss business issues with the IT manager and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement from day-to-day operations.
There are tutors for teachers who train them in the new technologies. You are based in the “Teaching Infrastructure and Study Programs” department at the university, which is also responsible for the digital learning platform. In order to support the teaching staff in using and changing to the new technologies, they are introducing stand-up meetings and feedback loops together with the IT department.
As a “blueprint” for the technical modernization of the university, a building was completely equipped with new lecture hall technology. The professors were able to incorporate their feedback into the design. For example, the touchscreens have been kept as simple as possible and operation is self-explanatory. The focus was also on hybrid learning. The lecture hall offers options for online streaming, supports distance learning and digital formats.
Another example is the redesign of the PLUS website. For this, too, Lohninger brought the users on board. He wants to present your feedback transparently in order to further improve the service beyond bug fixes and support. Users can enter suggestions for improvement in a tool called “Roadmap” and vote on them. “We want a transparent and democratic approach in order to continuously improve the service,” said the CIO. The users directly what is proposed, discussed and implemented.