A Message from the Chancellor on OneIT

Dear Faculty and Staff,

Information technology touches every part of our campus. Its rapid growth challenges us to strategically leverage our resources to efficiently provide the best services we can. To that end, collaboration is vital.

Today, I join my colleagues at the University of Nebraska in sharing with our campuses information about a new system-wide collaboration in Information Technology Services: the creation of OneIT at the University of Nebraska.

It's a new way of organizing our information technology resources across all parts of the university system.

Why the change? Ever-changing technology calls for a more efficient, effective, proactive, and progressive organizational model.

Here’s how OneIT will work:

• Four of the five centralized Information Technology Services groups—teams from UNK, UNL and UNO, plus the NU ITS Enterprise Systems team— will align to a single, unified IT operation serving our campuses in a more cohesive and collaborative manner. The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) is currently integrating with Nebraska Medicine, and OneIT will work very closely with that new team on procurement and standardized technologies.
• Campus chief information officers at UNO (Bret Blackman) and UNK (Deb Schroeder) and their teams will begin reporting to Mark Askren, effective immediately. Mark is the Vice President for Information Technology for the University of Nebraska system and is also the UNL Chief Information Officer. Both UNO and UNK CIOs will also maintain current reporting relationships through a dotted line model.
• Mark Askren has asked Bret Blackman to lead the implementation team that is charged with formulating a plan to provide to Mark for review. Mark will work with President Bounds and the chancellors for approval.

We’re at the very beginning of this transition, so as further decisions are made, we’ll keep the university community updated on any changes.

With input from partners across the university system, Mark, Bret and the IT leadership team are creating a thoughtful and thorough plan for implementing this model. I’m confident that our levels of service will not be interrupted by this change. In fact, I expect OneIT to strengthen our capabilities in many IT areas, such as cybersecurity and data analysis.

Please note that this initiative is separate from the work of the IT Budget Response Team task force, and pre-dates the task force. However, as an effort to provide more impactful, cost-effective technology services to all University of Nebraska campuses, OneIT certainly complements the task force's mission.

Thank you in advance for your support of OneIT. Collaboration is nothing new for our campus, and I truly believe OneIT will strengthen our operations, helping us build on our Maverick Momentum.

Sincerely,

John Christensen
Chancellor