A message from Didier Contis, Vice Provost for Information Technology & Chief Information Officer:
I’ve had many rewarding experiences since coming to UW–Madison eight months ago, but the listening sessions we held last fall with the IT community were easily some of the best.
What made them so special to me was how many of you showed up, shared your thoughts and ideas, and engaged in thoughtful discussions.
The engagement metrics in the Moving IT Forward report bear out how it felt to be in those rooms (virtual and physical). Over eight sessions, we received more than 700 comments — nearly 200 of them spoken.
That last part is particularly significant for me. I didn’t know what to expect going into those sessions — a new leader, centralization rumors, a French accent. It means so much to me, and it speaks volumes about the professional culture here at UW, that so many IT professionals took hold of the opportunity and made their voices heard.
What we learned from your ideas, your points of pride, your challenges and other feedback was just as valuable.
What you said
The conversations ranged widely — governance, AI, technical debt, relationships between different IT units. I won’t go into too much detail about the findings here — you can read the report for that.
Considering how big the turnout was at some of the sessions, we managed to get a remarkable level of candor in the discussions. People named real problems, not to complain or criticize each other, but to seek solutions. Some pain points we heard:
- The sense that IT professionals do essential work that can feel invisible and underappreciated.
- The frustration of navigating decisions that affect your work when you don’t feel like you have a chance to inform or influence those decisions.
- The challenges of managing IT services, compliance and technical debt that come with UW’s scale.
Likewise, people talked about what’s working well here, not to seek favor or status, but out of a genuine wish to spread good practices and improve cross-department collaboration. Some items we can all be proud of:
- UW–Madison has a strong people-centered IT culture, where employees take pride in being “essential enablers” who support the university’s mission.
- In the last four years, we’ve added around 350 hybrid classrooms across campus.
- The work our IT teams do has far-reaching positive impacts. Recent examples include the eduroam wireless network expansion, and Platform X, which has positioned UW–Madison as a national leader in medical research infrastructure.
What comes next
As I said when we released the report, we are still only at the beginning of this journey together. This university is large, and making positive change will take time.
In January, we launched the IT Federation Program, bringing IT stakeholders from across the university together with a shared goal of identifying opportunities to strengthen UW’s IT operating model. It’s an enormous task with an incredible amount of complexity baked in. A heartfelt ‘thank you’ to everyone who has contributed their time and talents to this effort so far.
The listening sessions report provides a strong foundation for them to build on. However, success will still depend on your patience, your goodwill and your continued willingness to lean in and speak up with that same collaborative spirit you showed me last fall.
Success will also require that leaders like me treat your patience, goodwill and engagement with care and respect. We must show progress, communicate clearly and follow through on what we say. I’m keenly aware that the trust you have shown so far is a fragile thing, and I plan to continue earning it.
The listening sessions made abundantly clear that our IT community is well-prepared for what this effort will demand from us. Our people, our professional culture, our spirit of collaboration and our shared mission fill me with confidence that we will come out of this process in a better place than where we began it.
As we move forward, I encourage you to stay engaged and take advantage of opportunities to build connections and strengthen our IT community.
— Didier