IT Leadership Team (ITLT) meeting recap

This month’s IT Leadership Team meeting included presentations on the IT Early Career programs, Yale’s Data Governance journey, and the change in Yale-provided cell phone policy for ITS employees.

Early career goals and recruiting efforts

Katie Cullen explained the key differences between the Early Career Development Program (ECDP) and the IT Associates programs. She provided an overview of how both help IT meet its staffing needs. Functioning as a rotational program, ECDP helps passionate staffers explore various roles in Information Technology through three 6-month rotations. The IT Associates program allows recent graduates to remain in the same positions. Both programs provide career-building workshops and networking activities to build candidates’ strengths, as well as providing training and development for each track. Investing in entry-level candidates helps fill open positions with young talent and provides promotion opportunities for more experienced leaders to advance as vacancies occur.

The team shared their recruiting goals for high school interns (6), college summer interns (24), ECDP (6), and IT Associates (25) and showed acceptance numbers. Various strategies such as panel interviews, attending career fairs, and interview guides have been successfully utilized to achieve goals. A robust training schedule based on IT’s organizational competencies is also planned for the ECDP. It was also recommended that managers plan and place requests based on their teams’ workloads before the July start date.

Yale’s data governance journey

Kathleen Broderick provided an update on the current project status. Driven by the university’s needs and business use cases, there is a new shift from a top-down to a bottom-up approach to help guide this issue. To address the complex questions on data sharing in an institution such as Yale and respond more efficiently to requests, key stakeholders, with the help of executive councils and data stewards, engaged in deep conversations and proposed a new mission or north star with an accompanying framework and objectives. It was shared that the group had made progress on data retention policies, creating archives to ensure the responsible use of data while protecting privacy. The team is currently focused on three levels of upcoming work – data vision, data strategy, and data governance- in guiding the community on the responsible use of data and proper data retention policies.

Yale-provided cell phone changes

ITS will begin phasing out cell phones for all staff members starting next year. Reasons for this change include reducing inequities between the majority of ITS staff who do not receive Yale-provided cell phones and the dwindling number who do have them, plus matching what is becoming common practice across the institution. Employees should expect to receive detailed instructions on the conversion process along with a deployment schedule and a FAQ page to address any questions thoroughly. Additionally, impacted individuals will be notified directly. The SLT assured the group that they were fully committed to supporting individuals through the process, including ensuring everyone has the tools necessary to do their work.

Ask SLT (now Ask IT Leadership)

There was a question on providing direction on project submission and the business case review. IT leadership offered suggestions such as providing estimates earlier in the process, creating multi-year submissions, and adding context to their preliminary forecast to give a clearer picture. Teams were urged to implement mid-year review periods during which previous estimates could be adjusted. Though John Barden stressed that this new initiative would help advance the university, he advised patience as teams navigated a new way of working. Those needing help could also call on the Operations Portfolio Management Office (OPMO) team as a resource.