L.A. Community Colleges CIO: Finessing the Politics of Education

Last year, Jorge Mata became CIO for the Los Angeles Community College District, a federation of nine colleges and several satellite campuses serving 140,000 students and 10,000 staffers with an IT shop of 70 workers.

Is it difficult to lead such a diverse organization? Because we're a federation of nine colleges with a CEO on each campus, getting everybody to agree is difficult. So I envision my role as CIO as creating opportunities to come to consensus. The political role is crucial. The people with the trump power are faculty with tenure. They are experts in the instructional field, and we in IT have to defer to them in many areas, which makes sense because education is our mission. That concept is really alien to some people, but it compares to the way businesses relate to their salespeople, who bring in the revenues.

What's your biggest IT challenge right now? We have an aging student- information system, the equivalent of the ERP for higher ed. It has everything from registration to enrollment, and the course schedule is the crown jewel, since that drives our revenue. If we don't offer the right courses, people won't take [what's offered]. We can't outsource [course scheduling], because it's art and skill and politics embodied in one document.

It takes intimate knowledge of why people take certain courses, something brought to the table by the department chairs and administrators. The biggest problem with it is that it's a terminal-based system in a Web world, so there are green screens. We have a lot of soul searching on what to do with it.

How can you operate with so few IT employees? We understand we have to put dollars into classrooms, which are also becoming digital, so our discussion is what is the right balance. IT didn't even interact with students 30 years ago. Now IT is often the first thing our students see of our organization.

How can you keep pace with students demanding Wi-Fi and other technologies? Students are very savvy, and they'll find the educational institutions that meet their needs. We don't need to be bleeding-edge, but we can't delay innovations forever. For example, we don't have wireless access in all areas. We find students want more online courses and can be frustrated when they [see] many courses online and find the one they must take is not online.

They want Wi-Fi in more places, too. From an educational standpoint, I agree them, because we're entirely a commuter school. We know that the longer students are on campus, the greater their chances of success.

With Wi-Fi and college kids, have you been hacked? Not that I am aware of. But I know it's not a question of if, but when. It's impossible to protect everything, but it is possible to plan what to do when a breach occurs. We think we're more likely to be a launch point, the source, with high-speed access, for hacks on somewhere else.

As your college district grows and changes, have you gained an advantage in dealing with technology vendors? We have education discounts, of course, which reduces our management overhead, and we use a contracting alliance to find the lowest prices. We can evaluate vendors so that if there is a competitor, we will know if it's a good price. We also have Microsoft campus agreements, which means we buy a license for the entire campus, which has freed us from being the licensing police.

We have found savings by standardizing on equipment and recently began using two types of desktops from Dell and HP instead of using 40 models. One thing we'd like from more vendors is that they offer students comparable pricing to what we pay for software or hardware, if we can prove they are students.

How do you keep your technology vendors honest? We have actively courted some vendors as strategic partners, such as Microsoft, HP and Cisco, and we have a nondisclosure agreement with them so that they are able to tell us what's coming in technology and we can align our decision-making with their road maps. We know the road maps aren't promises, but it tells where they are focused. We have yearly briefings with them and have rules of engagement. We're brutally honest with them, too. Sometimes I say their technology is great for a four-year college but horrible for a two-year college and here's why, and sometimes they have said, "Oh, we hadn't thought about that."

Since you are part of an educational institution, do you have a tight policy on accepting vendor gifts? I asked our legal department about this, and they said gifts under $10 are allowed, but above that, you have to fill out a form where you itemize anything over that amount.

I was at a storage conference in Las Vegas where one of the vendor giveaways was actually a Mercedes convertible. I wouldn't put my card into the drawing because if I'd won it, that would be completely unethical. Taking a lunch is OK, because that's a part of doing business if you discuss matters. But a $500 dinner -- it's better not to get into those situations.

When we run trials of equipment or software, we are careful that they come with return stickers on the box, which guarantees it is a just a test, not a demo forever.

Is it hard to keep good IT workers, especially since they get lower pay than a company would offer? It's hard to compete on dollars alone. On the other hand, if they are hired by us, we note that there's much less stress, and it's more rewarding, and the benefits are very hard to beat. Our quality of life is much higher here. I would make more money outside, but I don't know if I'd be happier. I tell my team that we change people's lives here. If we do a g

Matt Hamblen, Computerworld