FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Proper security and protection of an individual’s privacy top the 2005 list of information technology (IT) concerns for business, according to the board of advisors for the Information Technology Research Institute in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas.

For the fifth year in a row, the institute’s board representatives have ranked their top-10 issues currently facing IT organizations (See Sidebar - Summary).

“Information security breaches at such companies as Bank of America and LexisNexis have brought even more attention to an area already in the spotlight,” said Bill Hardgrave, executive director of the research institute. “Although security and privacy are tightly interwoven issues, they are not the same. Security refers to a company’s attempts to prevent inappropriate access to company resources. The increasing openness of systems and growing mobility of workers using devices such as personal digital assistants and all-in-one devices, such as Blackberries and Smartphones, have made it more difficult to properly secure those systems.

“Privacy is linked to the topic of security as companies must constantly revise and audit data security policies to protect individual privacy,” added Hardgrave, who is also holder of Edwin and Karlee Bradberry Endowed Chair and director of the university’s RFID Research Center. “Public concern about how businesses manage personal information is spreading to larger sections of business.  The proliferation of technologies like radio frequency identification, which track the movement of products and materials, also help to heighten these concerns.” 

The Information Technology Research Institute is an interdisciplinary research unit of the Walton College. Its board of advisors comprises 18 technology executives from international, national and regional businesses as well as state government. The board provides long-term strategic direction; industry feedback on IT research and education; and, in some instances, funding for IT research. Rather than focusing on technologies, which change rapidly, the board survey reflects broader IT issues. The top-10 issues provide a barometer of activities in these organizations and serve as a signpost for the academic community on research and curriculum issues.

According to Hardgrave, “Government regulations and compliance jumped to the No. 2 position on the list of issues due to a number of regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and requirements under 'homeland security’ that continue to impose significant overhead on IT to ensure compliance.”

Even though budgets, a top concern last year, have dropped to No. 3 on the list, budgetary issues continue to be tied to most of the top-10 issues. IT budgets have risen slightly, but are not keeping pace with company growth. IT organizations are challenged to prioritize projects based on the potential to provide maximum return on investment.

Project management, fourth on the list, is an important concern for organizations because it is a difficult and highly valued skill among IT professionals. With tightening budgets and resource constraints, the need for better project management continues to increase. This is a fruitful area for training. In fact, training is fifth on the list, made necessary by the constant change that IT organizations experience: new development environments, new programming languages and new approaches to analysis and design.

Business process design is an issue that has consistently appeared on the list each year, and this year it occupies the number six spot. IT as an enabler and driver of new business processes makes IT a strategic asset, enabling organizations to completely design new ways of doing business rather than simply automate existing process. Organizational change management is ranked No. 7. Managing the resistance to new systems and new ways of doing business is critical to successful deployment. Encompassing both process design and organizational management, project portfolio management, joins the list at No. 8. How do IT organizations prioritize the many requests for new systems and changes each day? Increasingly, companies select and prioritize projects by taking a portfolio approach to managing IT systems. These organizations choose to manage a mixture of low-risk and high-risk projects; strategic, tactical and operational systems; and small, medium and large projects to diversify their resources across the enterprise and maximize the corporate return on investment.

“We can see that the move to outsourcing, No. 9 on the list, is beginning to change the face of the U.S. IT workforce,” said Hardgrave. “IT outsourcing, sometimes called 'global development,’ is probably here to stay. Enrollment in U.S. IT programs is dropping as students no longer see a bright future in IT. Thus the U.S. IT workforce has become less technical and more managerial in nature. When high-quality workforce is available, there can be positive economic implications of offshore outsourcing. The big issue is how to best utilize outsourcing benefits (low-cost, high-quality labor) while mitigating its disadvantages (hard to manage, negative effects on U.S. workforce).”

The 10th issue is interorganizational collaboration and teamwork, essential in today’s global software development environment. When a project team becomes dispersed geographically, the project at hand becomes a truly complex undertaking. These collaborative efforts create the need for strict standards to enable the seamless integration of new systems into existing architectures.

Board members of the Information Technology Research Institute include: Scott Hambuchen, Acxiom Corp.; Sharon Thoresen, ALLTEL Corp.; Joseph Smith, Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield; Lindy Bowie, Arkansas Department of Information Systems; Doug Elkins, Arkansas’ Executive CIO Office; Phil Porter, Arvest Bank Group; Sandro Grima, Beverly Enterprises; Marty Schoenthaler, ConocoPhillips; Don Hall, Data-Tronics Corp.; Charlie McMurtry, Dell; Bill Holder, Dillard’s Inc.; Kent Kushar, E.&J. Gallo Winery; Kay Palmer, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc.; Joe Rarey, NCR; Dee Hency, Southwestern Energy; Jeri Dunn, Tyson Foods Inc.; and Dan Phillips, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In addition, members from the University of Arkansas include Doyle Z. Williams, dean of the Walton College; Fred Davis, holder of the David D. Glass Chair in Information Systems and chair of the information systems department; Anne O’Leary-Kelly, chair of the management department; Fred Limp, director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies; and Craig Thompson, professor of computer science and holder of the Acxiom Chair in Computer Science.

The research institute was established as the Information Technology Research Center in the Walton College in 1999 from a portion of the endowment created by the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation’s 1998 gift of $50 million. In 2005, the ITRC became the Information Technology Research Institute and opened the RFID Research Center. The institute’s goal is to engage the business community in such activities as research projects, roundtables, workshops, conferences and a variety of student-oriented events.

For more information on the institute and the 2005 top-10 IT issues, check the Web at http://itri.uark.edu or contact (479) 575-4261.

(Sidebar - Summary)

Top-10 Issues Facing IT Organizations in 2005
(According to the Information Technology Research Institute member organizations)
1. Security and privacy (2004 Rank: #2; 2003 Rank: #2; 2002 Rank: #4; 2001 Rank: #6)
2. Governmental regulations and compliance (2004 Rank: #6; 2003 Rank: #8; 2001, 2002: not ranked)
3. Budget versus service delivery (2004 Rank: #1; 2003 Rank: #1; 2002 Rank: #2; 2001 Rank: #7)
4. Project management (2004 Rank: # 3; 2003 Rank: #7; 2002 Rank: #7; 2001 Rank: #4)
5. Training and development of information technology workers (2004 Rank: #7; 2003 Rank: #3; 2002 Rank: #1; 2001 Rank: #3)
6. Business process design (2004 Rank #5; 2003 Rank: #9; 2002 Rank: #6; 2001 Rank: #10)
7. Organizational change management (2004 Rank: #4; 2003, 2002, 2001: not ranked)
8. Project Portfolio Management (2004, 2003, 2002, 2001: not ranked)
9. Outsourcing (2004 Rank #9; 2003, 2002, 2001 — not ranked)
10. Inter-organizational collaboration and teamwork (2004 Rank: #8; 2003 Rank: #4; 2002, 2001: not ranked)