Lastly, as with any planning, the plan and the process must be flexible enough to accommodate the unpredictable influences of change and opportunity. The plan must detail an operating environment that strikes an appropriate balance in covering fundamental issues through a central structure, yet allows individual academic faculty discretion. The plan must detail the emerging need for policy and procedure to recognize and deal with information technology related issues such as privacy, security and copyright as well as issues raised by recent state and federal legislation. Put in place an administrative mechanism to study the issues of organization among information technology units and recommend reorganization to improve effectiveness and efficiency. The plan must articulate and require support of and adherence to a comprehensive set of technical standards.
Standards are necessary to assure enhanced utility while recognizing the limitations of resources.
Such standards must provide clear guidance to both centralized and decentralized decisions and expenditures. These standards must also recognize the need for individual academic faculty to acquire hardware and software beyond the standards. Insure maximum compatibility of information technology facilities Provide ample opportunity to collectively influence local decisions Maximize commonalty of hardware, software, protocols, etc. The plan must foster mechanisms to establish continuous replacement funding for all information technology facilities and equipment. In particular, the plan must recommend ways for units to level information technology expenditures based on reasonable equipment replacement schedules and annual replacement expenditures based on those schedules.