Tell me if this familiar in your school – a new teacher needs help with an online platform. She emails IT and finds out that she needs to talk to the administrative assistant for that platform. The administrative assistant tells her the principal knows who the person in charge of that is. The principal finally points her to the English department chair who is responsible for it.
This type of communication chain is not all that uncommon in many organizations. The reality is that unclear communication like this creates angst and frustration amongst staff members who simply don’t know where to get help. While creating a contact list is the first step in improving communications, this type of chain exposes a significant ownership issue that needs to be addressed.
The bigger area of consideration here is who is responsible for what aspects of technology in your school. In many schools, this is often a combination of IT, Principals, Adminstrative Assistants, Librarians, Department Heads, Directors, or even others. Many times this is due to “idea ownership”, or basically whoever recommended the purchase is now responsible for it.
While a decentralized ownership model is not a bad thing, it does take more effort and coordination to pull off correctly. A set of standards must be identified for platform owners, meaning that someone (likely IT) is responsible for ensuring the security and privacy expectations, budget line, administrative access credentials, intended use, and training expectations, to name a few, are addressed.
Essentially the goal of this is to help ensure that platforms in the organization are vetted for quality, content and to ensure there’s not overlap with others. This ultimately reduces the number of platforms staff members have to learn and utilize and improves utilization with the ones that you do have.
If you find yourself in a decentralized environment where there’s a significant amount of added communication to get to the answer, or you need help designing standards for your platforms, let us know! LeadershipOne Technologies can plan your technical processes so you can save time, money and frustrations on the platforms you use.
