IT Strategy & Priorities

Strategy: Shifting from Growth to Value

OHIO IT will shift from growth to value, aligning our capacity and investments with work that yields the greatest impact, reduces risk, and improves the user experience. Our strategy focuses talent and resources on four priorities: strengthening our core, modernizing the enterprise ecosystem, advancing data and AI capabilities, and unifying technology governance. These priorities position OHIO IT to support the university’s long-term success while delivering secure, reliable, and user-centered services today.  

This strategy reflects a deliberate shift in how we lead, manage, and partner across OHIO IT. Meeting new needs once meant adding systems, tools, and projects. Today, success requires aligning resources to their highest and best use and deferring or discontinuing lower-value work. We will evaluate opportunities for impact, set clear priorities across the portfolio, and retire or defer lower-value work so we can fully deliver on the work that matters most.  

How OHIO IT focuses capacity and investment

OHIO IT’s strategic priorities provide stable anchors for planning, investment, and decision-making. 

These priorities are ordered intentionally and reflect where we are concentrating effort to strengthen the university’s digital foundation and long-term sustainability. All major initiatives and technology investments align to one or more of the priorities below.

Priority 0: Credible Core

Deliver secure, reliable, and trusted IT services that support daily university operations and maintain the stable foundation required for innovation and transformation. 

A credible core means: 

• Core services are reliable and easy to use, enabling the university to operate day to day without disruption or unnecessary friction. 
• Core services are resilient and recoverable, allowing the institution to withstand and recover from disruption when it occurs. 
• Security and regulatory requirements are met, protecting institutional data and reducing operational, financial, and reputational risk. 
• Accountability, cost, and performance are clear and visible, enabling informed decisions and tradeoffs. 

Why it matters: Trust in the technology foundation allows sustained focus on modernization, improvement, and value creation rather than fixing the basics. 

Modernize enterprise systems to improve usability and data quality, reduce institutional risk and duplication, and create a sustainable foundation for efficient operations and future change. 

Why it matters: Fragmentation and technical debt increase complexity, reduce confidence in data, and consume scarce capacity. Modernization reduces that burden, enabling more efficient operations, greater agility, and more focus on higher-value work. 

Priority 2: Advance Data & AI Capabilities

Build the data and AI foundations needed to improve data quality and access, support better decisions, improve operations, and enable more adaptive and personalized digital experiences across OHIO. 

Why it matters: Fragmented data and manual work slow decisions and reduce confidence. Strengthening data and AI capabilities enables clearer, faster decisions, more responsive experiences, and less time spent on low-value work. 

Priority 3: Unify Technology Governance

Align OHIO IT’s operating model, governance, standards, and financial management across central and distributed IT to provide a common framework IT decisions and investments. 

Why it matters: Without unified governance, decisions are slower, work is duplicated, and investments are harder to steward responsibly. Unified governance speeds decision-making, clarifies ownership, and improves fiscal discipline and the overall value of IT investments.