Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve

 The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help make the higher education we deserve—through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place students' success at the center, and a sustainable business model that has redefined "the campus."

"There will never be a return to what we knew as normal," a university president stated during one of this year's IT Issues leadership interviews.Here, as we begin another year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we all recognize that the higher education we knew will not return. The past two years have served as an inflection point at which the much-discussed and much-debated transformation of higher education has accelerated and proliferated.

Another leader, a chancellor, said: "The best opportunity is to redefine education right now. What does higher education look like in a post-COVID world?" The leaders we interviewed are not reflexively reacting to the changes in the world and simply watching their institutions adapt in response. Instead, they are redefining the value proposition of higher education by reshaping institutional business models and culture to anticipate and serve the current and emerging needs of learners, communities, and employers. Rather than working to restore the higher education we had, they are creating the higher education we deserve.

What is the higher education we deserve? One leader emphasized transformed teaching and learning: "I believe that we have the opportunity to reconceptualize how it is that we are no longer going to be in front of the classroom but, instead, we're going to be facilitators of knowledge."

Another leader described a more "customer"-focused institution: "Universities are going to have to become increasingly commercially-minded and agile and adjust much more to what students want and to what employers and governments are asking from higher education as well. The successful institutions will be the learning institutions that are able to respond more dynamically and be more agile in terms of their response, compared with those universities that are less reflective, less able to change."

Another president emphasized the need for colleges and universities to differentiate themselves. "One of the criticisms of higher education is that it is excessively homogenous. There is substantially less choice for people who want to engage with higher education than you might expect. We need to start carving out areas of very distinctive expertise and advantage and then plug those, in a modular way, into much bigger programs of work. I think the biggest transformation will be the move away from the cookie-cutter institutions that attempt to be all things to all people toward players who really carve out and dominate more spaces. And I think that's going to be a tricky journey."

Each leader defined the new higher education a bit differently, but all recognized that the higher education we deserve cannot be created without technology. In fact, for the first time ever, most leaders spoke of technology not as a separate set of issues but as a driver and enabler of, and occasional risk to, their strategic agenda.

The 2022 Top 10 IT Issues describe the way technology is helping to make the higher education we deserve.^Footnote2 Making the higher education we deserve begins with developing a shared transformational vision and strategy that guides the digital transformation (Dx) work of the institution. The ultimate aim is an institution with a technology-enabled, sustainable business model that has redefined "the campus," operates efficiently, and anticipates and addresses major new risks. Successfully moving along the path from vision to sustainability involves recognizing that no institution can be successful and sustainable without placing students' success at the center, which includes understanding how and why to equitably incorporate technology into learning and the student experience.

2022 Top 10 IT Issues

• #1. Cyber Everywhere! Are We Prepared?: Developing processes and controls, institutional infrastructure, and institutional workforce skills to protect and secure data and supply-chain integrity
• #2. Evolve or Become Extinct: Accelerating digital transformation to improve operational efficiency, agility, and institutional workforce development
• #3. Digital Faculty for a Digital Future: Ensuring faculty have the digital fluency to provide creative, equitable, and innovative engagement for students
• #4. Learning from COVID-19 to Build a Better Future: Using digitization and digital transformation to produce technology systems that are more student-centric and equity-minded
• #5. The Digital versus Brick-and-Mortar Balancing Game: Creating a blended campus to provide digital and physical work and learning spaces
• #6. From Digital Scarcity to Digital Abundance: Achieving full, equitable digital access for students by investing in connectivity, tools, and skills
• #7. The Shrinking World of Higher Education or an Expanded Opportunity? Developing a technology-enhanced post-pandemic institutional vision and value proposition
• #8. Weathering the Shift to the Cloud: Creating a cloud and SaaS strategy that reduces costs and maintains control
• #9. Can We Learn from a Crisis? Creating an actionable disaster-preparation plan to capitalize on pandemic-related cultural change and investments
• #10. Radical Creativity: Helping students prepare for the future by giving them tools and learning spaces that foster creative practices and collaborations

 Source: 2021–2022 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel, Susan Grajek

 

Monday, November 1, 2021

How we reached this online communication minefield

 One of the earliest judgements that looked into whether or not there was such a thing as privacy in private correspondence had involved two of the greatest literary giants of their time, on one hand, and an early inventor of the trashy novel on the other. The case was the final denouement in a long-standing feud that writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift had with publisher Edmund Curll. There isn’t enough space in this column for all the gory details and events that led to the final showdown in court. Suffice to say that after a series of increasingly vicious attacks on each other, Edmund Curll got his hands on over 20 years of private correspondence between the two famed writers and published it for all to read.

Never before had a court been called upon to decide on the privacy implications of a new technology. That said, never before had a technology made such radical improvements on the existing state of communications. Thanks to printing technology, what previously took months to manually transcribe now rolled off presses in a matter of hours. As much as this resulted in the widespread dissemination of information, it also made it possible for unscrupulous persons, of the likes of Edmund Curll, to print hundreds of copies of salacious gossip and place it in the hands of people with little effort.

Technology constantly improves the way in which ideas are communicated—the speed with which they are created, the distances they travel and the audiences they reach. As much as each of these advances has improved the overall quality of knowledge in society, every iteration has resulted in progressively greater incursions into our personal space.

The postal system allowed messages to be sent further afield than was previously possible. But even though this allowed people separated by great distances to stay in touch, it increased the likelihood that what they said to one another would fall into the hands of strangers along the way. So serious was this concern that most countries criminalized the act of opening letters entrusted to the postal department by anyone other than its intended recipient.

The telegraph, the next improvement on communication technology, placed even greater stress on privacy. In order to send messages over the wires, telegraph companies had to employ operators to transcribe messages from Morse Code to English. As a result, even though the telegraph ensured that messages reached their intended recipients faster, the technology introduced novel constraints on what could be said, given that the very operation of the system required it to be read several times along the way.

Next came telephones, a technology that made it possible for individuals to speak directly with each other over long distances. In the very early days, entire neighbourhoods had to be connected using a single ‘party line’ that was used simultaneously by a number of families. While your telephone only rang when you were getting a call, it was entirely possible for you to pick up the phone and listen in on someone else’s conversation on that line. Even after individual homes were directly linked with exclusive telephone lines, calls still had to be put through by switchboard operators who could (and did) regularly listen in.

Each time a new technology is introduced to society, the novel features it has to offer are welcomed with enthusiasm. Thanks to this initial euphoria, it takes time for its effects on personal privacy to be felt. But every technology inevitably faces a societal backlash, which is usually from the upper sections of society, people who often have the most to lose if their privacy is infringed. But then, with the passage of some more time, society typically learns to adapt by adjusting the manner in which people communicate to account for constraints imposed by the new technology.

We are currently in the midst of the latest evolution in communication technology. The mobile internet has upended the way we interact, and, for most of us, the initial euphoria has begun to wear thin. Since the internet never forgets, tools like news-feeds, search and algorithmic amplification surface information that most of us would rather had remained buried. Things said over a decade ago in an entirely different context can cause all sorts of embarrassment if dredged up today.

In a recent article, writer Byrne Hobart pointed out that privacy in online communication can never be absolute. The reason we find it hard to safeguard our privacy, Hobart argues, is that “the whole point of communicating is to violate your own privacy in a controlled way".

No matter how carefully we think about what we are posting online before we hit ‘send’, since we are susceptible to the very human failing of statistical bias, chances are that sooner or later, our assessment will turn out to be wrong. Which means that we need to view the very act of engaging in online communication as a risk management exercise that requires us to balance the benefit we hope to gain against the risks we could be exposed to as a result of it.

This realization has already altered the way that many of us communicate, forcing us to be more circumspect about how we engage in conversations online, mindful of the harms that could befall us if we are careless. The vast majority, though, still appear to get caught unawares when an innocuous or offhand remark sparks an uncontrollable conflagration of public response.

Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal and also has a podcast by the name Ex Machina.

Source: Mint epaper, 2/11/21

Quote of the Day

 

“Life is for one generation; a good name is forever.”
Japanese Proverb

“ज़िंदगी तो कुल एक पीढ़ी भर की होती है, पर नेक काम पीढ़ी दर पीढ़ी चलता है।”
जापानी कहावत

India-World Bank sign MoU to strengthen health systems in Meghalaya

 Indian government and the World Bank have signed MoU for a $40 million project for improving the quality of health services in Meghalaya

Key Points

• This MoU will strengthen the capacity of state to handle future health emergencies like covid-19 pandemic.
• Project is dubbed as “Meghalaya Health Systems Strengthening Project”.

Significance of the project

• Project will enhance management & governance capabilities of the state as well as its health facilities.
• It will expand the design and coverage of health insurance program in state.
• It will improve the quality of health services by means of certification and better human resource systems.
• It will finally enable efficient access to medicines and diagnostics.

Who are the beneficiaries?

This project will benefit all the 11 districts of state. It will further benefit the health sector staff at primary and secondary levels by building their clinical skills and strengthening planning & management capabilities. At the community level, it will enable women to better utilize healthcare services. Through this project, coverage of health services will be made accessible and affordable to the poor and vulnerable.

Megha Health Insurance Scheme (MHIS)

This project will help in strengthen the effectiveness of Meghalaya’s health insurance program dubbed as Megha Health Insurance Scheme (MHIS). MHIS currently covers 56% of the households. Now, with integration with the national Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), scheme plans to cover 100% of the households. It will reduce barriers to accessing hospital services as well as prevent catastrophic out-of-pocket costs for poor & vulnerable families.

Performance based financing system

This project will move towards a performance-based financing system, in which Internal Performance Agreements (IPAs) will be signed between DoHFW and its subsidiaries. It will thus foster more accountability at all levels.

Current Affairs-November 2, 2021

 

INDIA

– Developed nations failed to meet yearly $100 billion support goal: Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at the international climate conference COP 26 in Glasgow on behalf of the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group of countries

– 4 awarded death penalty for serial blasts in Gandhi Maidan in Patna on Oct 27, 2013 that had killed six people

– Army officer Lt. Col. Bharat Pannu creates Guinness world record cycling from Gujarat to Arunachal; covering a distance of 3,800 km in nine days

– CDS General Bipin Rawat delivers Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture 2021

– SC sets aside Calcutta HC order banning firecrackers in West Bengal during Kali Puja, Diwali and other festivals

– India and World Bank sign agreement to strengthen health systems in Meghalaya

– Union Education Minister launches Bhasha Sangam initiative for schools, Bhasha Sangam Mobile App and Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat Mobile Quiz

– Foundation days of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka (Karnataka Rajyotsava), Kerala (Kerala Piravi Day) and Andhra Pradesh celebrated on November 1

– National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) gets registered in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest number of photos of handwritten notes uploaded on Facebook in an hour

– Amit Shah inaugurates elevated corridor on Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar highway

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– CCI issues order against firms guilty of bid-rigging and cartelization in the supply of Low-Density Poly Ethylene covers (LDPE) to Food Corporation of India (FCI)

– GoI constitutes 20-member Empowered Group of Secretaries to monitor development and implementation of the PM Gati Shakti NMP

– Government issues norms to protect bankers when bonafide decisions go wrong

– SBI launches video life certificate service for pensioners

– Shipping Minister inaugurates simultaneous launching of five vessels at Cochin Shipyard Ltd

WORLD

– Japan: Coalition of PM Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito retains majority in parliamentary election

– Indonesia becomes first nation to approve emergency use authorisation of US Novavax Covid-19 vaccine

Current Affairs-November 1, 2021

 

INDIA

– Climate Equity Monitor website on global climate policy launched in India

– Culture Ministry launches three competitions to celebrate Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav: Desh Bhakti Geet writing, Rangoli Making and Lori writing

– Nationwide Clean India campaign culminates with Fit India Plog Run

– Plogging is a unique activity that combines fitness and cleanliness, in which participants collect litter while jogging

– 146th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel celebrated as National Unity Day

– 260 ITBP personnel awarded special operation medal for service during eastern Ladakh standoff

– Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh dedicates ‘Sardar Patel Leadership Centre’ to the Nation at LBSNAA (Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration) Mussoorie

– U.S. returns 250 antiquities to India worth an estimated $15 million

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– Customers can now subscribe to Atal Pension Yojana via Aadhaar eKYC: Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA)

– Amit Shah, Union Minister of Home Affairs and Cooperation launches the “Dairy Sahakar” scheme for cooperatives at Anand, Gujarat during the 75th Foundation Year celebrations of Amul

– Finance Ministry approves proposal by the Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to provide 8.5% rate of interest for the deposits for 2020-21

– Former SC judge Justice Ashok Bhushan appointed as Chairperson of NCLAT (National Company Law Appellate Tribunal)

– Former HC judge Justice Ramalingam Sudhakar appointed as President of NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal)

WORLD

– PM Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron decide to expand Indo-Pacific partnership

– Leaders of G20 countries endorses global minimum tax of 15% on multinational corporations at Rome Summit

– G20 leaders agree on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius target at Rome Summit

– World Cities Day observed on Oct 31

Why Mizoram vs Assam is a BJP project to ‘integrate’ northeast gone wrong

 

Assam-Mizoram violence is an outcome of BJP trying too hard to ‘integrate’ distinct northeastern states. This has unleashed latent regionalism.

To understand why tiny Mizoram and Assam are fighting for territory with machine guns, we need to raise five questions. In the answers would lie the nub of the issue.

First, why does Assam have a major, contentious territorial dispute with four of the six northeastern states it shares borders with but not the remaining two? At least not any substantive ones. Here’s a counter question. Why did India have substantive border disputes with almost all its neighbours, and especially those that came into being after Partition? 

The explanation is that just as Pakistan was carved out of India, and the boundary with Nepal was inherited from British times, four of Assam’s six neighbours were carved out of Assam between 1963 and 1972.

Just as border lines between India and its new neighbours were drawn hurriedly and casually by an outside power, the British, the boundaries of the new northeastern states were drawn by civil servants in New Delhi. If anything, the process might have been even more relaxed because, unlike Radcliffe, in this case the lines were only being drawn within the map of India, between our states. Mostly, the legacy boundaries from the British times were followed.

The current Mizoram-Assam row is a good example. In 1972, when Assam’s district of Lushai Hills was carved out as the Union Territory of Mizoram (it became a full state in 1987), North Block used the last district boundaries drawn by the British in 1933. Here is the rub. The British had also drawn another boundary for the same region in 1875 that gave some of the territory to the Mizos which was later denied in 1933. That first demarcation was also under a law, Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873. The answer to the first question, therefore, is there is a nasty inherited legacy of a hasty division, like the Partition of the subcontinent.

Here is our second question then: Why did the line shift in 1933? What are the Mizos and the Assamese fighting about? They accept the original, 1875 line because they say their tribal elders and chiefs were consulted. In 1933, no such nicety was followed. It could be that by that time a lot of British commercial interest had developed in the flatter, or gently sloped land next to Lushai Hills because many tea gardens had come up here.

The Assamese, on the other hand, have a strong legal and moral claim because they say they can only go by boundaries officially inherited. Also, that they were large-hearted in letting their massive state being Balkanized like this in the national interest. This is also the reason why such intense border issues do not fester between Assam, Tripura and Manipur. Because those two were already territorial entities by themselves and not created by dividing Assam.

The third question is, why have some of these border disputes, so latent for several years, come alive now? And why so, when one political party, that rules India with an overwhelming majority in Delhi, also rules all of the northeast? Either directly, as in Assam and Tripura, or in a coalition (Manipur), through a leveraged buyout (Arunachal) or through ‘treaty’ allies: Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram.

We need to note, however, that even in the past the worst of the violent border clashes — mostly between Assam and Nagaland — had taken place when the same party, the Congress, was in power in both states. The last big one, that saw 41 killed in Merapani Bazar village in 1985, was when Hiteswar Saikia was chief minister in Guwahati and S.C. Jamir in Kohima.

The answer is, simply, the smaller state syndrome. The same reason for which India’s neighbours harboured such anger over disputed borders, and we aren’t just talking about (West) Pakistan. Although a deep conspiracy theory is also believed there that Mountbatten conspired with Nehru to get Radcliffe to give India Punjab’s Gurdaspur district. But for that “diabolical act”, India would have had no direct access to Jammu & Kashmir. Please don’t misunderstand this for my seeing any justification here. There is none. We are also making a limited point that the smaller, newer states carved out of old, big ones usually harbour such grouses. Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal have similar ‘regrets’.

The fourth question then. Why was the BJP, its home ministry in North Block, and its anointed grand vizier, if not the czar of the northeast, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, not able to foresee and prevent it?

Why is it now not able to blow the whistle, flash red cards, halt the ‘play’ and send everyone home? How come both state governments are issuing statements threatening each other’s forces and citizens worse than nations at war? How come Assam has now issued this incredible travel advisory asking its people not to visit Mizoram because they might not be safe?

Ilived in the northeast to cover it in the most troubled period of 1981-83 when four insurgencies were raging and Assam was so paralysed that even a barrel of its crude oil could not travel in the pipeline to the refinery in Barauni, Bihar. Never was such an advisory issued by anyone. Never over Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab at the height of terror. Never in India. In 2021, we have established a national first and it is an embarrassment.

I thought that when I went to Merapani in 1985 to cover the Assam-Nagaland clashes and found the BSF separating the two police forces, and guarding the border with BoPs (Border Outposts) as it sets up along international frontiers, I had seen the worst. How could there be BoPs between our states? This goes to another level now. To be even-handed, we need to also mention the Mizoram MP K. Vanlalvena speaking outside Parliament threatening that the Assamese will be killed. Central forces are already patrolling this ‘border’ now.

We come to our fifth, and last question. Where has India been able to settle its disputed borders and why? India, through a process that began between Manmohan Singh’s UPA and Sheikh Hasina’s government, and carried forward magnanimously by the Modi government, settled its land and maritime boundaries with Bangladesh. Several decades ago, Indira Gandhi had similarly settled the Katchatheevu island dispute with Sri Lanka. In each case, the larger neighbour showed generosity and large-heartedness, not cussedness or dadagiri. That answers the question. It would never happen if India had approached this like the Big Brother.

When we net all these answers off, we arrive at a set of conclusions as to what has gone wrong in the northeast. First, the BJP has erred in seeing it as a monolith, just because it rules all. These are seven distinct states, each with a strong sense of regionalism, ethnicity, and a relaxed view of Indian nationalism. The BJP is trying too hard to ‘integrate’ these. In the process it is trying to mend what ain’t broke. This has awakened sleeping regionalism.

Next, following the same integrative approach it set up an organisation like NEDA. Compare it with, say, the debate over the creation of the Chief of Defence Staff, or now theatre commands in the armed forces. The IAF and Navy are a fraction of the Army. But they won’t concede it supremacy just because of its numbers. You have to negotiate, share space, reassure the smaller partners. Not give them one centralised command system and a commander.

Finally, these small states were created for three reasons: One, because they felt out of sight, out of mind, by the Assam government in faraway Shillong then. Two, to address their insecurities about being overwhelmed by outsiders and losing their identity. And three, to give the tribal elites their own share in power. This was impossible for them in a combined Assam where their numbers were in low single-figure percentages. Even today, the population of all six neighbours adds up to 1.55 crore, which is about 40 per cent of Assam.

They’ve always resented Assam as the big brother. They didn’t want to be dominated by Delhi nor by Dispur. On top of which, the BJP has given them a regional commander-in-chief of sorts in the Assam chief minister. This is impractical, unwise and unsustainable.

Shekhar Gupta is Editor-in-Chief and Chairman, ThePrint

Source: The print, 31/10/21