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Date: April 13, 2007Speaker: John King, Vice Provost for Academic Information, Professor, School of Information University of MichiganTopic: Changing Infrastructure and the Challenge of IT Management
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Abstract
Information technology is infrastructural, but it is an unusual kind
of infrastructure. In addition to its role as infrastructure in its
own right, IT is an essential and increasingly important part of
other forms of infrastructure. IT's role is unique and
extraordinarily powerful, but its special characteristics make the
management of IT inherently difficult. This talk focuses on two
special aspects of IT infrastructure: growing dependencies that
constrain and enable management options; and the role of IT in
shifting control over other forms of deep infrastructure
(communications, transport, retail, entertainment, etc.) from central
control to end-user control, with surprising results. The analysis
is intended to help IT managers and others involved in IT application
to complex organizations navigate the growing challenges they face.
Biography
John Leslie King is Vice Provost for Academic Information and Professor
in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. His
research has focused on the relationship between technical and social
change, and particularly the role of information technology in
institutional change. In the past two decades he has studied IT in
highly institutionalized production sectors including government,
education, health care, transport, finance, electric power utilities,
and common carrier communications. He has served as Editor in Chief of
the INFORMS Journal Information Systems Research, as well as associate
editor for many other journals, and is a Fellow of the Association for
Information Systems. He is a Senior Scientific Advisor with the
National Science Foundation, and a member of the advisory committees
for the NSF Directorates for Computer and Information Science and
Engineering as well as the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.
Until recently he was Dean of the U-M School of Information, and a
member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association.