i/s Back Issues

Volume 19

No. 3  January/February 2004

On Information Services and Technology at MIT: A Talk with Jerry Grochow

On November 1, Jerrold Grochow became Vice President for Information Services and Technology at MIT. He has been leading the reorganization of the central department, Information Services and Technology (IS&T), and making rounds throughout the community to hear what IS&T clients have to say. Here are his observations after three months at the helm.

is&t: You graduated from MIT and everyone in your immediate family has close ties to MIT. You know the Institute well, but have there been any surprises in your new role?

Grochow: I know the Institute well as of thirty years ago as a student, and I know the Institute as an alumnus and a parent, but I hadn't previously known MIT as a member of the administration. The past several months have been a learning experience for me, and I expect that to go on for quite some time.

I've met a lot of people not only within IS&T, but also around the Institute. I'm very interested in learning the business of MIT, which means meeting with faculty who are on the cutting edge of new ways of teaching, and meeting researchers in their environments. As in any organization that I've worked with over the years -- and there have been many, because I was a consultant for a large part of my career -- the first thing I try to do is understand what the people in those organizations do, since that helps me in providing computing services to them. I'm trying to do the same thing here.

Thirty years ago MIT didn't have a network and there were only a few computers on campus. Course 6 was Electrical Engineering only -- no Computer Science. So MIT is clearly a different place. I view the Institute as a new place for me to learn about, but also a place that I know and love in a way I can't say about any other organization.

How will your background as a chief technology officer influence your leadership here?

I've had the title of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) a couple of times in my career. As the interface between the information technology (IT) group and the organization, my role was to understand deeply both the technology and the business of the organization. It was my job to look for ways in which the technology could enhance the business, to allow it to change and grow.

I've had the role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) as well, and been directly responsible for day-to-day operations of large numbers of computer systems. But having been a CTO, focusing on the future, puts me in a terrific position here at MIT. Where's a better place than MIT to think about the next Athena, if you will? What's the next big thing? At MIT, I can talk to the designers of the next generation of network technology, I can talk to people at the Sloan School about how best to organize information services at a large institution. What better place to be to think about where we're headed -- and then help us get there?

What's in the cards for information technology in the next five years? And what challenges does IS&T face, in the short and long term?

Changes in technology tend to go in cycles, almost a sine wave. Thirty years ago, we were developing large time-sharing systems; I worked on Multics as part of Project Mac. Time-sharing was the way to go based on the cost of computer technology and the state of telecommunications at that time. Then we went to minicomputers, then microcomputers, or PCs, then we started with networks, and guess what happened? We started to put larger and larger computers on those networks and went back up the slope of the sine wave. Personal computers can be thought of as highly sophisticated terminals to a very large time-sharing system, like we had 30 years ago. So we have to look at where we are now on that sine wave.

In the next five years, we're going to see further expansion in the use of Internet technology that will impact us directly at MIT. There are a lot of new devices coming in. Although PDAs (personal digital assistants) are not yet used heavily on this campus, there is a huge penetration of cell phones with short text messaging, and these devices are starting to have PDA and web browser functionality. That's going to have a big impact.

Today, almost everyone owns one or more computers, yet they still access very large computers, sometimes in other parts of the world. We're going to have to figure out how to integrate all of these trends, to provide services for a range of computing capabilities wherever people may be, and as they move around.

As to short-term challenges, I have to acknowledge MIT's financial situation and the budget cuts. Everyone is aware of the situation and concerned about the implications for information services.

First and foremost, IS&T has been looking at how to minimize the impact of the cuts on central services, and we are working with advisory groups for different areas to make sure that we set priorities in the best possible way. There will be impacts -- you can't cut 20 percent of the staff and budget without there being impacts. But we will work with the community to make sure that the business of MIT goes on.

At the same time, we're very cognizant of the need for us to look at how we do business. If we can change the way in which we provide certain services, over time we can provide even better services at lower cost.

What have you heard from clients as you've started to make the rounds?

I've been meeting with deans, department heads -- administrative and academic -- professors, and researchers, and also plan to meet with student groups, to get a feel for the pulse of the community. Overall, many people are happy with the level of computing services they get from IS&T. However, others are not so happy, whether it's because they don't have good wireless access or enough bandwidth or don't get enough personalized support. Sometimes the problem is with IS&T, sometimes it's a broader issue of how IT services are provided at MIT.

The challenge for IS&T is to understand those areas where clients are not satisfied and find ways to work with them to improve the situation. In some ways, it's that simple. But if what's going to make them happy is gigabit service to their desktop, that will cost a great deal of money, and we will have to find creative ways to meet their needs.

I have found that members of the community understand the situation IS&T faces as a result of the budget cuts. People are supportive of our efforts to involve the community in setting priorities and supportive of us as we determine our new organization. But we have to continue delivering service at the same time.

When I came to MIT, I was told that we would be merging Information Systems (IS) and Financial Systems Services (FSS). I was also told that one of my goals was to expand the service orientation of this combined group. I asked at that time that we make an important, though perhaps symbolic, change in my title -- to Vice President for Information Services and Technology. As I like to point out, "Services" comes first.

You're both head of a department, IS&T, and the vice president for information services and technology at MIT. Do these two roles overlap closely or do they stretch you in different directions?

I believe they overlap, but they are two roles. As a whole, MIT does not know how much it is spending on information services and technology. One of my jobs is to answer that question and bring to the surface enough information so that decision makers at all levels can look at that data and make better resource allocations.

IS&T provides less than half of the information services on this campus. There are at least 20 other groups on campus that provide IT services. One of my goals as Vice President for Information Services and Technology, not just as a department head, is to make it possible for all these people to work together to find ways to provide better information services to MIT.

I've started a group, IT Leaders, and I'm very pleased that many people who head these various groups accepted my invitation to come together on an informal basis. We will continue to do that.

There are many IT organizations on campus, but we don't present a common face to customers. Sometimes there's confusion about which group is providing which services. We can all do a better job by understanding what each group does and presenting a common face to the community. That will call for a lot of cooperation among these groups.

How can members of the community weigh in with you on their technology needs or concerns?

I'm looking at the whole structure of advisory groups related to information technology. There are groups with a specific orientation: the Council on Educational Technology, the SAPbiz group, the Administrative Systems and Policies Coordinating Council (ASPCC), and others. Each provides advice in a specific area of technology and that's important. So we will continue to work with these advisory groups. I do want to make sure that they are representative -- that the people on them take their roles seriously as representing a larger constituency. We will publish the names of the people in these various groups, so that one way to give input will be to talk to your peers in these groups.

What we don't have, but will be forming, is an overall information technology advisory group. Bob Brown (Provost) and John Curry (Executive Vice President) will appoint members of a group -- the Information Technology Coordinating Council -- which will have broad oversight for IT on this campus. This group, which I'll chair, will advise Brown and Curry on the higher-level issues and resource allocation decisions.

Also, by forming the IT Leaders group I mentioned earlier, we've now got direct communication with the IT groups in the various departments. And we're working with the members of IT Partners. So if you talk to your local IT person, that provides an indirect conduit to me. And, of course, I do respond to email!

IS&T will provide several ways for members of the community to participate in making sure that MIT has the best information services and technology it can afford. It's going to involve a lot of different moving parts.

Do you have any message to the community that you'd like to end with?

I got a call from a recruiting firm last March, looking to fill the role of a CIO in an academic institution, and I really wasn't interested. Then the recruiter said, "It's at MIT," and I said, "That's very different." It wasn't just because of my connections with MIT. I immediately saw the possibilities of where we could go and what we could do. I saw how I could bring my 30 years of experience to this campus, to provide information services in a way that will enable students to be better educated, and professors to do better teaching and research. That's really what it's all about. It's very exciting, and I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

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