Listening Tour and Survey Results

John Charles, Vice President for IS&T, completed a six-month listening tour with members of the MIT community across campus. The purpose of this outreach effort was to:

  1. Validate previous work done by the community including the recommendation of the external Advisory Council for IS&T;
  2. Solicit feedback on the draft Vision, Goals, and Guiding Principles document; and
  3. Gather responses to several key questions, including:  
    • What are your major initiatives?
    • What are your top concerns?
    • What role does technology play in enabling your success?
    • How are your technology needs evolving?
    • Related to technology roles, responsibilities, and services at MIT:
      • What is working well?
      • What needs improvement?

Listening Tour Sessions

The listening tour sessions were conducted with administrative and academic stakeholders across MIT, including:

Listening Tour Results

Feedback from the listing tour was integrated into iterative versions of the Vision, Goals, and Guiding Principles document. The IT Governance Committee approved the final document in May 2014. Additionally, three high level themes were raised in all of the listening tour sessions:  

Partnerships – We heard that continuing to build and leverage IS&T’s partnerships with stakeholders as we work through the goals and priorities will be critical to the achieving MIT's 2020 IT Vision. It is important that partnerships span the administrative, academic, research, and student groups.

Communication – We heard that communicating broadly about what we are doing, why we are doing it, why it’s helpful, and how to use it is another key to achieving MIT's 2020 IT Vision. It is important to be clear, concise, and timely with our communications.

Policy – We heard that many IT policies are dated and no longer valid. It is important that policy development keeps pace with technology. Policy development is especially critical related to security.

Community Survey

In May 2014, IS&T gathered feedback on the Vision, Goals, and Guiding Principles document from the MIT community via a survey. The questions and responses are available in this document (PDF).