Informationsinfrastrukturen im Wandel. Changing ... - DINI

216 Andreas Degkwitz, Peter Schirmbacher
5. Problems and risks
The risks attending the desired changes are primarily due to the lack of
both flexibility and IT governance. The public-law form of colleges and
universities, which, in Germany, is based on the Öffentliche Dienst- und
Haushaltsrecht (law on public services and authorities) does not create conditions
conducive to the flexible employment of financial resources and
staff. Furthermore, it does not adequately support the much-needed
changes. On top of that, academic institutions still operate on the basis of a
self-conception that asserts the right (anchored in Germany‟s Basic Law )
to “freedom of research and teaching”. Hence, researchers and teaching
staff in particular are granted freedoms that are not very consistent with
clear management goals and generally foster long drawn-out decisionmaking
processes, which the “committee and consensus principle” prevailing
at German colleges and universities actually encourages. In general,
German colleges and universities still uphold the “Humboldt ideal”, which
is hardly conducive to change and encourages scientists and professors to
protect their academic freedoms. This applies not only to changes in information
infrastructures, but also to other areas, as the implementation of the
Bologna process shows 13
. This is one major difference between German
universities and their US and British counterparts.
The reluctance to accept an effective and efficient information infrastructure
as an economic and competitive advantage not only means that
the pressure of rising costs and the concomitant savings is transferred to
central structural areas of the information infrastructure and the administration
to a disproportionately high degree. The scepticism towards this type
of an infrastructure can also an underestimation of the need for a strategically
oriented information infrastructure and it receiving only limited support
from university managements. The lack of IT governance described
above must therefore be considered a far more serious problem than the
shortage of financial resources, since it provides an inadequate basis for
13
See: Lütke-Entrup, Monika; Panke, Stefanie; Tourlemain, Guy: Perspectives on ICT in
German Higher Education. – in: van der Wende, Marijk; van der Ven, Maarten: ICT in
Higher Education – A mirror of Europe. – Lemma, Utrecht, 2003