Informationsinfrastrukturen im Wandel. Changing ... - DINI

Andreas Degkwitz, Peter Schirmbacher 217
making decisions that have to be born by all universities and cannot, therefore,
be the sole responsibility of infrastructure departments. Here, too, the
Anglo-American universities are way ahead of their German counterparts.
The lack of “governance” is also a serious, manifest shortcoming in other
areas within the German university system. The Bologna processes are a
very instructive in this respect, too.
Finally, the self-conception of the staff in certain areas of the information
infrastructure (libraries, media and computer centres, administration
data processing) is largely shaped by the great emphasis placed on taskoriented
work and far less by processes and workflows. As a result, services
and service portfolios reveal a relatively low demand orientation. The
reason for this is to be sought, not least, in the high degree of staff specialisation
in areas that are sometimes very narrowly defined. At the same time,
work in structural areas often represents a response to a scientific challenge
to focus more on the local developments of a specific department than on
solutions and standards that apply to a many different areas. Such an approach
hinders the flexible employment of competent staff and poses risks
that are not to be underestimated. One striking indication of this is the fact
that subject specialisation is generally far more pronounced even in the first
and second levels of management than in the fields of managerial competence.
The situation outlined above can end up perpetuating local and individual
developments, certain forms of work and special local paths that
neither respond to technological developments and nor find acceptance
among users. In brief, it can result in a proliferation of isolated “self-made
islands” with high scientific pretensions on the one hand, and advanced
technology with a low degree of service orientation and standardisation on
the other 14
.
The above-mentioned risk factors are largely a product of structures and
conditions that have existed in Germany for several decades now and have
become firmly rooted in the self-conceptions of participants and areas, users
and target groups. This is true not only of the information infrastructure
14
Degkwitz (2005), p 333 ff.