Digital Workplace

During my first year at the College of Charleston, I was been able to meet and work with many people and departments across campus. In these one-on-one, group, and departmental engagements, among many things I learned that there are internal processes that are paper based and worse yet, we have processes where the technology isn’t fully utilized. Both problems have created barriers and friction to operational efficiencies, making it difficult to achieve the growing demands to effectively support and meet the needs of our students and faculty. As a result, we’ve established a new mission for the Division of Information Technology:

"Transforming the College into a digital workplace leading to digitally literacy."

There are two key components of this mission, the digital workplace and digital literacy. While there's more that can be written on the Digital Workplace topic, here's a brief synopsis.

What is the Digital Workplace?

An effective digital workplace decouples work from a physical location for much of the time. This decoupling frees up the work by reducing operational friction. This reduced operational friction has several important implications not just about where people work, but how information is shared, how teams are formed and how people come together to solve ad-hoc problems.

Why A Digital Workplace?

Klaus Holse (Microsoft Western Europe VP) said, "Businesses that will be successful in the future will be those who break down the barriers between people, workplaces and technologies and empower their employees to be productive and creative wherever they are... IT is a catalyst for new ways of working, but competitive advantage increasingly comes from letting employees use technology in the way they want to. This requires a business culture that puts people first.” — HR Magazine 29 Feb 2012.

There are 5 basic services or capabilities that a Digital Workplace provides:

1. Communication and engagement
2. Collaboration
3. Finding and sharing of information and knowledge
4. Business applications (process specific tools and employee self-service)
5. Agile working — the ability to be productive any time and place