CIOs at German Universities – a Survey by ZKI

Abstract

The ZKI e.V. (Zentren für Kommunikation und Informationsverarbeitung in Forschung und Lehre, centers for communication and information processing in research and HE) is the German consortium of HE IT service and public funded research centers. Members of ZKI are universities, universities of applied sciences and big research facilities with public funding, represented by the directors of the IT-centers as well as companies with a high interest in HE IT. ZKI was founded in 1994. Since 2001 the rectors‘ conference [HRK13], the „Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft“ (DFG, German research foundation) in [DFG01, DFG 06, DFG10], the ZKI [ZKI03, ZKI08, ZKI12]and others [vdH08, Fer09, Gör11] recommended to establish a general manager for the ICT at universities called Chief Information Officer (CIO). Between 2005 and 2010 some of the German ministries of higher education (Germany has a different ministry of HE in each of the 16 lands) requested the designation of a university CIO.