The Strategic Technology Plan for ITSS comprises high-level information technology direction and architectural design for central IT services and systems at Stanford University.  This plan's contents will define:

• What technologies ITSS's current offerings are based on
• What ITSS's technology goals and motivations are
• How ITSS can get arrive at these goals
• What the measures of success are

ITSS will define and promote one technology strategy.
A single report will be published and regularly updated which includes what technologies (i.e. products, practices, implementations) ITSS uses and promotes.  This report must give current technology uses and the strategy for future direction.  The ITSS strategy will be the responsibility of the ITSS Strategist in conjunction with Stanford’s academic and administrative IT leaders

ITSS’ strategy will be endorsed by clients and support their needs.
There must be a documented connection between technology strategy for ITSS and client support for that direction.  If the technology strategy is not reviewed and endorsed by clients of ITSS, it is not valid.  An advisory board will be formed which will be charged with regular review of ITSS’ strategy and inclusion of client input.   It is critical that ITSS Technology Strategy answer client questions clearly and demonstrably.

Technology strategy will trend toward uniformity, not unsustainable diversity.
Technology implementations and product diversity will be actively controlled by the ITSS published technology strategy.  This strategy will deliberately and openly make choices limiting the branching of IT architectures, product selections and operational implementations.

Excellent use of technology is more important than using excellent technology.
The ITSS strategic master plan will provide a framework from which IT project managers, developers, systems administrators, etc. will work within.  This will free them from having to reinvent commonly used technologies.  The focus will be on the quality of the implementation and resulting service rather than on using the latest technology.

The responsibility for Information Technology Strategy for ITSS rests with the Technology Strategist and the Executive Director of Technology Strategy and Support.  A Technology Strategy Planning Group, with members selected by the Technology Strategist, comprises senior Technologists and Architects from ITSS. There is generally a dual  reporting structure for the purposes of contributions to this working group and for architectural review done by the group of development efforts.

Technology Strategy Logical Structure

Information Technology Strategic Plan is structured around the following core diciplines:

• Network
• Infrastructure
• Data
• Application

 While each of these diciplines can be considered discrete concentrations, they are only called out seperately for the identification of key contributors'