Institutional Operations Council (IOC)

Student Information System (SIS) Strategy

🧠 ThinkSpace Synthesis Memo

NSHE Institutional Operations Council (IOC) – Student Information System (SIS) Strategy

Facilitated by Beyond | June 11, 2025 | Duration: Virtual ThinkSpace (2 hours)

👥 Who Was in the Room?

This ThinkSpace convened institutional technology and security leaders from across NSHE campuses, representing CIOs, CISOs, ERP managers, and integration leads. Participants brought both system-wide and campus-specific perspectives, especially highlighting disparities between standalone PeopleSoft environments (UNLV, UNR) and the shared instance. Beyond facilitated the session to ensure structured input on system limitations, modernization ideas, and SIS strategy alignment.

🎯 What We Set Out to Do

The goal was to surface shared constraints, technical burdens, and future-state aspirations for NSHE’s PeopleSoft Student Information System (SIS). Given the current architectural fragmentation across three environments, this session aimed to build consensus on pain points and identify forward paths that balance modernization, risk management, and campus autonomy. Participants were also invited to react to Beyond’s proposed “system-of-systems” framework as a potential direction.

🔍 What We Heard

What’s Working

• Fluid UI is an improvement, even if still clunky in parts.

• Institutions have built strong institutional knowledge on PeopleSoft — we’ve made it work.

• Current CRM and BI investments (Salesforce, Splunk, etc.) are building digital maturity pockets.

• Security teams have implemented workarounds that at least meet baseline standards.

What’s Not

• Any product in 2025 not supporting SAML is outrageous.

• We spend 6 weeks to 4 months testing a patch — and that’s just to keep the lights on.

• Shared instance means we can't deploy our own features without SCS mediation.

• We still manually sync bio-demo data and handle duplicate IDs — it’s exhausting.

• Transferology hasn’t taken off. No central system for credit articulation.

• We’re always reacting to Regent directives without having the tools to follow through.

• The SIS roadmap gets drowned by other tech projects — CRM, MFA, BI all pulling at the same team.

• We don’t have a way to defend staying on PeopleSoft unless we show what we’re doing instead.

🧭 Where We Go From Here

Infrastructure

• Identity and access are foundational: people want a centralized, secure SSO and MFA solution that doesn’t rely on PeopleSoft customization.

• The current PeopleSoft architecture — especially for shared-instance schools — is inhibiting flexibility. Participants support decoupling UI and workflow layers from the core SIS.

• Maintenance overhead (patching, integrations, data hygiene) is unsustainably high and ripe for automation.

Organizational

• SCS as the central steward is a chokepoint for shared instance institutions. There's demand for clearer governance and distributed autonomy through modular tech solutions.

• Security, compliance, and student success mandates from the Regents are outpacing what campuses can implement given resourcing.

Visibility & Planning

• Institutions need a defensible strategy to explain why they’re staying on PeopleSoft — and what modernization will look like.

• There's momentum for “middleware-first” thinking (e.g., APIs, workflow engines) but it needs clearer endorsement and investment.

• SIS optimization cannot be siloed; it must be coordinated with CRM, BI, and identity initiatives.

🌱 Strategic Opportunities

• Security Modernization as a Platform Move

  • Standardize SAML/MFA via identity abstraction layers to reduce security risk and integration complexity.

• Shift to a System-of-Systems Architecture

  • Create engagement and integration layers that let campuses innovate without disrupting the PeopleSoft core.

• Rationalize Technical Debt

  • Identify repetitive, high-effort IT tasks (e.g., patching, data syncs) and prioritize automation or externalization.

• Build a Student-Centric Transfer Experience

  • Develop or centralize tools for credit evaluation using historical articulation data and digital records.

• Align Roadmaps Across Teams

  • Avoid SIS effort being sidelined by parallel tech initiatives; map capacity holistically across CRM, MFA, BI, and SIS.

✅ What Happens Next?

This memo will serve as the foundational synthesis for Beyond’s Optimization Roadmap and Manifesto for the Future deliverables, as outlined in the SOW.

The next ThinkSpace is expected to focus on frontline and functional user feedback, with an emphasis on the student journey and workflow friction.