Why Higher Ed IT Leaders Need to Be Cognizant of Policy Changes

Kevin Hogan I also had a chance to chat with Jared Cummings, he's educators, senior advisor for policy and government relations, and he speaks to the current state of innovation in higher Ed, the impacts of federal policy and government relations, and why higher Ed leaders need to be cognizant of policy changes. Have a listen. Alright. Well, Jared, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. I know. You must have a pretty busy schedule here on the show floor in Chicago at Edge calls 2020. Jarret Cummings Three. Yeah, we've got. Jarret Cummings A. You know, doing a policy Q&A. Tomorrow and then have the CIO for the federal for the Office of Federal Student Aid at the Department of Education, is doing a panel session Thursday morning. And then I'm doing my annual policy presentation session. After that, a lot on deck. Kevin Hogan And knowing your Members well as well as our listeners and readers. And you know, coming from a space of it where I think. A lot of the folks should really get into the technology aspect policy, maybe not so much. Maybe there might be an instant to kind of maybe gloss over, but obviously it's it's a huge, important part of not only their work, but they know the necessity for the for the institutions they. Work for right? Jarret Cummings Absolutely. I think with the. Acceleration of regulatory processes over the course of the Biden administration, we're seeing more and more of that impact at the institutional level, or at least you can see it on the horizon. You know it's coming. And so you have compliance issues during cybersecurity. We just some of the comments and the Department of Justices Rule making around web and mobile app accessibility and then when I get back to your home fruits, there's or notices of proposed rulemaking awaiting my attentions. Yeah, keeps coming. Kevin Hogan It never stops. How do you suggest? Folks prioritize and. Understand what they need to know on a day-to-day basis or week to week basis. When it comes to the. Policy well, I think. Jarret Cummings It it's really important to engage in associations like educause. So we have our policy channel and the edge 'cause. We're site where we're regularly. Providing information about the different processes we're trying to address and educate. Because our colleagues at the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, National Association of College and university business officers, we all have our peace of the higher education, legislative or regulatory puzzle. And so plugging into those organizations. Allows other leaders and professionals in higher education to keep track of the different policy developments in the different areas that impact higher education without having to try to track it themselves, right. Kevin Hogan Yeah, right. So when? Again, you think about. The Priorization right now, what is the state of play where? What are some of the most essential pieces of legislation and policy? That should be at the at the. At the the front of. Jarret Cummings Their radar. Well, I think right now the the breakdown in Congress has put the legislative mass. Effect of our work somewhat on the back burner. Unless you're dealing with the, you know, budgetary issues, which is really outside higher education, is newer space, yeah. But at the agency level, you you really find the Biden administration trying to push through its agenda via the agencies as much as possible. And so. And to talk about the the US Department of Education and the Office of Federal Student Aid is in the process of rolling out. Speaker The big teeth. Jarret Cummings In addition to the financial aid process where the Federal taxpayer information is going to be used directly in the processing, federal financial aid, well, that brings with it cyber security implications for that federal tax information flows down the colleges and universities, and so we're awaiting right now. The newer version, the new version of the agreement that colleges and universities have to sign in order to exchange data. Kevin Hogan Yeah, well, so am I have to. Jarret Cummings College. Yeah, those are updates. Well, so yeah, the, the, the fascia itself. Yeah, that's, you know. Jarret Cummings It's even more significant for the federal student aid ecosystem overall. But for colleges and universities for art members. It's fairly clear that FSA is going to incorporate new cyber security requirements into that student aid Internet Gateway agreement because they have to now that they're handling federal tax information and they're going to be passing that information to colleges and universities. We just don't know what those provisions are going to be yet, right? And so therefore, the ability of institutions to plan and adapt or hangs on when we're gonna get that information. Now fortunately FSA did announce on about a week to two weeks ago that it's targeting October 23rd. As the date to release the new SIG agreement. So at that point we'll get a suits for what new requirements institutions we would face and perhaps even more importantly, how quickly they're going to face the because then our use of federal tax information. And federal student processing, where you know that once that new FASA is released. People start completing it. The process is such that my I believe it's July 1 and. Next year, you know. All of the provisions required to handle federal tax information in first and processing are supposed to be in place. The question for our Members is going to be. How we going to worry about having? There are all of the cyber cyber security issues associated with that and place at the same time we just. Kevin Hogan Don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are there differences in priorities when it comes to different levels of is to of higher learning institutions of higher learning music or the senior issues that would be in court for someone who's in the leadership position Community College the same as it would be if someone to say that you know a large state? Jarret Cummings Institution, I think it really depends on the nature of the issue. So in terms of what we've been working with the you know most directly and most recently. If you're involved. In federal student aid, then, these issues apply. Regardless of institutional size, and so the differences in what is it going to take for a smaller and possibly less well resourced institution to adapt relative to a larger institution? That may have more resource resources, but also has a more complicated environment where so it's hard to to parse out exactly how these issues are going to flow across different institutional types of sizes. Until institutions start experiencing them with web and mobile app accessibility that we, you know, we just submit comments to the Department of Justice on their proposed rules for web and mobile app accessibility. The way in their proposed regulations, they've parsed the difference is essentially, if you're an institution that's associated with a government jurisdiction that has a census population of 50,000 or. Floor. Then you would be considered a large public entity and you would get two years to come to compliance with their regulations, whereas if you're associated with a government that has a census population about less than 50,000, you'd be considered a small public entity and you'd get three years for compliance. And now and there are a lot of problems with that from a higher education perspective. Given that the government jurisdiction we're associated with doesn't necessarily have anything to do as an institution of higher education with your available resources, your internal capacity, the population that you're trying to serve. So that's one of the things we addressed in our comments to the partner justice. You know, we said essentially at a minimum that higher education that large would need three years regardless of institution size and to try to address these issues one by a reality. The department should be looking at first having a different way of describing size and capability in higher education relative to its regulations, and that it also should be giving a more, something more along the lines of a five year time horizon to achieve compliance. And understanding that institutions would have would develop a plan that were achieving compliance around the mid point of that time period that that is a more realistic approach than just saying. Ohh you're a. Community College and you're associated with a city that has a population of 50,000 and one. Yeah. So you only get two years to achieve compliance with these regulations, whereas a Community College in a city that's 49,999. Yeah, they get three years, right? Kevin Hogan Now, earlier today I was talking with Betsy and about resilience and inch close strategies in terms of creating an age of resilience for institutions and one of the things she talked about was the the need to break down silos like within institutions. When it comes to. Was it traditional for one particular leader, say the leadership group, to kind of own that and and has that changed in terms of the sharing of information when it comes to policy decisions and an institution? Speaker I think well. Jarret Cummings Institutions that have government relations personnel. Generally that office reports to or as part of the office, the president and historically that's been responsible for the interface between institution and state, government or federal government. But I think what's changed over time is the awareness that. With these major. Issues and higher education IT like accessibility like cyber security, have broad institutional and powers. And So what you're seeing is an opening of the interface between the government relations and federal relations personnel and the CIO. The see so so that they have that so that the government relations office can tap into that internal knowledge of what these issues mean for the institution. And vice versa, CIO's and Cisos can inform their government relations colleagues and who can engage with the president and help them understand, you know, these web accessibility regulations are are, are pretty significant. But we as an institution, we get our arms around this and think about how we would respond. Kevin Hogan Now, in most of my interviews, I try to wrap it up by asking horizon question. I can only imagine it's pretty tough to look at the horizon. Was the government shutdown and with the presidential election coming up. But I'll ask it anyway. Jared, you know, take take. A look into your crystal ball. And give our listeners or some insights into where you see maybe say that two or three most important. Things that might be coming down. The Pike that they should be. Aware of. Jarret Cummings Well, I think it's it's a clear trend line across the federal government and pushing out to our government stakeholders that. You are about. The awareness of the necessity to address cybersecurity in a whole of government whole of society. Approach has. Really come home. And so we're, we've seen a great deal of policy making and regulatory activity in that space and we're going to continue to seeing at least a great deal of regulatory activity in that space over the next few years as the implications of the the laws that have been passed and regulations have already been in place. Continue to flow out across agencies and the sector. Saying dress OK and then yeah, we're just at the beginning of the renewed conversation in around IT. Accessibility, you know, DOJ's. Of Rulemaking that's currently in process is based in title to the Americans with Disabilities Act that addresses state and local government entities. But that's just the start. And once they were finished there, then they will turn to Title 3, which is the part of the ADA that encompasses private these situations of higher education. Among other Congo private sector actors and. So you know that process is just going to continue over into that rule making at the same time the Department of Education announced last year that it's going to revamp its section 504 regulations around IT, access and dating and those automatically cover any institution that engages in federal student aid. Agreements, regardless of whether they are a public or private eerie also. We filed comments on October 3rd, but my expectation is that we're going to be commenting on regulations in this space. Well into the future, unless of course. There's a change in administration and then I'll have. To we visit my crystal. Kevin Hogan Ball. I'll never tell moment. That's that's all you got, huh? Yeah, man, you must have a. Jarret Cummings Busy day you have. Speaker To well and then. Jarret Cummings The other thing is, you know that's. November 2020. Or can change dynamics completely and we were in 2016 at the near the end of the Obama administration, we were talking about what accessibility regulations. Then at the end Trump President Trump loads the campaign. That discussion evaporates for Miss return. And now it's. Back. Yeah, yeah. Kevin Hogan Well, you're doing the omens work when it comes to kind of keeping all these things under control and knowing that the members of the calls appreciate it. And it's it's important work. And I appreciate you kind of filling me at our listeners in on, on what's happening and we'll be sure to follow your work up on that you caused. Jarret Cummings Great. Thank you for the. Opportunity really appreciate the discussion. Thanks again, Jim.