Research is a fundamental pillar of any contemporary university. Whilst there is not always an explicit boundary in every institution and overlap in delivery of services is inevitable, there is broadly two support areas enabling research: ‘corporate ITS’ and ‘eResearch’. In my 20 years plus of lived experience as both a scientist and a professional/executive, I have seen highly productive internal ‘ITS-eResearch’ partnerships contrasted with institution-wide tensions and misalignment in prioritisation, regardless of clear organisational strategy. There are broad cultural differences in corporate versus academia that often manifests into the aforementioned tensions as well as systems and processes that impact timeframes and priorities.

Here I will present some insights, leveraging real-world cases, into how a university CIO may proactively develop mutually respectful partnerships between ITS and eResearch/researchers. The first step is to understand academic culture and its norms and its implication to effective engagement. I will outline some engagement tactics including required team skills and key staff attributes, governance and decision-making frameworks, rewards and incentives, and assessing priorities, value and opportunity costs (not just the $ size of enterprise programs).