Information Technology (IT) Strategic Planning, an organization's process of defining its IT strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue a specific IT strategy, including its capital and people. It is the formal consideration of an organization's future course, where the organization is going, where it stands, where it wants to go and how it will get there. It is something that needs to be well planned in advance and thoroughly organized before mistakes are made that will cost organizations not only a large amount of money but also lost resources and time before, or even if, the set goal can be achieved. Strategic planners manage not only the resources, know-how, a tight schedule, but also the communication between departments and project managers, the direction of the strategy and the outcome of the entire project. Information technology decisions makers within an IT strategy must balance the act between accessibility versus security and privacy, centralized and decentralized or distributed services as well as proprietary and open source solutions. Other factors that need to be considered are innovation and reliability, the users and how the entire project will benefit the end-users, the community and how it will contribute to knowledge sharing. If the new system will lack innovation it might have advantages in usability and reliability, but that again will hinder the progress in achieving something better and more efficient, which again leads to the decision making process if the solution will be a standardized system or if autonomy or experimentation is an option. Many questions and many answers that IT managers and CIOS have to face during strategic planning. To make strategic planning easier Baldridge National Quality Program has designed a set of criteria for strategic planning, which are used to achieving the highest levels of organizational performance by using a well-executed approach to organizational and personal learning. This paper will analyze the existing strategic IT plans for University of Colorado and UC Berkeley and how these stack up against the Baldridge criteria for assessing strategic planning and how the two strategies have incorporated continuous improvement of existing approaches and significant change, which according to Baldridge are significant criteria that will lead to new goals and approaches. Further, this paper will also asses how the learning process has been embedded into the organizational and strategic processes and how this leads to building and sharing knowledge throughout their organization, resulting in solving problems at their source as well as is focusing on opportunities to effect significant meaningful changes within their educational communities (Baldridge National Quality Program, 2007). Institutions or organizations need to be flexible when it comes to strategic planning, thinking about the present as well as future needs, enhancing learning, maintaining or improving their competitive and educational advantage as well as achieve better goals and results. With this in mind Baldridge National Quality Program has developed seven comprehensive Categories which are designed to help educational institutions and  organizations to capitalize on their unique strengths, identify their opportunities for improvement and built on them to achieve best practices and results (CEO Issue Sheet, 2007). Particularly in the education filed, the organization trying to achieve the set goals needs to rely on ideas from faculty and staff, education and learning research findings, students’ and stakeholders’ input, best practice sharing, and benchmarking. If organizational learning is implemented and used at its best, the results will be an enhanced value to students and staff by having improved programs, courses and services. In addition to that it will also increase productivity and effectiveness in the use of all resources, develop and support innovation in new education opportunities, improving responsiveness and performance as well as reduce errors and costs and become more efficient in the long run (Baldridge National Quality Program, 2007). To achieve success and growth, organizations have to follow the seven criteria set by Baldridge National Quality Program which are leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, workforce focus, process management and finally results. According to Baldridge National Quality Program these are the criteria’s that support organizations in the strategic planning to achieve the set goals, implement better performance and support educations growth. Both universities have set similar principles in their IT strategies, which focused on integration and inclusion, which supports the objective to fulfill its teaching, research, and public service mission by allowing students and members of the campus community to communicate, collaborate, learn, and disseminate, within and across disciplines and campus borders as well as establish a well-communicated and coordinated educational technology support model for instructional design and advanced technological and pedagogical innovation, as well as for course content and course management and organization. Another major point that both universities approached very well and which is part of Baldridge National Quality Program criteria for excellence, is the focus on information technology excellence. This includes the easy use of campus applications, systems, communications devices, and classroom technologies that will be or have been integrated as well as provide a responsive IT environment that enriches and enhances learning and creativity among the entire campus and community (IT guiding principles for UC Berkeley, 2004). In the strategic planning category, which consists of Strategic Development and Strategic Deployment, the issues of strategic challenges and advantages are being addresses and how strategic objectives address opportunities for product and service, operational, and business model innovation. In the second part, the Strategic Deployment, the focus is on ensuring adequate financial and other resources for the accomplishment of the set plans and ensuring that human resource plans address workforce capability, knowledge and capacity needs. Both universities have managed to put a strong emphasis on this area by focusing on the critical issues which were identified as IT guiding principles, research, security, reliability and access. Included were also critical issues, such as governance, funding, expertise, timelines and structure as well as participants focusing on student’s experience, teaching and learning (Baldridge National Quality Program, 2007). During the Strategic Development progress Baldridge National Quality Program criteria evaluates the organization's strategy development process and how it address key student and stakeholder needs and how it will strengthen organizational performance. The key factors that are considered in this process are current and future student/stakeholder and market needs/expectations, including new educational service and student development opportunities,  key external factors, requirements, and opportunities, including the universities competitive environment and capabilities, the use of new technologies, budgetary and other potential risks, faculty and staff capabilities and needs as well as overall operational capabilities to meet student and stakeholder needs, including the capability to assess student learning and development and resource needs and availability. The objective in strategy development process is to establish what the strategic/longer-term objectives are and a timetable to accomplish them. The Strategy Development refers to the organization's approach to a future-oriented basis for making or guiding decisions, priorities, resource allocations, and organization-wide management. Such development might utilize various types of forecasts, projections, options, scenarios, and/or other approaches to addressing the future. It also addresses the overall organizational directions and strategy that might include changes in educational services and programs and how the organization will deal with the changes and approach the new arising needs within their strategy planning (Baldridge National Quality Program, 2007). Both universities have a very detailed strategic development plan, addressing all major issues which are part of Baldridge National Quality Program criteria. The critical issues, such as what the objectives are, the impact it will have on the community, the required IT research and student perception as well as advantages, disadvantages and capabilities have been thoroughly evaluated and addressed in their respective strategy plans. UC Berkeley has managed this task very well by separating the critical issues, into different categories such as teaching and learning, student experience, research, security, governance and experience. Within these main categories, the strategic planners have identified different risks, trends, challenges and current status quo. Based on that a detailed description of the goals was provided, and what actions will be taken to meet the identified and set goals for that specific issue (IT guiding principles for UC Berkeley, 2004). University of Colorado had the same strategy, although a slightly different approach. The university identified the trends and their vision of what the outcome of their project will be. After that the university has identified the main topics that they want to improve during the strategic planning. These topics were Educational Technology, Web-based Services, Network and Middleware, Central Services and Leadership, Coordination, and Governance. In these categories, University of Colorado had the same approach as UC Berkeley, by identifying the current trends and status quo and developing the required and planned steps to achieve their set goals and visions (Information Technology Strategic Planning Report, 2002). During the second part of Baldridge National Quality Program criteria for strategic planning, the Strategy Deployment phase, Baldridge National Quality Program focuses on the organization's strategy deployment process such as action plans and related performance measures. This includes information how action plans will be developed that address key strategic objectives, what the key short- and longer-term action plans are as well as how the organization plans to allocate resources to ensure accomplishment of the overall action plan. In addition to that it also evaluates how the organization will communicate and deploy the strategic objectives, action plans, and performance measures/indicators to achieve overall organizational alignment including key performance measures and/or indicators for tracking progress,  and key faculty and staff resource requirements and plans. In this case, UC Berkeley has identified all strategic planning roles throughout the deployment. For each role, one or more individuals have been assigned by name and what their main responsibilities will be during the strategy deployment. Further, the university has divided the entire project into several phases, providing information about the outcomes and timelines for each individual phase. The phases were divided according to the previous topics that the university has identified during the strategy development phase. In each of the different project phases, the university addressed the issues such as governance, security, teaching and learning by identifying the main objectives and the tasks and goals that are associated with it during the deployment phase (IT guiding principles for UC Berkeley, 2004). University of Colorado had a very similar approach, dividing the deployment into several small projects with assigned core staff and different tasks and goals that need to be accomplished during that phase (Information Technology Strategic Planning Report, 2002). The final and important task during strategic planning is the performance projection, project tracking or result analysis. It is important to set two-to-five year projections for key performance measures and/or indicators. They should include key performance targets and/or goals. This performance projection also includes a performance comparison with comparable organizations, key benchmarks, and past performance. The project and results tracking should not only include communication directions, but also gathering student and stakeholder information and feedback, track progress relative to strategic objectives and action plans, including process requirements resulting from action plans and the overall perception of the key players during the project deployment and upon completion. The measures and/or indicators of performance, project tracking and the results should include changes resulting from innovations in education delivery and/or use of technology, redirection of resources, effectiveness of research and services, improved performance of administrative and other support functions, and improvement in safety. Even in the last criteria, both universities managed to adhere to Baldridge National Quality Program criteria for success by developing a plan to assess performance, have a project tracking approach as well as gather results from various sources to analyze if the objectives were met. UC Berkley has a Campus wide Information Technology (IT) Strategic Plan which is a living document that guides UC Berkeley's IT decision making to advance the campus's mission. In order to maintain accurate data and result analysis, UC Berkley is performing various information and data gathering studies such as interviews, polls, and IT data analysis to see if the students experience has been improved, easier services are offered to faculty, student and campus members as well as if this strategy is leading to innovation, knowledge transfer and facilitates the learning and teaching processes. With the analyzes data, UC Berkley keeps their strategic plan a living document, allowing them to follow trends, identify issues and adapt to allow for an improved overall education performance as is the objective of Baldridge National Quality Program (IT guiding principles for UC Berkeley, 2004). University of Colorado also has established a matrix allowing staff members to evaluate their strategic planning based on various criteria. The criteria set were on how to survey student and faculty, communication of IT policies and guidelines across campus including the establishment of self-evaluation groups and periodic evaluation and result meetings (Information Technology Strategic Planning Report, 2002). In overall both universities have managed to implement the Baldridge National Quality Program criteria in their strategic planning to enhance their performance in fulfilling its societal responsibilities and its service to the community. Organizational, faculty and staff success depends increasingly on having opportunities for personal learning, data sharing, unrestricted growth and innovation and on practicing new skills. A well developed strategy plan according to Baldridge National Quality Program will certainly help establish that goal.