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Implementing a support model for IT in a diverse, devolved environment

Bill Rosenberg

What happens when an institution grows in size and in the diversity of its IT needs? When departments are given considerable autonomy, and guard it jealously? When virtually all staff use IT, with a wide variety of needs and abilities? number of things happen! "entral IT organisations find it impossible to meet the demand! #ew systems grow in departments in response to lac$ of attention from the central organisations % systems that often do not interface easily to ones in other parts of the institution, systems that too often are poorly specified and poorly supported! IT staff are employed in departments that can afford them& other staff ta$e on the role in poorer departments, without recognition or training! 'ome departments are e(ceptionally well supported& others feel almost deserted! The central organisations become less responsive and innovative as they try to respond to an increasing and une(pected variety of needs! There is widespread dissatisfaction % from IT users at the support they don)t receive& from IT staff at lac$ of resources and the impossible e(pectations of them! *any of you will find this scenario familiar! It is often called a +crisis in IT support,! -ow should we react to it? .ersuade the /niversity administration to give us more staff in the central organisation? That usually doesn)t wor$ % certainly not to the e(tent we see necessary! 0ismantle the central organisation and devolve support to the departments? Then the institution ris$s losing the benefits of coordination, integration, and % often % depth of e(pertise! What I want to present to you is a +support model, that comes to terms with these issues and provides a coherent way forward! It was first described in the " /'1 paper, +The "risis in Information Technology 'upport2 -as 3ur "urrent *odel Reached Its 4imit?, by .olley *c4ure, 5ohn 'mith, and Toby 'it$o6, which I can thoroughly recommend you read! The situation they described fitted the /niversity of "anterbury very closely, and late last year, after consultation with departments, we adopted it as policy and have begun to implement it! I will firstly described "anterbury)s situation briefly, Then I will describe the essence of the model to you and how we have gone about implementing it to date! I)ll finish by saying a little about issues that I can see lying in wait for us!

University of Canterbury
The /niversity of "anterbury has about 67,888 e9uivalent full:time students and 6,688 staff, of which just under half are academics! It has a typical range of departments for a /niversity, in faculties of rts, 1ngineering, ;ine rts, ;orestry, 4aw, and 'cience! 3ne thing that has distinguished the /niversity)s culture, not only in IT, has been a fervent % almost religious % commitment to departmental autonomy! This has until recently not been in terms of finances& in particular, staffing has been under strong central control! 0epartments with sophisticated IT needs and a strong base of technicians have typically been able to build up their own IT support staff! *ost of those have been in the +hard sciences, and engineering, though more recently also in "ommerce! 3ther departments have made do in various ways! ;rontline support to departments has therefore been very uneven! 0ue to the departmental autonomy and allergy to central provision of services, the "omputer 'ervices "entre % which was merged with the udiovisual "entre at the beginning of this year
+The "risis in Information Technology 'upport2 -as 3ur "urrent *odel Reached Its 4imit?,, " /'1 .rofessional .aper 'eries, <6=, by .olley ! *c4ure, 5ohn W! 'mith, and Toby 0! 'it$o! 'ee also http2>>www!educause!edu>ir>library>html>pub?86=>6=inde(!html!
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to become Information Technology 'ervices % has focused more on infrastructural services than direct user services! ;rom a relatively early date it was no longer the centre of computing power in the /niversity, with a number of departments having comparable facilities! ;or many years, the staffing section in Registry @now the -uman Resources 0epartmentA has done most IT training! *ore recently, has developed a -elp 0es$, which is available to both staff and students, reasonably generous student computer wor$rooms, file server facilities, and the provision of frontline IT staff to those departments without their own! 'taffing had been largely static, other than the development of a computer shop, for many years! 4i$e many central organisations, there was a feeling that e(pectations from users were impossible to meet with the resources given, and that departments were getting resources that could be better used centrally for the whole institution! *any staff felt bogged down in maintaining current systems rather than being able to be pro:active about developing new systems and providing for new needs! 3n the other side, a review in 6BBC showed that many users felt they were not getting the services they wanted, both at the des$top and in e(pertise and development of new facilities from the central organisation! recurring problem has also been lac$ of co:ordination between departments and between departments and the central organisations! 0epartments have developed facilities % sometimes because they were not being supplied centrally % which have not fitted in with other departments, or have not been supported centrally! dministrative information systems have been supplied from a section of Registry, Information 'ervices, and telephone services have been part of the buildings section @now ;acilities *anagement 0epartmentA! merger of IT', Information 'ervices, Telephones, and the /niversity .rintery, is currently in progress!

The Support Model


The four main elements of the 'upport *odel described by *c4ure, 'mith, and 'it$o are as follows2 support mechanism designed for client needs +whole:product, focus2 getting rid of the seams reliable +baseline, information infrastructure matching economic model I will address those in turn! A support mechanism designed for client needs This is the central feature of the model! It comes from the observation that centrally provided support is simply not scaleable to provide for the diverse needs and immediacy re9uired by users in departments! 0epartments have both common % what we call +baseline, % needs, and needs specific to the discipline or purpose of the department! The near:universality of computer use means that there is an unavoidable need for support, as far as possible +ne(t door,, in departments! To be effective, it needs to be immediate, and needs to be matched to the personality, s$ills, and state of $nowledge of the individual! central organisation providing assistance through a help des$ or a pool of consultants cannot get to $now its clients well enough to provide that $ind of service! In addition, the specialised needs of departments can be so diverse @across the /niversityA that it is impossible for a central organisation to $eep current with the technology, maintain the

depth of e(pertise re9uired, and be aware of the changing needs of the department, in all these areas! If it tries, it gets labelled as unresponsive or not up with the technology! 3n both counts, front line and specialised departmental IT support should be carried out by local +on:site consultants,! It is a matter of convenience who formally employs these consultants! If they are wor$ing full time in a department then it ma$es sense for them to be employees of the department2 that is where their day:to:day relationships and loyalties will inevitably lie! If some of the consultants are shared between departments, because those departments do not have a re9uirement for a full time consultant, then they might better be employed by the central IT organisation! This is largely our current model at "anterbury, but I will discuss some of the finer points later! major issue is co:ordination between departmental and central staff and the systems they run! That describes frontline departmental support! What then is the responsibility of the central IT organisation? It ta$es primary responsibility for supporting the on:site support staff and for the IT infrastructure! The support for on:site support staff includes training, consulting, providing suitable tools, and designing and supporting the baseline environment and infrastructure! 'o the central organisation must maintain e(pertise in supported applications and systems so that when on:site support staff run out of ideas on how to address a problem % they can have direct access to someone who can help them e(pertly! 3n:site support staff to be generalists, other than in the areas uni9ue to their department! The IT infrastructure includes the usual facilities such as communications networ$s, Internet and mail gateways, but may also include file servers and other facilities for which there are economies of scale in being run centrally, and little that is needed by way of local customisation! In "anterbury)s conte(t the responsibilities also include running student wor$rooms and front line support for undergraduates! We can therefore thin$ of this as a +two:tier, support model! The following diagram, which is from p!6= of *c4ure et al summarises the arrangement! -ere at "anterbury, as I have already described, it was comforting to see how close we already were to this picture in an organisational sense! There is much to be done in fine tuning, filling gaps, and providing s$ills and e(pertise! 3n the basis of this model, we were given five new positions, two of which filled obvious gaps in shared departmental support, and the other three addressed under:staffing in areas of e(pertise and support in IT'! Three of these have been filled! We have put some emphasis on improving co:operation and communication between IT staff around the /niversity! ;ortnightly technical seminars, mainly given by /niversity staff, but also some from outside, have been a major step forward! This is not simply because of what we learn from the seminars, but because it is a regular social occasion for departmental and central IT staff to meet, get to $now @and trustA each other, and chat informally about common problems!

A whole-product focus: getting rid of the seams ;rom a user)s point of view, it is important that services are designed as far as possible to match their needs so they see usable tools rather than pieces of technology they must stitch together! That implies thought about what is needed to integrate services and applications, to provide consistent interfaces, and ensure reliability at all levels of a service that appears to a user as a tool! -owever, that is a good principle not only to satisfy our clients! By setting up standards that have been agreed to across the campus, we also set up incentives for departments to co: operate, because they $now that if they $eep to those standards, their systems will wor$ together with relatively little effort, that they will get e(pert support from the central organisation when needed, that if staff leave there is less training effort re9uired % or at least they will get assistance from the central organisation, and hopefully, that support costs will reduce! This comes down to the concept of an IT rchitecture, which I $now many of your universities are well ahead of "anterbury in developing! It is the systematic development of standards to cover all areas, particularly where IT systems interface, but also in standard computer configurations and software standards! Then users can be assured that different computers, operating systems and applications will wor$ together in a easily comprehensible way! If successful, the reward is an improved environment for users, and reduced support costs! *any people will be cynical about standards! "ertainly they will be if they are not involved in developing them! 'o it is as important how you go about developing and adopting these standards as which standards you adopt! "onsultation must be wide, and a fair representation of interested parties must participate in the selection process! t "anterbury we have not yet systematically addressed an IT rchitecture, but have it in our strategic plan for the coming year! -owever, we have a number of standards in place that form a basis for it! We are wor$ing towards an all T".>I. internal networ$! We have chosen I* . for our email server! We have adopted 40 . in principle as the basis for our directory and authentication services! doption of Windows #T as our preferred file server platform is under

discussion! 'tandards for print services, to allow common charging mechanisms, are also under development! We have adopted further standards that I will mention under the baseline environment! *ost of these have been developed by wor$ing parties with e(pertise from around the campus, so community acceptance of the result is highly li$ely! A reliable baseline information infrastructure The baseline refers to the common needs of users, such as email, wordprocessing, and so on, and the computers they run on! #o university has the resources to support every possible configuration and ma$e of computer and software product! It also helps in recruitment and training of IT staff, because those s$ills will be more generally available! "omplete standardisation ignores specialist needs, but *c4ure et al suggest that a useful rule of thumb is an objective of a +baseline infrastructure, that meets E8F of the needs of E8F of users! This would include software % at minimum, an office suite, an email pac$age and a Web browser supported by in:depth specialist e(pertise in the central organisation& and hardware designed to run the baseline software with reasonable performance, configured to provide a consistent user interface, reasonably priced, good availability of both parts and whole systems, and reliably supported by its supplier and by the central organisation! t "anterbury, we have adopted @or are in the process of adoptingA standards for an office suite, document interchange, email client and server, web browser, and bibliographic software! We will loo$ for a des$top database product in the new year! The baseline environment caters for ."s running Windows #T and *acintoshes! We have specified standard ." configurations that our shop can supply with a guaranteed delivery time! We are trying to address the needs of /ni( users but are relying largely on the greater e(pertise and support within the departments that use /ni(! 0epartments are not compelled to use the baseline environment! The incentive to use it is a higher level of support, lower purchase costs @we try to site license supported softwareA, and assurance that essential services, including administrative and 4ibrary applications, will wor$ with it! In particular, the central IT organisation will support only those products in any depth! gain, this environment must be designed and implemented with full consultation between providers and users or it will not be accepted! A matching economic model ;unding models must match the fact that virtually all the /niversity)s population uses computing! substantial part of the cost of IT support is hidden! 3ne e(ample is that of secretaries, technicians and academics without +IT support, in their job descriptions but supporting IT users in their departments! That cost is added to where insufficient $nowledge or training leads to them doing things that could be done more 9uic$ly and effectively by IT professionals! nother cost is hidden in bad purchasing decisions2 e9uipment bought without full consideration of how it fits into the /niversity)s IT structure or how it will be supported! That may lead to e9uipment being unused or to unnecessarily high costs of support! *c"lure et al list three steps towards achieving a functional economic model2 1. Measure and fully understand the true costs and benefits of IT. The costs must loo$ at the whole institution, not just at the technology organisation! The benefits are those to the institution % not in technology indicators! They must account most importantly for support @so there are no hidden costsA but also maintenance, upgrades, and replacement of hardware and software!

2. Map the responsibility for costs onto the location of the benefits. 'ome common needs apply to almost everyone2 correspondence, library access, report writing are e(amples! Those costs should be covered by general technology support funding! Where a need is specific to a department % such as specialised software or hardware % that department should bear the primary cost! 3. Assign funding responsibilities appropriately to central IT organisations and departments. /nli$e the early years of computing, centrally funding technology when everyone uses it no longer ma$es sense in all cases! -owever there are still some functions that are more appropriate to centrally fund rather than being attributed to departments! These include % If the beneficiary is the common good rather than the individual @for e(ample, public student wor$rooms& the networ$A& If the service re9uires a large one:off investment @for e(ample a high 9uality colour printer % though consumables and maintenance would be charged to the userA& If the service is seen as strategic by the /niversity and it is desirable to have it used widely @for e(ample a support unit for the use of IT in teaching and learningA& If there is no capability for individual users to control their level of consumption @for e(ample use of some central infrastructure such as name and authentication serversA& If a resource is abundant relative to demand or is self:renewing @such as the internal networ$, or institutional on:line informationA! *c"lure et al provide the following table2 Attributes of services that might indicate central subsidy vs distributed costs Subsidise Benefit is common good 4arge, fi(ed cost 'trategic service 1ncouraged consumption #o user control .lentiful supply Renewable resource Distribute Benefit is local Hariable cost 1stablished service "onstrained consumption /ser control 4imited supply #on:renewable resource

-owever it must be emphasised that this model assumes that departments are e9uitably funded in the first place! The /niversity as an institution cannot afford to have some of its community unable to participate in essential services! These principles provide a sound basis for discussion when the inevitable issues of cost recovery arise! Implementation of them is not a simple issue though, because they have much wider implications than solely IT! t "anterbury we have made little progress in this area, but the whole /niversity is undergoing a major change in its financial systems, with considerable devolution of financial authority! 0iscussion of these issues is inevitable! 3ne area in which change is li$ely, is paying for the departmental consultants that IT' employs! 'ervice 4evel greements with departments in this and other areas is under development!

Some remaining issues


We have only begun the process of implementing this support model! With new staff on board, we need to wor$ on the relationship between e(perts in the central organisation and IT staff in departments! 0eveloping an IT rchitecture will ta$e considerable effort, which will be

ongoing! .rovision of standard hardware is still at an early stage, with leasing a li$ely option to encourage it! There are some specific issues that need to be addressed2 Departmental IT staff Who pays for departmental staff employed in the central organisation? I have already raised the issue of who pays for departmental IT staff! 4ogically it should be the department, but it needs to be done in a way that does not intrude on the consultant:client relationship! n annual contract based on an '4 seems logical! Ensuring ade uacy of departmental support staff numbers The model will fail if there are inade9uate numbers of support staff in departments! I was interested in the recent e(change on the /ser 'ervices listserver on support staff ratios! I had already estimated a ratio of one IT consultant to CG wor$stations for +baseline support, @i!e! not including specialist needsA! The /ser 'ervices information and further information I gleaned from the 1ducause BB conference in "alifornia supports that as a reasonable starting point! major 9uestion is2 if this is accepted, how is it implemented within the economic model? It depends on departments having enough money to pay for this, or the /niversity recognising this as a basic necessity and augmenting departmental grants where necessary! !oordination bet"een IT staff in the institution The support model is a distributed one! It runs the ris$ @that "anterbury has already e(periencedA of lac$ of communication and coordination between IT staff in departments and between them and staff in the central organisation! I have already mentioned the regular fortnightly seminars that have helped build good relationships! In the design of the new merged central IT organisation, we are also li$ely to have a manager who has specific responsibility for building these relationships, and acting as an advocate for departmental IT staff in the central organisation! 3ne 9uestion is how far the institution should go in emphasising the importance of this coordination! 'hould it be written into all IT staff job descriptions for e(ample? Help desk If the /niversity is successful in providing a good service to departments by resourcing a networ$ of departmental IT staff, then one would e(pect that the use of the -elp 0es$ by staff would decline! It would then be used @in "anterbury)s caseA mainly by students! Will that really happen? -ow would that change its organisation? *ight it still be useful as a call centre for both central and departmental IT staff? Other ser ices The central organisation needs to maintain e(pertise in many areas that would provide considerable economies of scale if made available for departmental facilities! n e(ample is management of file servers, or more generally, file server services! -ow should this be managed and charged for? n obvious answer is '4 s! -ow do we encourage departments to use such services? 'imply because they are cheaper @which ma$es assumptions about departments seeing the real cost of what they doA? 3r should there be /niversity policies on such matters? !entral organisation structure We are currently debating the organisational structure of a merged central IT organisation! To what degree should it reflect the support model? If so, how? ;or e(ample, one option proposes

two main divisions within the organisation % one for frontline support @such as -elp 0es$A, the other for the second level support, including infrastructure! Would this wor$, or is it too deep and unwieldy? It also begs the 9uestions of how services such as publishing @print and webA, audiovisual, and management information systems fit into the model! ;or some universities, 4ibrary services should be included in that list!

Conclusion
The neat thing about this model % given at least "anterbury)s culture and history % is that it gives a coherent and rational framewor$ on which to decide where services should be developed, and develop them& to set e(pectations of users, service providers, and /niversity management& and @best of allA to ma$e cases for additional resources! It both draws a line as to what resources can be reasonably re9uested @so senior management don)t feel they are filling a bottomless pitA, and provides a rationale for justifying them! It also brings together many concepts that are often seen in isolation, such as centralised vs distributed support, levels of support, economic models, IT architecture, and standards! 0oubtless, we will learn more about its wea$nesses and strengths as we continue to implement the model here at "anterbury! Bill Rosenberg is Deputy Director of Information Technology Services at the University of Canterbury. Email w.rosenberg!its.canterbury.ac.n".

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