Computing Support Working Group

Overview

Background: This work is in response to a request from Provost Bob Brown and Executive Vice-President John Curry to propose a scaleable solution to the computing support needs across campus. The genesis for this topic was the identification of computing support as one of the ‘hot buttons’ for the AAC. The focus for this work will be to select a few (3 or 4) sample departments in order to understand their requirements and existing data in depth, and, from that information, analyze and synthesize the group’s recommendations. The recommendations can present options or scenarios.

Charge: This is an Information Systems facilitated working group, composed of cross-organizational staff and working collaboratively with the Administrative Advisory Council II, chaired by Marilyn Smith. This group will begin work in mid-June and will deliver in early October a proposal containing recommendations for improving computing support among the Departments, Labs, and Centers (DLC’s) at MIT. The key questions to be answered by this working group are: How can MIT dramatically improve the depth and consistency of computing support to the DLC’s? How can the Institute best aggregate and marshal computing support resources most effectively and balance the provision of support across locally provided and centrally provided support. What are the roles and relationships between the DLC’s and IS in realizing this new vision?

Goal: To create an improved, consistent, and scaleable computing support environment that will serve the DLC’s effectively and will be affordable for the Institute.

Workplan

Historical Markers

Foundational Meeting Notes - May 3, 2001
Project Refinement May 18, 2001
Detailed Initial Workplan
Progress Report Aug 3, 2001

Current Workplan

June to mid-August, 2001

Select a sample group of depts that seem to encompass the spectrum of local support provision: formal full-time local, informal part-time local, contracts with outside provider such as IS' DCS, and no local support at all.
Goal: try to answer questions like these:
- Is there any commonality among these groups about their stated needs or inventory of problems?
- Is there any pattern to the solutions they've found that work for them?
- Will we be able to recommend just one solution for all DLCs, or are there a few different kinds of solution to apply to different categories of DLC?
Interviews: CSWG generated a list of questions to ask of the AO and local tech person, if there is on, for each of the selected departments. It was sent to the AOs prior to a meeting between them and two CSWG representatives. The content of the meeting was a discussion based on the survey but otherwise free-ranging within the subject area.
   To date, seven of the eight departments (see the list below) have had surveys/interviews conducted and documented. The School of Humanities is comprised of many departments; Doug Pfeiffer recommended individual interviews with AOs and technical staff of two of them.

   A tabulation of the surveys was begun; results are not ready to be released.
CaseTracker case analysis: IS's Casetracker problem tracking tool records the customer support work of the Help Desk, Business Liaison Team, MCC, and other IS groups. We extracted all the ~4800 cases known to belong to the eight departments and attempted to tabulate and classify them. The questions driving this work are: are the cases that end up in casetracker different between departments with and without local support. Where there is local support, are there cohorts of people who still end up calling the helpdesk and if so, what do they call about?

mid-August - mid-September, 2001

Synthesis: from what we've learned, can we converge on a single recommendation? Are there common threads in the DLC testimony? Are they supported by the indirect evidence in casetracker?
Synergy: is anyone else proposing models of providing coordinated support to the decentralized DLC community? Can we learn from them, or join them, or influence them towards a single approach that the DLCs will find acceptable?

mid-September, 2001

OpenCourseWare: Approach Steve Lerman for a discussion about his plans for providing support to DLCs in the OCW domain. Meeting planned for Sept. 14th, 2001.
Support Workplan Groups -- Distributed Support, in particular, inhabits the same problem/solution space as CSWG, but driven from the IS-provider point of view. Are they converging on an aproah to work that dovetails with DLC expectations? Meetings are needed between CSWG and the Workplan Coordinating team; that team is forming in mid-September.

October, 2001

Develop a recommendation to take to the proper

Research Notes

List of departments interviewed initially

BEH (Rolanda Dudley-Cowans, dudley@mit.edu )
Biology (Maureen Maguire, maguire@mit.edu )
ChemE / MS&E [ASO] (Robin Elices, relices@mit.edu )
Civil Engineering (Pat Dixon, patdixon@mit.edu )
EAPS (John Politano, politano@mit.edu )
Humanities (Doug Pfeiffer, dwp@mit.edu )
LIDS (Eileen Ng Havidel, ghavidel@mit.edu )
Physics (Virginia Esau, vesau@mit.edu )

Introductory Letter to the AOs of the departments
Survey form, original