Computing Support Working Group
Friday, Aug. 3, 2001
Present: Marilyn Smith, Hans Dietrich, Marybeth Costa, Theresa Regan, Amy
Francis, Kyle Pope, Elizabeth Cooper, Rob Smyser, Greg Anderson

I. Survey Updates:

Rob has created a project notebook for our work at:  http://web.mit.edu/cswg
As of Friday, we had completed surveys with every identified unit except
Civil.
- Action item:  Marilyn will pursue the contact with Pat Dixon in Civil

The initial meeting with Doug Pfeiffer of Humanities was to identify the
depts. within Hum to survey. Those recommended are:
- Economics
- Linguistics and Philosophy
- Literature
- Action item: Theresa will coordinate the contacts and interview schedule
with these three units.

The goal is to have the surveys complete by 8/17 (i.e. meeting with the
units) and to have the approved surveys finished by Friday, Aug. 24.

In looking at the depts. surveyed and those proposed, we agreed the spread
looked relatively balanced:

local I/T support             DCS (or like) support	no I/T support
  BEH				EAPS			Physics
  ASO				Biology			Civil
  Ling & Philos.		Ling. & Philos*
  Economics			Literature

* Linguistics and Philosophy has a hybrid of both local support as well as
a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with DCS.

II. Establishing 'Profiles' from the data gathered:

We devoted the remainder of the meeting to beginning the dialogue on how to
develop these profiles from the data. The goal in developing these profiles
is to explore if there are a few profiles that would cover the majority of
depts. If that is true, we can then develop resource plans for those
profiles as part of our recommendations to the Provost and Exec.
Vice-President.

Initial discussion of characteristics of a profile:
- Dept. size - # of admin. machines, assuming a ratio of one machine to one
admin. user
- Complexity - mix of machine platforms, servers, skills, locations
(including home), extended hours of support, etc.
- unmet needs: from the survey results what needs have been expressed that
are not being met today:
--- web development (skill sets, dept pressure for web sites)
--- training need (Office, customized training, time to apply the training
learned, etc.)
--- Relationship between faculty and administrative staff - what is being
asked of admin staff.
--- Lack of central understanding of local environment; local contacts
often must repeat information unnecessarily
--- What's in the future, how can central units prepare for the constantly
rising demands, how to anticipate and plan for the future needs of depts.
--- For local I/T support, what contacts and information are needed from
central resources
--- Confidence in the products and support provide - if the dept. has
confidence in the support provider and the services, then the dept. will
often be more patient and understanding if there are complications or the
problem can't be solved immediately. If there is no confidence in the
support services, the dept. will fear that their problem will be ignored.
--- Depts. become anxious about the unexpected problem that may arise. How
can central I/T resources reduce that anxiety and mitigate the fear of
unexpected problems.
--- Extended hours of support , including back-up for support during 9-5
when the normal resource is not available.
--- When something unexpected happens today, where does the local dept. go
to insure that the problem is logged and responded too. Some depts. have
better procedures and processes than others.
--- How do central groups respond to emergencies among their clients
--- What are the triage / hand-off paths - how is information passed along
so that the appropriate expertise can be applied.
--- How does the community know what's available.

We then acknowledged the progress of the previous two years, especially for
software.
We also began the conversation about models that would address these unmet
needs and would fit for the dept. profiles. This will be the key next step
in the group's work to begin on 8/24. For example, how to participate in
the local triage and logging of problems so that information is not
repeated and a determination can be made regarding what is immediate and
what can wait. There was also a discussion about how colleagues are often
used to assist in I/T work and how these good efforts can sometimes cause
stress and take away from assigned work.

Next meeting is Friday, 8/24 for an extended time - 10:00 - 12:30 including
lunch.

Action item: Marybeth has offered to take the survey data and to create a
spreadsheet for our analysis.  She will work with Rob.
Rob is working on the project notebook.