Primary points of consensus:
1. Increased training and
and knowledge sharing among IT staff should benefit the team's ability
to respond quickly and appropriately to a wide variety of common IT
issues.
2. Standard solutions and procedures to the address the most common IT
issues access to appropriate software and tools etc. should be the
focus of such training.
3.
Some specialization of staff already exists. This should be respected
to help distribute work appropriately among team members, but training
should continue to be a focus in order to build a depth of knowledge of
all members, increasing individual skill and versatility.
3. Creating a more formal "Help Desk" structure for the IT team along
with a clearer workflow and issue/task management process may help
organize the team and better interface with the rest of the faculty and
staff.
Steps to move forward:
1. Team member will identify key areas of expertise and interest.
2. Team members will identify priority topics for trainings.
3. Adam can assist in implementing an issue tracking system, the
purpose of which will be to capture--to the extent possible--all
incoming issues and support requests, assign them to appropriate IT
staff, track their status and archive the solution. The database of
solutions assembled through such a system will be an invaluable source
of IT knowledge.
4. A draft organizational strategy document can be developed and presented for the Dean and others.
Below is a more detailed list of IT roles and
responsibilities, as well as the "opportunities" for continued
development of the IT team initially identified through discussions
with team members.
IT staff Responsibilities at MUSPH
Personal computer and computer lab support
- Software
issues and support
- Email
client use issues
- Antivirus
and operating system issues
- System
crash recovery
- System
and software updates
Hardware issues
- Hardware
specification
- Hardware
procurement
- Hardware
and driver installation/updates
- Hardware
repair and maintenance
- Training
Network administration
- Network
server admin
- Mail
server admin
- Webserver
admin
- Email
and internet access issues
- Establish
and enforce network security policies
Application administration and development
- LDAP
(user account) administration
- Web
application management (e.g. TUSK, Moodle, Issue tracking software, Student
Information System)
- Database
management and updates
- Application
and database research and development
Knowledge management strategy
- System
and web application design and implementation (collaborative)
- Database
Design and implementation (collaborative)
- Assessment
of new technologies and technology partners
Miscellaneous
- Video/audio
support and multimedia processing
- Video-
and Teleconferencing
- Event
facilitation
- E-learning
facilitation
Opportunities at MUSPH
1.
Formalize ad hoc IT support processes
a.
Clarify IT staff roles
b. Establish
issue priorities
c.
Implement issue tracking system
d. Create
an identifiable formal IT support structure (i.e. Help Desk)
e. Establish
default workflow
2.
Standardize approaches solutions where possible
(Issue tracker can help with this)
a.
Identify core software, hardware, anti-virus
b. Identify
standard fixes to common problems
c.
Build a knowledge base of problems and solutions
to facilitate troubleshooting
3.
Establish training priorities
a.
Identify skills required per role, and hold IT
team trainings
b. Identify
high-impact faculty/staff trainings (must be useful from both IT and non-IT
staff)
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