the crisis in information technology support: has our current

CAUSEthe association formanaging and usinginformation resourcesin higher education

The Crisis in InformationTechnology Support:Has Our Current ModelReached Its Limit?

CAUSE Professional Paper Series, #16

by Polley A. McClure, John W. Smith, and Toby D. Sitko


The Crisis in Information TechnologySupport: Has Our Current Model

Reached Its Limit?

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The Crisis in InformationTechnology Support:Has Our Current ModelReached Its Limit?by Polley A. McClure, John W. Smith, and Toby D. Sitko

Contents

Introduction 1

The Crisis Triad and How We Got Here 2

Elements of an Ideal Technology Support Environment 7

We Can Get There From Here 17

Seeing Our Future in an Evolutionary Context 19

Corporate Sponsor Profile 22

CAUSE appreciates the generous support of

ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED

who funded publication and distribution of this paper(see pages 22-23)

About the Authors

Toby D. Sitko ([email protected]) is Director of Information Technology Customer Services atthe University of Houston. To manage demand for broader, deeper, and ever morespecialized IT services, she and her colleagues are defining a new IT support structure at UH.Major initiatives include developing an integrated IT Support Center to handle centralizedcomputing, telecommunications, and media support services. Projects also include buildinga full-service Faculty Technologies Lab to support multimedia development and establishinga distributed support program for IT. As the University makes major investments in thenetwork and workstation infrastructure and in “smart” electronic classrooms, the CustomerServices staff is quickly adapting to support them. Sitko’s work and collaboration with PolleyA. McClure and John W. Smith began during her twelve-year tenure at Indiana Universityin the 1980s and early 1990s. There she served in various leadership roles and helped guidethe integration of the academic and administrative computing centers into a singletechnology unit. In this new environment, User Services aggressively focused its supporteffort on providing online tools that enable users to be more self-sufficient.

John W. Smith ([email protected]), Technology Planning Associate at the University ofVirginia since 1993, is a true information technology eclectic. Eager to embrace newtechnologies and study their impact on human culture, Smith writes extensively ontechnology planning, the ethics of technology, and technology futures (http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~jws3g). He has served in academic departments and computingsupport, and managed entrepreneurial start-up projects. Smith’s technology career beganat Indiana University in the late 1960s, where he helped transition the medical sciencesresearch and instructional environments from kymograph and inductorium to computer-based data acquisition and analysis. He served as the first manager of the Small ComputerSupport Group and in later positions helped shape the institution’s vision of computing asTechnical Advisor to the Dean for Academic Computing. He then served as FacilitiesDirector of the computer science department, where he led the department’s transitionfrom a time-shared UNIX environment to the far more flexible distributed environment.

Polley A. McClure ([email protected]) is Vice President, Chief Information Officer,and Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia. Currently she ischairing or serving on six boards and committees that advance the mission of highereducation, including the CAUSE Board of Directors. In 1993 she won the CAUSE/EFFECTContributor of the Year Award for her collaborative paper, “Administrative WorkstationProject at Indiana University.” She often works in partnership with others as she valuesthe fresh insights and strong professional relationships that collaboration fosters. McClureearned her Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Texas at Austin and in 1983 became a fullprofessor at Indiana University. There she was appointed Dean for Academic Computingin 1987. From this position, she launched one of the earliest mergers of administrativeand academic computing centers, creating what is now University Computing Services(UCS). After serving two years as Executive Director of UCS, McClure was appointed Asso-ciate Vice President of Information Resources, a position she held until she joined theUniversity of Virginia in 1992.

THE CRISIS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT 1

Introduction

From the day the first computer was installedin an institution of higher learning,technology managers have dealt with

increasing demand for services. Continuousgrowth of 20 or 30 percent per year in variousmeasures, from CPU cycles to help desk calls, werecommon. The campus periodically entered a crisisstate when specific capabilities became saturated.The typical response to the crisis was to presentthe obvious inadequacies to the institution andask for additional resources. As soon as enoughcapacity to last for a few years was added, the cyclebegan again.

Today we perceive a sense of crisis ininformation technology support, but it has adifferent twist. Our conversations with colleaguesdescribe the problems as more expansive, and theold solutions are not working very well. Wecannot fix the insufficiencies by buying the nextgeneration computer or by hiring five morepeople. In virtually every service we provide,demand seems to be growing far beyond our

capacity to supply. Yohe sounded the alarm,identifying many factors contributing to the crisisand suggesting some useful immediate steps tolessen their impact.1

We think the current crisis is not just a result ofincreasing numbers. Fundamental changes takingplace in higher education make old models ofinformation technology support inappropriate andinsufficient. In this paper we describe the currentproblems and suggest some ways in which they aredifferent from those we faced in the past. Wepropose some elements of a new support modeland suggest how we might evolve to it from ourcurrent environment. Finally, we present a briefevolutionary history of information technologysupport in higher education to put the currentsituation in historical context and summarizeappropriate directions for the future.

1 Michael Yohe, “Information Technology Support Ser-vices: Crisis or Opportunity?” CAUSE/EFFECT, Fall 1996, 6-13.

CAUSE PROFESSIONAL PAPER SERIES, #162

The Crisis Triad and How We Got Hererespond to these exploding needs. Many of theseproblems are common at other campuses, and theyare beyond the ability of a single institution toresolve.

Non-linear, exponential growth is not a newphenomenon in information technology. The basicelements driving demand for services, however,provide insight into why today’s demand growthcurve is so precipitous.

More customers need more servicesA decade ago, fewer than 20 percent of our

faculty, staff, and students were active consumersof technology services and support. Today, almostall of them are, at least to some degree. Ten yearsago, a handful of the campus population wasinterested in dial-in access. Today, a typicalstudent package includes accounts for e-mail, dial-in, the World Wide Web, and networked file andprint services. The educational potential of theWeb alone has unleashed a firestorm of supportdemands, not to mention escalating printing costsin public labs.

Per capita demand for services has increasedUsers used to work for months to generate a few

tens of thousands of bytes of information. Whenthey moved that information across the network, afew kilobits per second of bandwidth deliveredadequate service. Today, a user with a scanner cangenerate hundreds of megabytes per hour. When athousand people attempt to view those electronicimages via the Web, even 100-Mbps networks arestressed. In forty hours of instruction per semester,we can light the spark that will make a studentwant to use information technology resources andservices forty hours a week to write papers, run labsimulations, and interact with instructors.

New users are mainstreamThe factor that has most dramatically escalated

For years we have struggled with the need forincreased quantity and quality of servicesand support. What tips the scales now is the

degree to which our underlying assumptions areinadequate. Three primary issues characterize thecurrent crisis:◆ Demands on central information technology

(IT) organizations are overwhelming◆ Support quality is deteriorating◆ Central IT organizations are becoming the

scapegoatTo create a solution, we must understand themechanisms behind each of these issues.

Central organizations areoverwhelmed by demand

Faculty and administrators on our campusesincreasingly perceive information technology tobe critical to their work, and they want centraltechnology organizations to promptly meet theirchanging expectations. At the University ofVirginia, for example, demand for dial-in lines hasincreased by more than 100 percent each of thelast two years, as have calls to the help desk,network traffic, and requests for UNIX accountsfor Web pages. Administrators are demandingelectronic forms and information warehouses; weneed to replace our legacy systems with modernclient/server integrated applications. Faculty needsupport in introducing technology into theirclasses; they want properly designed and equippedclassroom facilities in which to work. Recordnumbers of students bring computers to campus,and they want Ethernet cards installed andconfigured as soon as they arrive. When Internetperformance decreased last spring, research facultydemanded improvements in this fundamentalresource for their work. Budgets have not increasedsignificantly for the past five years at theUniversity, nor has the number of people to


the demand for support is the new breed of user.Two decades ago, our users were a hardy group,knowledgeable about and seriously interested incomputing. They were tolerant of systemidiosyncrasies and failures. Adequate supportmeant posting signs in the computer center withexamples of the control cards users needed inorder to run different kinds of jobs. We wrotedocumentation and they had the motivation andexpertise to decipher it. Recent users ofinformation technology are often not particularlyinterested in the technology itself, and they arewilling to spend only minimal time and effort tolearn to use it. How we support the last 20 percentof the population that we are bringing into thetechnology environment is very different from theway we supported the early adopters. New userswant “complete products.”2

Multivendor, distributed technologyrequires high-level support

The support burden derives from the increasedcomplexity of desktop applications themselves,and, increasingly, from how those applicationsinterconnect. A typical end-user application todaymight involve a desktop computer, a departmentalnetwork and server, the campus network, and amainframe information source. The end-to-endinformation path involves multiple systems andseveral administrative units. New technologies,such as object linking and embedding,significantly increase the complexity andinterdependencies among applications. Users arenot satisfied with accessing and manipulating onlynumbers and text. They expect images, sounds,and full-motion video. Users also demandtransparent interoperability between applications,regardless of the operating system or vendor. Twosystems that work just fine by themselves can

develop problems when interconnected. Thenumber of potential problems increasesmultiplicatively as more and more heterogeneouscomponents are added to the mix. Simply movinga linked file into a different subdirectory can breakapplications campuswide. Common userapplications, such as library bibliography access,pass through technologies managed and controlledby different administrative units. Thus we mustdeal not only with technical interactivity, but alsocultural and administrative diversity.

Funding models are inappropriateMany of our institutions are still operating

using library models of providing “free”computing resources. This model was probablyappropriate when the computer was a fixed-costmainframe and we were trying to promote use ofthe network. Now that the value of informationtechnology is well established, many of us stillhave not shifted into other economic models thatwill help to better manage demand. Outmodedmodels cause significant problems, includingmaking it difficult for users to match costs andbenefits, promoting excessive consumption ofresources, and contributing to the support crisiswe are experiencing.

Support quality deteriorates

In the absence of a significant change in approach,the mismatch between demand and capacityproduces a death spiral of decreased quality ofservice and support. Continuing the University ofVirginia example, contention for dial-in lines is sofierce that individuals set up attack dialers andthen camp on in an attempt to assure continuedaccess. During the first month of the academicyear, the call-waiting queue at the help desk islonger than the line at a Grateful Dead concert.

Information technology staff are frustratedbecause they cannot meet needs, despite the longhours they invest at work. Once viewed as heroes,these same people are now considered

2 Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing andSelling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers (New York:HarperBusiness, 1991).


incompetent because they cannot handle the floodof requests. In an attempt to serve, help desk staffimplement automated solutions to providing helpthat irritate customers who want the personaltouch. We do not have time to plan successfulimplementation and support of new technologiesor to communicate with customers about changes.Instead, we rush new services out the door.Because they are not production-quality services,they further increase pressure on the help desk,and the spiral continues.

It is easy to understand that if demand isdrastically increasing and support resources arenot, both the quantity and quality of support willdiminish. Given the difference between demandand supply on most campuses, perhaps the mostamazing observation is that our supportmechanisms have not entirely collapsed—perhapsbecause some users have developed their ownsupport mechanisms.

Some say we are approaching crisis, when thedata indicate that we should actually be inmeltdown. In addition to the simple mismatchbetween supply and demand, qualitative changesin the technology environment of our institutionsalso contribute to the deteriorating level ofsupport. Exploring the mechanisms andcharacteristics of technology support will providea better understanding of the problem and willultimately lead us to a possible solution.

Centrally provided primarycustomer support does not scale

Primary support consists of answering userquestions directly with the customer. Thiscontrasts with secondary or expert support inwhich a group of staff provides informationresources, tools, deep expertise, and backup forthose who provide the front-line, primaryresponse.

Historically, when users were fewer and morehomogeneous, the computer center provided mostof the primary support, often employing expertconsultants and programmers to do so. As the

population of users has changed, this practice hasbecome both ineffective and inefficient. It isineffective because no single consultant canpossibly know all the answers that the widespectrum of users requires. The variety of userinformation needs spans such a broad range oftechnology services and computing applicationsthat users, especially new users, often havedifficulty communicating the critical elements oftheir environments in terms that experts can use toanswer their questions. As we scale up the numberof these questions, it also becomes inefficient touse highly skilled experts to provide primaryconsultation, such as “Have you turned on thepower switch?” Instead we need people on thefront lines who are trained in diagnosis, more likeprimary care physicians, rather than specialists. Asingle pool of staff will be less good at answeringfront-line questions for a heterogeneouspopulation of thousands of users than the samenumber of staff who are divided among the usersin smaller sets, with the opportunity to learn thecapabilities and environments of their individualsubsets of customers. Thus, we believe that thecurrent centralized primary support model inmany institutions is doomed to collapse.

One exception we see is centrally provided,subject-specific consulting and service centers,such as the Center for Mathematical and StatisticalConsulting at Indiana University, the AcademicComputing-Health Sciences Center at theUniversity of Virginia, and the High PerformanceComputing Center that is now getting started atthe University of Houston. These centers provideprimary and expert consulting and often systemand network administration, and they seem to bevery successful in meeting their users’ needs.However, unlike general help desks or consultingpools, their domain is very focused in content andthey serve a small subset of the entire range ofusers on campus. These centers seem to be theexceptions that prove our rule.


Assignment of support responsibility isambiguous

As central resources fell behind in their abilityto meet demand, users responded in two ways.Those who assumed it was the responsibility of thecentral technology organization to provide all ofthe answers and help they required took theposition that it was the IT organization’s job toteach, rather than their responsibility to learn.Departments and individuals purchased hardwareand software that did not meet their requirementsand then expected central support to make it allwork. In many cases, the IT organization haspromoted these misperceptions by attempting toconvince the institution that it had completeresponsibility. Some distributed units, however,responded by developing their own supportmechanisms that functioned quite independentlyof the central services. Many of these have notbeen able to keep up with the increasingcomplexity of technology or to interconnect theiridiosyncratic environments with the rest of thecampus and world. The central organization’sresponse to these units has often been to simplyignore them, relinquishing the ability to influenceusers’ decisions and learn from their experiences(both bad and good). In either case, both centraltechnology staff and the users perceived thequality of support to be significantly diminished.

Distributed systems need special supportProblems with local area networks, desktop

client applications, and remote access aresometimes impossible to troubleshoot from adistance. With no one else to turn to, the userresorts to central technology support providers.This no-win situation causes frustration for thecustomer and serious demoralization for thesupport staff who try valiantly to find solutionsfrom afar. Unable to do so, they eventually makeoffice calls or house calls. This wonderfullypersonalized service typically alienates othercustomers unless there are enough supportproviders to handle everyone’s needs this way.

Every machine in the institution is differentIn the early 1980s, microcomputers were

limited in processing capability. Software waslikewise very limited in functionality. Under theseconditions, the choices we had to makesignificantly determined the degree to which ourmachine actually met our needs. No machinecould solve all of our problems, so we chose theone that came closest and that we could put on ourdesk soonest. In addition, we funded ourequipment through donations, grants, begging,and every one-time method we knew.Compounded over a decade or so, the result ofthese practices—especially at large researchuniversities—is an assemblage of equipment,software, and configurations that is nearlyinsupportable at any reasonable cost.

Central units are mergingThere has been a trend over the past five years

to consolidate academic and administrativecomputing organizations and, in many cases, alsotelecommunications, media services, and librariesinto a single organization. These mergers areprobably the right thing to do, but they requireredefinition of identity and responsibilities forstaff and users and major reorientation—bothtechnical and cultural. Precisely how this affectsthe effectiveness and efficiency of the support staffand the user’s ability to get needed support is notclear, but it may contribute to a sense offrustration. On the other hand, there are synergiesand new knowledge that result from theseorganizational changes that promise, at leasteventually, to outweigh the transient problems.

Central IT organizations are thescapegoat

Faculty, administrators, and students havefollowed our lead by incorporating informationtechnologies into their daily work. We providedextensive personal support to enable facultypioneers to enhance instruction through


technology. Now they have demonstrated whatthey have been able to do, and they are not aboutto return to the industrial model of scholarlywork. In most institutions, these customers haveno idea of the impact of their consumption on thesupport organization; they mainly know that theirown needs are no longer being met. Also, manyhave no idea of the cost of the services they wantbecause we have set up economic systems thathide that information from them. Under theconditions we have created, it is likely that theywill conclude that we are not doing our jobs.

Given the now inappropriate but historicallybased perception—reinforced at great cost by ourcentral technology organizations—that we are theauthorities on all aspects of informationtechnology management, it should not surprise usthat we are being given full responsibility for thecurrent problems. In addition to this first-leveleffect, some other factors are contributing to whatappears to be a rash of scapegoating of our centralorganizations.

Central organization/budget is a big, easy targetWhen problems occur, human beings seem to

need to fix blame, even if, as in this case, thecauses are diffuse. Over the past decade, thecentral IT organization has made itself very visiblewith its requests for huge levels of new funds andits promises of wonderful new solutions. Thosefunds, staff, and promises make IT organizations anatural target of criticism. Even the very mostprogressive such organizations in the mostprestigious institutions are periodically subject toloud and angry calls for major change from theuser community.

Computing has become truly distributedAlmost everyone today understands that,

technically, the information environment isdistributed. It is more difficult to grasp that thedistribution extends to the authority over, and theresponsibility for, that environment. Thecontemporary information environment is too

complex and too interconnected for any individualor unit (departmental or central) to whollyconceive, manage, and maintain. It is not the jobof the academic departments to do this. We cannotexpect them to understand the complexities of theenvironment (that, after all, is our job), but we canexpect them to hold us accountable if theenvironment does not work.

Technology and content are more integratedNew types of information products cannot be

separated from their underlying technologyframework. In the days of data processing,computers performed functions that were simplyenhancements to manual operations. Not so today.For instance, a network-based hypermedia“textbook” does not exist if we remove thetechnology. The integration between form andcontent means that availability and performance ofthe technology is fundamental to the existence ofthe academic content. No wonder those who havespent their lives developing content are becomingless inclined to give complete control over thetechnology to the technology organization.

New users want authority, but lack expertise tomake decisions

Users who have only experienced informationsystems through a Windows, Macintosh, or Webinterface may be inclined to believe that “all ittakes is a click” to achieve the power and magicthey experience every day. These users do notunderstand the mechanisms underlying this magicand the complexity required to make it all happen.Technology staff work with tools that most staff,faculty, and administrators do not understand.Nonetheless, these users and administrators assumethat they do, and that their decisions are as valid,or more so, than those of the technologyprofessional with twenty years of experience.

Expectations exceed resourcesMost information technology organizations in

higher education experienced significant increases


in funding during the mid- to late-1980s, but notduring the rapid growth phase of the past fewyears. We contributed to expanded expectationsduring the 1980s, anticipating that resourceswould continue to grow. We did not communicateabout how technology dollars were being spent, soneither users nor administrators were able toanticipate the current crisis in technology support.The economic and political climate for highereducation is very different in the mid-1990s, andwe are not in a good position to respond.

User involvement in IT decisions is insufficientOne of the best ways to secure broad

“ownership” of a decision is to have those affected

involved in making the decision. For veryunderstandable reasons, many of our institutionshave been less inclusive than they might havebeen. In some cases, those outside our businesswere ill prepared to deal with the technical side ofthe decisions. In others, users were not interested.In still others, the administrative style of ourinstitutions did not fully support collaborativedecision-making. There may even have been alittle jealous guarding of our own prerogatives.Whatever the reasons, we have missed manyopportunities to educate our constituencies inways that might have allowed them to be moreconstructive in their assessment of the currentcrisis.

Elements of an Ideal TechnologySupport Environment

How can our institutions respond to thiscrisis? We propose a new, holistic modelof support that includes four core

components:◆ A “whole-product” focus◆ A strategic economic model◆ A support mechanism focused on customer

needs◆ A reliable baseline information infrastructure

Below are examples of how each component mightbe applied in a college or university. Naturally, thespecific implementations will vary acrossinstitutions. Of utmost importance is that for themodel to work, all four components must beaddressed and implemented holistically as part ofthe redefinition of technology support.

A whole-product focus

The new “average” userA primary result of ubiquitous information

technology on our campuses is a change in thenature of the “average” user. Early adopters ofinformation technology were interested intechnology for its own sake and were willing toexpend considerable effort to apply it to theiracademic work. These people still exist on campus,but today’s mainstream users simply want to usetechnology to do meaningful work. For example,they are not fascinated with e-mail, but need it tocommunicate with colleagues; they think of wordprocessing as a tool for writing papers and grants,not as something they want to spend hourslearning to use.


Integrated service, not more technologyIn our current support model, the response to

increased demand is to supply more capability andcapacity (cycles, bandwidth, sectors), offer sometraining on the use of specific technologies, andprovide a source of answers to questions. It is leftto the users to integrate these services. Forinstance, communicating requires more than wordprocessing and e-mail. Users must compose amessage, find the right e-mail address, transmit themessage over the proper medium, and file theinformation away for later reference. In today’stechnology environment, these tasks can requirefour different applications. With the technologyavailable on the desktops, networks, and servers ofour institutions, we can do a much better job ofproviding fully integrated environments for basicinformation functions such as correspondence,classroom presentation, grant management, and soon. These are what we call “whole-product”environments.

Consistent and reliable whole-productenvironments

Early technology adopters were accustomed toinconsistencies. They knew that if the “quit”command did not close an application, “done,”“bye,” “exit,” or “esc” likely would. Today’saverage users lack this knowledge and experienceand are more likely to use the “reset” function oftheir computers than to try different solutions. Ifthey lose their work by resetting, they may stopusing the technology because “it doesn’t work,” orthey will turn to support providers for help.

When technology merely supplements the waywe do business, we can tolerate a lower level ofreliability. If the computer display system fails atour conference presentation, we can generally usebackup optical foils. If our presentation dependsupon real-time Web access, however, thetechnology must work. We cannot tolerateproblems with data format, projector resolution,noisy phone lines, or an off-line server. Whencustomers find that they cannot depend upon the

technology we have been promoting, they suspectus, our organization, and technology itself. Weunderstand the complexity of the environmentand may think our service is pretty good under thecircumstances. Nonetheless, customers measureour success in terms of results, and if service isunreliable, we have failed to do our jobs.

A strategic economic model3

Problems with some current funding modelsMany institutions have been willing to make

huge investments in information technology, notbecause they saw the value in it, but because theywere afraid not to. This has served us well in thepast, since we have been able to respond rapidly toincreasing demand for more, better, and differentservices and technologies. Now, however,customers have come to expect that capability andcapacity are “free,” and consumption is expandingat an increasing rate. Even when the supply shiftedfrom central mainframes and minicomputers toperipheral personal computers, funding oftenremained central, i.e., the dean or provost ratherthan the individual departments supplied thedollars for departmental servers and for facultyworkstations. This economic model is functionalwhen 30 percent or 40 percent of the campus usesthe technology and the total technologyexpenditures are proportionally small. It results incrisis when 90 percent or 100 percent of thepopulation needs the technology and institutionalexpenditures become large and visible.

Although much of the capability and capacityhas been provided centrally, the support for its use

3 John L. Oberlin presents excellent discussions of eco-nomic systems in academic information technology in thefollowing articles: “Departmental Budgeting for InformationTechnology: A Life-cyle Approach,” CAUSE/EFFECT, Summer1994, 22-31; “The Financial Mythology of Information Tech-nology: The New Economics,” CAUSE/EFFECT, Spring 1996, 21-29; and “The Financial Mythology of Information Technol-ogy: Developing a New Game Plan, CAUSE/EFFECT, Summer1996, 10-17.


has not. New technology has brought informationenvironments that people can use without havingto learn FORTRAN or even DOS commands. It hasnot, however, delivered an environment in whichprinters can be fixed, or lost files can be foundremotely. Campuses have thus evolved a hiddensupport economy—the secretary becomes theword-processing expert, the faculty memberinstalls departmental machines, and theundergraduate student creates and maintains thedepartment Web pages.

The true cost of computer supportOne of the implications of this hidden economy

is that nobody in the institution knows the truecost of computer support. Most support isdelivered by people who do not have the word“computer” in their job descriptions. Departmentssee others making good use of technology. Theywant the same results, but they are unwilling toinvest the same capital and effort. Significantinstitutional resources are being used inefficiently.The secretary has become an expert through trialand error. The faculty member takes half a day toinstall a machine that a technician could haverunning in an hour. The department’s elegant andsophisticated Web site has to be discarded threemonths after the student graduates becausenobody can understand its non-standard,idiosyncratic structure. We cannot effectivelymanage the technology on our campuses if we donot understand its costs.

Achieving a functional economic modelThree important actions are required to achieve

a rational, strategic economic system. We mustmeasure and fully understand the true costs andbenefits of information technology so that we canmake a rational argument for funding. Next wemust more directly map the responsibility forcosts to the location of the benefits. Finally,funding responsibilities must be assignedappropriately to the central technologyorganization, departments, and individual faculty.

✓ Measure costs and benefits to the institution.Benefits must be measured not in technologyindicators, but in terms of institutional goals andpriorities. The costs must be derived by looking atthe whole institution, not just the technologyorganization. With an understanding of real costsand benefits, we can design a support structurethat minimizes the former and maximizes thelatter. With measures of costs and benefits, we canmake a rational argument for funding. How manyof our institutions provide computers for adepartment but no additional funding formaintenance, upgrades, and replacement? Howmuch time is wasted because a faculty member hasto spend a day appealing to the dean before shecan get someone to look at her broken computer?How much extra time is spent at the help desktrying to support software that is three versionsold because no one budgeted for upgrades? Any ofthese situations may be tolerable in isolation, butin aggregate, these inefficiencies are enormouslyexpensive. By budgeting for the true operationalcosts of supporting information technology, wecan greatly improve the quality and efficiency ofsupport.

✓ Map the responsibility for costs to the locationof the benefits. Since everyone in the institution isexpected to correspond, access the library, or writepapers, reports, or grants, the institution shouldcreate an information environment that handlesthese functions effectively and efficiently, withcosts covered by general technology supportfunding. Where needs are more specific todepartments, costs of meeting those needs shouldbe born by the appropriate department(s). TheSpanish department, for example, will benefitfrom using a Spanish language keyboard thatdisplays accented characters and from having easyaccess to an online Spanish dictionary andthesaurus. The department should pay the primarycosts of this level of functionality. If a facultymember in that department needs to manipulateSpanish text from 14th-century manuscripts, thecosts for that specialized service should be the


responsibility of the faculty member.4

✓ Designate appropriate funding responsibilities.Ultimately, every faculty member requires aunique information environment. Of course noinstitution can afford to support uniqueenvironments for each individual. The old modelof subsidizing “technology” must be replaced byone that subsidizes institutionally importantfunctions. The department subsidizes the activitiesimportant to its success, and the individual doesthe same for his or her success.

Table 1 suggests some of the characteristics ofservices that might point us to centralized subsidyvs. fully distributed costs under our model. Ingeneral, if the beneficiary of a service is thecommon good rather than the individualconsumer; if the service requires a large, one-timeinvestment; if the service is seen as strategic by theinstitution and it is desirable to have it usedwidely; or if there is no capability for individualusers to control their level of consumption, thencentral subsidy may make sense. Likewise, if aresource is abundant relative to demand, or is self-renewing, we may find it easier to subsidize thanaccount for usage and impose charges.

Economics 101 tells us that there will beunlimited demand for “free” resources. Unlimiteddemand, however, does not imply unlimited

supply. Administrators and customers need to bereminded of this and accept responsibility fordefining their fundamental technology needs(benefits). We have the responsibility to helpeveryone, including ourselves, understand the realcost of information technology. Together, we cangenerate a rational economic system that directsresources most effectively toward the goals thattruly make a difference for the institution.

A support mechanism focused oncustomer needs

More complex support needsInformation technology requires a vast range of

support. For faculty members to deliver successfullectures in technology classrooms, the networkrouter must allow them to get to the servers onwhich their information is stored. They mustunderstand the impact of compression upon thequality of their displayed images. The computermust come up in the right configuration whenthey turn it on, and they must be able to find theright Web pages for a particular class. There aremany ways the lecture can fail, even when thetechnology works flawlessly. Our currentinformation technology support model draws abright line between the responsibilities of thetechnology organization and those of the user.Succinctly, the central IT organization delivers themeans and the users implement them. We havemet our responsibility by providing thetechnology classroom, offering classes inPowerPoint and word processing, and having amultimedia center where instructors can convertslides to images. Our traditional users have theability and willingness to integrate these

4 If use of the Spanish language keyboard is also important,for example, to Religious Studies, Art History, and the Institutefor Central American Studies, these departments might col-laborate with the central IT organization to target this specificfunctionality.

Attributes of services that might indicatecentral subsidy vs. distributed costs

Subsidize Distribute

Benefit is common good Benefit is localLarge, fixed cost Variable costStrategic service Established serviceEncouraged consumption Constrained consumptionNo user control User controlPlentiful supply Limited supplyRenewable resource Non-renewable resource

Table 1


capabilities into the final product, the classroomlecture. Our new mainstream users, however, arenot willing to invest a significant amount of timelearning PowerPoint or how to digitize slides, andthey are completely intolerant of classrooms thatdo not work as advertised.

The help desk next doorWhile mainstream users bring different support

challenges to IT, the need for traditional supporthas not diminished. Someone must know how touse PowerPoint, someone must be able to reset theinstructor’s PC, and someone must be able toselect the right compression ratio for the images.Our new model proposes a distributed supportmechanism, with the nexus of support shiftedfrom the central help desk to the department. Thisoffers a number of advantages:• Support is as close as possible to the user. Most

of the questions are answered “next door.”• Department-based support providers—or on-site

consultants (OCs)—understand the informationissues of the discipline. They know how toconfigure a keyboard for Spanish characters andwhich electronic foreign language dictionary isthe best. They know what is truly important tothe discipline and what is fluff.

• OCs understand the personalities of theircustomers. They know who wants to be pointedto the manual and who needs to be shown. Theyknow who is too shy to ask for help and who isfacing a high-priority deadline.

• Departments can best weigh costs againstbenefits for their constituencies. If a completelycustomized desktop environment is essential toa department’s success, it can reallocate existingpersonnel to provide for it. If it is not essential,the department can take advantage of theenvironment provided as part of theinstitutional infrastructure.

• Departments can decide when a particulartechnology should be introduced, and to whatextent. If only one person wants a Web page,that can be dealt with one on one.5 But if half

the people want Web pages, it may be moreefficient to provide a class.Many institutions have tried the idea of

departmental support personnel with varyingresults.6 There are several critical success factorsfor this part of the model.• OCs must understand the content and culture

of the department. It is easier to teach a linguistabout technology than to get a technologist tofully understand the academic issues in theSpanish department.

• We must train OCs how to support theappropriate technologies and how to access theresources and tools they will need to efficientlysolve problems.

• The department must have a baselineinformation environment that is reliable anddesigned to require minimal support.

• OCs must have tools to make them moreefficient and effective. Facing a non-functioning PC, they need diagnostic softwareto help determine whether the hardware isdefective. To present a class on the constructionof Web pages, they should have a courseoutline, handouts, and overheads prepared byprofessional instructional developers.

• We must be flexible when selecting OCs anddetermining their job descriptions. We mightthink that every department needs a master’s-level computer scientist. In reality, some may bebetter served by a part-time graduate student.

• Departments must play by the economic rulesof the new model. If their OCs spend all of theirtime holding the hands of a few faculty, the

5 Faculty often need “just-in-time” learning. They can shiftovernight from complete indifference to a technology such asthe World Wide Web to “I need it NOW.” Training deliveredmonthly or on a fixed schedule does not meet their needs.

6 See, for example, Kelly McDonald and Brad Stone, “Dis-tributed Computing with Centralized Support Works at BrighamYoung,” CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1992, 13-18; and Andrea Martinand Vicky Dean, “A Management Perspective on DistributedSupport at Rice University,” CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1996, 22-26.


department cannot expect the central ITorganization to provide primary support for therest of the faculty. If departments are onlywilling to allocate part of a secretary totechnology support, they should not expect thesame level of service as the department thatconverts a faculty line to a support position.

• The IT organization must play by the economicrules of the new model. Where it accepts therole of expert, it must be truly expert anddeliver expert services.

Implications for central IT organizationsIt is fairly obvious from the previous

description that our model implies significantchanges in the user’s department. There areequally significant implications for the ITorganization. There are four critical successfactors—training, consulting, tools, and baselineenvironment—for which the central supportorganization should take the primaryresponsibility. These elements are all part of adynamic continuum that must be managed.

When technologies are new, are poorlyunderstood, or are used by only a few within theinstitution, a consulting service (answering thequestions one at a time as they arise) is the onlyapproach. But as the same question begins to beasked repeatedly because more are using thetechnology, we need to engage training rather thanconsulting. Likewise, when it becomes possible toprovide “automatic” solutions (such as softwareinstallers), then we no longer have to take theuser’s time and mental space for training. And,finally, the same function should eventually bedriven into the overall baseline environment andbecome transparent to the user.

✓ Getting smarter about training. Thecomplexity of today’s environment makes itvirtually impossible to provide full training ineven a single common application. WordPerfect6.0, for example, has a reference manual of 804pages and over 100 options that can be selectedfrom its primary window. Mainstream users are

unwilling to take time to learn all the functions,and they would not remember them even if theydid. They do not know they need to understandmail-merge until they have to send out 200rejection letters. When that need shows up, theywant to know how to do it now. Classes given oncea semester, or even once a month, will not satisfytheir needs.

No central organization can afford to deliverthis “just in time” instruction. The OC mightdecide that it is a priority need and attempt tosatisfy it, but the time it takes to prepare a classmay be prohibitive. Our model proposes adistributed solution to this challenge. Professionalinstructional developers in the central IT supportorganization can create a series of instructionalmodules, starting with an introductory overviewand including segments covering special featuressuch as mail-merge, desktop publishing, embeddeddocuments, etc.

Central IT might use these materials to deliverclasses at the beginning of the semester, wherethere is a large demand. OCs would be trained inthe use of these materials and would pick thespecific content needed by their department. Thematerials would be designed to allow the trainingto take place in the department’s environment,rather than presenting the trainees with unfamiliarscreens and functions. Trainers would be able tochoose examples relevant to the department.

✓ Tailoring consulting services. The consultingfunction should be similarly distributed betweenthe department and central resources. OCs shouldbe the first contact for questions. If they need helpin solving the problem, they have a direct line tothe experts in the IT organization. If the OC is notavailable, the department might arrange for centralsupport to provide temporary backup. If the samequestion keeps coming up, the OC can provide, oreven impose, training in that area.

Departmental support is the primary source fortraining and consulting specific to a discipline. AnOC assigned to the Spanish department can bestdevelop the training materials for the use of the


Spanish keyboard and dictionaries. In ourdistributed model, however, the central supportstaff would be aware of the special capabilities ofthe department. If, for example, the Institute forSouth American Studies requested help ininstalling the Spanish keyboard, central supportcould refer the Institute to the Spanishdepartment’s OC. In this manner, the institutionbenefits from both the depth and breadth oftraining and consulting capabilities.

✓ Developing technology tools for distributedsupport. Both consulting and training needs arereduced when the information infrastructure isreliable and consistent. Tools should be developedto navigate this infrastructure efficiently. Evensimple information tools can have a large impacton support requirements. For example, if a usercan get to the library catalogue by clicking on anicon, many of the details of the communicationsoftware, campus network configuration, andlibrary software structure become irrelevant.

The IT organization should take the lead indeveloping the information infrastructure. It willdevelop tools of general interest, but it will play amore important role by creating a tooldevelopment framework. This will make it possiblefor departments to develop tools for their uniqueneeds with the levels of expertise they are likely tohave. For example, a macro library could becreated to make it easy for departmental personnelto extract information from institutional databasesand present it in their preferred format.

✓ Reallocating support responsibilities and staff.This model implies a significant redistribution ofsupport responsibilities and perhaps personnel. Ifdepartmental staff field the primary supportquestions, central IT staff will have the time todevelop the more reliable and robust informationenvironment, which will in turn reduce thenumber of technical problems the departmentalstaff must resolve. Departmental staff will be ableto spend more of their time addressing problemsunique to their discipline, thus directly improvingthe product of the department. The user

departments will have to assume a significantportion of the responsibility for their informationenvironments. The IT organization will have toshift its emphasis from primary customer supportto secondary support.7 These transitions may bedifficult to achieve, but once in place, they willprovide for a rational economic model and takebest advantage of the strengths of constituencies.

A reliable baseline informationinfrastructure

We have identified one of the key characteristics ofthe current crisis as the ever-increasing disparitybetween supply and demand. We assume that inthe near future, there will be no significantincrease in support resources. The most importantcontribution we can make to reducinginefficiencies is to establish a highly reliableinformation infrastructure.

The infrastructure should be defined by userneeds, be intuitive and consistent, and requireminimal effort to learn and use. It must enable usto do simple things simply and do repetitivethings efficiently. Most important, theinfrastructure should be available when needed, beengineered not to break, be vigilantly monitored,be quickly repaired when things go wrong, andhave minimal resource requirements. It shouldcreate a base for:• the development of solutions for more complex

problems• the exploration of new applications• the exploration of new technologies

We think that current technology is capable ofproviding a reliable baseline infrastructure to meetabout 80 percent of the needs of 80 percent of theusers. The software for this environment includes

7 We do not think the IT organization will be able to get outof the primary support business completely. Some users, suchas freshmen and independent study students, have no depart-mental affiliation. Their needs, however, can be met by very“generic” environments.


one of the office suites, a robust e-mail package,and a Web browser. The hardware for thisenvironment must run the software withreasonable performance, provide a consistent userinterface, and be readily available.

A tidy technology solution would allow acampus to support a single hardware platform anda single software suite. Such an environmentwould meet the 80 percent criteria, but it isarguably impractical and undesirable for mostcampuses to implement. From the perspective ofwhat the user sees, however, the differencesbetween Macintosh and Wintel machines havebecome relatively minor. Similarly, all majorapplications programs are converging on a similargraphic interface, a common set of functions andfunctionality, and good import/export capabilities.We can achieve our goals in ways acceptable tomost users if we are careful and disciplined in howwe design and configure our environments.

Most campuses have specified, or have at leasttried to specify, a standard computer environment.These standards have lessened the support problemto a small degree, but they certainly have notsolved it. The failure of these standards to resolvethe support problems reflects a segmentedapproach to the support crisis. When developingand implementing a standard informationinfrastructure, we should consider the followingcritical success factors.

The infrastructure must be designedOur current environments have evolved

through a process that has yielded satisfactoryresults but is far too inefficient for the 1990s. Aninfrastructure design must start with aninformation architecture that describes theinformation needs, databases, and informationprocesses common to the entire institution.

The architecture expresses the information andinformation processes that are most important tothe institution in terms that we can translate intotechnology. It helps us maintain a holisticperspective, so that we do not over-solve some

problems and overlook others. Even moreimportant, it prevents us from investing tooheavily in technology that is interesting but thathas little relevance to real problems. Thearchitecture also provides a set of guidelines forinterconnecting environments that address theunique needs of departments and individuals toenvironments that address institution-wideconcerns. For example, a researcher who can add14th-century characters to a keyboard map andinclude a 14th-century dictionary in a wordprocessor need not support a unique computingenvironment to conduct scholarly work.

Architecture designs guide our decisions aboutwhich technologies are needed and what they needto do. No longer is it sufficient to install a piece ofsoftware on the server and then fix the problemswhen the customers point them out, or to changethe network configuration and reconnect peoplewho were disconnected. To achieve the level ofreliability expected of the contemporaryenvironment, we must fix problems withoutbreaking our systems. To do that, our systemsmust be well designed and monitored vigilantly.

IT staff must manage environments,not fight fires

Providing a reliable infrastructure thatcontinues to meet institutional needs implieschanges for our IT organizations. In the past, werewarded our firefighters. It was okay to breaksomething as long as you could fix it beforeanyone noticed. We rarely had the time to dothings right, but we always seemed to find the timeto do them again. Early users of informationtechnology understood this culture and learned todeal with it. Today’s mainstream user will nottolerate unreliability. Many IT support providershave the appropriate attitude and aptitude to finda problem and fix it once it occurs. But now weneed staff who can understand a complex systemwell enough to ferret out its weak points and fixthem before service is affected. Such highlyknowledgeable staff will function as infrastructure


managers, responsible for fireproofing rather thanfirefighting—a role shift that is key to success in thenew information technology support model.

The infrastructure must be hierarchicalRather than being flat, the information

infrastructure must be hierarchical: an individual’senvironment is built on top of the departmentalenvironment, which in turn lives atop theinstitutional environment. (See the diagram onpage 16 for a graphic illustration of this model.)The department can create its own environmentbecause it does not have to spend all of its timesupporting the basic technology, and theindividual faculty member, administrator, orresearcher then builds upon both bases. Thearchitecture and design of the infrastructureensure that these layers interconnect effectivelyand efficiently. This part of the model alsoprovides a way for the campus to deal with therapid changes in the technology as well as theever-increasing expectations of our customers.

It is our nature to explore new applications andpush the envelope of technology. If these effortsoccur in a common environment, they can bemore easily made available to others in theinstitution. Thus we provide for a migration ofnew and useful applications from the individual,to the department, to the institution. Theelectronic versions of the 14th-centurymanuscripts become available to everyone in theSpanish department. The efforts of the Spanishdepartment to develop Spanish word processingbecomes part of the foreign language wordprocessing module in the institutionalinfrastructure. The mechanism that allows theinfrastructure to evolve quickly, and in harmonywith user needs, is another critical success factorfor the standard environment.

The new architecture must be implemented withsupport from users

Implementing the standard informationinfrastructure is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg

problem. Customers are reluctant to give upidiosyncratic environments when they do not seethe advantage of a standard infrastructure, and it isdifficult to implement a new architecture if thecustomers are not clamoring for it. We think theremay also be some reluctance on the part of the ITorganization to fully commit to an environmentthat it does not solely define, develop, andmanage. Standard environments, however, canactually deliver the true potential of informationtechnology. A few examples include:

✓ Return-to-service. When a desktop computeror server breaks, the most urgent need is to returnits functionality to the user. If an OC cannot fixthe computer using diagnostic tools within 15minutes, s/he should be able to replace it from aswap-out pool. With standard environments, asmall investment in such a pool provides a greatadvantage.

✓ Personnel turnover. If all its administrativeinformation is in a standard environment, adepartment will be relatively unaffected bypersonnel turnover. The new secretary will knowhow to get the letters out and send notices to allfaculty, and the new chair will know where to findlast year’s annual report and cut and paste from itto generate this year’s report.

✓ Classroom presentation. When classroompresentation technology is standardized, facultyare confident that they can teach in any classroom.

✓ “Seat” capacity. If incoming students aregiven a description of systems that will work in thecollege or university’s information environment,they can make good purchasing decisions and haveless need to use the seats in public computingfacilities. This enables an institution to minimizeits acquisition of machines that quickly becomeobsolete.

✓ “Critical mass” support. With a commonenvironment, one is likely to get a questionanswered by the person in the next office, in thehall, or at the lunch table. Departmental andcentral support staff thus have more time to addreliable and robust features to the environment.


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The diagram below illustrates the concept of hierar-chical standard environments. The lowest level rep-resents the institutional information technology in-frastructure. The functional capabilities in this levelare made available to everyone in the institution.This environment is designed and managed to behighly reliable, consistent, and easy to use. Since thisis an institutional environment, the central IT sup-port organization is responsible for its management.

The technology support group can also sponsorspecial technology environments (the cross-hatchedareas in the diagram). This is where the new tech-nologies are introduced, explored, and tested. Thecentral support organizations might also want to pro-vide assistance to some individual users in the cus-tomization of their environment. The selection oftechnologies and users is based upon theorganization’s best guess as to which technologiesand applications will become mainstream in the fu-ture. For example, the central organization mightsupport a special lab/project on real-time video, as-suming that video conferencing will be important tothe institution in a few years. It might also provide

special support to a class that wants to use videoconferencing. If this particular technology is bothbeneficial and supportable, it would be migrated intothe baseline environment. Thus we have a mecha-nism to migrate new technologies into the institu-tion while not burdening all of the users with experi-mentation.

The second level represents areas or departmen-tal standard environments. The primary definitionand management of these levels are the depart-ments, although there might also be coalitionsformed for some areas that are multidisciplinary.Ideally, these environments build upon, rather thanreplace, the institutional standard environment. Theextent to which a department customizes its envi-ronment is a function of its need for unique capa-bilities and its ability to design and support the ad-ditional features.

The third level represents individual user technol-ogy environments. Many people will be content withthe institutional or departmental environment,hence will require no special support. Others willneed or want an environment tuned to their specificneeds. They will be expected to pay the cost of theuniqueness.


We Can Get There From Here

We have no doubt that we can transcendthis crisis in information technologysupport. The question is, are our IT

organizations willing to do the work required?Here is some of what we must do.

Educate campus constituencies

This really is a process of helping our institutionscollectively discover and learn how to manageinformation technologies. When we are in thetrenches with the pushing and shoving and finger-pointing, it is not always easy to see the process inthat light. As leaders we must search for andidentify every opportunity to be educators and tomake sure that the lesson of our experiences is asclear as it can be. If faculty and students complainthat they cannot get their work done because thedial-in lines are always busy, we need to be surethey understand how many lines we have, howmuch each line costs per year, how their ownbehaviors contribute to the problem, and how achange in their behavior can help fix it. They nowwant continuous, Ethernet-like connections fromtheir homes, which would ultimately requirealmost one incoming line per person. People arecapable of learning and accepting new economicmodels and/or constraints on behavior if theyunderstand the underlying issues and are involvedin the processes of deciding on the regulations.

Engage users in decisionsthat affect them

If we have done our jobs in educating theinstitution, we ought to be able to use thecollaborative process that our institutions knowwell to create the standards and rules necessary tosupport our functioning together as a community.Thomas Jefferson said:

I know of no safe depository of the ultimatepowers of society but the people themselves;and if we think them not enlightened enoughto exercise their control with wholesomediscretion, the remedy is not to take it fromthem, but to inform their discretion byeducation. Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820

There may have been a time when computers wereso mysterious to ordinary people that customerswere willing to let the experts decide theimportant issues. Those days are gone. Our onlyoption is to educate and collaborate.

Redefine roles toward a federal model

At many institutions, the central IT organizationsand their users collude in perpetuating the viewthat the central organization is responsible formost technology, service, and support, even in theface of facts to the contrary. Departmental supportmechanisms have developed in most institutionswithout a clear definition of how they articulate(or not) with the central support function. Underthese conditions we often see many people doingthe same jobs, stepping on toes in the process,while important jobs go undone. We suggest thatan institutional dialog about these roles beundertaken with the goal of improved efficiencyand effectiveness. All parties need to be a part ofthis dialog, with upper-level administrationlending official status to the solution proposed.

It may be helpful to frame these discussionsabout changing roles in political and economicterms, as the development of an informationeconomy based upon the model of federalism.8 In

8 Robert W. Zmud, Andrew C. Boynton, and Gerry C.Jacobs, “The Information Economy: A New Perspective forEffective Information Systems Management,” Data Base 18(1): 17-23.


this model, the central IT organization retains arole similar to the federal government, butencourages and supports a quasi-open marketeconomy in information services. The central rolein this model does not include providing all ITservices and support or dictating to individuals ordepartments what they can or cannot do. It focusesinstead on influencing the actions of distributedunits through policies and standards necessary tothe smooth functioning of the whole, operatingsome key functions critical to all (such asinstitutional data management), and providing abasic technical infrastructure that supports thedepartmental and individual applications. Beyondthese “reserved powers,” the federal model leavesgreat freedom for departments to exploittechnology in ways that maximize their owneffectiveness.

Create effective distributedsupport models

We must experiment with new organizationalmodels to find ones that provide a sufficient levelof decentralization without destroying the fabricupon which we can build an integratedenvironment. This will be easier to do ininstitutions that still have a relatively centralizedstructure. Some possible approaches include:• Establishing a group within the central

organization whose clients are departmentalsupport personnel

• Creating discipline-focused, physically dispersedsub-centers, such as Dartmouth did with itsHumanities Center and Science Center

• Establishing a free-standing central departmentto support and coordinate departmental supportpersonnel

• Setting up expert information bases and onlinetraining materials for use by departmentalsupport providers

• Providing incentives for departmental supportproviders to participate in the educational andintegrative activities made available. Incentives

might include such things as paying a salarysupplement, providing equipment and/orsoftware, or formal certification.

• Transferring staff from the central ITorganization out to departments.

There are many possible approaches, but allinvolve significant changes to the current roles andself-image of our central IT staff and to theapproach and mindsets of staff currently indistributed support activities.

Another challenge of setting up an effectivedistributed support system is ensuring theownership by department managers of technologysupport responsibilities. Even if we have done agood job of educating constituencies at ourinstitutions, some individuals at the departmentallevel may resist taking responsibility for managingtheir unit’s IT environment, either because theythink it is the job of central IT or because they lackresources to do so.

Mentor individual staff

Enlisting the enthusiastic participation of sometraditional technologists on our campuses in thepersonal transformation required for the newsupport model can be a significant challenge. Ourcurrent organizations still have plenty of peoplewho “grew up” with an earlier paradigm and reallylike how it was then. This reluctance to changeapplies to technical staff at both the central anddepartmental levels.

In addition to attitudes toward change, thereare in many cases serious limitations to the skillsets of these support providers. Training can recastskill sets if the trainee is willing to learn and grow.Training is needed not only to develop newtechnical skills that are more appropriate to thedistributed technologies of today, but also todevelop communication and diplomacy skills andthe systems-level viewpoint needed to bemaximally effective in the future roles for ourorganizations. We continue to need the very besttechnical experts we can find, but that alone will


not guarantee success in the new context.Reorientation of our central staff should occur

along two lines. The most technical roles in thefuture should be oriented to designing forrobustness and manageability. Less technical rolesneed to focus on designing institutional processes,structures, tools, and incentives to accomplishcertain user behavioral outcomes. Both groupsneed good communication skills and diplomacy.The reorientation of departmental support peopleshould include their new roles as partners with thecentral group, with the responsibility andauthority that implies. We have found no formaltraining aimed at these transformations. Thisleaves personal mentoring— a very slow process.

Recruit and replace, if necessary

There are institutions for which the need totransform the information technology supportfunction is so urgent that the process of motivatingand mentoring referred to above cannot produceresults in time. There are some individuals who justwill not engage the new model. If the organizationis growing and can add new skills and attitudesthat way, change by addition is a possibility. If not,our only option may be to replace some existingstaff with new people who are more adaptable.Sometimes it is only necessary to do this a fewtimes. The savvy new staff can help with theaccelerated mentoring process. Outsourcing thefunctions that have the highest priority for changeis a variant of this strategy.

Seeing Our Future in an EvolutionaryContext

The paradigm shift that we are currentlynavigating is, of course, not the first suchchange our institutions have experienced,

nor, probably, will it be the last. The leap forwardwe need to make now is not unique to highereducation or to information technology, but isrelated to a set of changes working their waythrough all organizations in our society as we passfrom the Industrial into the Information Age. Tounderstand where we need to go, it is helpful toput our current changes into historicalperspective.

Where we have beenTable 2 provides such an historical perspective,

describing our views of at least three phases in theevolution of information technology supportwithin higher education institutions. We see these

stages as developmental, requiring a passagethrough the Industrial Age, for example, beforeentering the Information Age. They are alsocumulative in that an Information Age supportstructure contains the elements listed in the lastcolumn, in addition to those in the first twocolumns. For the Information Age, the focus ofnew development is on the institutional processes,but such organizations of course still rely ontechnology and customer focus as well. Passagethrough these stages seems to be partiallyindependent of “calendar time,” in that there arestill organizations exhibiting many of the Iron Ageattributes today at the same time that others areemerging into the Information Age.

In the Iron Age (or, perhaps better, the Age ofCraftsmen), individual technology artifacts werecreated one at a time by individual, highly skilled


workers. Their products were uniquely andbeautifully attuned to the specific requirements ofan individual user. This era was typical of themainframe, time-sharing style of computing.Information technology organizations were calledcomputer centers, and users went to the center todo most of their work. The computer centers wereusually the province of expert scientists andengineers and administrators. Their focus wastechnology and making it work. They wereexploring new frontiers and proselytizing aboutthe wonders they found. Their products were neattechnologies, interesting in their own right, andmasses of numbers manipulated in various ways.Staff in computer centers were often breakingsystems as fast as they fixed them, but this wasmore or less tolerable because the users werehearty and forgiving. The single most prized

attribute of staff was brilliance. The focus ofcomputing was on individual users projects. All ofthis was well supported by one or two centralizedorganizations.

The focus of the Industrial Age changed withthe arrival of personal computers and networks.Instead of a total focus on technology, we realizedthat we also should be thinking about customers.No longer was it sufficient to explore and bringhome neat tools. We also needed to spend timetaking care of groups of users and beingresponsive to the needs they identified. We becamedriven by customers and technologies, rather thantechnology alone. Excellent service, such as thehelp desk, was required in addition to neattechnology and the results of number crunchingprograms. Our users expected us to be wizards atputting out fires and fixing the environment when

Table 2

The three ages of academic information technology support

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it broke. We still valued our technical experts, butnew staff entered our organizations. They broughtlittle technical knowledge, but they had a keensense of service and responsiveness to customersand they were excellent communicators. Managersworked on structures and processes that spannedour institution. Because of the proliferation ofpersonal computers, computer supportorganizations sprouted all over the place.(Remember the epidemic of VAXes and littlecenters to tend them?) Mostly this process wasdriven by whoever had the money to invest.

Where we are goingToday, many of us are teetering between the

Industrial Age and the Information Age. In order tofacilitate the transformations going on in ourinstitutions, we need to get our organizations tofocus on institutional processes, such as learningor managing a department. We will have toaccomplish this by partnering with faculty oradministrators—those with the content andfunctional expertise. Reacting to demonstratedneeds is both insufficient and impossible. It isinsufficient because the problems that surface areso seriously damaging that the best hope forresolving them is to prevent them in the firstplace. It is also impossible because the number of

needs, taken singly, is completely beyond ourability to respond. This requires designingenvironments to be managed rather than fixed.Our products are whole, institutionalenvironments that work in an integrated fashion.Many of the resources we “manage” are not underour control and may be located anywhere in theworld. Our support organizations need to bedistributed broadly, but they cannot be composedof anarchic fiefdoms.

The Information Age challenge is to conceiveand manage a whole, complex system in whichmost of the human and technological parts do not“belong” to us. Doing so requires very differentorganizational models and personal skills. Thegreatest challenge in making this leap is to bringour Industrial Age mind sets forward, either byexpanding the way individuals see themselves andtheir roles, or by instilling respect and tolerancefor the roles and skills of others that are verydifferent from our own. We doubt that anyprofessions have experienced the dramatictransformation within the lifetime of individualworkers that ours now faces. Given the massivechange and progress of the last twenty years ofinformation technology in education, we areconfident that we, and our institutions, will rise tothe challenge.


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CAUSE Professional Paper #15

Reflections on Leadershippresents a collection of essays by the winners of the CAUSE ELITE Awardfor Exemplary Leadership and Information Technology Excellence

Thomas W. WestBrian L. HawkinsBernard W. GleasonAlbert L. LeDucRobert C. Heterick, Jr.Carole A. BaronePatricia Battin

in response to the unusual challenges to leadership in times of change.

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“There are many ways to be outstanding leaders. This is nocookie-cutter business … The essays that make up this paperdemonstrate the exquisite richness and diversity of leadershipwithin our profession.”

from the foreword by Polley Ann McClureChair, 1996 CAUSE Board of Directors

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CAUSE is an international nonprofit association dedicated to enabling the

transformational changes occurring in higher education through the effective

management and use of information resources—technology, services, and

information. Incorporated in 1971, CAUSE serves its membership of more than

1,400 campuses and organizations and 3,800 individuals from its

headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.

CAUSE is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is dedicated to a policy that

fosters mutual respect and equality for all persons. The association takes

affirmative action to ensure that it does not discriminate on the basis of age,

color, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin,

race, sex, or sexual orientation, and encourages members and other

participants in CAUSE-related activities to respect this policy.

the crisis in information technology support: has our current

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