IS Launches IT Partners Program for Local Experts

Susan B. Jones

On October 2, 65 members of the MIT community, representing 59 
departments, gathered for the first meeting of the IT (Information 
Technology) Partners Program. These staff were invited because they 
function as computer experts in their departments. About 20 IS staff 
also attended.
  
The purpose of IT Partners is to create a mutual technical support 
structure for IT professionals at MIT. Recognizing that local office 
experts are often the first line of computing assistance, IS hopes to 
forge a partnership that recognizes and supports this contribution.
 
The event began with welcoming remarks from Mike Sampson, Program 
Coordinator; Jim Bruce, Vice President for Information Systems; and Bill 
Hogue, Director of the IS Support Process. Joanne Costello, Coordinator 
for IT Support Planning, then led participants in a brainstorming 
session about their needs for IT support and frustrations with current 
support from IS.
 
Concerns and Suggestions
Concerns voiced in this session ranged from how the Institute 
recognizes the work of local experts to uncertainty about which 
platforms can run SAP, MIT's new financial system.

A recurring theme was how information gets communicated. Local experts 
felt that IS needs to find a way to disseminate information about 
software and operating systems quickly and in a way that gets their 
attention. Web pages, they suggested, are good for distributing 
information, but an email alert mechanism would also be useful. 
Telephone alerts were suggested for situations in which networks were 
down and email inaccessible.

One topic that provoked a lot of discussion was the IS Computing Help 
Desk. Issues included response time and procedures. Participants 
suggested that the new Help Desk tracking tool, Scopus, might be used to 
gather statistics to demonstrate how having local experts in departments 
affects the flow of calls to the Help Desk. Local experts also expressed 
a desire to have access to Scopus to track the status of calls 
from their departments.

The local experts suggested ways the Help Desk could offer assistance. 
These included pairing local experts with consultants, and setting up a 
process for quickly escalating problem reports from local experts to IS 
experts.

After the brainstorming session, Costello moderated a panel of IS 
staff (Harold Pakulat, Theresa Reagan, and Al Willis) who spoke about 
the status of the Help Desk, SAP, and IS support of Macintosh and 
Windows operating systems (see "New Directions for the Macintosh 
Operating System" on p. 7 for issues related to old and new Macintosh 
operating systems.)

Into the Future
IT Partners plans to meet twice a year and perhaps more frequently 
for targeted sessions on technical issues.

IS has created a Web page for IT Partners at

http://web.mit.edu/itpartners/

This page has an application form for those who wish to become IT 
Partners. Benefits of joining may include use of an unpublished Help 
Desk phone number, free seats in training classes, and inclusion on an 
IT Partners mailing list.