Action Item 3.01
Support should be robust, easy to use, transparent, and available in multiple levels based upon specific needs of the individual user.
LSU faculty, staff, and students should not have to search for IT support, it should be readily available and easily accessible. Members of the campus community should be empowered by their IT environment, not encumbered by it. Support for use of the IT environment is critical to its empowering capabilities. ITS should develop support models cognizant of the multiple constituencies and various levels of expertise on campus; support staff should be easy to contact and should guide users to helpful, clear solutions. Support should be available in multiple forms, e.g., in person, in an online knowledge base, and downloadable, to provide users options in seeking assistance based on their particular need.
A leveraged support model should be put in place to meet the varying needs of the campus community. Too often, levels of expertise do not match the workloads on support personnel. In too many instances, students are charged with large scale projects and professionals are providing basic desktop support, simply because of the mechanisms departments have for IT support. A leveraged support model would be a more efficient use of human resources and talents. Such a model would provide for professional-level consultants who offer direct personal assistance in solving complex problems by appointment.
Action Item 3.02
A one-stop shop for all IT related issues should be developed and properly staffed. Support should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 52 weeks a year.
While the ITS Help Desk is a good starting point for IT assistance, the user community wants a fully developed one-stop shop for all IT support. A centralized customer relations center to address hardware, software, and telephony queries and services would make acquiring services easy and would streamline currently segregated telecom and computing assistance. Ease of use and effective user-support are integral to an IT abundant environment.
Use of information technology at LSU takes place outside of the 8:00am to 4:30pm Monday-Friday work schedule, and so does the need for assistance. Mechanisms for trouble-shooting and solving errors must be in place to serve the user community when the users need them. Online resources such as a searchable Knowledge Base should be easy to navigate, up-to-date, robust, and made centrally available to the entire community.
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Action Item 3.03
Communications between central and distributed IT staff should be strengthened. ITS should develop programs that provide improved communication and coordination between the key providers of IT support on campus in a leveraged support model.
A strong distributed support model relies upon connections to central IT. In order to reduce redundancies, provide first-rate client support, and mitigate strains between distributed departmental support and ITS, mechanisms for effective communication must be in place. Central IT must be responsive to the challenges facing departmental support personnel, and distributed support personnel must be informed of what institutional changes and
policies will impact them.
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Action Item 3.04
ITS, the Center for Academic Success (CAS), and the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) should work collaboratively to provide training opportunities for faculty and students alike.
LSU faculty and students must be technology literate to make effective use of computers, basic software packages, and technology appropriate to their disciplines or fields. LSU graduates should be ready to tackle the challenges of industry and the private and public sectors. The three agencies on campus capable of developing a campus-wide technology competency (ITS, CAS, and CELT) should partner, not only on training materials and methods, but also in finding appropriate physical resources where these skills can be developed and maintained.
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Action Item 3.05
The University must significantly increase the number of IT professionals on campus—both centrally in ITS and distributed within the colleges and departments on campus.
Too often, student workers provide the bulk of technical support for departments. Student workers, while talented, are, first and foremost, at the University to study for a very limited time period. Departments have professional needs that must be met, and there is a need for continuity of support and IT services that cannot be provided by a transient student staff. A lack of sufficient IT professionals also puts the security of data and systems at risk. The University should ensure that best practices in IT security are in place, and that servers and sensitive data are secured. These responsibilities should not be placed upon students, but on professional IT staff.
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Action Item 3.06
There should be a mechanism for training and certification of IT staff in the technologies they support.
The training and continued professional development of IT professionals is an institutional priority. As technologies continue to advance, IT professionals must stay ahead of the curve, as IT often progresses quarterly. Distributed IT personnel should have connections to ITS.
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Action Item 3.07
ITS Help Desk personnel should have broad understanding of general technical questions, but should also have more developed content expertise in areas identified by community demand (statistical computing, GIS, database management, Web development, and the like).
As part of the leveraged support model, the Help Desk should be staffed with personnel who posses specialized area knowledge that is up-to-date in addition to broader, basic knowledge of common technology. The needs of users are so broad amid the LSU community that the current model is not sophisticated enough to meet demand.
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Action Item 3.08
Documentation provided by vendors and distributed with open-source software systems should be readily available online and downloadable for use.
With the availability of campus-licensed software downloads should come downloadable user manuals and instructional guides from vendors. Users will be best served when they have both tools and instructions guiding them to the most advantageous use.
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Action Item 3.09
Documentation should be augmented with locally-produced information relevant to local conditions and institutional rules.
High quality documentation is critical to understanding computing topics. In addition to vendor-provided publications, the University should produce information delineating critical University IT usage policies and local best practices.
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