Will & Rosalind,

You bring up an excellent point. Frameworks such as ITIL and recommendations from organizations such as HDI (Help desk Institute) are wonderful places for us to look to as we begin to identify methods of streamlining and making more efficient the services we provide. Before the TIG audit took place Andrea Rodgers reached out to several areas to discuss creating a help desk SLA that was based on HDI recommendations. The recommendations that were chosen were not perspective in nature and allowed areas that had help desks identify where in a spectrum they currently were at with efficiency and effectiveness and how, if they were so inclined, they could improve their system by identifying specific recommendations that they could pursue. It is important for us to remember in moving forward with any changes that frameworks are simply just that. We need to adapt and assess what parts of a framework will work best for UNM and how to apply them and to do that discussions on needs will continue to take place.

You are also both correct that no matter how efficient we make a system much of what our users also look to us for is a positive user experience. Much of that will come from positive communication and interactions with our user base and is something we should continue to strive for regardless of the changes made. On the communication side, discussions have already begun taking place based on feedback from the staff engagement session at tech days that emphasized a need for clearer, more frequent, communication with IT. It is also my hope with the way accountability is being built into the organization charts that it is encouraged that all IT staff are able to connect with the areas that they serve and not just provide an efficient service. These dialogues should continue not just within IT but between the ITO’s and the Deans and Directors that they serve with to ensure continuous positive interactions with IT staff.

Walter Winegar-Valdez

Another important point in justifying the need of department specific SLA’s is the use of language such as “Administrator will utilize departmental (local) IT contact for first level triage of incidents and service requests, when available.” This language along with the statement made at IT agents that certain enterprise services could not be offered to the degree that they are without departmental support suggest to me that departmental IT organizations need to be very clear in their own SLA’s how we provide those “1st level support” services to our areas and what limitations we may have considering we are not all operating with the same tools or processes.
Due to statements that also hold both departmental IT and their departments liable for costs such as “UNM IT will bring to the Department’s attention any situation in which extra time is being required of UNM IT staff to support services due to lack of Department staff knowledge, planning or poor UNM implementation practices. In these situations, UNM IT reserves the right to bill, at our standard hourly rate or expedited service rate, for additional time spent in support of services being delivered to the Department” we need a clear method of identify our services and processes that would limit liability and risk. Blanket statements like these run the risk of setting up areas to fail due to lack of access to the same tools that UNM IT or other groups may have.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by wvaldez.