Indiana University
Brian D. Voss
Assistant Director,
University Computing Services

A. Introduction

Indiana University has long recognized that the advent of distributed computing would lead to the need for a distributed support structure. And in the late 1980's, IU began to develop (rather than distribute) support resources to campus departments. However as these distributed support programs progressed, it was seen that having distributed support resources, alone, would not avert the support crisis; that there was a need for a strong central support function. And in that the growth in the use of computing and information technology remained staggering, the large "untapped" support resource found in the users themselves needed to be drawn out. In the mid-1990's, IU has crafted a support model hinging upon these three principals: 1)Local support resident in departments on campus; 2) Education and tools that help the end user support themselves; and 3) A strong centralized support function acting as a lever to facilitate the first two elements.

The Leveraged Support Model is through its implementation and we have evaluated both the successes and failings of the model. We are in an 'operational' phase, and we are striving for continual improvement in the various programs and elements. The LSM is a living thing, and it needs to evolve over time to meet the needs of IT users, in a fashion consistent with budget realities facing IU and other higher education institutions today.

B. Problem Statement

B.1. The Institution

Indiana University is a public university composed of a residential campus in Bloomington, a major urban campus in Indianapolis, and six other campuses located in Gary, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, Richmond, and New Albany Indiana. IU currently serves approximately 94,000 students, employs nearly 17,000 faculty and staff, and has a budget approaching $2-Billion annually. It is one of the largest institutions of higher learning in the United States.

The computing and information technology environment is rich and diverse. Specifically on the Bloomington campus, there are over 2,000 microcomputers available for students, and approximately 6,000 in service for faculty, staff, and graduate students. Platform breakdowns are: Roughly 80% are Intel; 18% Macintosh, and 2% unix.

University Computing Services provides IT services to the IU system for mission critical systems and services (Administrative Computing), and to the Bloomington campus for academic computing services. Formed by a merger between administrative and academic computing organizations in 1988, UCS's organization structure no longer differentiates between those service sets. Rather, the organization is structured along services provided to the institution without regard to who they are, or where they are located. The organization consists of approximately 240 FTE appointed staff, and over 200 non-appointed hourly and part-time staff. The annual UCS budget is approximately $26-million.

With the recent appointment of a full University Vice President for Information Technology, UCS and its counterpart organization on the IUPUI campus will merge to provide a consistent service set across the two core campuses. This organization will have over 400 FTE staff and a budget of over $60-million; the telephone operations on both campuses will be included in the merger. The smaller regional campuses will retain their own computing centers and structures, as they have always acted as "local points of service presence" for information technology support on the outlying campuses.

B.2. The Situation

Let's break this down and look at some very factual observations and also some as-objective-as-we-can-be opinions on the state of support for IT.

Some Observations:

• IT use is growing -- the employment of computing technology in learning, teaching, and the operation of the institution has grown at a tremendous rate since the early 1980's. While growth has been most explosive in distributed fashion (desktops and departments), centrally served computing has also grown tremendously.

• IT use is distributed -- the use of computers and applications is no longer centralized, or at least not solely centralized.

• IT support is no longer completely centralized in the computing center -- Local Support Providers (LSPs) exist and are functioning well in delivering support to users of information technology and systems. Users, as well, are becoming more involved in their own use of IT and are undertaking supporting themselves.

• IT and IT support are linked -- Computing use continues to grow rapidly within the institution, driven not only by internal forces but primarily by external ones. As it grows, so does the demand for support.

And some opinions:

• IT's growth and the requisite demand for support can not be effectively contained by the central computing organization (CCO). Attempts to ration support, or control the growth and expansion of computing and IT use have proven useless, contentious, and frustrating for all involved.

• The growth of IT support in departments is not a phenomenon resulting from the shifting of "chores" from the CCO to the departments. Rather, it is a phenomenon resulting from the exponential growth in the demand for IT support -- it consumes more resources now both internally to the CCO and externally to campus entities.

• CCOs are not capable of providing all the support needed by this ever-growing demand for IT and support of that growth. CCOs have seen their support functions grow from 10% to 25% of their resource (mostly human resource) in the past decade. Further growth in the percentage of the CCO functioning as a support unit will mean that other vital and valued services will need to be eliminated or transferred to departments (networking, application development, research and student computing services, etc.)

• User responsibility is increasingly a necessity. Users have integrated IT into their job functions -- teaching, research, and administration. Computers can no longer be viewed by these users as "things" which get in the way of them doing their jobs. Rather, these "things' are part of the job now, and as a result, individual responsibility for using IT is on the increase.

B.3. Strategic Significance

It is a given that computing and information technology are a part of today's higher education environment. What is not always seen is that the costs of supporting the use of technology are greatly more significant and long-standing than the costs of acquiring it.

If the need for a strong and structured technology support environment is not recognized, an institution can waste it's capital investment in technology; acquiring and placing hardware and software which is not used effectively (if at all). And if this need is not addressed properly, the institution can get caught in a spending spiral for technology support that exceeds the spending spiral for technology itself.

C. Objectives: Desired Outcomes

The objective of the LSM is to allow the institution to continue to grow its information technology environment without co-requisite growth in resources devoted to supporting that environment. As of this writing, IU has made a substantial investment in support resources (human); so the desired outcome was (and continues to be) to maximize the benefit of that investment without growing it much further.

D. Approach

D.1. Finanacial Resources

• One Time Initiative Funding

• Base Funding

• Education Funding Problem

D.2. Human Resources

• Within the Central Computing Organization

• In Departments

D.3. Policies & Practices

• No real Policy Issues

• Practices -- Working over time to change the paradigm of support provision; both within the CCO and on Campus

• Education of LSPs -- Ed/Cert

• "Free" Basic Training

D.4. Technology Resources

• Contracts/Site Licenses

• Software Distribution

• Web-based Help

• Automated Problem Management

D.5. Mix and Balance Resources

• Leveraging Human Repaltionships -- The Good 'Ol People Club

E. Results

E.1. Benefit and Successes

• Growth of LSP Community

• Ed/Cert Success

• UHO/KB Use -- 25K+ htis a week

E.2. Failures

• Expense to the Institution -- loss of economy of scale

• Moved too fast to pull traditional support mechanisms

• Lack of Consistency in LSP job functions/descriptions and compensation

E.3. Unintended Consequences

• Change in the supply/demand for talent (seller's market); CCO takes new place in "food chain"

• Procided excellent mechanism for rolling out major systems (CCO no longer on the 'hot seat' alone)

• Created a new set of users with vastly higher expectations and demands -- they know the story and can't be misled (keeps us honest)
  

F. Lessons Learned

F.1. Advice to Others

• Start Early and Build Slowly

• Move Intensely with a lot of commitment or

• Get Executive Order or

• Learn from the mistakes of others; but also be willing to accept your own mistakes and adapt, improvise, and overcome

F.2. Advice to Self

• What would we do differently?

• What changes would we make?

• What changes do we plan to make?

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