PSU employee survey regarding USNH IT consolidation plan
by Academic Technology Committee
March 22, 2020
Major findings
- The vast majority do not support the planned consolidation of IT services. Less than ten percent of the responses are in favor.
- There are three major themes among responses that are either not in favor or reluctant of consolidation. First of all, most people do not want to see help desk centralized. This was expressed in many different ways (e.g., face-to-face service for support and trouble-shooting, keeping the feet on the ground, help services, customer support, and support services to students). However, they all seem to speak to the same theme. Secondly, many stressed uniqueness of individual campuses and the importance of deploying IT staff that understands the needs of each campus. Lastly, people demanded that the administration listen to employees on each campus before making the decision.
- There were also some suggestions for possible services that may be good condidates for consolidation, which include equipment ordering/purchasing, software, and IT leadership.
Method
This analysis examined only the third question in the recently conducted survey regarding the USNH plan to consolidate IT services. The question reads,
“What recommendations does PSU faculty and staff have for the administration in discussion with USNH on a potential IT consolidation?”
Of 74 people who participated in the survey, 45 answered this question. After reading each of the responses, the author added two variables to the raw survey data for further analysis. First, the author classified each reponse into four categories: 1) not in favor of consolidation, 2) in favor, 3) neutral, and 4) reluctant. Second, the author tagged each response with main topics/themes for further analysis. The author acknowledges that this process of classification and tagging is subjective to the interpretation of the author.
Defintion of values in the variable, Consolidation
- no: not in favor of consolidation
- yes: in favor
- neutral: neither
- reluctant: not in favor but also suggested possible individual services for consolidation
Responses in favor of consolidation
## [1] "Let the best system help desk take the lead and have others adopt the process and systems."
## [2] "It reorganization is one of the best idea I heard after long time. I know there are faculty and staff members who will oppose every solution no matter what just for political reason. Administrators must get over this and take tough decisions. This is one of that situation again. IT staff is highest paid on the campus. Since faculty and staff don't even use high tech material which requires inhouse software programing. External venders always support their software on phone or something on site free anyways. Moving high salaried position to UNH who is more research and engineering sister institute. Talent from high paid ITS will be utilized appropriately without over burdening PSU. Keep low level support (student workers) for technophobic people. Additional help from UNH directly to students /faculty or indirectly through student workers. Most people asking to keep everything there use help for just Moodle course or overhead projectors, it does not rationalize huge cost."
## [3] "My recommendation would be to create ONE system-wide IT center/hub (all services under one roof) and have one ticketing system & desktop support(perhaps 24/7/365 basis). Make available knowledge database for users, so they can resolve small issues on their own. Investigate commonalities and needs of each institution (platforms, applications, LMS, etc). Find out how other institutions of higher education have consolidated their IT services. Provide strong IT leadership. Maybe bring IT personnel from USNH system together for a week-long workshop, have them share their expertise/views, and find ways to make this work for the greater good."
## [4] "I would like to have two paths for IT, one for students and one for faculty/staff. My biggest gripe is having to go through student workers to discuss moodle issues or concerns with classroom technology. If I am teaching a course in 15 minutes and the classroom computer or projector is not working I do no want to have to go through a student asking me if I have turned it on and off. I want to go to a professional staff person who recognizes the urgency of my call"Reponses that mentioned help desk
## [1] "I understand the need for consolidation with the goal of more efficiency. The process, however, is not transparent and the messages (when we do receive them), are not consistent. I would also like to know why the Help Desk is being done first since it is probably the most complicated system. Why not start with something like the course management system, or Banner support?"
## [2] "I believe success lies in multiple, frequent opportunities for faculty and staff involvement in changes to our current services and access to on-campus support. I also view the Help Desk as an invaluable tool for all PSU community members as well as an excellent learning opportunity for the students who work there."
## [3] "I recommend we continue in our current IT configuration for help desk functions etc. Consider the current concerns with COVID 19, if administration wants faculty to create alternate modes of delivering education during a potential shutdown how would that be supported by consolidated services. Technology is as much a backbone of the university as bricks and mortar now so it needs to be on site for faculty support."
## [4] "If we need common systems (e.g., Banner) that are complex and consistent in their utilization across USNH please do look for efficiencies of consolidation. Other support services that do not fit that profile need localized support."
## [5] "I think it is extremely important that there be instructional technology services and IT support on campus for technology issues. Everything we do is tied into our ability to access technology. Whatever reorganization happens, I hope academic services are not put in jeopardy."
## [6] "There are likely some areas that can be consolidated. However, I would strongly urge that PSU be able to keep its own IT support staff and system as much as possible. It WORKS... and dismantling a well-functioning system in order to save in the short term feels very foolish."
## [7] "Sometimes small is better. The smaller schools may not be as prestigious as UNH, but we are more flexible, more agile, less stuck in silos, and we don't trip over our own egos as much. It is catastrophic to assume that UNH has all the knowledge or even any knowledge whatsoever about how things work at the schools that are not UNH. (For that matter, I doubt anybody knows how everything works at UNH. It's a mess.) Consolidating us toward the UNH model will be a disaster. Faculty and staff at Plymouth have done amazing work with folks from GSC and Keene, but to my knowledge we have never had a fruitful partnership with UNH. And all evidence suggests that isn't our fault. UNH is a self-satisfied bully when it comes to this stuff. Plymouth has consistently been more successful, innovative, and creative — and yet we're now stuck being dictated to by UNH's CIO. Call him a System CIO all you want, he is still UNH. It's enraging."
## [8] "Consolidation without reducing staff facing customers on the ground Consolidation without reducing academic technology staff"
## [9] "Consolidation could be of some areas areas but let each of the schools have a help desk and not make us call someone at UNH or another school . Each of us need staff. Ours are the most effective for here and we need people that know Plymouth. I cannot understand doing something with a phone call or email."
## [10] "I think it would be excellent to centralize software. I can see having a call center to help with the minor problems, but for the most part I think that we need feet on the ground here in Plymouth. If there are issues with classroom technology and we can't get the help in a timely manner, the students will lose confidence in us and it may be a retention problem"
## [11] "I do not want our on-campus help desk removed or reduced in any way. Additionally, I do not want to lose resources for the Computer Science & Technology discipline. We are already experiencing bottlenecks and delays getting our issues resolved."
## [12] "I understand there's a lot of duplicity among services such as the helpdesk. I understand the idea behind consolidating leadership, but why do the people on the ground have to be consolidated and lined up in specific teams? That part does not seem necessary, and will greatly disrupt services here at PSU."Reponses that advocated for campus-specific service
## [1] "Slow down and allow for faculty and staff input across all campuses. Get a clear understanding of how the different AT is used and how each campus has different needs when it comes to AT. AT should never be looked at as a \"one size fits all\" service - it has to reflect the needs of those who use it: faculty; staff; and students."
## [2] "I think each USNH site needs live ITS staff who are readily available to provide support to faculty and students for both hardware and software. Perhaps cybersecurity support could be consolidated, or equipment ordering."
## [3] "I think it is extremely important that there be instructional technology services and IT support on campus for technology issues. Everything we do is tied into our ability to access technology. Whatever reorganization happens, I hope academic services are not put in jeopardy."
## [4] "That individual campus needs be taken into account. We could definitely lose Mahara, though. :)"
## [5] "Consolidation could be of some areas areas but let each of the schools have a help desk and not make us call someone at UNH or another school . Each of us need staff. Ours are the most effective for here and we need people that know Plymouth. I cannot understand doing something with a phone call or email."
## [6] "I would think that buying and purchasing of computers and other hardware/software may be beneficial to bring down costs for the system. I do not support consolidating staff as needs are different for students/faculty at different campuses."
## [7] "I think some IT consolidation makes good sense. I am less concerned about the back end than I am about academic tech. The CoLab has a skeleton staff that has fewer instructional designers currently on staff than we used to have (we have one now, used to have a handful four plus years ago). Losing technologists on top of this as they focus more on the kinds of large-scale projects that UNH is advocating now (for example, inclusive access) is going to cripple our ability to develop Cluster Learning. Either we need to make sure the new USNH AT is keyed into campus-specific teams, or else PSU needs to make sure we keep some folks on our own staff who are able to work with our one designer to keep our tech ship afloat as we sail into this kind of engaged, public-facing, and connected pedagogy."
## [8] "I do not want to see a consolidation of services- we need the team of experts that we currently have on our campus who understand our specific needs."
## [9] "Retain Moodle as our LMS, allow differences across campuses if those differences clearly maximize fit to the varied organizational internal and external environments, and avoid adding more layers of bureaucracy which only bog down the system, cause user frustration, and perhaps most importantly, student dissatisfaction, which may be manifest by transferring out of the USNH system."
## [10] "I do not want our on-campus help desk removed or reduced in any way. Additionally, I do not want to lose resources for the Computer Science & Technology discipline. We are already experiencing bottlenecks and delays getting our issues resolved."
## [11] "PSU needs to have a strong technical local advocate for PSU initiatives being put forth to System IT. Strongly recommend a written agreement (contract) with IT to make sure needs are being met."