Communicating With Distributed IT Support Staff 

One of the key issues in working successfully with distributed IT support staff is being able to communicate with them and opening channels for them to communicate with each other. Most methods require knowing who the staff are in the first place which can also be difficult. Gathered here are ideas and schemes which have been tried in various member institutions. All ideas are presented for you to take away and try in your own institution. Similarly, if you have other methods or suggestions, please let us know and we'll include them on the page.

Groups and committees

Oxford University's ICT Forum was established in 2007 as an outcome of the University's ICT Strategy Programme. All members of the IT Support Staff register are automatically members of the ICTF. ICTF has a Chair and a Steering Group and has formal terms of reference and constitution.

Centrally held register of IT support staff

The University of Oxford maintain a moderated register of known IT support staff, held centrally by the Computing Services. The list was started by asking all administrators, heads of department, colleges, etc. to complete a form giving details of their staff, with examples of the type of staff who the central services felt should be included. A number of "carrots" were created to encourage new IT support staff to join. For example, those on the Register have direct access to account records about their users which are held centrally, special training opportunities are only open to those on the Register, they get fast track to help services and experts, etc.

Individuals can apply to join the list via a web form. They have to supply the contact details of one referee who can vouch for them and the form data is checked and processed by hand. Once on the Register, the special facilities are accessed via an on-line login page. Maintenance is also via the web form although email to the relevant computing services section is also acceptable.

Email lists

Centrally managed email lists

Oxford generate an ITSS-announce email list from their register of IT support staff. This is a low volume, restricted posting list which all members of the Register are subscribed to. It is used for urgent and/or important messages such as security alerts, changes to service, planned outages, etc. It is also used for one or two non-urgent messages such as brief weekly news and training bulletins.

The University of Ulster has a general purpose email list to communicate with distributed IT support staff. They also have a number of more targeted lists covering areas like:

• CERT (emergency response to incidents)
• PC contract information
• software licence co-ordinators (1 person per faculty)
• informal liaison on technical matters of initial interest (mainly between Informatics staff and the central Information Services Department)

Non-managed email lists

All members of Oxford’s ITSS Register are automatically subscribed to the ITSS-discuss mailing list when they join the Register but they may subsequently decide to unsubscribe, or re-subscribe, themselves. All members of the list can post to it. It is often used for self help, for ITSS to communicate with each other, to solve problems or ask for recommendations, and occasionally for reminders about events advertised via ITSS-announce.

At the University of Reading, details of the it-supporters email list are on the IT Services web pages and also in the staff training booklet and all IT support staff are encouraged to join.  IT Services staff send announcements of changes to services to the it-supporters list as well as the formal list for contacts in schools and departments. Various other items are mailed to the list and IT support staff use it to seek advice from other IT support staff.

Conferences and seminars

The University of Oxford runs an annual IT Support Staff Conference. This is organised by the University's ICT Forum.  Around 200+ people attend and there are scheduled times for socialising, panel sessions and discussion as well as speakers and workshops.

The University of Reading organise a one-day annual IT Support Staff Conference. The programme is determined in conjunction with the IT Support Staff Committee. Most of the speakers at the conference are from within the institution (giving updates on central services and details of future plans) but there are some external speakers (e.g. preferred PC supplier, key software suppliers, speakers on technical issues).

Oxford and Reading also provide a full programme of seminars for IT support staff (see http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/calendar/ for Oxford’s seminars).  Reading hold regular lunchtime seminars on various topics are also held at Reading.  Lunch is provided as an incentive to get IT support staff to attend.

The University of Ulster hold the following events and training:

• 6 monthly events hosted by Information Services Department and open to any user; associated with proactively advising on development plans and informally seeking feedback on "QofS"
• Awareness Events: closed events, usually 0.5 day each, held occasionally to discuss and seek 'buy in' to proposed strategic developments – invited audience usually includes senior technical IT staff within Faculty structure
• Information Services Department, typically once annually, will arrange commercial training on a common technology and endeavour to achieve an attractive price so as to enable Faculty staff to attend foc

Discussion forums

Reading use the university’s VLE (Blackboard) for discussion forums for the IT support staff.  The VLE is also used as a repository for presentations given at the annual conference and lunchtime seminars.  Where possible, presentations are recorded with Camtasia and these are made available via the VLE.