Decentralized Information Technology Requires Central Coordination!

Decentralized Information Technology Requires Central Coordination!:



This article from 1999 describes IT for academic facilities. There are so many facets that hold true with our current IT resources and issues; the struggle with supporting technology has never changed and never been more necessary than it is today.



Here are some critical highlights direct quoted from the document:



  • When either the hardware or software used in these systems becomes obsolete, it is difficult to migrate or upgrade the systems in a manner that preserves all of the necessary adaptations. [Hardware we have managed with leases, VDI and other aspects. Software however is another issue]


  • ...research groups[BLs & Regions for us] obey a strong instinct to solve problems locally. The prevailing reward systems which favor personal excellence in scholarship are inadequate to encourage development of infrastructure. It is the responsibility of the central administration to allocate funding to counter this trend, achieving a healthy balance between centrally offered incentives and local initiative.


  • [in a market where knowledgeable IT professionals are scarce] This is even more important when the staff resources are highly distributed and most units lack second tier and backup personnel. The loss of “the computer person” in a department can produce serious disruptions in the operation of the unit.


  • Less experienced computer users are not familiar with the fragility of most systems and they quickly become dependent on these technologies for critical day-to-day operations, without a full understanding of their limitations. IT management cannot neglect this challenge. [I add understanding and training to reach those understandings of how to use software is critical ]


  • Note that when the pool of talent is depleted, the “richer units” will also suffer because their most capable people will leave academe without leaving a legacy of trainees...With good institutional training programs and good planning, vertical task integration for IT staff can be accomplished in an environment of central coordination and local control, particularly if territorial borders remain soft.


  • ...economies of scale by standardizing hardware, software, and support services. [I believe we have done well on this one so far]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Powerpoint countdown and current time in slides VBA

Add text fields- this VBA searches through the objects in the first frame until it finds " " in the text some where, truncates everything from and to the right and replaces it with an active countdown timer or current time in the box. Refreshes every 500ms with a prtsafe call so it doesn't bog down the CPU. Add a slide advance to start the next slide and begin automated slide advancement. Attribute VB_Name = "Countdown" Private Declare PtrSafe Function WaitMessage Lib "user32" () As Long Public Sub Wait ( Seconds As Double ) ''non cpu-intensive wait timer '' https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57268161/sleep-wait-timer-in-powerpoint-vba-thats-not-cpu-intensive Dim endtime As Double endtime = DateTime.Timer + Seconds Do WaitMessage DoEvents Loop While DateTime.Timer < endtime End Sub Sub Countdown_from_Start () Dim Time As Date Dim Count As ...
Read more

Revit area plans adding new types and references (Gross and rentable)

Image
Note to self: Add additional (duplicate) gross area and net area schemed under Area Plans And Area schemes... Really counter-intuitive place to put this instead of say...  Area Plans> New Type> Edit Type (ADD) or Create an area plan, then Go to Properties, Edit Type and Duplicate... Always seem to forget this one! 2015-10-16-And for the calculation type... To update: this also applies to Revit as well as LT- The gross calculations cannot be overridden, however the 'rentable' comes in various flavors... From AD Revit help: Applies to Revit LT 2015 Rules are determined by one type of space bordering another space. The following table shows area measurement rules. To find the appropriate measurement rule, find the selected Area Type and the corresponding Bordering Area Type. Gross Building Area Scheme Types Gross Building Area Scheme Types Area Type Selected Bordering Area Type Measurement Rule Gross Building Area Gross Buil...
Read more