Desktop Project Update -- August 19, 1997
Over the past several years, the Capital Request Committee, a sub-committee of the Campus Technology Committee, has constructed a dominoing and purchase plan to move the campus towards a measured funding program (as others have recommended) that provides generally for replacement of all campus lab machines over a five-year period. It is our intent to construct a parallel plan for employee machines, so that after the Desktop Project has been completed and the bond funds have been depleted, the college will have a schedule and budget for desktop replacements. Thus the overall goal of this plan is to negotiate between two conflicting goals: a massive infusion of desktop hardware over a short period of time in preparation for the introduction of many new systems and the development of a planned and budgeted five-year desktop hardware replacement cycle.
Inventory
Many of the planning decisions the college faces will be easier to make if
we establish and maintain an accurate inventory of hardware.
a. Many of GCC's technical staff have been maintaining an inventory of the equipment in the offices they support, but until now, while those records are 95% accurate, they have been uncoordinated and idiosyncratic. In anticipation of the Desktop Project, we have identified a format and a series of fields for an initial coordinated inventory; we have also gathered some tools and written some instructions for DOS and for for Mac users that anyone can use to determine what kind of hardware is on his or her desktop (also useful for finding information about a personal machine.) After OGF processes become clear, we intend to transfer this data into a hardware database that intersects with the Fixed Assets portion of OGF, with Dial, and with other college records. Of primary importance is that the database be easy to maintain by multiple people and that it produce useful reports in a timely fashion.
A coordinator of the Desktop Project has been identified, and she has begun to collect and organize the inventory data. In addition, she is gathering a list of SIS users who will have immediate need for access to LCS when it becomes operational at GCC in April, 1997. We have recently added information to the inventory that identifies those individuals who have been waiting for as much as 18 months for hardware upgrades, and buildings that have inadequate networking. As we uncover other information needs, we will be able to add fields for them in the current spreadsheet; when college processes with respect to OGF, receiving, and installation become more stable, we will be better able to construct a useful and maintainable database that will help us make important decisions related to hardware purchases and installation. We believe these decisions should be grounded in good data, carefully considered by groups of people, and that the criteria should be public and open to question. Ultimately, our goal is a process for measured hardware replacement upon which people can rely for their personal growth, instructional development, and budget planning.
b. Currently, the network is functional in 80% of our campus buildings. Additional ethernet ports for new machines will be added to the current network as needed. Work continues on the Saratoga I portion of the Infrastructure Project.
c. Glendale does not intend to request any money for buy-back of current machines. Instead, we are proposing to extend the purchase of new machines over a three-year period, easing the college into a rational technology budgeting cycle. To this end, we have identified a category of "near-Apollo" desktop machines that we believe, with the addition of memory and storage, can provided specified users with the necessary functionality to accomplish the new tasks associated with their jobs for at least two years. GCC intends to defray replacement of these machines until they no longer serve their users.
Integration with other campus planning
A faculty committee spent much of Spring, 1996 outlining their expectations for technology at GCC. Spurred by
that document and by new hiring in three of the four Information Services
leadership positions, we have created a Staffing
Plan to Support Emerging Initiatives. The plan has four main goals:
to handle the projected changes while maintaining or exceeding current
levels of service and reliability for instruction; to anticipate the new
levels of support required by faculty and staff over the next few years
and to devise creative means of providing it; to invest in our current
staff by encouraging cross-training and continuous learning, rather than
hiring new employees at high levels; and to work together to achieve these
goals.
One of the first issues to be addressed by the GCC LCS Implementation Team will be establishing the order of Desktop Project computer installations, taking into account the following:
Some departments and units have experimented with applications and file serving on a limited basis, but many users do not know how to make effective use of these capabilities. One goal of the desktop project implementation plan is to move units toward standardizing on file and print services, including backups and user support, so as to minimize the need for continuing technical intervention. Obviously this will depend on the installation of a powerful enough network so that user productivity is not impacted. The goal is to have no more than 100 machines on a single server.
As part of the current HTC rewiring project, GCC is installing four new servers to support HT 1 and 2 classrooms and pits. While these affect the instructional program, they will allow us an opportunity to test leveraging ethernet switching technology for students with an eye to doing the same for faculty and staff members elsewhere on campus. In addition, the main administrative server (Peabody) will be upgraded to Novell 4.1 in early fall. All of these efforts are directed towards increasing the reliability, efficiency and consistency of Glendale's network.
By June, 1999 (36 months), all full-time, board-approved employees will have on their desks and connected to the network an Apollo-certified computer and will know when that computer is scheduled for replacement over a 5-year budget cycle. The campus network infrastructure will be fully upgraded, and all full-time, board-approved employees will have access to (and be capable of using) file, print, and application services, including Netscape, LCS, OGF, and electronic mail (and office productivity software if required by their jobs).
Training and Support
One of our college goals is to develop a
learning organization that is responsive, efficient and adaptable. As
part of the Information Services Staffing Plan and to move towards this
goal, GCC has hired a new Director of Training and Employee Development
and established four new functional teams directly addressing user support
needs. These teams should be organized by August 1; full staffing depends
on approval of the new funding plan for support of LCS.
In addition, through the cooperation of several departments, we have created a new training classroom, a new training seminar room, an LCS team office, and a Desktop Project staging area. The training classroom will be outfitted with 20 new Apollo-certified machines and a teacher station with display capabilities; the training seminar room will be outfitted with a single Apollo-certified computer and high-quality display capabilities. Both rooms currently have satellite down link capabilities and are connected to the campus network.
Training and Employee Development, working with interested faculty members from several departments, will develop a catalog of credit and non-credit courses, workshops and refresher sessions specifically tailored towards the needs of college employees. Many of these courses are currently in the course bank, but where necessary, faculty will be encouraged to develop new courses and submit them through the curriculum process. Every effort will be made to offer courses in a variety of formats (OE/OE, video, and network-based) so that employees can choose to work at their desks or away from their offices as they prefer and at times convenient for them (including before and after work hours and on weekends). Whenever possible, courses will be offered in modules. Full-time employees will be encouraged to take advantage of fee-waivers and other professional growth opportunities.
GCC has been staffing a Help Desk since 1993 and is currently participating in the testing of new Help Desk software. A major goal of the staffing plan is to provide more effective user support, primarily through cross-training of staff and the creation of flexible teams to address specific problems as they arise.
Reporting
GCC assumes that with the approval of this plan, GCC's allocation of
Desktop Project funds will become available to it and that desktop funds
unspent after 18 months will remain in GCC's account to support the full
three-year implementation of its plan. The college will report its
progress semi-annually on its web pages, including figures on hardware
installations, application, file and print serving capabilities, skill-set
development, and user support improvement. The integrity of these funds
will not be compromised.
