A conference for IT Support Staff was proposed at the Hilary Term meeting of the IT Users Group. Steve Jones (OUCS), Pete Biggs (Physical Chemistry), Ken Dunford (Eng. Science) and Gerard Robinson (Anaesthetics) agreed to form the organizing committee and co-opted Susan Lake (Theology) for her experience in the organization of similar events for librarians. Carol Bateman (OUCS) replaced Steve Jones when he took up a new post in Leeds.
At the first meeting Mr Robinson was elected to chair the committee and 26 June was chosen as the date to hold the event. Given the relatively short time scale and limited choice of venue it was necessary to devise a fair method of attracting delegates. Given that St Anne's could only accommodate 140 people and that departments and colleges total more than 160 it was decided to send letters inviting Heads of Houses and Departments to nominate their own delegates. In this way it would almost be possible to guarantee one place for each college or department to be represented. Ultimately 18 Colleges and 54 departments responded and it was then possible to offer more delegate places for the departments that had a higher number of IT staff.
The format of the day's events was chosen to be a combination of formal presentations and workshops. A social gathering was planned for the evening to be held at the University Club in Mansfield Road.
The chairman opened the conference by welcoming the delegates and outlining some of the objectives for holding the event. He emphasised that it was hoped that the conference would form a focus and forum for the exchange of information and views of all IT support staff throughout the University. It was also hoped that such events would enable people to put faces to names.
Mr Joe Stoy (Computing Lab.) presented the first lecture by giving an overview of the University's IT Strategy. This was a very well received presentation, detailing the University's ten year Information Strategy and two year Technical Strategy, citing the Flemming Report and the recent IT Strategy Report by Alex Reid. Reference was made to the client server model of the provision of computing facilities and that then required a corresponding distributed IT support service. The topics of the provision of computing equipment for student & staff, the provision of IT support in areas that traditionally have not employed their own local technical staff, the extension of the University network to being a Wide Oxford Metropolitan Area Network and the Libraries' databases. A three layer model of support staff was proposed,
Overall, however, the ideal would be a service that is seamless
to users.
The second presentation covered the area of security & privacy. Dennis Jackson (UKERNA) provided an animated and entertaining, but serious view of the various aspects of security involved with a national academic network. International co-operation and points of contact were detailed along with how individual institutions and bodies communicated potential and real security problems. This lead on to Malcolm Harper's (Computing Lab.) presentation of security and privacy policy within Oxford University. Pete Biggs (Physical Chemistry) concluded the first session with an explanation of the role and operation of the Oxford Computing Emergency Response Team and their vital link to UKERNA. Some recommendations of what action should be taken in the event of an incident were given.
After a welcome break for mid-morning refreshments, Stephen Parkinson
(Modern Languages) chaired the second session.
Alex Reid (OUCS) presented a detailed and much appreciated description
of OUCS and how the service is responding to the change from the
support of centralized computing facilities to a client-server
paradigm. Such a change had not resulted in any decrease in the
activities of OUCS whose 80 members of staff were providing training,
advisory, centralized computing, networking and security for over
17,000 users. There was no doubt that OUCS would change to meet
the technological requirements of the University and conference
was informed that a review of OUCS would be carried out shortly
under the chairmanship of Nick Woodhouse.
The prospects and possibilities of future networking technologies
were outlined by David Coomes (LanCare). There were many ideas
that would assist the planning for the mid- and long term provision
of IT facilities. The prospect of a virtual network was one of
the many possibilities that could prove very useful to those peripatetic
members of the University who find themselves regularly working
on more than one site.
After a light lunch delegates were able to attend two workshops from a selection of five, (each one being repeated). The choice of workshop had been made at the time of booking and it had been possible to allow all delegates to attend both workshops of their choice. All these sessions would have benefited from being allocated more time and may be seen as a basis for future events.
Professional Skills Development,
Carol Bateman (OUCS) & Kay McIntyre (Staff Development Unit)
This workshop detailed those courses that are currently available via OUCS and other organizations in the area of both technical and personal skill development. It was seen that the courses currently offered by OUCS tend to be aimed at the end-user rather than support personnel. Delegates were pleased to hear that OUCS and other bodies were looking at ways in which accreditation for their skills, similar to that offered Microsoft or Novell could be obtained. It was suggested that there is a need for more liaison between the relevant bodies and support staff BEFORE a new service is introduced, e.g. GEAC or the change from Sable to Ermine. It was suggested that a newsletter specifically for IT Support Staff would aid the dissemination of information and that OUCS could also seek advice from IT support staff on specific course requirements. The need for a University-wide policy on what is expected from support staff and to recognize the need for continuous skills development was also mooted. A register of 'experts' to which support staff could refer was proposed.
Career Development for IT Staff
Alex Reid (OUCS), Robin McCleery (Zoology), Martin Price (AISU), Stephen Parkinson (Modern Languages), Joe Stoy (Computing Lab.)
The panel introduced themselves and categorised support staff according to their route into IT support ranging from full-time professional to 'gentleman amateur'. It was noted that there is no standardization with respect to pay scales and that staff are currently employed on a range of scales. The difficulties in re-grading were outlined and it was reported that possible changes to the criteria were being looked into. The problems involved with short term contracts and 'soft' money were highlighted. The mobility of support staff was raised but it was foreseen that there would be significant management problems unless all staff were under the authority of one body. Professional accreditation was seen as most useful and further workshops and seminars would help and also reduce the isolation felt by staff in the smaller departments or colleges. A desire to be able to plan a career path within the University was expressed.
IT Support with Reference to the New Library System
Everard Robinson (Libraries Automation System)
With the participation of the attending delegates this highly interactive workshop provided an insight into to the problems involved in the provision of IT support in a distributed environment. LAS was cited as a centralized example & comparing and contrasting it with locally based IT support personnel.
Supporting Student Learning with the World Wide Web
Jonathan Derby (CTISS)
The usefulness of the World Wide Web to assist teaching has increased dramatically in the last two years despite the Web's chaotic nature. This workshop outlined recent trends with respect to usage and growth of the web and the increased use of multi-media material. Despite bandwidth limitations, information of widely varying quality and the inadequacy of searching mechanism, live examples of available resources were given, showing some innovative use of the web to support teaching and learning. Other issues were also covered including the effects of possible standardization on innovation and diversity.
Email - an overview of the Oxford setup and a review of the different protocols and clients.
Peter Higginbotham (OUCS)
This workshop started with an outline of the main requirements to be considered when selecting the systems to be recommended for general use throughout the University. There was then a description of the differences in philosophy and practicalities of three main server systems. This was followed by a review of the features and platform availability of five possible mail clients. The recommended client, 'Simeon' was described in some detail, including some feature that are due for inclusion in future releases. Discussions led to the conclusion that it was unlikely that any single system would offer sufficient benefits to be proposed for standardization across the University.
The final 30 minute session was devoted to an open discussion.
A number of points were made:
An invitation was extended to delegates to offer their services to organize future events to which there was an encouraging response. Offers of contacts within other organizations to approach with request to support future events were also forthcoming.
The chairman closed the formal proceeding by thanking the delegates for attending, the speakers for contributing and his fellow committee members for their efforts in making the day so successful. Delegates were then invited to adjourn to the University Club for further refreshments where an convivial evening was spent by a large proportion of the attendees.
As a result of the many discussion associated with the conference
the Organizing Committee would like to make the following recommendation
to the ITUG for consideration by the IT Committee:
The distributed computing environment in Oxford has developed
a corresponding need for distributed support. This has been implemented
in various ways either by central bodies, (e.g.. OUCS, Clinical
Medical School) funding shared resources or by departments or
colleges employing their own local staff. There is a wealth of
experience of IT support in Oxford and to share this would assist
us all. Therefore to aid the flow of information in all directions
we believe that both University and Support Staff would gain much
by being more proactive. To this end it is suggested that an IT
Support Staff Committee should be convened. Its brief should include
the following:
No doubt after due discussion, the brief of such a body would
expand, but these are issues that we feel need to be addressed
with some urgency.
The organization of an conference next year should start at once and although a request was made to hold the event outside term we feel that there was much to recommend the choice of a day in towards the end of Trinity term. St Catherine's College has been approached as a possible venue and the only available date is 26 June 1997. The fixing of the date and booking of the venue should be done as soon as is possible.
The individual members of the organizing committee feel that their efforts have been well worthwhile and as chairman I have been most grateful for their support. Collectively we feel that there should be a balance between continuity from year to year and the advantages of fresh ideas from new faces and so both Pete Biggs and myself are willing to assist the organization of a conference next year. Also I have a list of eight people who expressed a positive interest in assisting in the organization of future events.
Thanks are due to all those delegates who returned their evaluation and session reports which made the compilation of this report all the easier. I beg forgiveness for blatant plagiarism.
Thanks also are due to Sun Microsystems/Relay and Silicon Graphics
for their generous support and the provision of demonstrations
throughout the day.
Gerard Robinson, Nuffield Dept. of Anaesthetics. Octt. 1996