PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 22, No. 11, Dec. 6, 2002

Photo by Bill Wiegand Service oriented According to Pete Siegel, chief information officer of the Urbana campus, the name Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (more commonly called CITES) was chosen because it reflects the size of the organization and the scope of its services. "We have 250 employees in several locations around campus who are responsible for nearly 75 services," Siegel said. "We changed the name to emphasize that despite our size and broad responsibilities we are a single organization."

‘How are we doing?’ CITES wants to know
Although campus administrators are pleased with the results of combining the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the Computing and Communications Services Office (CCSO), and the Center for Educational Technologies (CET) into what is becoming known as CITES (Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services), they want to know what you think.

Since its inception last spring, one of the main roles of CITES has been reliable, effective, efficient core services. They hope the launch of a campuswide survey on its services in spring 2003 will tell them how they’re doing.

"We are working to identify different communities on the campus who have common interests in the use of different technologies," said Pete Siegel, chief information officer of the Urbana campus. "We are doing a better job of figuring out how to engage the campus in discussion of issues at the right time. Too early and we waste their time or we have them involved in things that don’t pan out; too late and they don’t feel they were properly consulted."

Photo by Bill Wiegand Just a phone call away The Help Desk is one of CITES’ primary services. In the past six months, CITES has been developing the Help Desk as a "gateway" to all of its services with five full-time consultants and a full-time manager having been hired since April. Terri Bingaman (left), a CITES customer service representative, and student consultant Jerome Kao (right) assist a walk-in customer at the CITES offices at the Digital Computer Lab.

CITES already has begun using focus groups as a way of involving faculty and staff members and students in its decision-making. Campus input also is solicited through the customer feedback form at the bottom of every one of its Web pages.

According to Siegel, the name CITES was decided upon because it reflects the size of the organization and the scope of its services.

"We have 250 employees in several locations around campus who are responsible for nearly 75 services. We changed the name to emphasize that despite our size and broad responsibilities we are a single organization. We want CITES customers to benefit from one-stop shopping. Even with tight budgets, customer service activities have remained at the very top of our priority list."

One of CITES primary customer service activities is the CITES Help Desk. In the past six months, CITES has been developing the Help Desk as a "gateway" to all of its services. Since April five full-time consultants and a full-time manager have been hired and the group’s efforts seem to be paying off.

change to discover technicians at the CITES Help Desk who were willing to go beyond the call of duty and help us re

Grant Gulovsen, director of information services at the College of Law, turned to the CITES Help Desk when his users began complaining about computer freezes after installing the software necessary to access the campus wireless network in the College of Law Library. "We knew this was a very complicated problem with no easy answers and had pretty much given up on

a solution," he says. "It was an unexpected and welcome to solve this issue in a satisfactory and timely manner."

Siegel ascribes the change to a whole different attitude at CITEwS. "We want campus to know that we really do want to hear from them." That attitude is a direct result of a grass roots effort that began in CCSO last year, when CCSO staff members identified and initiated changes to improve customer service.

Stan Yagi, former director, CCSO, and now assistant CIO, Information Technologies, is one of those responsible for measuring and quantifying the improvements. "Most people couldn’t care less about the name change," he says. "They want to know how we have improved how they get their jobs done. That’s the ultimate metric."

Improvements in CITES services in the last year include:

• A complete redesign of the CITES Web site, with new and improved navigation and literally hundreds of new and updated pages providing useful information on the full range of CITES services
  
• Equipment and utility upgrades to the network to improve network reliability, which in turn reduces the chances of users losing data
  
• A new e-mail system with a much improved Web-based interface. The system was introduced to incoming students this fall and will be deployed to the rest of campus during the next several months. The new system handles the hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages that pass through CITES much more efficiently which means all users should experience easier, quicker access to their e-mail.

Lanny Arvan, assistant CIO, Educational Technologies, hopes that what will be most visible to staff and faculty members in the change from CET to EdTech are the results of his mandate from the Educational Technologies Board to make it easier for faculty members to find educational services. Arvan is working with his peers on campus to meet the "significant obligation to a lot of people to provide decent quality utilities support. We are serious, too, about trying to increase campus use of technology for a more in-depth approach to teaching."

Yagi agrees, "We don’t want to just support services. We want to help lead the campus in its assessment of emerging technologies."

CITES SERVICES
You will recognize names of some services in this list, but others might surprise you.

• Account services
• Blackboard
• Campus operators
• Campus Web server
• Cellular telephone service
• Departmental services
• Electronic directory
• E week
• Firewall services
• Gradebook
• Internet Security Scanner
• Listserv
• Premier dialup
• Network design
• On-site consulting
• Teleconferencing
• UI Direct
• UIUCnet
• Voice mail
• WebCT
  For the complete list and service descriptions, go to: www.cites.uiuc.edu/services/.

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