I am a Technology Specialist working in education. We are not a huge school as yet, and as such have a small IT support staff, Director, Network Admin, help desk/multimedia, and myself. We have approximately 550 PC’s plus a lab of MAC’s. There is not a peice of equipment on the campus older than three years (minus some soon to be replaced servers and switches).
I guess I’ll get right to the bottom line – are all IT depts, in the business sector as well as Education, considered the spawn of the devil? Is there anyone that does not come under scrutiny for failing to support this dept. or that dept? i.e THAT dept always gets high priority, whereas MY department is always on the backburner!
I have come into the IT field after spending 14 years in manufacturing. I work with a really good bunch of folks here in Oklahoma, I really do. But there seems to be a grudge against us for not gettings things done in a timely a manner as our customers (95% Instructors, then Dept heads, etc) think it should.
Additionally (some folks, not all) they do not trust us to prioritize our work and generally assume that we put them off for kicks. We have a very good workorder system that out Director enters for each person with the priority she deems necessary, and then they are stored in a Db for future reference. In addition to the day to day, please tie my shoes for me workorders (If there isn’t a shortcut on the desktop, then it hasn’t been installed) we roll out approx 150 desktops and a dozen laptops each year. This year they were 2.5 months late. They arrived as school started, whereas we are generally done. Can anyone else out there see what kind of bind this puts us in? Keep in mind though, there is no PC on campus older than 3 years – in other words the new machine is not going to increase productivity, or enable a student to do something they already cannot.
Recently, another Director met with myself and my Supervisor (IT Director) and said in as many words, we were inept as a department, the school did not have sufficient IT support, and we need badly to hire out a part time “lackey” (my word) or additional full time support to sufficiently meet her and everyone elses needs.
My feelings are this is a mid size educational facility, not a two year school, and cetainly not a University. I think their expectations are unrealistic.
Please bear in mind the IT group I work with are very knowledgable, and out first priority above all else is our students and teachers. There isn’t time or likely enough space for me to go into more detail, but after the meeting Friday I was ready to leave the field all together. We DO seem to have the backing of the Superintedent, whom my boss answers to, but it feels like a bushwhacking is coming our way.
Does any of this make sense? Am I all alone?