Challenges FACING a small IT department

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Challenges FACING a small IT department

• Danny Reid

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• We need both sides of our business cards to list
  our real jobs

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About Myself

• BSc Computer Science (Algoma)
• MSc Computer Science (UWO)
• Began teaching for the COSC department 3 years
  ago
• Currently the Divisional Director of IT Services

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About the Department

• 4 senior staff members
• 1 junior staff member
• 1 evening student assistant
• We wear many hats!

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About the Department

• Our range of skills must be just as big as
  larger campuses
• One day youre configuring a network, the next
  youre developing new applications
• Of course, a tradeoff occurs between depth vs.
  breadth
• Changes happen just as quickly too
• Challenges when staff go on vacations, or are
  off sick
• Cross departmental support is a must

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About the Department

• Were all aware of whats going on in the
  department
• Weekly meetings for updates
• A great time to offer advice, suggestions, or
  alternatives

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Limited Resources

• Staffing
• Budgets
• Time
• How do we manage?

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Open Source

• Were a firm believer in open source
• Its free!
• Community support (free too!)
• Used in proven applications
• Web servers
• Some Routers
• Backup systems
• Department applications

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Open Source

• Course Management System
• WebCT/Blackboard too expensive
• Started using Moodle 2 years ago
• 39,000 registered sites w/ 1.7 million courses
• Athabasca moved to Moodle several years ago too
• Very popular amongst faculty
• of course this causes other academic issues
• (tour)

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Think Simple

• We try to keep things simple
• Examples
• We maintain standard images across campus with
  push technology
• A new Instructor Evaluation System (tour)
• A new Email Broadcast System (tour)

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Make the most of the budget

• Economies of scale
• Large departments can make volume purchases
• We are aggressive in obtaining quotes
• About 50 of our purchases go through EBay
• Difficult to arrange training
• Expensive
• Difficult to spare someone for that time
• We focus on self study (We love OReilly books!)

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In-house

• A lot of in-house development
• Access Control Systems
• Surveillance Systems
• Phone Systems
• Registration Systems

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In-house

• Phone Systems
• We use Asterisk (an open source phone switch)
• Offer ISDN video conferencing
• Route long distance
• Sell calling cards!
• Slowly moving to VoIP phones

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In-house

• Registration system
• Current registration system built in the early
  80s
• Very outdated, not maintained
• A choice was made 2 years ago to develop in-house
  again
• Purchased registration systems are costly
  (prohibitively for us)
• We heavily involve the end-users
• Current Status
• Recruitment and Admissions modules are live
• Registration currently in development
• Our development team has just doubled!
• (Tour)

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Were not perfect!

• Areas of concern
• Software updates and patches
• Contingency plans / Disaster recovery
• Security
• Policies and procedures
• Documentation

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• Not being chained into a cubicle is the best
  part of my job