We wanted to ask "What are the guiding principles we should use to vet the draft list of IS&T Core Products and Services?"  Here's what YHS captured:


An extremely rough transcription of that brainstorm activity follows:

  • Is maintained
  • Promotes collaboration across MIT
  • Critical to MIT mission
  • Enhances workspace -- helps people study, teach, admin. and collaborable
  • All other things equal, should serve the many, not just a few
  • We help people use the service
  • Responds to community need
  • It should also be needs-driven
  • "Most" DLCS don't want to do it OR were told they can't do it
  • IS&T is not the sole provider of central IT services
  • Is IS&T at least a "good" provider of the service?
  • Sustainable
  • Reduces "cost" in total across MIT -- might be financial cost, or could be other qualitiative factors
  • Guides prioritization, for example, research computing inside IS&T vs. NOT inside IS&T vs. SOMEWHAT inside IS&T
  • Should not be stated in terms of "product" name
  • Easy to explain and easy to use
  • Practical (this needs defintion)
  • Has explicit policy, governance and a roadmap
  • Predictable and consistent -- no surprises!
  • Reliable
  • Measurable
  • Keeps "current" with technology trends
  • Represents "best practices" in some sense
  • Is legal

Given that messy collection, we thought we'd better fine tune this list, perhaps by completing the sentence "A Core IS&T Service Is..."

... to produce a short, crisp and well-defined list. 

We produced this list:

  • critical to MIT's mission
  • sustainable and scalable
  • practical
  • maintainable, supportable, reliable and predictable
  • cost-effective
  • governed, roadmapped, resourced, etc.

Underlined words were open to interpretation, and we flagged them for further semantic analysis.

And then found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, at which point we decided that what we were really listing were the delivery goals for Core Services (see below) should be.

So the goals of a core service are to be...

  • cost effective
  • easy to use
  • effectively managed
  • explainable
  • justifiable
  • measurable
  • practical
  • reliable
  • scalable
  • secure
  • supportable
  • visible

Finally, we reached the land of Guiding Principles ...

... by returning to the document attached to the CSS Leaders Team wiki space entitled Responsibilities of Information Services and Technology Department at MIT.  ISTDeptDesciption.doc

IS&T's mission is to:
  • provide efficient and cost effective IT utilities (network services, data centers, software infrastructure, and associated services) to the MIT community;
  • partner with administrative units to develop administrative processes and solutions that improve service and decision making, and that lower administrative cost;
  • maintain receptivity to leading edge IT knowledge embedded in MIT's academic community and leverage it where appropriate.
IS&T will work within the complexities of IT service provision at MIT to:
  • improve the functionality and interoperability of MIT's administrative systems environment;
  • develop a practical next generation approach for MIT's "operating system" for the educational enterprise (the "student system");
  • work with academic leadership on identifying appropriate research computing capabilities;
  • continue to build a strong, focused organization capable of meeting evolving campus needs in an environment of tight resources
IS&T will strive to deliver robust core services to the Community based on currently available technologies and will assure that MIT is positioned to benefit from advances in technology that would allow superior service at reduced cost to the Institute.

Humbly submitted by today's scribe...tjmcgovern...all remaining errors are mine. Whack away!

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