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Facilitation of the Work of Real People
A stretch goal, but not really draft 
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"If you build it they will come" is no longer true. It hasn't been for a while. Our community's expectations are shaped by the world, and not by MIT's constraints. The new reality is, "If you build it for me, with me, and it doesn't make me think, I may come." The tried approach of starting with a new piece of technology and developing a service from it is giving way to understanding a person, understaing their need, and designing a solution for it, technology's best efforts to the contrary not withstanding. The core needs to be simple and solid enough to support unlimited complexity and customization. IT needs to have the basics covered, and those need to be robust, self-service, and trivially easy to use. These include consistent, well-implemented, and easy to understand policies and security guidelines. It means easy communications between people via email, calendars, chat, and networks (social and otherwise). Software MIT needs access to needs to be accessible, in the most inclusive sense. IT needs to support people's work and lives and should never get in the way. Oh, and delivery must be cheap and quick. |
- enhance IT services delivered to faculty and students
- expand Departmental Services
- streamline software delivery process
- define and deliver software stack in support of GIRs
- improve email/calendaring options
- provide easy access to software tools
- ensure services worthy of MIT
- become home to the strategy for the public student computing experience at MIT
- deliver Information Security and Privacy Policy 1.0
Development of the CSS Workforce of the Future
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DRAFT:
Technology has thoroughly reshaped the way we do business... Today's technology has given all of us unprecedented freedom and the power to access information whenever and wherever we need it. Never before have we seen the extent of making sure people have the knowledge, technology, tools, capital, time, and physical space to generate superior results. \ [W\]orkers \ [will\] seek more elasticity in where and when they work, collaborative, real-time technologies that boost knowledge sharing and encourage the free flow of ideas will become more essential. No matter what new technologies develop, the most important skills will remain the ability to learn and to think critically. Many skills treasured by previous generations were made obsolete by computer software, and so were the workers who lacked the flexibility to adapt. We cannot know which jobs will be superseded by technology in the future; we can only know, without a doubt, that some will be. And the reverberations will be felt in an ever more diverse workforce.
Excerpted from BusinessWeek of October 25, 2007.
_http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2007/ca20071025_473242.htm_
NEAR TERM GOALS:
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Understanding of CSS Costs
In order to make well founded decisions about products and services, we need to have a good understanding of what a product or service costs MIT (to roll out, support, and maintain). The total cost should include the costs associated with each IS&T group that assists in the roll out or support.
CSS must also work on understanding and measuring what our unit costs and appropriate units to measure are.
Examples: How much does it cost to transition one person to Exchange? What is the per-call cost to MIT of someone having a problem on the new wireless network? The old wireless network?
Once we understand unit costs, we can easily apply them to specific products or services to drive service improvements, transition schedules, and inform risk management. We can easily look at how certain process or service improvements can change unit costs, hopefully for the better. We can have healthy discussions about revenue models and chargebacks that are relevant and informed. And we can make rational arguments for budget allocations and investment based on projections and measurement rather than high-level estimates.
- improved understanding of unit costs
- pilot new revenue models
- design business process improvements
- develop understanding of risk management and associated costs