Shelli DeRobertis
Staff Writer
Your opinion counted if you were one of the participants in the recent annual client satisfaction survey given by the Office of Information and Technology.
“What we will be able to do with (the survey) is learn where people are feeling pain with technology and take direct action to issues that are raised,” said Clive Houston-Brown, chief information officer for OIT.
The 32-question survey was administered in November through e-mail to everybody with a ULV e-mail account.
The participants included 19 faculty, 28 classified staff, 20 administrative professionals, 55 main campus, nine from the School of Continuing Education and three from the law school in Ontario.
“It’s a helpful, positive sign that the department solicits feedback,” said Phil Hawkey, the University’s executive vice president.
The annual survey helps OIT to pinpoint any problems that may exist ranging from campus computers and the e-mail system functioning properly, to client services and their technicians ability to effectively fix computer related problems.
From responses to four questions regarding problems being responded to or fixed in a timely manner, OIT was able to identify this as an issue that needs addressing.
“One of the things we will be working towards is developing service level agreements that specify a response time that people can expect for certain types of problems,” Houston-Brown said.
OIT is also constantly working on keeping staff up to date with the rapid growth in technology.
“In the area of technology, the use has grown tremendously in the past 10 years and the use intensifies,” Hawkey said. “The staff needs to take time to study, go to training meetings and to know the new version of hardware when there’s a change.”
Hawkey said that e-mail and Microsoft Word and its elements are the most used programs so therefore generate the most problems or concerns.
“If your computer isn’t working right, you want someone available immediately,” Hawkey said. “That is a priority. Clive and I are working constantly to improve customer service that OIT provides its clients.”
The help desk has people available Monday through Friday for people who have compute related problems.
Marilin Rivera is a sociology major and work-study student who works at the help desk and says she receives many phone calls on a daily basis.
“Students forgetting their passwords for their e-mail account and professors who need help logging into the Novell system,” Rivera said, are the most common phone calls she receives.
A new plan OIT is implementing is for the help desk to be available on weekends.
“They’re working on it right now and it depends on additional staffing,” Hawkey said.
Another plan OIT has involves preventing virus problems that have occurred with incoming students who unknowingly bring viruses to the campus.
“One of the things we would like to address,” Houston-Brown said, “is that in the fall when new students come into the dorm, we have a great deal of trouble with viruses and worms and attacks as they bring their systems onto the network. Next year we want to be proactive and look at their systems ahead of time and set them up with an anti virus.”
OIT help desk staffers can be reached Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and on Friday until 6 p.m. at Ext. 4130.
Shelli DeRobertis can be reached at sderobertis@ulv.edu.
