CLA News on Wednesday

The CLA Service Desk in 110 Anderson Hall is discontinuing walk-in support effective end of day Friday, May 17.

What's Staying the Same

• Continue to contact the CLA Service Desk by phone at 4-HELP or by email at 4help@umn.edu.

• Continue to pick up and return Loaner Laptop and Equipment Pool items from 110 Anderson Hall.

Questions?

Contact CLA-OIT at 4-help or 4help@umn.edu.

You spoke and Associate CIO Brad Cohen listened. Here are the IT priorities voiced at the CLA NOW Special Session last Thursday:

• Local it support for research
• Admin access to pcs for users
• Support for Innovation
• Contextually sensitive support (rationalized allocation to respond to inequalities in local resource allocation)
• Computer purchasing, application licensing, other desktop support that is responsive to unique needs (e.g., language labs)
• Wireless--more dependable, more broadly available
• Collaboration, communication and coordination across units (esp. to facilitate common solutions to shared problems, e.g., grad student tracking, book purchasing)
• Make innovation more visible across units as it addresses common problems
• Data management that is sensitive to perspectives and unique ad hoc reporting needs (institutional vs. collegiate vs. department...)--see School of Public Health tool
• Better usability generally
• People play many roles on campus, make systems that let them flow easily through those roles
• Institutional nimbleness, sensitivity to local nuance even in implementation of commodity services
• Consistency of response and service level (end the dread of who will answer the phone!)
• Unearth best practices and drive them through institution more effectively, Scale more quickly
• Benchmark against peers to see how IT funding is managed as a strategic part of faculty/grant recruiting (GIS example)
• Research IT has to be strong--grant scoring depends on it
• Better and more visible tech support services for faculty
• Process improvement in service delivery
• Responsive IT
• E-learning support to rapidly expand course offerings to meet enrollment demand
• Improve business model for e-learning, appropriate incentives
• Get rid of phone and voicemail

Unable to attend? Have more to add? Take a moment to fill out the IT Input Survey or view the slides Brad shared.

The Office of Human Resources is looking for interested individuals to participate in the AFSCME Clerical Negotiations this year. The negotiations would begin late May, early June. The end date is not known, but is usually by November 2013. The negotiations last year started at 5:00 p.m. and were held during the week, 1-2 days a week about every other week. We try to negotiate on the Minneapolis campus, but may end up in mediation which is often held in St. Paul.

Please contact Sheri Stone at ston0047@umn.edu if you are interested in participating or have any questions.

Take a moment to fill out the IT Input Survey today. An important part of decision-making regarding information technology services at the University of Minnesota is to seek and draw upon broad input from our community. This brief survey is one critical source of input for senior executives at the University to consider as they determine the Information Technology priorities for the University. Results, along with other input, will be made available as part of IT@UMN's commitment to transparent governance.