Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

The last couple of days have been pretty busy and very interesting. I got to learn the details about various projects that are either ongoing or are in the works. So far, there are no surprises because through Director’s meeting or through direct communication with other Directors I have known about many of these projects.

My e-mail replaced John’s in many of the listserves where he represented ITS as the CIO. Similarly I am also slowly getting into some of the institutional committees where he represented ITS.

I did not receive any further comments from anyone about the proposed TSS reorg and John has approved it. It will become official on July 1. Some of the TSS staff members have already begun meeting with their new supervisors and attending the appropriate group meetings. An extremely important request from TSS: Danielle, Pat’s daughter, will play for TSS in the ITS softball match, even if it were to be postponed beyond July 1.

We had a great Director’s meeting. We had a lot to cover. James has begun attending the Director’s meeting. I am sure soon you will all get the synopsis of the various topics discussed there.

June and July are months where we all pay special attention to our budgets because of the end of financial year end the closing of the books. In many cases, the real picture of where we stand does not happen until the end and some purchases have to go on a fast track so we can get the invoices on time and pay for them before the end of June. In addition, certain budgets like the Telecom one, are extremely challenging and one does not know the exact state until the last month. For example, this year, some of the credits that SBC promised us in March time frame has not appeared in their bills yet. They have yet again promised us that this will appear in the June bill, which is yet to arrive. So, it gets pretty interesting….

However, I can tell you that we are in great shape this year. We will soon be looking at the budget for 2006-2007. We will have some reductions in place there in line with the proposed university wide reductions. Since the Directors collectively contributed to this, these reductions should not come as a surprise…

I am sure you all remember the use of clickers during one of our staff meetings. Jolee has been managing this project and we had some logistical difficulties with the distribution of these devices last year through the store. She has proposed a new way to handle this which we are going to try out this year. Basically, the store will manage the distribution (selling and repurchasing) of the clickers, but the registration of these clickers will be managed through an EP application. We will be meeting next week to go over the details…

And, I am sure you all heard about the problem of the PCs being dropped from the Shaft on the South East side of the building… Bonnie is helping us investigate what can be done to stop this. I am totally confused… I was told that this is an emergency exit, so we cannot do certain things like lock it permanantly. I am also told that access to this is only from 5th and 2nd floor. How can that be if this is an emergency exit. And then, I was told that people suspect that this is being done by students. However, access to the 5th floor is restricted after hours and weekends… We need to do something about it because this is dangerous….