**From: Joel Smith
To: dept-computing-group@lists.andrew.cmu.edu
Subject: DEPT: Virtual presentation for dept computing from Joel Smith
Date-Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 10:50 AM -0500

Dear Colleagues:

Unfortunately, a last minute change in a meeting by the President's management team
is going to keep me from coming to the Departmental Computing Administrators' Meeting.
I find this particularly frustrating because there are two important developments in Computing
Services that I wanted to discuss and get your feedback on. Given the circumstances, I've
decided just to write up the announcements and request that you send me questions,
feedback, suggestions by e-mail - at least until the next meeting.

1. Changes in Computing Services. After several months of discussion, we are making
changes in both the operations and structure of Computing Services. These changes are
driven by some specific goals:

- Breaking down silos in which we have, over the years, come to operate.
- Understanding very clearly who our customers are and how we can best support them.
- Designing our resource allocations and project management to make sure that projects
we undertake will reach their goals.
- Provide a clear technical architecture and an explicit user support architecture that
will be our roadmaps for future developments and the basis for joint projects with
departmental computing organizations.
- Work with faculty, staff, students, and departmental computing organizations to
establish clear priorities for central services.
- Provide better non-unix OS support.
Continue and improve the process of cooperating with departmental computing services.

The most fundamental changes we will make are in goal-setting, prioritization,
decision-making, evaluation, and project-management processes. These are our focus.
Some specific changes will be:

- Instituting a regular "IT Discovery" process (this is lifted from a design at MIT) through
which all new projects that Computing Services might deliver or support will be fully analyzed
by both Computing Services and other stakeholders. The objective is very much thinking
through projects (or decommission of services) to maximize the chances for success.
- Concentrating on the development (in concert with all of you) of a architectural roadmap
that clearly defines where Carnegie Mellon infrastructure is going.
- Development of better project management and support for project planning within Computing Services.
- Additional means for learning more about our clients and their uses of computing (see item 2 below).

We have made some organizational changes effective January 1 to help with these process
changes. We are now organized into 5 organizational units:

- User and Educational Services - directed by Meena Lakhavani
- Networking - directed by Chuck Bartel
- Infrastructure Services and Middleware - directed by Tom Dopirak
- Financial and Facilities Planning and Operation - directed by Ken Hallinen
- Architecture, Discovery, and Technology Integration - directed by Mark Poepping

Our initial changes probably won't greatly affect how you all interact with Computing Services,
but we are continuing the redesign and it's likely that continuing changes will involve such changes.
Some examples include:

- Many of you will be asked from time to time to participate as experts in the IT Discovery process
- We are changing to some degree the organization of second-level support, moving much of it into
Infrastructure Service and Middleware
- We will be pursuing your knowledge and advice on doing better user modeling to understand our
customers' needs.

There will be other effects, but we will engage in ongoing conversation with all of you so that you
are both informed about and can help inform the changes we are making.

2. Campus Computing Advisory Committee

In the fall, I asked the Provost to authorize the creation of a Campus Computing Advisory Committee
made up of a) a faculty representative from each of the schools, b) a faculty member appointed by
the Faculty Senate president, c) three staff members appointed by the Staff Council president, and
d) three students appointed by the present of the Student Senate. The objective of the committee is
to provide Computing Services both strategic and tactical advice about meeting the research, teaching,
and productivity needs of the campus. This committee will be staffed by Computing Services and
provided with a great deal of information about Computing Services plans, budgets, strategies,
staffing, etc. so that they can supply the best advice possible. We now have almost all the suggested
appointees to this committee and its first meeting with be in February.

Computing Services has many other committees and forums that it depends on for input, advice,
and communication. These will continue to exist. The Campus Computing Advisory Committee
simply adds to the effort.

Best,
Joel

Joel M. Smith
Vice Provost for Computing Service and CIO
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Ave.
412-268-2649