On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 11:59 -0700, jb wrote: > My wife actually worked for OIT when we were undergrads, and her boss > used to tell her (over and over again) how great OIT was and that it was > the only campus department that turned a profit (typical for a > monopoly). As an employee there and as a campus student, she felt that > OIT offered probably the worse service of any department on campus, and > consistently misinformed (read: lied) to their customers on service > issues. Now that was I-won't-tell-you-how-many years ago, and I think > things have significantly improved there over the last little while, but > you can see where the sour taste comes from.
The very fact that OIT does turn a profit is one of the major causes of the problems (image and otherwise) that OIT has. OIT's mandate is not to turn a profit. The Church as mandated simply that OIT be cost- recovering. That means they have no church budget but pass their costs directly onto the departments and units they are serving. The church did not say it should be done at a 10% markup (fortunately a couple of years ago the church took away their 5 million dollar slush fund). The fact that OIT does turn a profit is wrong and goes against the spirit of what the Church Education System (who gives us all our money) has said and desires. This does bring up interesting discussions with the deans around budget time when we have to go to them with ever-increasing budgets in part because of the OIT costs. Unfortunately even being cost-recovering is really hurting OIT's ability to serve BYU because anything that OIT sees as cutting into their ability to make a profit, I mean recover costs. This leads to empire- building and protectionism. Instead of us being co-workers and co- providers of BYU services, we are merely their customers. Kind of sad. Oddly enough BYU-Idaho's IT department is fully budgeted and they seem to do a fine job of serving the needs of BYUI. Furthermore, from talking to IT personnel up there, there isn't a great resentment of the IT office like we have here. > That said, Brian, your presence in this thread shows how things are > changing. Michael points out that OIT has a bit of an image problem. > Companies an service organizations usually address these issues in a > positive manner, but OIT seems a bit like MS in that they couldn't care > less what people think of them because those people still have to use them. The unfortunate thing is the OIT attitude (as characterized very well by your wife's boss) is a real problem from somewhere in the middle all the way down to the people on the ground. I have had very condescending conversations with OIT student employees. One OIT student went off for 20 minutes telling one of my students how horrible the Chemistry department was, how crappy our network and servers were, and how bad our wiring was. This may come as a shock to those following this thread, but I rare badmouth OIT. I simply ask them to do the things they have agreed to do at a reasonable cost. I think we are making progress in this area, but we have a long long ways to go. Michael -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
