Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education

Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Edcation Mark C. Sheehan, ECAR Volme 8, 2007 Research Stdy from the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

This research stdy is available online at the ECAR Web site (www.edcase.ed/ecar). The content of this stdy is restricted to athorized ECAR sbscribers and to those who have separately prchased this stdy. The sername and password below are reqired to gain access to the online version and are to be sed only by those who may legally access the content. Username: ERS0708 Password: HELPDESK1120 4772 Walnt Street, Site 206 Bolder, Colorado 80301 www.edcase.ed/ecar/

Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Edcation

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher edcation by promoting the intelligent se of information technology. The mission of the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research is to foster better decision making by condcting and disseminating research and analysis abot the role and implications of information technology in higher edcation. ECAR will systematically address many of the challenges broght more sharply into focs by information technologies. Copyright 2007 EDUCAUSE. All rights reserved. This ECAR research stdy is proprietary and intended for se only by sbscribers and those who have prchased this stdy. Reprodction, or distribtion of ECAR research stdies to those not formally affiliated with the sbscribing organization, is strictly prohibited nless prior written permission is granted by EDUCAUSE. Reqests for permission to reprint or distribte shold be sent to ecar@edcase.ed.

Contents Foreword...5 Chapter 1 Exective Smmary...9 Defining the Help Desk Methodology Key Findings Conclsion Chapter 2 Introdction... 17 Importance of the Help Desk The IT Spport Challenge This ECAR Stdy Chapter 3 Methodology and Respondent Demographics...23 Research Approach Classification Schemes Analysis and Reporting Conventions Overview of Respondents Stdy Organization Chapter 4 The Instittion and Its Central IT Organization...29 Central IT and Its Partners Central IT s Goals and Strategies The Impact of Instittional Cltre Smmary and Implications Chapter 5 Methods of Implementing Help Desk Services... 41 Help Desk Organization Help Desk Services Otsorcing Help Desk Availability Smmary and Implications Chapter 6 Fnding and Staffing the Central IT Help Desk...57 Help Desk Fnding Help Desk Staffing Alignment of Expectations with Resorces Smmary and Implications Chapter 7 Help Desk Tools...65 The Atomated Help Desk Client Spport Tools Smmary and Implications Chapter 8 Service Level Agreements... 75 Service Level Agreements on Camps Constitencies for Service Level Agreements What SLAs Address Smmary and Implications Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Setting a Corse: Goals for the Help Desk...85 Help Desk Goals Service Improvement Drivers and Barriers Strategic Planning for the Central IT Help Desk IT Service Management Practices Smmary and Implications Evalating the Help Desk...99 Basic Help Desk Metrics Assessing Satisfaction Commnicating Costs and Vale Help Desk Matrity Smmary and Implications EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

Chapter 11 Sccess of the Help Desk: Assessing Otcomes... 113 Sccess in Meeting Goals Positive Impact of the Help Desk Overall Service Qality Smmary and Implications Chapter 12 On the Horizon: The Ftre of the Help Desk... 131 The Client Commnity The Technology Environment Spport Tools and Methodologies Management Practices Smmary Appendix A Instittional Respondents to the Online Srvey... 139 Appendix B Interviewees in Qalitative Research... 145 Appendix C Bibliography... 147

Foreword A mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an electronics engineer, and an IT help desk administrator are riding together in a car when sddenly the engine dies. The mechanical engineer sspects a drivetrain failre. The chemical engineer thinks it mst be a problem in the fel system. The electronics engineer is sre that a control chip is defective. The IT help desk administrator simply asks, Why don t we all jst get ot of the car, then get back inside and see if it works again? Actally, in most versions of the joke, the forth occpant is a compter scientist. Bt it wold be a rare compter scientist who spent his or her day telling dozens of people to reboot their PCs. The joke is fnny in part becase compters sometimes get balky for no clear reason and then retrn to normal for reasons that aren t mch clearer. It s also fnny, thogh, becase many of s most of s, probably call an IT help desk from time to time and know exactly what the first piece of advice will be. Maybe the joke isn t so amsing to help desk professionals, who often have to trobleshoot a sbtle problem while exercising the skills of a diplomat, a psychologist, or, occasionally, a saint. Bt it shows that the work they do is prominent enogh to earn a place in pop cltre. And that s a reminder that of all the services that make p the IT portfolio, none has a more direct cstomer-facing role than the help desk. IT organizations have provided technical spport for as long as there s been a distinction between administrators and sers of compting technology. Technical expertise, of corse, is a core competence of ser service organizations. Bt the ser service domain has expanded as mch with compting s sociology and cltre as with its technical demands. In early data processing days, the interface between information systems experts and their bsiness department clients was fairly intimate and manageable. That changed when personal compting and mass Internet adoption broght two consective qantm leaps in ser demand, trning technical spport from a conversation between near-peers into a large-scale exercise in cstomer service. The many challenges of keeping a college or niversity s enormosly diverse range of sers prodctive while they se an enormosly diverse range of technology inspired this ECAR stdy. In some ways, ors is a story of grace nder pressre. Despite the challenges of managing technical spport spply and demand, or srvey respondents seem almost cheerfl in their self-assessment of overall help desk service qality. More than half rate it as very good or excellent, and many others 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

thoght it was at least good. Where they set goals, as they often do, they tend to say that they meet them. Or stdy clearly reflects respondent pride in help desk organizations that feel they have rolled with the pnches, kept p with demand, and made qality spport available where it s needed. Yet we fond signs that the exhilarating task of responding to a whole commnity s IT needs has also kept many help desk organizations tactical, conservative, and focsed on tried-and-tre methods. We fond only spotty adoption of the IT service management frameworks that many organizations in the commercial sector have sed to achieve tighter IT alignment with strategic goals. Self-service tools were not as widespread or nmeros on average as we expected them to be, and perhaps for this reason instittions were ambivalent overall abot their effect on redcing help desk demand. We fond commnications methods srprisingly traditional for an era in which the stdent poplation is known for its fast-changing commnications cltre. And, perhaps explaining mch of this, 56 percent of or respondents characterized help desk fnding as less than or mch less than adeqate. A certain wary focs on proven methods is nderstandable for an organization that is all too often called on to clean p the mess when gee-whiz technologies prove nreliable or ser-nfriendly. Help desk administrators and staff freqently find themselves, in principal investigator Mark Sheehan s apt phrase, on the front line of higher edcation IT. Bt all is not reaction and constraint. As Mark details in the following chapters, we fond a complex of practices that tended to move together among the most matre and high-performing help desk organizations. Among or respondents, implementation of service management framework practices (exclding service level agreements), se and commnication of performance metrics, and the existence of strategic plans all proved to be associated with higher reported service qality levels. And what s more, high service qality levels tended to be associated with higher evalations of the central IT organization s reptation within the instittion. Acting as scot and intelligence officer in or foray to IT s front line was ECAR Fellow Mark Sheehan. In his initial mission as principal investigator of an ECAR stdy, Mark has crafted a broad and deep assessment of higher edcation help desk practice that reflects his long experience as a CIO and IT professional. The meticlos data presentation and clear, lcid prose of the following chapters testify both to Mark s scientific training and to the writing skills for which he was already known before joining ECAR. Mark has been aided by ECAR s talented and collegial fellowship. Bob Albrecht, Jdy Carso, Jdy Pirani, Don Spicer, and I helped with qalitative interviews and took part in creating the for case stdies that accompany this project. Gail Salaway participated throghot, advising on srvey design, data preparation, and analysis, and condcting the bddy check of qantitative findings that we perform on all ECAR stdies. The incomparable and invalable Toby Sitko broght it all together as sal, from coding the srvey instrment for Web presentation to needling the interim director to finish the Foreword on time. Richard Katz, ECAR s fonder and director, helped conceive of the project, broght it to frition, and was its steward throghot its initial phases. Finally, transforming ECAR s digital prose and charts into polished pblications has depended on the professionalism, and often the patience, of or EDUCAUSE colleages Nancy Hays and Gregory Dobbin. Appropriately, given the topic, we have also had a great deal of help from higher edcation colleages and other professionals. The seed for this stdy was planted by Betty Leydon, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO at Princeton University, when she sggested at an EDUCAUSE

conference session that we take on IT service management. Proving the principle that no good deed goes npnished, we also asked Betty to review the stdy prospects and srvey draft, and she graciosly did so. We are also indebted to the ser services professionals who assisted s with a review of preliminary findings: Vivianne D. Johnston, Help Center Manager, Regis University; Denise Schette, IT Cstomer Spport Services, Metropolitan State College of Denver; and Herb Wilson, Director of IT Spport at the University of Colorado, Bolder. We are also indebted to HDI (formerly the Help Desk Institte) and its higher edcation form steering committee for valable discssions and observations. In particlar, we thank HDI s Leslie Cook; Mark Fitzgerald, Boise State University; Bill Vriesema, Calvin College; and Jon P. Garvin, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Pblic Health. Likewise, we are gratefl for the assistance of Ann Lamanes of the IT service management conslting firm Pink Elephant. The fondation for this stdy, of corse, is the 454 respondent instittions that took part in or srvey, identified in Appendix A. We are profondly aware that a srvey invitation from ECAR can hardly help bt impose on or respondents time and patience, and we are constantly gratified that so many colleages see enogh vale in or work to respond. And we are all the more indebted to the IT professionals who agreed to qalitative interviews that contribted greatly to nderstanding and interpreting the srvey findings. These colleages 36 individals at 24 separate instittions are named in Appendix B. Other higher edcation colleages opened their doors and generosly donated their time to collaborate with s on the for case stdies that accompany this stdy. We are especially gratefl to Bowdoin College and Colgate University for showing s two different bt eqally compelling ways to optimize the help desk s strategic vale; New York University for sharing with s the details of its IT Infrastrctre Library implementation; the University of Alberta for giving s insight into ways of improving the help desk s self-service applications and optimizing stdent workers contribtion; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which provided a model for creating and sstaining a highly distribted fabric of IT spport services. We are prod to deliver the first in-depth stdy of IT help desk practices in higher edcation, and we firmly believe that the findings here will be of interest and vale to IT leaders and line staff alike. One theme rnning throghot these pages will srprise no one familiar with the topic: the commitment of IT professionals to deliver excellent services that spport their commnities and advance higher edcation. We thank them for their contribtions and dedicate this stdy to them. Ron Yanosky Bolder, Colorado EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

1 Exective Smmary Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Edcation is the final report of a research stdy initiated by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) in Jly 2006 to explore higher edcation information technology (IT) spport services. The stdy investigated many aspects of the central IT help desk throgh a qantitative srvey of 454 EDUCAUSE member instittions in the United States and Canada, condcted in Janary and Febrary of 2007. We later spplemented the srvey throgh interviews with chief information officers (CIOs), help desk administrators, and others selected from or membership. In higher edcation, the central IT organization s help desk is on the front line in at least two senses. First, in many ways, it is the face of central IT. Help desks at instittions of all sizes receive thosands of assistance reqests every year, and those contacts represent most or all of their clients experience of the central IT organization. The impression the help desk gives of technical competence, cohesiveness with the rest of central IT, and cstomer service sbstantially impacts camps perceptions of central IT. Second, the help desk represents the IT organization s first line of response to the client commnity s demands. The CIOs, help desk managers, and others who made p or srvey respondent pool often expressed a sense that client demands were escalating so rapidly as to impact the qality of help desk services. Even as they face growing external demand, help desk staff find themselves on nstable grond as technology changes rapidly and as their back-office IT colleages change familiar systems and services and release new ones. These pressres challenge the help desk to change and adapt; those that can t may become reactive and enter a destrctive downward spiral. IT service organizations in general have begn to address the management challenges this sitation poses by a proliferation of process frameworks and best practices that can be lmped nder the heading of IT service management (ITSM). Foremost among these, and the framework pon which most are bilt, is the IT Infrastrctre Library (ITIL), a trademarked prodct of the United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce. While ITIL is familiar to IT spport managers in Erope and in the U.S. private sector, it is less familiar in U.S. higher edcation. It was partly with that knowledge gap in mind that this stdy was conceived. Defining the Help Desk The central IT help desk has traditionally been the place to visit or the telephone nmber to call when one is stmped by some 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

aspect of IT or needs information abot the instittion s IT environment. Typically, camps IT help desks serve all comers in these ways, so the variety of problems they confront is wide. Most help desks attempt to resolve their clients qestions on the spot bt escalate thornier problems to specialists, sally staff reporting elsewhere in the central IT organization. Some higher edcation organizations otsorce the first tier of help desk spport, bt we fond this to be rare among or higher edcation respondents. The help desk goes by many names; we chose to se this term in or stdy becase we felt it wold be most recognizable. Instittions also refer to it as a spport center, call center, or hot line. Some se the term service desk, bt that has taken on new meaning as the ITSM literatre grows: the ITSM service desk embraces help desk fnctions as well as the responsibility for first-line client contact abot all central IT services. The matre service desk is proactive as well as reactive in that it pshes commnications abot the IT environment and central IT services to the client commnity. While we know many campses are moving their help desks in this direction, not all have done so, and not all wold recognize the fll implications of the term. We measred help desk sccess in several ways: the nmber of goals the help desk prsed and the freqency with which it met them, overall service qality and perceived client satisfaction in specific service areas, and the help desk s perceived positive impact on the instittion s varios constitencies and mission. Becase of the help desk s niqe position in the IT organization between central IT systems and their sers we agree with the ITSM doctrine that the help desk mst be integrated into central IT organization planning and management activities. While commnication is necessary to the help desk/ central IT partnership, alone it is not sfficient for the partnership s sccess. Help desk management and staff are niqely aware of the conseqences to the client commnity of central IT decisions, and ths their involvement in central IT decision making is essential. We were gratified to see that so many of or srvey respondents said the help desk was adeqately inclded in varios central IT planning and management activities. Methodology ECAR applied a mltipart research approach to this stdy, which involved a literatre review to identify isses and establish the research qestions; consltation with a select grop of CIOs to identify and validate the research qestions; a qantitative Web-based srvey of IT administrators (mostly CIOs and help desk administrators) at 454 higher edcation instittions among the EDUCAUSE member base; postsrvey qalitative interviews with 36 exectives and staff members involved in help desk management at 24 instittions; and for case stdies examining help desk and service management practices at a total of five higher edcation instittions. Key Findings The central IT help desk is a complex enterprise operating within a dynamic environment. For this reason, or stdy looked at many aspects of the help desk, inclding the central IT organization, its goals, and its cltre; the help desk s scope, resorces, and services; service level agreements between help desk and clients; 10

practices in place for evalating and improving help desk services; and perceived sccess of the help desk organization. Throghot or analysis we related or findings to principles and practices represented in the ITSM literatre and soght reinforcement or reftation of their vale in the higher edcation context. In the following sections we smmarize and synthesize or findings. The Instittional Context Among or respondent instittions, IT services are still highly centralized. At most of them (88.5 percent), there is only one central IT organization. As Figre 1-1 shows, at most of or instittions, central IT provides nearly all IT infrastrctre and three-qarters of IT spport services. In all instittional size categories, as measred by FTE enrollments, independent IT organizations exist otside central IT bt are mch more common in large instittions (90.5 percent) than at small ones (21.9 percent). For jst over two-thirds of central IT organizations, the primary goal is to provide infrastrctre and services that frther the instittion s strategic goals. At only 4.0 percent of instittions is it central IT s goal to provide infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage; at sch instittions the pace of adoption of new technologies is higher, and bdget increases in the past three years have been more common. Only 10.4 percent of respondents characterized their instittions as early adopters of new technologies. Abot twice that many felt that description fit their central IT organizations. Abot 70 percent characterized both their instittions and their IT organizations as mainstream adopters. Late adopters made p the remainder in each category. The Help Desk and Its Resorces As is the case with IT services in general, help desk services are highly centralized within or respondent poplation. Abot threeqarters of respondent instittions provide all 100% 90% 91.8 80% 75.5 Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 19.1 Figre 1-1. Providers of Infrastrctre Elements and Spport Services (N = 220) 10% 5.0 3.2 5.5 0% Mostly central IT Roghly eqal mix Mostly nit-specific IT Infrastrctre Spport services Provider EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 11

help desk services from one or more central IT help desks; abot three-qarters of these have only one. Only abot a qarter of or respondents help desk managers report directly to the CIO; most of the rest report to the head of a central IT service area. Majorities of or respondents help desks spport a wide range of infrastrctre and identity-related services and common instrctional, administrative, and personal prodctivity applications. Least spported are privately owned hardware, programming langages, research applications, and applications hosted off camps. In traditional fashion, the help desk is most likely to ply its trade over the telephone or via e-mail. Walk-in interactions and assistance delivered at the client s location are also very common. Srprisingly, help desks se interactive text commnication (chat, instant messaging, and text messaging) infreqently or not at all to provide spport this despite the fact that 84.1 percent of stdents in The ECAR Stdy of Undergradate Stdents and Information Technology, 2007 said they sed instant messaging applications, with half that nmber sing them at least daily. Althogh the commercial sector increasingly offshores cstomer service fnctions, few of or respondent instittions otsorce any of their help desk services. Only 2.6 percent otsorce 75 percent or more of their services; 13.7 percent otsorce between 1 and 75 percent of them, and the remainder (83.7 percent) otsorce none. Larger instittions have a lock on the practice of providing help desk services 24 hors a day, seven days a week; jst nder 5 percent of respondents help desks are this available, and more than half of these are at instittions with more than 15,000 FTE. Abot two-thirds of respondents help desks are available beyond standard camps bsiness hors, while a srprisingly high 30.5 percent are available only dring standard bsiness hors. Reassringly, only 1.3 percent report less availability than that. Most of or respondents were nenthsiastic at best abot help desk fnding. Over half (55.7 percent) rated fnding as less than or mch less than adeqate; only 3.2 percent said it was more or mch more than adeqate. For almost two-thirds of respondents, fnding for the help desk is at or below 10 percent of the central IT bdget. Despite ser poplations in the thosands and tens of thosands, help desks provide their services with remarkably few staff. At small instittions the mean nmber of fll-time eqivalent help desk staff is abot seven, at medim-size instittions it is abot 10, and at large instittions it is jst nder 18. These figres inclde stdent employees. Instittion size, Carnegie class, and instittional control are all associated with the nmber of FTE stdents served per FTE help desk staff member. Overall, the mean is 1,264 and the median is 861. Even with their generally larger nmbers of help desk staff, larger instittions served more stdents per staff member than small ones. Each help desk staff member at doctoral and associate s instittions serves a mean of almost 1,800 stdents, three times as many as at bachelor s instittions; the nmber for master s instittions is arond 1,100. On average, each pblic instittion help desk staffer serves twice as many stdents as those at private instittions. More than two-thirds of respondent instittions are sing an integrated site of help desk atomation tools. Web-based help docments are common for both help desk staff and sers, bt the many other tools we asked abot were in mch less common se. Opinion is fairly evenly divided abot the effectiveness of the help desk s se of self-service tools to redce help desk demand, thogh it is significantly more positive among instittions where more sch tools are in se. 12

Adoption of ITSM Practices We asked abot five representative ITSM practices: capacity planning, availability planning, change management, release management, and service level management as represented by the se of service level agreements (SLAs). Except for service level management, a majority of respondents se each of the five practices. Only 20.5 percent of respondent instittions se SLAs, and a srprisingly high 38.1 percent of respondents said they had no plans to implement them. When we asked why, the most common reasons given were that the practice is incompatible with instittional cltre and that help desk staff have higher priorities than developing SLAs. We also learned that over 90 percent of SLA development projects now nder way have neither fnding nor completion dates, sggesting that these projects have low priority. On a more positive note, well over threeqarters of respondents have adopted at least one of the other for basic ITSM practices. While jst over a third of the entire respondent pool had adopted all for, among those who had adopted SLAs half again as many (52.7 percent) had done so, spporting or assmption that organizations often adopt ITSM practices in concert. The practice of strategic planning for the help desk is also more common where the for ITSM planning and management practices and SLAs are in se. Above, we emphasized the importance of active help desk participation in the ITSM activities of the central IT organization. Or findings spport this by revealing that the priority central IT places on deployment of easy-to-spport systems is significantly higher where respondents agree that the help desk is adeqately inclded in ITSM activities. As we will see, the qality of help desk services is closely associated with the insti- ttion s perception of the central IT organization. For this reason we were srprised that only 18.4 percent of or respondents had implemented cstomer relationship databases; while another 42.0 percent had implementations nder way or in the planning stages, the remainder, nearly 40 percent, said they had no plans to do so. Measring Performance We did not find widespread se of help desk performance metrics. Overall, those most commonly reported are demand for help desk services and the time it takes to resolve clients problems. These metrics are typically reported within the IT organization; fewer than 40 percent of respondent instittions report them to non-it senior administrators and only 20.1 percent to deans. Overall, only abot 40 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that their help desks se these metrics effectively to improve ser services. However, among those who report their metrics more widely, agreement is more freqent, as it is among those who have adopted more basic ITSM practices. Or respondents assessment of their help desks matrity enabled s to ncover a constellation of practices that appear to be associated with matrity level. Most respondents (40.0 percent) characterized their help desk s matrity as standardized, the middle level in or five-point scale. As Table 1-1 shows, those who chose the higher levels of managed or optimized tend to have adopted more basic ITSM practices. They also agree more strongly that the help desk is adeqately involved in basic ITSM activities, have a strategic plan for the help desk, reglarly analyze more metrics, and agree more strongly that help desk costs and vale are well nderstood on their campses. Evalating Sccess As one measre of sccess, we asked respondents to evalate their help desks positive impact on varios service areas. By a EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 13

Table 1-1. Nmber of For Basic ITSM Practices Adopted, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 1.40 1.538 Repeatable 127 1.87 1.458 Standardized 181 2.40 1.530 Managed 80 3.01 1.288 Optimized 30 3.33 1.184 Total 453 2.35 1.536 wide margin, the two areas of greatest positive impact are, in a sense, self-serving: More than 80 percent said the help desk had high positive impact on camps perception of central IT services vale and of its reptation. While these good pblic relations indicators sggest the help desk is doing things right, other findings from this series of qestions raise some dobts that it is doing the right things. Following a theme that began in the earlier section The Help Desk and Its Resorces, respondents rate the help desk s positive impact lowest for research spport, with only 8.1 percent saying the help desk has high positive impact pon that aspect of the instittional mission. Thogh considerably higher for two other strategic areas, instrctional activities (53.4 percent) and administrative activities (68.2 percent), ratings still significantly lag those for the more tactical pblic relations areas. Respondents are pbeat abot overall help desk service qality; more than half rate their service qality as very good or excellent. Asked for specifics, they tell s their clients wold rate help desk service qality highest in technology areas sch as identity management, desktop compting essentials, and commnication applications and lowest in three core areas of higher edcation: instrction, administration, and research. This finding, in concert with the reptation-oriented positive impact findings reported above, sggests that the help desk s importance to the instittion may be more tactical than strategic. We saw earlier that the goal of most of or respondents central IT organizations is to provide infrastrctre and services in spport of the instittion s strategic goals; the findings introdced here sggest that the help desk s services, while thoght to be of generally high qality, may be too far removed from the instittion s core bsiness processes to be of more than tactical vale. This distinction aside, within the help desk s sphere of inflence we find service qality to be positively associated with central IT s adoption of and inclsion of the help desk in basic ITSM practices, the se of metrics to docment help desk performance, and the existence of a strategic plan for the help desk. Finally, as Figre 1-2 shows, service qality varies dramatically with help desk matrity level. Conclsion As the face of the central IT organization, the camps IT help desk plays an important role in enabling, facilitating, and spporting the se of technologies in prsit of the instittion s mission. While they may not be crcial to the sccess of every help desk, the practices and fnctions otlined in the IT service management literatre appear to be consistently associated in or data set with the positive impact the help desk has and with the overall qality of its services. Similarly, respondents who report a higher degree of help desk matrity are more likely not only to have adopted ITSM practices bt also to report sbstantially higher overall service qality than less matre organizations. 14

5.0 4.57 4.0 3.70 3.99 Mean Overall Service Qality* 3.0 2.63 3.09 Figre 1-2. Mean Overall Service Qality, by Help Desk Matrity Level 2.0 1.0 Initial (N = 35) Repeatable (N = 125) Standardized (N = 178) Managed (N = 78) Optimized (N = 30) Matrity Level *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Or respondents main message is that they feel good abot the qality of their services. Their help desk organizations set goals and, more often than not, meet them. Nevertheless, many respondents tell s the help desk feels constrained in its prsit of improvement. The barriers that most concern them are ever-increasing client expectations and less-than-adeqate resorce pools. While most help desks have adopted integrated atomated toolsets for managing their operations, their client commnications and service technologies are behind the times certainly behind the adoption crve of ndergradate stdents, their most abndant clients. This conservatism may be nderstandable as a reaction to the pressre-cooker atmo- sphere of the help desk dring the first week of classes, bt it may also be one of the factors that limit the help desk s strategic impact. As Web 2.0 applications case paradigm shifts in information sharing, the help desk that limits itself to traditional, hierarchical cstomer service modes cold find itself eclipsed by a camps IT spport wiki. As mobile compting, virtal classrooms, and asynchronos learning liberate higher edcation from time and space constraints, the help desk that is available only from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. cold find its relevance evaporating. Whatever changes the ftre of IT brings, one thing is certain: The coming generation of help desk leaders will have their work ct ot for them. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 15

2 Introdction As higher edcation information technology professionals, we re tempted to look at or organizations IT resorces and services from the inside ot. In this networked age, or connections to the Internet and more specialized networks sch as Internet2 and the National LambdaRail are or mbilics, the cord that connects s to the world beyond the camps. On or campses, radiating from this nexs along the network backbone, are the infrastrctre elements on which or services are based the servers, the local area networks, and ltimately the workstations by which or clients connect with s. When we think abot secrity, as we so often do these days, we bild or first lines of defense arond the core systems and data managed by central IT. Most of s are members of a central IT organization, with a ncles of exectives, directors, and managers participating in a web of internal relationships and leading the teams that manage or IT infrastrctre and applications the teams that ltimately interact with or clients at the periphery of or organization. Bt that s jst s. Unless we ve broght them inside as, for example, members of or advisory committees, or clients see s very differently. To them, the center of the IT organization is the point at which they contact it. From their workstations, they see a web of connections to services sch as e-mail or administrative applications. Throgh their browser software they connect to a niverse of possibilities information, interaction, entertainment on the network. And when they contact s directly, either electronically or face to face, the person who responds becomes the center of the IT organization for them for the dration of the contact. The lines of information and inflence that or clients see within the central IT organization radiate from that central point. Importance of the Help Desk On most campses, the central point of contact for clients with IT problems is a formal client service organization. These organizations go by many names, among them help desk, spport center, call center, service desk, and cstomer hot line. 1 Here we se the term help desk to refer to the entire array of IT client service organizations, following conventional IT sage in higher edcation and elsewhere. For or clients, the help desk is the face of central IT, its eyes, ears, and voice on camps, and when it is effective, it is where clients direct their attention when they need spport. 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 17

It wold be difficlt to overestimate the help desk s importance in the higher edcation context. Dring ECAR s 2007 stdy of ndergradate stdents IT sage and attitdes, stdent respondents offered hndreds of comments abot the help desk. The stdy report smmarizes those comments as follows: While there were some positive comments abot the helpflness of staff in fixing technical problems, negative comments were far more freqent. These pointed most often to a lack of cstomer service orientation, bt also addressed problems with help desk availability, wait times, and fees. This sggests that the help desk fnction appears to be relatively high priority for many stdents, and is an important finding for IT leaders. 2 At a more general level, Samel J. Levy, vice president and CIO at the University of St. Thomas, observes, At some instittions, I sppose, the help desk is not a high priority in the instittion. Either the commnity does not vale it or they don t need it or the leadership simply says there are more important ways to direct their resorces. For me, it is the single most important thing. I can t imagine anything of greater vale that we can bring to the instittion. The IT Spport Challenge Like pblic and private sector enterprises everywhere, higher edcation instittions contine to place increasing reliance on information technology. Whether IT spports administration, instrction, or research, complex webs of hardware and software resorces nderlie an even more complex web of services. As complexities in these environments increase, service providers often find it challenging to maintain high cstomer satisfaction levels. Becase spport resorces do not always keep pace with spport demands, service providers can find themselves spiraling downward into a reactive operation mode, adapting to new challenges only with great difficlty, and missing opportnities to enhance the variety and qality of the services their constitents reqire. The help desk is on the front line of the strggle between spport demands driven by rapidly evolving information technologies and the central IT organization s efforts to mobilize the resorces necessary to meet that demand. Often the help desk finds itself in a kind of crossfire, pinned down from the otside by seemingly insatiable client demand and threatened from the inside by changes to central IT systems and services in which the help desk may have had no voice and of which, in the worst case, it may not even have been informed. Until recently, IT organizations have had few resorces for resolving these tensions. They can temporarily offset growing ser demands by investing in additional IT staff, staff training, and new technologies to help staff perform more efficiently. Enlightened leadership can facilitate better internal commnications between the help desk and the rest of central IT. Help desk managers can establish forms in which clients and service providers work together to agree pon reasonable expectations of and limits to help desk services. At some instittions, these agreements are codified internally in the form of operational level agreements and externally in the form of service catalogs and service level agreements. Otside assistance with help desk management isses has long been available throgh the conferences and pblications of professional associations sch as EDUCAUSE and the Association for Compting Machinery s Special Interest Grop on University and College Compting Services. Both organizations encorage practitioners to share their sccesses and lessons learned with their higher edcation colleages. Another resorce is HDI (formerly the Help Desk Institte, http://thinkhdi.com), a membership organization whose training events, 18

conslting activities, and pblications assist help desk managers throghot the pblic and private sectors. In spport of its higher edcation members, HDI has established a Higher Edcation Form made p of representatives from 25 U.S. and Canadian colleges and niversities. Recently, nmeros strctred, formal IT service management models have become available and inclde sections specific to help desk management. These are dominated by the United Kingdom s Information Technology Infrastrctre Library (ITIL), now codified in the ISO/IEC 20000 3 docments of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. These docments provide a framework for integrating an instittion s IT services with its strategic directions; for constrcting an agile, proactive, sccessfl IT service infrastrctre based on docmented best practices; and for ensring that sstainable, high-qality IT services remain available as the technology landscape evolves. Many organizations ranging from high-profile IT companies sch as IBM, Microsoft, and HP to niversity bsiness schools to small private conslting firms have developed instrctional and consltative services to help IT service organizations implement ITIL strctres and practices. The blanket term IT service management (ITSM) has emerged in the literatre to identify the sperset of IT service-related standards and best practices of which ITIL is an important component. 4 This ECAR Stdy Colleges and niversities worldwide are incorporating ITSM elements into their central and distribted IT service organizations, bt with the exception of occasional conference papers 5 and trade-pblication articles, this work is going largely ndocmented among their higher edcation commnity peers. To help fill the gap, ECAR has ndertaken this stdy to docment the crrent state of the higher edcation IT help desk, investigate the extent of adoption of certain key ITSM practices, evalate their costs and benefits, gage their sccess, and provide gidance to instittions that may be considering implementing them. The detailed qestions that framed this stdy inclde the following: What are the respective roles of centralized and decentralized IT spport organizations? What are the goals and strategies of central IT and the central IT help desk? How are help desk services organized and provided? How is the help desk fnded and staffed? What spport tools are available to the help desk, and what tools does it make available to its clients? What are the drivers of and barriers to improvement of help desk services? What is the adoption stats of service level agreements and other basic ITSM practices? By what means does the help desk measre its performance and what does it do with that information? What are the otcomes of the help desk s efforts to improve its practices and its services? Stdy Scope and Objectives Becase relatively few higher edcation IT organizations are formally implementing ITIL practices, a stdy focsed on those practices per se wold have borne little frit. To inclde the largest nmber of instittions in or stdy and gather the most broadly applicable findings abot their help desks, we elected to coch or qestions in general terms that wold be recognizable to respondents familiar with the ITSM literatre bt also have meaning for those who weren t. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 19

Within the ITIL framework, the help desk entity is referred to as the service desk. A service desk differs from the traditional help desk in that it serves as a single point of contact between the client and the IT organization. In the higher edcation context, this implies a role that goes beyond that of resolving compter sers technical problems. For example, the service desk s role also incldes commnicating with sers abot the IT organization throgh newsletters, Web pages, or blogs; cataloging and promoting all central IT services; and accepting and handling (or roting) sers reqests for assistance of all types. As defined in the ITSM literatre, 6 the service desk operates as the interface between clients and central IT throgh five basic processes: incident management, in its traditional reactive role in dealing with clients technology problems; configration management, by verifying or recording information abot the client s IT resorces; change management, by facilitating or trobleshooting IT environment changes; release management, by participating in the deployment of new or modified software and hardware; and service level management, by representing the central IT organization in matters relating to the service agreements it has made with the camps. In framing or srvey qestions, we asked abot two of these ITSM processes by name: change management and release management. We also asked specific qestions abot availability planning and capacity planning. Each of these for processes profondly impacts help desk clients, yet the central IT organization sometimes condcts some or all withot the help desk s participation. We hypoth- esized that help desks in more matre IT organizations wold be inclded in these for basic processes, and so we based or ITSM qestions arond them. Finally, we asked a series of detailed qestions abot service level agreements to investigate the service level management process. We did not se the term incident management in or srvey. Instead, becase this process is at the core of the traditional help desk s responsibilities, we asked many detailed qestions abot the help desk s processes for dealing with incident-related service reqests. We omitted mention of configration management as well, except to inqire abot the help desk s se of a configration management database. Despite or qalitative interview findings that formal ITSM implementations are not standard practice among higher edcation IT help desks, many of the reslts we present in the following chapters show that progress is being made. Most respondent instittions have implemented one or more ITIL-derived processes, and planning for others sch as service level management is well nder way. Or respondents clearly take pride in the qality of their services and in their ability to meet their many diverse goals. They are aware of at least some of their shortcomings in research compting, for example. Nevertheless, on the whole, they are concerned abot rapidly growing demand for their services and feel somewhat constrained in their responses by the cltral contexts in which they mst operate. In a field of shifting bondaries and at a time of constant change, the help desk is expected to be both stable and agile, and becase it is the face of IT on camps, the stakes are high. If or findings sggest that the help desk is a somewhat conservative organization, we need only look to these stresses to see why. 20

Endnotes 1. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce, Service Spport (London: The Stationery Office, 2000), 62. 2. Gail Salaway and Jdith Borreson Carso, with Mark R. Nelson, The ECAR Stdy of Undergradate Stdents and Information Technology, 2007 (Research Stdy, Vol. 6) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007), available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 3. International Organization for Standardization, ISO/ IEC 20000-1:2005: Information technology Service management Part 1: Specification. 2005 (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization). And ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005: Information technology Service management Part 2: Code of practice. 2005 (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization). 4. When we began this stdy, the crrent version of ITIL was version 2. Dring the smmer of 2007, version 3 was released, with many sbstantial changes. In this report all references to ITIL are to version 2. 5. For example, R. Ben Maddox, ITIL in the Real World: NYU Leverages ITIL Best Practices to Enhance IT Organizational Processes (EDUCAUSE 2006 conference presentation), http://connect.edcase.ed/library/abstract/itilintherealworldny/38954. 6. Jan van Bon, Georges Kemmerling, and Dick Pondman, ed., IT Service Management, an introdction (Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2002), 109. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 21

3 Methodology and Respondent Demographics Grown-ps love figres. Antoine de Saint-Expéry, Le Petit Prince This ECAR stdy sed a mltipart methodology to gather qantitative and qalitative data abot or respondent instittions practices srronding IT help desk management. We investigated the state of college and niversity help desk organizations, services, tools, resorces, and management practices, and how these and assorted other measres relate to desirable help desk otcomes. Research Approach Or research proceeded along for major pathways: a literatre review, a qantitative Web-based srvey of IT leaders at higher edcation instittions among the EDUCAUSE member base, qalitative interviews with IT exectives and other staff from selected instittions, and case stdies. The literatre review helped identify and clarify isses, sggest hypotheses for testing, and provide spportive secondary evidence. Besides examining articles and stdies from jornalistic, academic, and IT practitioner sorces, we relied heavily on IT service management standards and frameworks to develop stdy objectives and srvey qestions. Among these sorces, we relied especially on the U.K. Office of Government Commerce s Information Technology Infrastrctre Library (ITIL) service delivery gidelines 1 and the pblications of the IT Service Management Form. 2,3 Also important was Barbara Czegel s Rnning an Effective Help Desk. 4 With inpt from CIOs and IT staff, the ECAR research team designed the Webbased srvey for IT administrators. We sent invitations for the srvey to 1,649 EDUCAUSE member instittions and received 454 responses (a 27.5 percent response rate). Appendix A lists respondents to this srvey, which can be fond at http://www.edcase.ed/srveyinstrments/1004. ECAR sed qalitative interviews to gain deeper insights into findings from the qantitative analysis and to captre ideas and viewpoints we might otherwise have missed. We interviewed 32 individals involved in IT help desk concerns, inclding higher edcation CIOs, help desk managers, and others. (Appendix B lists the interviewees.) We condcted most interviews by telephone and several at the 2007 ECAR Symposim hosted by HP and EDUCAUSE. The event was held in Bolder, Colorado, in Jne 2007. The case stdies that accompany this report provide an in-depth look at several topics that emerged from the research as particlarly interesting, inclding the challenges and rewards of two approaches to transforming camps perceptions of IT at Bowdoin College and Colgate University; 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 23

the deployment of a widely distribted IT spport framework at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a help desk centered methodology for developing client self-service applications at the University of Alberta; and the adoption of best practices in IT service spport and delivery from the IT Infrastrctre Library at New York University. Classification Schemes For prposes of comparison, we groped instittions sing categories derived from the 2000 edition of the Carnegie Classification of Instittions of Higher Edcation, developed by the Carnegie Fondation for the Advancement of Teaching. To obtain adeqate nmbers for statistical and descriptive prposes, we collapsed the Carnegie 2000 classifications as follows: Doctoral (DR) instittions grop the doctoral-extensive and doctoral-intensive niversities together. Master s (MA) instittions grop master s colleges and niversities I and II together. Baccalareate (BA) instittions combine the three Carnegie 2000 baccalareate grops. Associate s (AA) instittions are the same as the Carnegie 2000 associate s category. In addition, for demographic prposes we report an Other Carnegie category that incldes specialized instittions and U.S. higher edcation offices. Owing to the diversity and small size of this category, it does not figre in or detailed data analysis by Carnegie class. We also tracked Canadian instittions in a separate, single category. In November 2005, the Carnegie Fondation for the Advancement of Teaching introdced a new classification scheme employing additional instittional characteristics. We have not provided a crosswalk to the new scheme, in large part becase we sspect that or readers, at least in the near term, will be more familiar with the older 2000 taxonomy. Analysis and Reporting Conventions We adhered to the following conventions in analyzing the data and reporting the reslts: Some tables and figres presented in this stdy have fewer than 454 respondents and have been adjsted for missing information. Percentages in some charts and tables may not add p to 100.0 percent de to ronding. We analyzed the data for each online srvey qestion for differences in response patterns among Carnegie classes, private and pblic instittions, and instittions of varying size. Instittion size is determined by the nmber of fll-time eqivalent (FTE) enrollments. We also looked for associations between other combinations of variables as appropriate. We noted differences that were both meaningfl and statistically significant in the text and/or the spporting figres and tables. Note that a statistically significant relationship between variables does not necessarily indicate a casal relationship. The Likert scales sed in the online srveys are footnoted in the tables and figres showing reslts for these srvey qestions. Overview of Respondents We distribted the Help Desk Management Srvey to the EDUCAUSE instittional representative at each member instittion. In most cases, this was the CIO. Of the 454 respondents, 428 were from the United States or its territories and 26 were from Canada. 24

Figre 3-1 compares the distribtion of CIO srvey responses sing the Carnegie class categories described above, alongside EDUCAUSE membership and overall poplation size in each category. The responding schools mirror the EDUCAUSE membership mch more closely than the overall poplation by Carnegie class. Proportionately, we had the strongest participation from doctoral instittions (29.1 percent of respondents). The median FTE stdent enrollment of or srvey instittions was 4,278, while the mean, reflecting the weight of the largest responding instittions, was 7,804. Overall, however, smaller instittions made p the blk of this srvey s respondent base. Figre 3-2 shows the distribtion of respondents by stdent enrollment. Instittions of 4,000 or fewer stdents acconted for 46.0 percent of respondents, those of more than 15,000 acconted for 16.8 percent, and those in between made p 37.1 percent. Among respondent instittions, 57.8 percent were pblicly controlled and 42.2 percent were nder private control. As Figre 3-3 illstrates, control was strongly associated with FTE enrollments, with control more commonly pblic as enrollments increased. Or srvey was completed mainly by respondents holding the position of CIO (51.3 percent of the total). Highest-ranking help desk administrators acconted for another qarter of the respondents, with other IT administrators and staff making p most of the remainder (see Figre 3-4). With, at most, 4.1 percent of respondents representing non- IT positions, we emphasize that the srvey reslts reflect a CIO and IT management point of view. Stdy Organization The remainder of this report presents or findings and investigates the factors that we fond to be associated with help desk sccess. Chapter 4 examines the instittional context that shapes the help desk s mission and goals. In Chapter 5, we look at the help desk itself, its organization, the services it 2,000 1,800 1,743 1,600 Nmber of Instittions 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1,115 622 613 446 319 350 243 264 222 111 121 87 63 46 26 69 0 Figre 3-1. Srvey Respondents, by EDUCAUSE Membership and Carnegie Class DR MA BA AA Other Carnegie Canada Srv ey respondents EDUCAUSE members Carnegie instittions Carnegie Class EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 25

More than 25,000, 5.2% 15,001 25,000, 11.6% 1 2,000, 23.0% Figre 3-2. FTE Stdent Enrollments at Instittions Stdied (N = 439) 8,001 15,000, 17.5% 2,001 4,000, 23.0% 4,001 8,000, 19.6% 45% 40% 39.1 35% 32.6 Figre 3-3. Instittional Control, by FTE Enrollment (N = 423) Percentage of Instittions 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 10.9 15.9 15.8 23.0 8.7 23.8 26.4 5% 3.8 0% 1 2,000 2,001 4,000 4,001 8,000 8,001 15,000 More than 15,000 Private Pblic Stdent Enrollment (FTE) offers, and its availability. Chapter 6 reports or findings on help desk fnding and staffing, and the alignment of client expectations and help desk resorces. In Chapter 7, we examine the tools sed by help desk staff as well as the tools the help desk makes available to its clients. Chapter 8 looks at the se of service level agreements (SLAs) by help desks, inclding crrent and planned stats, constitencies, barriers to implementation, and management practices. In Chapter 9, we investigate 26

Other, 1.3% Non-IT management, 0.4% Other IT management, 9.9% Vice president/provost/vice provost or eqivalent, 2.4% Director of another central IT service nit, 10.4% CIO or eqivalent, 51.3% Figre 3-4. Srvey Respondents, by Job Title (N = 454) Highest-ranking help desk administrator, 24.2% help desk goals, the factors driving and inhibiting those goals, the stats of strategic planning for the help desk, and the central IT organization s se of a set of formal IT service management practices. Chapter 10 discsses the means by which help desks measre their effectiveness, assess ser satisfaction, and commnicate the help desk s costs and vale to varios constitencies; we also report on the overall matrity level of help desk processes at respondent instittions. Chapter 11 considers a range of help desk related otcomes and how they are associated with other variables from the srvey. Chapter 12 concldes the stdy with a look at the ftre of the IT help desk in higher edcation as derived from srvey responses, ECAR s qalitative interviews with selected respondents, and insights from HDI, a prominent membership association for IT spport service providers. Endnotes 1. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce, Service Delivery (London: The Stationery Office, 2001). 2. Jan van Bon, Georges Kemmerling, and Dick Pondman, ed., IT Service Management, an introdction (Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2002). 3. Peter Brooks, Jan van Bon, and Tieneke Verheijen, ed., Metrics for IT Service Management (Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2006). 4. Barbara Czegel, Rnning an Effective Help Desk (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998). EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 27

4 The Instittion and Its Central IT Organization Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context... Eliel Saarinen, Architect Key Findings At most respondent instittions, responsibility for IT infrastrctre and IT services belongs primarily to a central IT organization. Most respondent instittions (68.5 percent) report that central IT s goal is to provide IT infrastrctre and services that frther the instittion s strategic goals. At only 4 percent of respondent instittions is the goal of central IT to provide infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage, bt that grop of instittions is significantly more likely than those prsing other goals to have experienced increasing bdgets in the past three years and to be early adopters of new information technologies. At most respondent instittions (81.2 percent), the priority placed on deployment of easy-to-spport central IT systems is moderate to very high. Nearly two-thirds of respondent instittions (64.9 percent) report an overall instittional organizational climate that is either stable or dynamic. The remainder report volatile or trblent climates. Almost two-thirds of respondents characterize their overall instittions as mainstream adopters of new information technologies; only 1 in 10 says the instittion is an early adopter. Central IT organizations, however, are twice as likely to characterize themselves as early adopters. As we will see in Chapter 5, help desk services take a variety of forms on or respondents campses. Anticipating this, or srvey asked for varios items of basic information abot respondents instittions and central IT organizations so that we cold nderstand the contexts within which help desk resorces, services, and management practices operate. 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. Central IT and Its Partners IT services can be provided in a nmber of ways. At a small liberal arts instittion, for example, a single central IT organization may serve all the IT needs of an entire camps. As instittion size and mission broaden, a central IT organization may be hard pressed to provide the diversity of services its constitents reqire. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 29

In some cases this may lead to decentralization placing the sorce of IT spport closer to the locs of need. Sometimes this decentralization is done nder the aegis of the central IT organization, with distribted spport providers reporting to central IT managers. Other times, individal academic or administrative nits create more or less complete IT organizations that operate more or less separately from central IT. In this report, we refer to these latter, independent IT organizations as nit-specific. Central and Unit-Specific IT Organizations Almost 9 in 10 (88.5 percent) of or respondents reported that their instittions had only one central IT organization. Of the 39 respondents reporting mltiple IT organizations, 32.7 percent were doctorals and exactly a qarter were master s-level instittions. Bachelor s-level instittions, at 5.8 percent, were the least likely Carnegie class to have mltiple central IT organizations. The associate s and other Carnegie classes made p the remainder. In a few cases, reports of mltiple IT organizations are explained by the fact that the respondent was from the system office of a mlticamps niversity. In most other cases, thogh, we assme that mltiple central IT organizations are a reflection of the more complex IT environments of instittions granting advanced degrees. We were also interested in the distribtion of IT responsibilities between central IT organizations and those that we referred to as nitspecific organizations serving a school, college, or department, for example, within an instittion. Jst over half of or respondent instittions (51.3 percent) had no nit-specific IT organizations at all. The remainder had one or more sch organizations. Distribtion of Unit-Specific IT Organizations Fll-time eqivalent (FTE) stdent enrollment, Carnegie class, and instittional control (pblic/private) were significantly associated with the dichotomy between central and nit-specific IT. Figre 4-1 illstrates the relationship to enrollment. More than 9 in 10 (90.5 percent) instittions larger than 15,000 stdents had one or more nit-specific IT organizations. Among midsize instittions, 58.6 percent had them, and only 21.9 percent of smaller instittions did. Looking at Carnegie class, we fond that among doctorals 86.4 percent report nit-specific IT organizations. Half that many (43.0 percent) at the master s level did, while only 28.6 percent at the associate s level and 22.1 percent at the bachelor s level reported nit-specific IT organizations. Analysis by instittional control reveals that 59.1 percent of pblicly controlled instittions had nitspecific IT organizations, while only 34.2 percent of private instittions did. In smmary, then, large instittions, those that grant doctorates, and those nder pblic control were most likely to report nitspecific IT organizations. We speclate that a combination of central and nit-specific IT organizations enables the flexibility and specialization of IT spport generally reqired by the more complex crricla and the more robst research programs common to instittions that grant advanced degrees. The geographical dispersion of many large instittions may also reqire this mixtre of central and nit-specific IT organizations, regardless of Carnegie class. At private instittions the centralization of exective control may make the evoltion of nit-specific IT organizations somewhat less desirable, feasible, or necessary. The Roles of Central and Unit- Specific IT Organizations For the 220 respondents who reported nit-specific IT organizations, we wondered what those organizations relative roles might be. We asked respondents to indicate which type of organization provided 30

100% 90% 90.5 80% Percentage of Instittions in Category 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 21.9 58.6 Figre 4-1. Instittions with One or More Unit-Specific IT Organizations, by Stdent Enrollment (FTE) 20% 10% 0% 1 4,000 (N = 201) 4,001 15,000 (N = 162) More than 15,000 (N = 74) Stdent Enrollment (FTE) IT infrastrctre sch as data networks, Web and e-mail servers, and administrative data systems. We also asked which type of organization provided IT spport services sch as application spport, remote trobleshooting, and sername/password assistance. For each service category, we offered a range of three provider options: mostly central IT organizations, a roghly eqal mix of nit-specific and central IT organizations, and mostly nit-specific IT organizations. The reslts, depicted in Figre 4-2, show that IT infrastrctre is provided in a highly centralized way. More than 9 in 10 respondent instittions reported that infrastrctre was provided mostly by the central IT organization. IT spport services, on the other hand, were somewhat less centralized. Almost 2 in 10 respondents said they were provided by a roghly eqal mix of central and nitspecific providers. As with infrastrctre, very few respondents reported that spport services were provided mostly by nitspecific providers. These reslts reinforce or perception that higher edcation instittions almost always seek economies of scale by centralizing infrastrctre, bt in the case of client spport services they are somewhat more likely to trade economy for service qality by distribting that responsibility. Central IT s Goals and Strategies Consideration of the context in which instittions provide central IT services (inclding help desk services) reqires that we nderstand what central IT hopes to accomplish and how it has chosen to do it. While a comprehensive profile of the IT organization wold be impossible to extract from the responses to a few general qestions, we can get a sense of an organization s help-desk-related choices by viewing central IT in terms of its goals and strategies. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 31

100% 91.8 90% 80% 75.5 Figre 4-2. Providers of Infrastrctre Elements and Spport Services (N = 220) Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 19.1 10% 5.0 3.2 5.5 0% Mostly central IT Roghly eqal mix Mostly nit-specific IT Provider Infrastrctre Spport services What Central IT Hopes to Accomplish To get a glimpse into the central IT organization s priorities, we asked respondent instittions to select from a set of for alternatives the one that best described their central IT organization s goals for IT. The alternatives were: Provide reliable IT infrastrctre and services at the lowest possible cost, which we anticipated wold be chosen by IT organizations focsed on bottomline prodctivity and perhaps less on cstomer service. Provide appropriate IT infrastrctre and services to different sers, based on their needs, which we anticipated wold be chosen by IT organizations oriented primarily toward cstomer service. Provide IT infrastrctre and services that frther the instittion s strategic goals, which we anticipated wold be chosen by more otward-looking IT organizations, where partnering with other key instittional nits was paramont. Provide IT infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage, which we anticipated wold be chosen by IT organizations that are carefl to align their activities with the instittion s higher-level bsiness strategies. Figre 4-3 illstrates the distribtion of responses. More than two-thirds (68.5 percent) of respondents selected alternative 3, frthering the instittion s strategic goals. Those selecting alternatives 1 and 2, goals related to reliable, low-cost services and services appropriate to ser needs, represented 12.0 percent and 15.5 percent of the respondent poplation, respectively. Respondents selecting alternative 4, the goal most closely aligned with higher-level bsiness strategies, represented only 4.0 percent of the stdy poplation. These responses may indicate that there is 32

Create competitive advantage, 4.0% Reliable, low cost, 12.0% Appropriate to ser needs, 15.5% Figre 4-3. Central IT Organization s Goals for IT (N = 451) Frther instittional goals, 68.5% a generally right answer to or goals qestion that instittions whose IT organizations exist to frther the instittion s strategic goals are following a de facto best practice. On the other hand, the responses may sggest only that alternative 3 was the safe or politically correct answer. If an instittion has strategic goals, it wold be difficlt to falt an IT organization for working to frther them. While the response pattern to this qestion is significantly associated with those of a few other qestions (as we will discss later), it is nsal in not being significantly associated with sch positive help desk otcomes as the overall qality of help desk services or the freqency with which the help desk meets its own goals. This reinforces or sspicion that responses to this qestion may have reflected respondents views of what was correct or safe. Deployment of Easy-to- Spport Central IT Systems We asked respondents to describe the priority the central IT organization places on deploying systems that are simple for the help desk to spport. When the central IT organization deliberately deploys systems that are relatively easy for the help desk to spport, it exhibits concern not jst for the help desk staff bt for the systems sers as well. Responses are portrayed in Figre 4-4. Very low and low responses acconted for almost 2 in 10 respondent instittions, while high and very high acconted for almost 4 in 10. The 20-percentage-point low/high contrast sggests a healthy respect among or respondents for central IT s efforts. Those saying the central IT organization places moderate priority on the deployment of easyto-spport systems represented 42.7 percent of the srvey poplation. The mean priority that central IT places on deploying easy-to-spport systems varies significantly by stdent enrollment, as Figre 4-5 shows. While the mean is fairly consistent where enrollments are 4,000 or less and between 4,001 and 15,000, for larger instittions the mean drops abot half a point on or five-point scale. This finding sggests that at small and medim-size instittions, central IT and the help desk are better able to find common grond concerning the spport impacts of central IT s technology choices. The drop in mean priority among the largest respondent EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 33

Very high, 11.8% Very low, 4.9% Low, 14.0% Figre 4-4. Priority Central IT Places on Deploying Easyto-Spport Systems (N = 450) High, 26.7% Moderate, 42.7% 4.0 3.42 3.34 Figre 4-5. Mean Priority Placed on Easy-to- Spport Systems, by Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Mean Priority* 3.0 2.79 2.0 1.0 1 4,000 (N = 201) 4,001 15,000 (N = 161) More than 15,000 (N = 73) Stdent Enrollment (FTE) *Scale: 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = moderate, 4 = high, 5 = very high instittions may reflect the fact that as the scale of central information systems increases, the programming and maintenance costs of modifying them to improve ease of se become high enogh to override spport concerns. 34

The Impact of Instittional Cltre Each higher edcation instittion has its own cltre. No matter how focsed central IT and the central IT help desk may be on facilitating the se of technologies, they will find that they are limited in what they can do by the instittion s prevailing attitdes and by the resorces available to them. To frther nderstand the contexts in which or respondents IT organizations operate, we asked a series of qestions abot three aspects of cltre: overall organizational climate, bdget climate, and the pace of adoption of new information technologies. Organizational Climate Like several prior ECAR srveys, this one asked respondents to indicate the overall organizational climate at their instittions. We offered for choices: Stable: Change is slow or rare. Dynamic: Change is continos, orderly, planned, and navigable. Volatile: Change is episodic, is discontinos, and reqires care. Trblent: Change is often driven by events, is npredictable, and can disrpt ongoing operations. The reslts, depicted in Figre 4-6, show that the blk of respondents (48.2 percent) jdged their organizational climate to be dynamic. Those considering the climate volatile made p 22.7 percent of the respondent poplation, and those considering it stable made p 16.7 percent. The smallest grop, at 12.4 percent of the sample, was those who thoght their overall organizational climate was trblent. This distribtion of reslts, skewed toward the dynamic response, deviates from the more even distribtion we expected to see. The fact that the most favorable-sonding response was the most freqent and the least favorable-sonding was the least freqent may sggest that at least some respondents sensed there were right and wrong answers and chose to respond in the most favorable way. Or it may sggest, as do other data we will discss later, that a majority of respondents are inclined to see the glass as half fll to take an optimistic point of view. Bdget Climate Along with or organizational climate qestion, we asked more specifically abot the central IT organization s bdget climate Trblent, 12.4% Stable, 16.7% Volatile, 22.7% Figre 4-6. Overall Organizational Climate at Respondents Instittions (N = 450) Dynamic, 48.2% EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 35

in the past three years. As Figre 4-7 shows, decreasing bdgets were the least commonly reported, by 17.7 percent of respondents. In most cases (47.6 percent) IT bdgets were flat dring that period, althogh in almost 35 percent of cases, bdgets had increased. Of corse, in the face of rising costs a flat bdget is essentially the same as a decrease, so these figres may not be as positive as they appear at first glance. We fond an association between the IT bdget climate of the past three years and the IT organization s goals. As illstrated in Figre 4-8, respondents who said their goal was to provide IT infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage were more likely to report a climate of increasing bdgets than those identifying other goals. This sggests that at instittions where IT is considered a strategic partner, central IT is more likely to be fnded at levels that keep pace with technological change. Pace of Adoption of New Information Technologies We asked respondents abot the pace of adoption of new information technologies by the central IT organization and by the instittion as a whole. The response options were early adopter, mainstream adopter, and late adopter. The reslts presented in Figre 4-9 indicate that both IT organizations and instittions as a whole were most likely to be mainstream adopters of new information technologies. Central IT organizations, at 21.1 percent, were abot twice as likely to be early adopters as instittions (10.4 percent). Conversely, instittions, at 18.2 percent, were abot twice as likely as central IT organizations (9.3 percent) to be late adopters. As might be expected, the association between these two measres is strong. Looking only at instittions that reported being early adopters, 8 in 10 had central IT organizations that were also early adopters. The same level of commonality existed among instittions that reported being mainstream adopters. In these two categories it appears that as the instittion goes, so goes central IT. The pattern of like-mindedness among early and mainstream adopters did not hold for instittions that reported being late adopters. There, fewer than half of central IT organizations adopted new technologies at the same pace as the instittion. Most of the Decreasing bdgets, 17.7% Figre 4-7. Bdget Climate of Central IT Organization in Past Three Years (N = 452) Increasing bdgets, 34.7% Flat bdgets, 47.6% 36

70% 66.0 60% 60.0 55.6 Percentage of Instittions in Category 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 20.8 13.2 8.6 31.4 19.5 42.9 37.7 16.7 27.8 Figre 4-8. Central IT Bdget Climate, by Central IT Goals 0% Reliable, low cost (N = 53) Appropriate to ser needs (N = 70) Frther instittional goals (N = 308) Create competitive advantage (N = 18) Goal Decreasing bdgets Flat bdgets Increasing bdgets 80% 70% 71.4 69.6 60% Percentage of Instittions 50% 40% 30% 20% 21.1 18.2 Figre 4-9. Pace of Adoption of New Information Technologies 10% 10.4 9.3 0% Early adopter Mainstream adopter Late adopter Pace of Adoption Instittion (N = 451) Central IT (N = 450) EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 37

remainder exceeded the instittional pace as mainstream adopters, and two respondents at late-adopter instittions even reported that central IT is an early adopter. If or findings for early and mainstream adopters sggest mtally reinforcing relationships between the instittion and central IT, the data for late adopters sggest instead that at these instittions the central IT organization often takes the initiative to pick p the pace. Central IT s pace of adoption of new information technologies varied significantly with the instittions overall organizational climate. Figre 4-10 clearly reflects the preponderance of mainstream adopters seen in Figre 4-9. Not srprisingly, where the organizational climate was dynamic, we fond the highest proportion of early adopters (29.9 percent). In sch an organizational climate, risk taking is likely to be encoraged, and or data sggest that this carries over into IT initiatives. For instittions, the overall pattern of the association between pace of adoption of new technologies and the instittion s overall organizational climate resembles the pattern shown in Figre 4-10 for central IT organizations. Even so, as we might expect, instittions reflected a greater conservatism than central IT organizations in all organizational climates. In general, instittions were less likely to be early adopters and more likely to be late adopters. The pace of the central IT organizations adoption of information technologies varied significantly depending on the respondents central IT goal (see Figre 4-11). Instittions whose goal was to provide reliable IT infrastrctre and services at the lowest cost exhibited the most conservative pace. Only 7.7 percent reported being early adopters, while more than 30 percent reported being late adopters. The most aggressive adopters were instittions whose goal was to provide IT infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage. There, two-thirds of respondents characterized themselves as early adopters, and one-third said they were mainstream adopters. Late adopters were not represented at all in this category. Mainstream adopters were predominant among those instittions whose central IT organization s goal was to provide IT 80% 73.0 76.5 70% 66.4 64.3 Figre 4-10. Pace 60% of Central IT Adoption of New 50% Technologies, 40% by Instittion s Overall 30% Organizational 20% Climate 10.8 Percentage of Instittions in Category 10% 16.2 29.9 3.7 13.7 9.8 16.1 19.6 0% Stable (N = 74) Dynamic (N = 214) Volatile (N = 102) Trblent (N = 56) Instittion's Overall Organizational Climate Central IT early adopter Central IT mainstream adopter Central IT late adopter 38

80% 73.9 70% 61.5 65.7 66.7 Percentage of Instittions in Category 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 30.8 24.3 19.9 33.3 Figre 4-11. Pace of Central IT Adoption of New Technologies, by Central IT Goal 10% 7.7 10.0 6.2 0.0 0% Reliable, low cost (N = 52) Appropriate to ser needs (N = 70) Goal Frther instittional goals (N = 307) Create competitive advantage (N = 18) Central IT early adopter Central IT mainstream adopter Central IT late adopter infrastrctre and services to frther the instittion s strategic goals. A similar pattern, bt with a lower percentage of mainstream adopters, emerged among those whose goal was to provide IT infrastrctre and services to different sers on the basis of their needs. Smmary and Implications We expect the natre and qality of central IT help desk services the topic of the remainder of this report to be determined in large part by the instittional context. Or respondents were remarkably niform in some contextal areas and divergent in others. Well over three-qarters of the instittions we srveyed had a single central IT organization; the remainder had more than one. Nearly half of or respondent instittions also had one or more IT organizations operating otside the sphere of central IT. This diversity of approaches to IT spport sggests that at many instittions IT spport services are not niform. For example, a camps department with its own IT organization may experience services that are more highly available and more personal than those experienced by a department that relies only on the central IT organization. We fond that noncentral, nitspecific IT organizations were most common at midsize and large instittions those with more than 4,000 FTE enrollments. At instittions with nit-specific IT organizations, IT infrastrctre resorces were more highly centralized than spport services. While abot three-qarters of those respondents reported that the central IT organization provided most IT spport services, more than 90 percent reported that IT infrastrctre, which benefits more from economies of scale and may reqire more stringent secrity, was provided centrally. Respondents showed srprising niformity in their selection of a smmary goal for their central IT organizations. More than two-thirds of respondents agreed that their goal was to provide IT infrastrctre and services to frther the instittion s strategic goals. While this may have seemed the most politically correct response to some respondents, data smmarized later in this section sggest that by some measres this goal may not attract EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 39

the same level of spport that we fond associated with the goal of providing IT infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage. Nearly two-thirds of respondents reported a relatively positive ( stable or dynamic ) organizational climate for the entire instittion. In terms of bdget climate, however, nearly two-thirds reported that central IT bdgets in the last three years had been either flat or decreasing. Stability in overall organizational climate is relatively easy to perceive as a good or at least benign thing; a flat ( stable ) bdget, however, in a resorceconstrained area like IT is more difficlt to see in a positive light. Bdgets were reported to be on the rise at more than a third (37.7 percent) of instittions that selected the most common goal that of providing IT infrastrctre and services to frther the instittion s strategic goals. By contrast, bdgets had risen for a majority (55.6 percent) of those instittions that said the goal of central IT was to help create competitive advantage for the instittion. Increasing bdgets were least common (13.2 percent) at those 53 instittions where providing reliable infrastrctre and services at the lowest cost is the goal. This sggests to s that instittions reward IT organizations that see themselves as partners in the instittion s competitive sccess. Finally, most respondents said their central IT organization was a mainstream adopter of new information technologies, as was the instittion when considered as a whole. On the other hand, central IT was more than twice as likely as the whole instittion to be termed an early adopter. When viewed in the context of central IT s goals, the highest percentage of early-adopter IT organizations (jst over two-thirds) was reported within the relatively small grop that said their goal was to provide IT infrastrctre and services to create instittional competitive advantage. 40

5 Methods of Implementing Help Desk Services People seldom refse help, if one offers it in the right way. A.C. Benson Key Findings Most instittions provide all help desk services from a single central IT help desk. Most help desk managers report to the head of a central IT area, not the CIO. Help desk services are most freqently offered by telephone, e-mail, and in-person interaction either at the help desk location or at the ser s location. Interaction at the ser s location is significantly more common at smaller instittions. Otsorcing of help desk services is relatively rare, with jst over 16 percent of respondents otsorcing any help desk services. Among those, a strong majority is otsorcing 25 percent of services or less. Over two-thirds of help desks are available more than standard camps bsiness hors, inclding nearly 5 percent that are available 24 hors a day, seven days a week. In this chapter, we report on the characteristics of or respondents central IT help desks. While details vary, in terms of mission and focs, they have mch in common, as we will see. We asked abot the nmber of help desks at each respondent instittion and their organizational affiliations. For the help desk with which each respondent was most familiar, we asked for details abot management reporting line, the services offered (and not offered), the stats of otsorcing of help desk services, and the availability of those services along several dimensions. Help Desk Organization The term help desk means different things at different instittions. All of or respondent instittions recognized the term and were able to answer qestions that assmed the existence of a discrete help desk entity. Not all instittions refer to the help desk by that name, thogh. At some instittions, the help desk is called the technology spport center; at others it may be called the IT service desk. At some instittions, the help desk may be more a fnctional entity than an organizational one, and may not have a name of its own bt rather be sbsmed nder a broader entity, sch as cstomer service or ser spport. As we saw in Chapter 4, 11.5 percent of respondent instittions have mltiple central IT organizations. In some cases, each of these 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 41

organizations has its own help desk. Nearly half of respondent instittions have nitspecific (not central) IT organizations. Some of these IT organizations also have help desks of their own. Where there are mltiple help desks, we assme there may also be different policies, practices, and priorities. Rather than ask or respondents to attempt to aggregate information abot all their camps help desks, we asked them to answer or srvey qestions from the perspective of that central IT help desk with which they were most familiar. How Many Help Desks? Jst nder three-qarters (73.6 percent) of or respondents reported having only central IT help desks and no nit-specific ones (see Figre 5-1). The remainder had at least one central and at least one nit-specific help desk. Becase 11.5 percent of or respondents reported having more than one central IT organization, it follows that some respondents might also have more than one central IT help desk. We asked that qestion and fond that almost 24 percent of all respondents have more than one (see Figre 5-2). That is almost twice the percentage that reported having more than one central IT organization. In general, we find that when a single central IT organization has mltiple help desks, they differ from each other mainly in the constitencies they serve or the services they offer. The nmber of central IT help desks varies significantly with FTE enrollment. While 83 percent of respondent instittions with enrollments of 4,000 or less have only one central IT help desk, three-qarters (75.3 percent) of those between 4,001 and 15,000 do. At instittions with more than 15,000 FTE enrollments, only two-thirds (66.2 percent) have a single help desk. We fond no significant association between nmber of central IT help desks and Carnegie class. Who s in Charge? We inqired abot the reporting line of the central IT help desk manager and fond that at the majority of respondent instittions (54.0 percent) the manager reports to the head of a central IT service area bt not the CIO (see Figre 5-3). Those reporting directly to the CIO or eqivalent make p another 3 in 10, while nearly all the remainder (17.3 percent) report to another IT spervisor or manager. At two respondent instittions Figre 5-1. Presence of Central and Unit- Specific Help Desks (N = 451) Both central and nit-specific IT help desks, 26.4% Central IT help desk(s) only, 73.6% 42

More than five 3.5 Five 0.4 For Three 1.3 3.5 Figre 5-2. Nmber of Central IT Help Desks (N = 451) Two 14.6 One 76.5 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% Percentage of Instittions Head of central IT service area 54.0 CIO or eqivalent Other IT spervisor/manager Non-IT management 0.4 17.3 27.9 Figre 5-3. Help Desk Manager s Reporting Line (N = 452) Other 0.4 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Percentage of Instittions the help desk manager reports to a non-it manager, and at two others the help desk manager has yet a different reporting line. The central IT help desk manager s reporting line was significantly associated with FTE enrollment, as Figre 5-4 shows. It was nearly twice as common at smaller instittions for the help desk manager to report directly to the CIO (40.8 percent) as at medim-size instittions (21.6 percent), and almost for times as common as at large instittions (10.8 percent). Presmably this reflects flatter IT organizational strctres at smaller instittions. As we will see in later chapters, thogh, several help desk service otcomes are also associated with FTE enrollments; the finding reported here hints that the help desk manager s direct responsibilities to the CIO may inflence some of those enrollment-related otcomes. Help Desk Services Not all central IT help desks provide the same services. To get an idea of the scope of services provided by the help desks or respondents were reporting on, we asked EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 43

70% 66.2 60% 58.0 Figre 5-4. Reporting Line of Central IT Help Desk Manager, by FTE Enrollment Percentage of Instittions in Category 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 43.8 40.8 14.4 21.6 19.8 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.6 0.0 1.4 1 4,000 (N = 201) 4,001 15,000 (N = 162) More than 15,000 (N = 74) 10.8 21.6 Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Head of central IT service area CIO or eqivalent Other IT spervisor/manager Non-IT management Other how freqently that help desk provided assistance with 12 common infrastrctre and identity management elements and 11 common IT applications. What the Help Desk Does Nearly all respondent instittions central IT help desks offer their clients assistance with most of the items we asked abot. Considering infrastrctre/identity items, 72.5 percent of respondents said they offered assistance with all 12; 18.9 percent offer assistance with 11 of them. Considering application items, 63.9 percent of respondents said they offered assistance with all 11; 17 percent assist with 10 of them. Figres 5-5 and 5-6 present detailed reslts. Note that the percentages in these charts are for respondent instittions that offer assistance with the infrastrctre/identity element or application in qestion. When calclating these percentages, we exclded respondents who said their instittions did not offer assistance with an item. (We discss these in the next section.) Two identity management items, password changes and ser accont generation, top the list of infrastrctre/identity assistance mean freqencies. Nmeros instittions have atomated both of these processes, 1 bt the findings here sggest they still consme sbstantial help desk resorces. The third identity management service element we inqired abot sername changes was relatively less freqently provided. Also provided very often or often by majorities of or respondents are assistance with operating system software, central hardware, and the data network. These relatively high vales are not nexpected, given the complexities of operating systems (and the secrity vlnerabilities of Microsoft Windows in particlar), the sers relative inability to self-help with central hardware isses, and the criticality of the data network to most IT applications. Reported freqencies for voice network assistance top the lower half of or findings, perhaps reflecting that while the voice network is argably as crcial as the data network, it is also sally less complex, more stable, and more familiar, ths reqiring less help desk assistance. The slightly lower freqency of assistance with other niversity-owned hardware sggests that ser- 44

Password changes (N = 448) 68.3 23.2 6.3 1.6 0.7 Accont generation (N = 443) 54.9 23.7 12.9 4.3 4.3 Operating system software (N = 449) 45.4 31.2 18.7 2.7 2.0 Username changes (N = 441) 45.1 22.9 16.1 9.5 6.3 Data network (N = 448) Central hardware (N = 445) Voice network (N = 411) Other niversityowned hardware (N = 440) 25.8 23.0 28.8 43.3 21.8 22.6 26.3 32.8 20.9 34.1 28.3 14.1 17.9 11.6 8.3 4.5 1.6 8.3 16.5 9.5 Figre 5-5. Freqency of Help Desk Assistance with Identity/ Infrastrctre Elements Secrity incidents (N = 449) 21.4 20.7 29.8 15.6 12.5 Presentation technologies (N = 437) 20.1 20.4 25.4 17.4 16.7 Secrity consltation (N = 445) 18.0 26.3 35.7 13.0 7.0 Privately owned hardware (N = 385) 10.4 15.6 26.0 23.4 24.7 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Very often Often Sometimes Seldom Almost never Percentage of Instittions owners of the crrent generation of desktop hardware, in particlar, can self-help with considerable freqency. Both secrity consltations and secrity incidents tend to be episodic phenomena, and so their relatively low assistance freqencies are not srprising. Relatively low freqencies of assistance with presentation technologies may reflect their more limited penetration or relative reliability, or both. Providing assistance with personally owned hardware is a particlarly difficlt isse for pblic instittions, as we discss below in Choosing What Not to Do. This may help explain the relatively low freqencies with which or respondents provide assistance for it. Of all the applications we inqired abot (Figre 5-6), electronic mail is the most freqently spported by or respondents central IT help desks. The percentage of very often and often responses exceeds those for any other application or infrastrctre/ identity element we asked abot. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 45

Camps e-mail applications (N = 453) 70.9 23.8 0.2 4.6 0.4 Personal prodctivity applications (N = 450) 45.6 30.4 19.3 3.1 1.6 Camps calendaring applications (N = 436) 45.2 29.4 17.2 4.8 3.4 Camps Web applications (N = 441) 39.2 28.1 21.1 8.6 2.9 Figre 5-6. Freqency of Help Desk Assistance with Applications Camps instrctional applications (N = 441) Employee se of administrative applications (N = 440) Stdent se of administrative applications (N = 435) 30.7 27.6 31.3 27.8 27.9 26.6 25.1 22.4 27.0 11.3 12.2 10.5 7.0 5.2 7.4 Off-camps applications (N = 370) 5.9 7.3 23.5 22.7 40.5 Camps library applications (N = 426) 3.8 8.7 23.7 31.2 32.6 Programming langages (N = 380) 3.2 2.6 10.5 29.5 54.2 Camps research applications (N = 377) 2.9 6.9 22.8 28.1 39.3 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Very often Often Sometimes Seldom Almost never Percentage of Instittions Three application types form a freqency clster of very often and often responses totaling over 60 percent. These are personal prodctivity applications sch as e-mail, Word and Excel; calendaring; and Web applications. Another clster with eqivalent freqencies above 50 percent incldes camps instrctional applications and staff and stdent se of the camps administrative system. Of the remainder, assistance with library applications, applications hosted off camps, and research applications have freqencies of very often and often responses totaling less than 15 percent. Assistance with program- 46

ming langages, with a very often and often freqency of 5.8 percent, is the least commonly provided of all or applications. With the exception of library applications, all those on or list that are part of daily life for most faclty, staff, and stdents have mean freqencies of assistance well above sometimes. This sggests that library applications presmably a part of daily life for most of the camps are spported in some other way, sch as throgh the library s own help desk or reference desk. Choosing What Not to Do Sbstantial nmbers of instittions reported offering no assistance with several infrastrctre/identity items and applications. In all cases these are the spport items for which Figres 5-5 and 5-6 report the lowest freqencies of assistance. Infrastrctre elements for which more than 5 percent of respondents reported offering no assistance (Figre 5-7) inclded only privately owned hardware and the camps voice network. Of or key demographic classes, only instittional control was meaningflly associated with provision of assistance for privately owned hardware. Two-thirds of the instittions that say they do not offer this type of assistance are nder pblic control, a sbstantially greater portion than the 57.8 percent that pblic instittions represent in the overall srvey poplation. A practice of not spporting privately owned hardware is more likely to be necessary in pblic instittions where state law and instittional policy may prohibit se of pblic resorces for private benefit and where sensitivities to Privately owned hardware (N = 450) Camps voice network (N = 450) 8.7 14.4 Presentation technologies (N = 452) 3.3 Username changes (N = 453) 2.6 User accont generation (N = 453) Other camps-owned hardware (N = 448) Central hardware (N = 451) Secrity consltation (N = 451) 2.2 1.8 1.3 1.3 Figre 5-7. Infrastrctre/ Identity Elements for Which Help Desk Assistance Is Not Offered Password changes (N = 451) Secrity incident response (N = 451) Operating system software (N = 451) Camps data network (N = 450) 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% Percentage of Instittions EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 47

competition with the private sector are likely to be stronger. Instittions reporting that their help desks don t offer assistance with the camps voice network had demographics that tracked very closely with the overall poplation demographics. Findings for this practice were not strongly associated with any of or other major data items. Among application assistance items (Figre 5-8), more than 15 percent of instittions reported not providing assistance for three items: applications hosted off camps, research applications, and programming langages. Among respondent instittions whose help desks offer no assistance with camps research applications, 90.7 percent are in the associate s, bachelor s, and master s Carnegie classes. Doctorals make p jst 9.3 percent of that grop, thogh they make p 29.1 percent of or overall sample poplation. It comes as no srprise that the help desks at doctoral instittions at least sometimes assist with research applications. Help desks that offer no assistance with programming langages are distribted niformly across all or demographic classes. Where Help Is Provided The term help desk wold seem to sggest a static, frnitre-centric organization with a helper on one side and a recipient on the other. Even the IT Infrastrctre Library framework fails to flly dispel this sggestion, and simply replaces help desk with the slightly broader-sonding service desk. In fact, as or data show, the artifacts most closely associated with the help desk are more likely to be a telephone and a compter screen than Applications hosted off camps (N = 450) Camps research applications (N = 449) Programming langages (N = 451) 16.0 15.7 17.8 Camps library applications (N = 452) 5.8 Figre 5-8. Applications for Which Help Desk Assistance Is Not Offered Stdent se of administrative applications (N = 451) Camps calendaring applications (N = 451) Camps instrctional applications (N = 452) 2.4 3.5 3.3 Camps Web applications (N = 448) Employee se of administrative applications (N = 447) 1.6 1.6 Camps e-mail applications (N = 453) Personal prodctivity applications (N = 452) 0.4 0.4 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 18% 20% Percentage of Instittions 48

a desk. Some instittions acknowledge this telecommnications focs by sing the term help line, thogh that may be jst as limiting as help desk. Figre 5-9 presents the freqencies with which or respondents help desks se seven mechanisms for commnicating with their clients. We refer to these as help desk service modes. The most rotinely sed help desk service modes are telephone and e-mail. Most of or respondents also rotinely se in-person interaction at the help desk location and inperson interaction at the ser s location. All of these are classical service modes, and it wold be srprising if they were not in common se among or stdy poplation. In sharp contrast are the three interactive electronic text commnication modes we asked abot: Internet-based text/instant messaging, chat room, and cell phone based text/instant messaging, which fewer than 10 percent of or respondents rotinely se. While a majority of respondents (56.8 percent) either se or plan to se Internetbased text/instant messaging to commnicate with clients, majorities have no crrent plans to se chat rooms or cell phone based text/instant messaging. This finding is a bit srprising in light of the data from the 2007 ECAR stdy of stdent se of IT, 2 in which 84.1 percent of stdent respondents say they se instant messaging with a median freqency of daily. At the University of Alberta, chat is a mainstay of the central IT help desk. AICT Helpdesk Analyst Brent Voyer reports excellent ser satisfaction with the service: When people call s on the telephone, they re sometimes pt on hold for long periods dring bsy times and don t know when we will be able to get back to them. With chat, when people hit the IT center s home page they see the chat option prominently displayed, along with a graphic representation of its stats, which is qite a bit more encoraging than the telephone inter- 2.2 Telephone (N = 452) 97.8 0.7 E-mail (N = 450) 94.0 5.1 In-person interaction at help desk location (N = 450) 68.9 23.3 0.4 7.3 0.2 In-person interaction at sers locations (N = 451) Internet-based text/ instant messaging (N = 438) 6.8 20.3 57.4 29.7 27.3 43.2 1.1 14.2 Figre 5-9. Help Desk Service Modes Chat room (N = 441) 2.9 12.0 25.9 59.2 Cell phone based text/ instant messaging (N = 432) 3.0 10.9 18.5 67.6 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Rotinely sed Occasionally sed Planned for the ftre Not planning to se Percentage of Instittions EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 49

face. At Alberta, e-mail and chat accont for abot 73 percent of the academic help desk s 22,000 annal client contacts. Crrent severe limitations on cell phone based text message length (160 seven-bit characters) may help explain or respondents lack of interest in that particlar technology. Few help desk service modes were strongly associated with or key demographic variables, bt those that were provide interesting insights. As Figre 5-10 shows, in-person interaction at the ser s location varies significantly by FTE enrollment. (A similar and statistically even stronger association exists with Carnegie class.) Nearly two-thirds of smaller instittions rotinely provide help desk services at the ser s location. The freqency drops somewhat among medim-size instittions and drops more dramatically to jst over a third at the largest ones. At all three FTE enrollment levels, abot a qarter of respondents occasionally provide help desk services at the ser s location. At all three levels nearly no respondents report planning to offer help desk services at the ser s location in the ftre. Among respondents asserting that they have no plans to se that service mode, freqencies increase dramatically from the smallest instittions throgh the largest ones, more than dobling at each step. This pattern of responses may reflect a progressively less personal service orientation at larger instittions, althogh many other explanations are also possible. For example, the data may simply sggest that the hose calls service mode does not scale well, given per capita resorce constraints at many larger instittions. Or the more extensive geographies of larger instittions and the cross-camps travel time they add to the resoltion of sers problems may make that service mode inefficient. In the context of Carnegie class, the doctorals provide help desk services comparatively rarely at the ser s location and do not plan to evolve in that direction. At least 92 percent of instittions in each of the other classes either rotinely or occasionally provide help desk services in this mode, compared with only 68.8 percent of doctorals. 70% 60% 65.7 60.9 Figre 5-10. In-Person Interaction at User s Location, by Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Percentage of Instittions in Category 50% 40% 30% 20% 27.9 13.0 24.8 33.8 29.7 36.5 10% 0% 6.0 0.5 1.2 0.0 1 4,000 (N = 201) 4,001 15,000 (N = 161) More than 15,000 (N = 74) Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Not planning to se Planned for the ftre Method is occasionally sed Method is rotinely sed 50

Spport professionals at two very different instittions provide perspectives on this mode of spport. Christine Mrphy, systems planner at the University of Delaware (20,000 FTE), explains, The central IT organization reaches ot to the other related IT services providers in many different departments throgh its Camps IT Associate program, which places an IT staff member who has the technical expertise in the appropriate discipline in the varios departments. The goal is to help the departments to be onboard with central IT. At Dartmoth College (5,600 FTE), Conslting Services Manager Ellen Yong describes her instittion s personal spport model in this way: With or personal model, the faclty or staff member always deals with the same IT consltant. The IT consltants are assigned by department, and each IT consltant has mltiple departments, depending pon the size of the departments. They are physically located in the department... The IT consltant develops relationships with the department s faclty/staff. He or she becomes an integral part of the department that he or she spports. Despite their differences in size and instittional control, these two instittions have fond that high toch spport methods help them deliver excellent help desk services. Given the example set by many prominent retail merchants offering online chat as a high-tech cstomer service option, we were srprised that 6 in 10 of or higher edcation IT respondents expressed no plans to offer sch services. Those reslts vary significantly with instittion size. The breakdown in Figre 5-11 shows that instittions with fewer than 4,000 FTE enrollments are the least inclined to se chat rooms for help desk services. Within this grop, slightly more than twothirds report not planning to adopt that service mode, and only 10.8 percent now se it rotinely or occasionally. By contrast, fewer than half of instittions with more than 15,000 FTE enrollments report not planning to se chat rooms for help desk services, and crrently 27.4 percent well over twice as many as at the smallest instittions se it rotinely or occasionally. The findings in Figres 5-10 and 5-11 hint at a dichotomy between large and small instittions in which small instittions more freqently opt for a higher-toch mode of help desk service delivery while larger instittions somewhat more freqently opt for high-tech modes not face-to-face at the ser s location, bt still with a degree of interactivity. Of corse, to keep these speclations in perspective, we mst recognize that even the respondent instittions with the largest enrollments are more than for times as likely to provide help desk services at the ser s location as they are to provide them via chat. Otsorcing Not all central IT help desk services are provided in-hose. Otsorcing may offer sch advantages as extended hors of availability, standardization of service qality, and relief from management headaches sch as dealing with staff trnover, coordinating staff training, and managing employees dring late-night shifts. Or data, portrayed in Figre 5-12, indicate that otsorcing of central IT help desk services is still far from a pervasive phenomenon. Only 16.3 percent of respondent instittions are otsorcing any of their help desk services, and the blk of those (12.6 percent overall) are otsorcing 25 percent or less of their services. For the last for years, Colgate University has otsorced all its tier-one help desk spport to Advantage Commnications of Prince Edward Island, Canada. For instittions that are considering otsorcing, Colgate s chief information technology officer, David Gregory, advises, Otsorce yor nonstrategic services and focs yor staff on what EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 51

70% 68.4 Figre 5-11. Chat Room Use, by Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Percentage of Instittions in Category 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 20.7 9.8 1.0 51.9 33.8 11.3 3.1 46.6 26.0 19.2 8.2 0% 1 4,000 (N = 193) 4,001 15,000 (N = 160) More than 15,000 (N = 73) Not planning to se Planned for the ftre Method is occasionally sed Method is rotinely sed Stdent Enrollment (FTE) 51 75% otsorced, 0.7% 26 50% otsorced, 0.4% 75 100% otsorced, 2.6% 1 25% otsorced, 12.6% Figre 5-12. Percentage of Help Desk Fnctions Otsorced (N = 453) No services otsorced, 83.7% is strategic to yor instittion. I wold be hard-pressed to imagine a strong argment as to why tier-one spport wold be considered strategic. In higher edcation, Gregory explains, mch of the resistance to otsorcing has to do with the academy s sense that its IT spport needs are different from those of the commercial sector. Bt the bottom line is: We are not different, he concldes. We have the same PCs and Macs on or desktops as they do in indstry. Where we are different is in how we pt them to se. That s why it s important to get yor on-camps spport staff trained to assist faclty and staff with their discipline- 52

specific problems. Those are the strategic areas in higher edcation. At Bowdoin College, CIO Mitch Davis expresses concern along slightly different lines. Otsorcing takes the empathy ot of IT spport, he says. The only way for the help desk to be sccessfl is to be empathic. In an otsorced sitation, yo are getting answers, not soltions. An otsorced help desk lacks the ability to react and respond to a client s needs in the instittional context. Argments for and against otsorcing are discssed frther in the case stdy Bowdoin College and Colgate University: Using the Help Desk Strategically to Revitalize the IT Organization, 3 which accompanies this report. Help Desk Availability To help s nderstand more abot the role of the help desks or respondents were reporting on, we asked when the help desk was available and whether there were constraints on the poplations the help desk served. We fond that for the most part, respondent instittions help desks were available beyond standard camps bsiness hors and that services did not vary on the basis of the client s niversity class (faclty, staff, or stdent) or departmental affiliation. Availability in Time We asked on which of the following general schedles the help desk was available to its clients: less than standard camps bsiness hors, standard camps bsiness hors only, more than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 x 7, or 24 x 7. Responses appear in Figre 5-13. Very few of or respondents help desks are available less than standard camps bsiness hors. Somewhat fewer than a third are available dring standard camps bsiness hors only. The majority of respondent instittions make their central IT help desks available more than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 hors a day, seven days a week. Those that have made their help desks available on a 24 x 7 basis are few: only 4.9 percent of or sample. Availability varies significantly by both FTE enrollment and Carnegie class as well as by help desk bdget and staffing levels, which we discss later in this chapter. Becase the general data pattern is the same for all these variables, Figre 5-14 portrays only the data for enrollment. In only two categories do we find respondent instittions with central IT help desk availability of less than standard camps bsiness hors those with 2,000 or fewer FTE enrollments and those with 8,001 to 15,000. Availability limited to standard camps bsiness hors declines across the chart, from 44.6 percent for the smallest instittions to only 17.6 percent for the largest ones. Percentages increase most of the way across the chart for help desks whose availability is more than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 x 7, from 51.5 percent for the smallest instittions to 72.7 percent for instittions between 8,001 and 15,000 FTE enrollments. For instittions with enrollments greater than 15,000, the percentage of respondents whose help desks are available more than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 x 7 is lower than for the next-smaller enrollment category, bt it is here that we see the blk of responses for 24 x 7 availability, reaching 13.5 percent among these largest instittions, a factor of almost for greater than in any other category. Again, the pattern is similar for Carnegie class, where doctoral instittions most freqently have 24 x 7 help desk access. Understandably, instittions with the largest client bases, bdgets, and help desk staffs also are the most likely to report 24 x 7 access. The degree of otsorcing of help desk services is also significantly associated with availability, with 5 of the 12 instittions (41.7 percent) that EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 53

24 x 7, 4.9% Less than standard camps bsiness hors, 1.3% Figre 5-13. Central IT Help Desk Availability (N = 453) Standard camps bsiness hors only, 30.5% More than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 x 7, 63.4% Figre 5-14. Help Desk Availability, by Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Percentage of Instittions in Category 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 44.6 51.5 36.6 60.4 25.9 70.6 22.1 72.7 17.6 68.9 13.5 10% 0% 3.0 3.0 3.5 1.0 2.6 2.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 2,000 (N = 101) 2,001 4,000 (N = 101) 4,001 8,000 (N = 85) 8,001 15,000 (N = 77) More than 15,000 (N = 74) Stdent Enrollment (FTE) Less than standard camps bsiness hors Standard camps bsiness hors only More than standard camps bsiness hors bt less than 24 x 7 24 x 7 otsorce three-qarters or more of their help desk services reporting 24 x 7 availability. Indiana University has offered 24 x 7 spport for more than five years, according to Se Workman, associate vice president for spport. When the Indianapolis and Bloomington IT spport organizations merged, we fond that the level of service we offered at that time didn t match the need. Indianapolis classes are often taght at night, and IT spport is needed then. Also, when the Information Commons opened its 24 x 7 operation in the Bloomington camps Library, we took on spport responsibility for the 300 workstations there. It is really bsy ntil 3:00 a.m. Workman s advice to instittions 54

considering moving to a 24 x 7 operation is, Jst do it. It really did shock me how many calls we got after 9:00 p.m. Availability by Client Type We asked if spport from the central IT help desk varied according to the ser s class (faclty, staff, stdent). For almost two-thirds (64.3 percent) of respondents help desks it does not. This finding was not significantly associated with any of or standard demographics. When asked if spport varied according to the client s departmental affiliation (sch as administrative, instrctional, or research), flly 85 percent reported that it did not. A significant association exists between this finding and Carnegie class, as illstrated in Figre 5-15. At jst over a qarter of doctorals, spport does vary by the client s departmental affiliation. This is more than twice the freqency at master s and associate s instittions, and almost for times the freqency at bachelor s instittions. Ths it appears that greater complexity of academic programs may inflence instittions to deploy more specialized help desks. Smmary and Implications IT help desk distribtion resembles that of IT organizations. Abot three-qarters of or respondents have only central IT help desks; the rest also have one or more nit-specific help desks. Three-qarters of instittions have only one central IT help desk; most of the remainder have two. Only one instittion in 10 has more than two central IT help desks. The reporting line for the help desk manager varies by instittion size. At the smallest instittions, 4 in 10 help desk managers report directly to the CIO, while only 1 in 10 does at the largest instittions. Most help desks provide a range of infrastrctre and application assistance. The top infrastrctre/identity management services or respondents help desks offered are password changes, ser accont generation, operating software assistance, and help with the camps data network. Services provided 30% 26.4 25% Percentage of Instittions in Category 20% 15% 10% 12.4 6.9 12.7 Figre 5-15. Variability of Spport Based on Departmental Affiliation, by Carnegie Class 5% 0% DR (N = 110) MA (N = 121) BA (N = 87) AA (N = 63) Carnegie Class EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 55

least often inclde assistance with personally owned hardware and with the camps voice network. The top applications that or respondents help desks spport are e-mail, personal prodctivity tools sch as Word and Excel, and calendaring. Least often spported are applications hosted off camps, research applications, and programming langages. Help desk services are most freqently offered by telephone, e-mail, and in-person interaction at either the help desk location or the ser s location. Less sed service modes are instant messaging, chat, and text messaging. The most poplar modes involve more traditional means of commnication, two electronically mediated and two not. The least poplar modes are less traditional, at least among or respondents, most of whom we assme are a generation older than the stdents they serve. The service mode of in-person interaction at the ser s location is most common at smaller instittions, perhaps reflecting a more personal approach to service in smaller academic commnities as well as a geographical layot that makes hose calls efficient. For similar reasons, perhaps, online chat is sed most freqently at the largest instittions and is being implemented or is planned most freqently at midsize instittions. Otsorcing of help desk services is relatively rare among or respondents, with jst over 16 percent of respondents otsorcing any help desk services; a strong majority of those otsorce 25 percent or less of their services. More than two-thirds of or respondents help desks are available more than standard camps bsiness hors, inclding nearly 5 percent that are available 24 hors a day, seven days a week. Most of the latter are at instittions with more than 15,000 FTE enrollments. It is sally the smaller instittions whose help desks operate only dring reglar bsiness hors. Help desks at respondent doctoral instittions are more than twice as likely as those at other Carnegie classes to provide different levels of service based on the client s departmental affiliation. This may reflect the presence of alternative means of spport at these academically complex instittions nitspecific IT organizations, for example. Endnotes 1. Ron Yanosky with Gail Salaway, Identity Management in Higher Edcation: A Baseline Stdy (Research Stdy, Vol. 2) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2006), 63, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 2. Gail Salaway and Jdith Borreson Carso, with Mark R. Nelson, The ECAR Stdy of Undergradate Stdents and Information Technology, 2007 (Research Stdy, Vol. 6) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007), 42, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 3. Jdith A. Pirani and Robert Albrecht, Bowdoin College and Colgate University: Using the Help Desk Strategically to Revitalize the IT Organization (Case Stdy 7) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007), available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 56

6 Fnding and Staffing the Central IT Help Desk Money may kindle, bt it cannot by itself, or for very long, brn. Igor Stravinsky Key Findings At most instittions the central IT bdget is a major sorce of help desk fnding. Stdent technology fees, recharges to other camps nits, and fees for services were rarely cited as major or moderate sorces of fnding. More than half of respondents said their help desk fnding was inadeqate. At smaller instittions the mean nmber of help desk staff is abot 7; at instittions with between 4,001 and 15,000 FTE stdents the mean is abot 10; and at larger instittions it is nearly 18. At smaller instittions the mean nmber of FTE stdents per help desk staff member is abot 630, at midsize instittions it is abot 1,600, and at large instittions it is nearly 2,300. The better or respondents felt abot the adeqacy of the help desk bdget, the more likely they were to feel that camps expectations of the help desk were aligned with help desk resorces. Financial and hman resorces are key elements in nearly any spport endeavor. We asked or respondents for information abot their help desks bdgets past, present, and ftre and crrent staffing levels. While those data contained few srprises, we received less predictable responses to or qestions abot the perceived adeqacy of help desk fnding, the nmber of help desk staff relative to enrollments, and the alignment of camps expectations of the help desk with its resorces. Help Desk Fnding Obviosly, the financial resorces available to the help desk can make a difference in that organization s service level. Help desk fnding compensates staff and pays for their training. It prchases service tools for their se and selfservice tools for clients. Fnding (or lack of it) can affect working conditions, staff morale, and staff and cstomer attitdes. While money can t compensate for poor leadership, even good leadership can find it difficlt to thrive when fnds are wanting. 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 57

Still, as the qotation that opens this chapter points ot, money isn t everything. Mitch Davis, CIO at Bowdoin College, offers this observation: When I came here, IT was 9 percent of the total college bdget and everyone was dissatisfied with IT services. Today we are spending 5.2 percent of the college bdget and abot 96 percent of staff and faclty think we are doing a good job. So it s really not abot money; as I see it, it s abot commnications. Fnding Sorces For almost two-thirds of or respondents (63.7 percent), fnding for the central IT help desk is nder 10 percent of the central IT bdget, with nearly 4 in 10 receiving 5 percent or less (see Figre 6-1). Most of the remainder receive between 11 and 25 percent of the central IT bdget, while scarcely more than a handfl (6.7 percent) receive more than 25 percent. More than 9 in 10 (92.7 percent) of or respondents cited the central IT bdget as a major sorce of help desk fnding. Only 3.8 percent said it was a moderate sorce, while 2.2 percent said it was a minor sorce. Overall, 83.0 percent of respondents said they had only one major sorce of fnding; of these, 95.5 percent named the central IT bdget. Figre 6-2 depicts other sorces cited as contribting to the help desk bdget. Of these, only a stdent technology/compting fee was cited as a major sorce by more than 10 percent of respondents; 9.6 percent cited it as a moderate sorce. None of the other sorces we asked abot was reported as a major or moderate sorce by more than 4 percent of or respondents. Over 30% 4.4 26 30% 2.3 21 25% 6.7 16 20% 8.7 11 15% 14.2 Figre 6-1. Fnding for the Central IT Help Desk as a Percentage of Central IT Bdget (N = 344) Percentage of Central IT Bdget 10% 9% 8% 7% 6% 5% 1.2 2.3 3.2 4.1 11.3 14.8 4% 6.1 3% 2% 7.6 7.6 1% 4.7 0% 0.9 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% Percentage of Instittions 58

20% 18% Percentage of Instittions 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 4.6 2.5 12.8 6.2 1.8 2.1 0.8 0.7 1.4 13.8 13.9 3.9 3.0 9.6 12.5 Figre 6-2. Minor and Moderate Sorces of Help Desk Fnding Other Than Central IT Bdget (Mltiple Responses Allowed) 0% Other Grants Fees for services Recharges to nits Stdent fee Minor sorce Moderate sorce Major sorce Fnding Sorce Fnding Adeqacy Or respondents were more often negative than positive abot the adeqacy of fnding for the central IT help desk, thogh not dramatically so. As Figre 6-3 shows, 44.3 percent described fnding as adeqate to mch more than adeqate. Another 45 percent said it was less than adeqate, and 10.7 percent said help desk fnding was mch less than adeqate. The overall mean response was 2.37 on a scale from 1 to 5 (standard deviation 0.722), not qite halfway between less than adeqate and adeqate. Or respondents sense of the adeqacy of the help desk bdget is significantly associated with the bdget climate they reported for their central IT organizations in the past three years. As Table 6-1 illstrates, mean agreement that help desk fnding is adeqate increases slightly from decreasing bdget climates throgh increasing ones. While all these means are between less than adeqate and adeqate, only the mean for instittions with increasing bdgets rises past the halfway point. Looking specifically at the past three years change in the central IT help desk bdget, we find the range of responses depicted in Figre 6-4. Of those who responded, 55.7 percent reported increases in the help desk bdget, while only 11.8 percent reported decreases; 23.7 percent reported no change, and a sbstantial 8.9 percent said they did not know. We also asked what bdget changes or respondents foresaw for the next three years, and Figre 6-4 shows the answers to this qestion as well. Again, the majority (59.1 percent) spoke of increases, althogh anticipated ftre increases were generally smaller than those reported for the past three years. Fewer respondents anticipated any level of decrease (5.5 percent) and no change (22.1 percent) than respondents reporting in those categories abot the past three years. As we expect with qestions abot fnding and the ftre, a large nmber of respondents to this qestion (13.3 percent) answered don t know. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 59

Mch more than adeqate, 0.2% More than adeqate, 3.0% Mch less than adeqate, 10.7% Figre 6-3. Adeqacy of Central IT Help Desk Fnding (N = 440) Adeqate, 41.1% Less than adeqate, 45.0% Table 6-1. Mean Agreement That Help Desk Fnding Is Adeqate, by Central IT Bdget Climate Bdget Climate N Mean* Std. Deviation Decreasing bdgets 77 2.14 0.663 Flat bdgets 204 2.30 0.740 Increasing bdgets 157 2.57 0.672 Total 438 2.37 0.720 * Scale: 1 = mch less than adeqate, 2 = less than adeqate, 3 = adeqate, 4 = more than adeqate, 5 = mch more than adeqate Figre 6-4. Central IT Help Desk Bdget Changes, Past and Ftre (N = 452) Percentage of Instittions 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 2.7 0.4 0.7 0.0 Decreased by more than 15% Decreased by 11 15% 3.5 2.9 Decreased by 6 10% 4.9 2.2 Decreased by 1 5% 23.7 22.1 27.9 25.3 No change Increased by 1 5% 14.2 19.9 Increased by 6 10% 10.9 5.3 5.5 5.8 Increased by 11 15% Increased by more than 15% 8.9 13.3 Don t know Percentage of Change Change reported for past three years Change anticipated for next three years 60

Help Desk Staffing Staffing is a critical resorce for the help desk, potentially affecting the qality of service provided to clients as well as the workload and morale of the help desk staff themselves. We asked respondents to tell s how many flltime eqivalent positions, inclding stdents, were assigned to the help desk. Staffing levels at or respondent instittions varied from less than one fll-time eqivalent employee (two respondents) to more than 100 (for respondents). Despite this wide variation, the majority of help desks in or sample (51.0 percent) had five staff or fewer (see Figre 6-5). A qarter more had from 6 to 10 FTEs, and most of the remainder had from 11 to 30 FTEs. Among respondents reporting between 1 and 100 help desk staff members, the mean was 8.15 (N = 441, standard deviation 8.21). The median was 6, reflecting the preponderance of instittions with nmbers lower than the mean. Help desk staffing is associated with several other instittional characteristics. (Note that Tables 6-2, 6-3, and 6-4 below exclde instittions classified as Systems. ) Understandably, greater FTE enrollments are associated with larger mean nmbers of help desk staff. As Table 6-2 shows, instittions with 4,000 or fewer FTE enrollments had a mean help desk staffing level of abot seven FTE. Midsize instittions had a mean of jst over 10. At the largest category of instittions, the mean was almost 18. Carnegie class shows a similar trend (see Table 6-3). Doctorals had a mean of almost 16 FTE, followed by master s and associate s instittions with means of 8.50 and 8.25, respectively, while bachelor s instittions had a mean of 6.13 FTE help desk staff. These two tables, then, clearly show that larger instittions and those with more complex academic programs reqire more staff to provide help desk services. More than 30 2.3 26 30 1.8 21 25 2.5 16 20 7.6 11 15 9.9 10 4.4 Help Desk Staff (FTE) 9 8 7 6 0.0 4.8 4.8 10.6 Figre 6-5. Nmber of Help Desk Staff in Fll- Time Eqivalents (N = 447) 5 11.5 4 10.6 3 2 11.5 11.8 1 5.1 Fewer than 1 0.5 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% Percentage of Instittions EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 61

Among respondents reporting between 1 and 100 help desk staff members, the mean nmber of FTE stdents served per FTE help desk staff member was 1,263.95 (N = 426, standard deviation 1474.303) and the median was 861.29, again reflecting a preponderance of instittions with nmbers lower than the mean. The mean nmber of stdents served per FTE help desk staff member was significantly associated with all three of or key demographic variables; Table 6-4 presents the details. In general, the larger the instittion, the higher the ratio of stdents to help desk staff. Midsize instittions serve more than twice as many stdents per staff member as small ones, and large instittions serve 3.6 times as many. With regard to Carnegie class, bachelor s instittions have the most favorable stdent-to-staff ratio; master s instittions more than doble it, and associate s and doctoral instittions more than triple it. At privately controlled instittions, the mean ratio is less than half that at pblic instittions. The ratio of stdents to help desk staff members is not, in all cases, the same as the ratio of potential clients to help desk staff. As we learned in Chapter 5, at abot a third of or respondent instittions, help desk spport varies depending on the client s class (faclty, stdent, or staff) within the instittion; ths many of or respondents help desks may not serve stdents at all. Nevertheless, we think the stdent-to-staff ratio is at least sggestive of the amont of spport help desk clients can expect, on average, relative to the demographics discssed here. Alignment of Expectations with Resorces We find a window into the qality of commnication between central IT and the camps in the extent to which camps expectations of the central IT help desk align with the help desk s resorces. Figre 6-6 illstrates the responses to that srvey qestion. The distribtion of responses is bimodal, with peaks at disagree and agree. Strong disagreement and strong agreement were both ncommon answers, and netral responses made p a relatively low 22.8 percent of the total. While agreeing responses exceed disagreeing ones slightly (40.3 percent to 36.9 percent), the separation of the two peaks hints at well-developed opinions on either side of netral. Table 6-2. Mean Nmber of Help Desk Staff, by Instittion Size (FTE) Instittion Size (FTE) N Mean Std. Deviation 1 4,000 198 6.97 10.589 4,001 15,000 161 10.06 11.904 More than 15,000 73 17.81 13.153 Total 432 9.95 12.136 Table 6-3. Mean Nmber of Help Desk Staff, by Carnegie Class Carnegie Class N Mean Std. Deviation DR 109 15.87 14.240 MA 119 8.50 9.954 BA 85 6.13 4.413 AA 63 8.25 17.301 Total 376 10.06 12.573 62

Table 6-4. Stdent Enrollment (FTE) per Help Desk Staff Member, by Demographics Instittion Size (FTE) N Mean Std. Deviation 1 4,000 194 628.07 565.191 4,001 15,000 159 1,571.22 1,418.754 More than 15,000 73 2,284.59 2,280.909 Total 426 1,263.95 1,474.303 Carnegie Class DR 108 1,789.96 1,998.358 MA 118 1,184.52 1,120.478 BA 85 535.04 461.277 AA 59 1,779.57 1,703.618 Total 370 1,306.93 1,518.794 Control Private 180 756.07 981.601 Pblic 232 1,634.99 1,662.355 Total 412 1,250.99 1,470.823 Agreement that camps expectations are aligned with help desk resorces is significantly associated with or respondents feelings abot help desk fnding adeqacy. As Table 6-5 shows, the mean reported adeqacy of fnding steadily rises as agreement abot alignment increases. The difference between the low and high meanadeqacy vales is eight-tenths of a point on or five-point scale; the vales range from slightly below less than adeqate, among those who strongly disagreed that expectations and resorces are aligned, to a qarter of a point below adeqate among those who strongly agreed. Ths it appears that qite reasonably the better or respondents felt abot their bdgets, the more likely they were to feel they were meeting camps expectations. Smmary and Implications Most of or respondents help desks depend on the central IT bdget for their fnding. Relatively few consider recharges to other camps nits, stdent technology fees, or fees for services to be major or moderate sorces of fnding. While the central IT bdget and recharges are sally nder prely political control and ths can be tricky to increase, technology fees and fees for services are both tied to aspects of demand the nmber of stdents in the first case and the amont of service provided in the other and therefore might seem more attractive bases for the help desk bdget. The fact that so few instittions se them sggests that IT help desk services are generally viewed as a common good item and instittions are relctant to allow financial considerations to come between the clients and the assistance they need. Not srprisingly, in the rapidly expanding and evolving area of IT, it is difficlt to provide on a fixed income all the services the client commnity needs. In fact, more than half of or respondents told s their fnding is inadeqate. Nor shold we be srprised that adeqate bdgets were reported least commonly among instittions where the overall climate was one of decreasing bdgets. Like the U.S. Marines, help desk staff may be entitled to think of themselves as The EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 63

40% 35% 35.6 Figre 6-6. Agreement That Camps Expectations and Help Desk Resorces Are Aligned (N = 447) Percentage of Instittions 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 7.4 29.5 22.8 5% 4.7 0% Strongly disagree Disagree Netral Agree Strongly agree Level of Agreement Table 6-5. Adeqacy of Help Desk Fnding, by Agreement That Camps Expectations and Help Desk Resorces Are Aligned Agreement That Expectations and Resorces Are Aligned N Mean* Std. Deviation Strongly disagree 30 1.93 0.785 Disagree 130 2.21 0.655 Netral 98 2.31 0.805 Agree 155 2.56 0.635 Strongly agree 21 2.76 0.436 Total 434 2.36 0.714 * Scale: 1 = mch less than adeqate, 2 = less than adeqate, 3 = adeqate, 4 = more than adeqate, 5 = mch more than adeqate Few. The Prod. Among or respondents, more than three-qarters of help desks have 10 employees or fewer, thogh most serve instittions with thosands of potential clients. While the mean nmber of help desk staff increases with instittion size, it does not keep pace. In general, the larger the instittion, the more potential clients each help desk staff member faces. Respondents split into two camps on whether camps expectations of the help desk were aligned with help desk resorces; fewer than a qarter of respondents were netral on the topic. Not srprisingly, those who felt more strongly that help desk fnding was adeqate were more likely to agree that camps expectations of the help desk were aligned with resorces the help desk cold draw pon. 64

7 Help Desk Tools Or Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the reslt of trying to do today s jobs with yesterday s tools. Marshall McLhan Key Findings Help desk atomation featres are common and are sally part of a commercial integrated help desk atomation system. Online tools for help desk staff members to se in assisting clients are less common, thogh implementations are nder way and others are widely planned. Web access to online help docments is common, bt few help desks offer access to a knowledge base or atomated troble-ticket tracking system. While intelligent learning and adapting freqently asked qestions (FAQ) systems are very ncommon, their growth rate seems high. Only abot 35 percent of respondents say their instittions se self-service tools effectively to redce demand for help desk services. Up to a point, the more sch tools they deploy, the more sccessfl respondents feel they are. We saw in Chapter 5 that a help desk is mch more than a piece of frnitre. Or respondents se telephones and e-mail most freqently as tools to provide help desk services, bt they spplement those with a variety of other technology-based tools. In this chapter we look at the tools help desks se internally as well as those they make available to their clients for self-service. The Atomated Help Desk Higher edcation has adopted information technologies to enhance teaching and learning, research, and administration, and those technologies become more pervasive every year. Similarly, higher edcation help desks have adopted IT-based tools to manage their own operations and to better serve their clients. Sometimes these tools stand alone, and sometimes they are bndled into integrated help desk atomation systems. While most integrated systems or respondents se are vendor spplied, both open sorce and homegrown systems appear to have a place. Atomation of Help Desk Fnctions Majorities of or respondents reported that they had flly implemented the atoma- 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 65

tion of each of the five help desk fnctions we inqired abot: call logging, call roting, call escalation, call database, and qery and reporting tools for the call database. Figre 7-1 shows the implementation stats of each. While nearly three-qarters of respondents reported having flly implemented a call database, 8 in 10 responding that way said they had flly implemented corresponding database qery and reporting tools. Presmably the remainder se more primitive methods for extracting information from their call databases. Or respondents reveal good intentions, however, becase only 3.6 percent of or srvey poplation had not planned call database qery and reporting tools, the lowest percentage for any of the help desk fnctions we asked abot. Atomation of call logging and roting was also common. Call escalation was the least freqently atomated of the fnctions we asked abot. However, as with call roting, more than 85 percent of respondents were at least planning to atomate it. Almost a third of respondents (32.8 percent) had atomated all five of the fnctions we asked abot. Fewer than a fifth (18.7 percent) had atomated none. For more than two-thirds of respondents (69.1 percent), these atomated help desk fnctions were part of an integrated help desk system. Sch systems help overcome some of the difficlties that can arise in making disparate tools even best-of-breed tools do what s needed. As Samel Levy, vice president and CIO at the University of St. Thomas, pts it, We have several good tools (ticketing system, reqest for services, inventory database, and event resorce schedler) that aren t as integrated as we wold like. That means that or data are located in several different tools, so the process for reporting on those data is complex and we have several different tools to enter reqests into. Integration (or replacement) of those tools throgh a broader cstomer relationship management strategy will be or next step. Among or online srvey respondents, we fond that in general the more atomated 100% 90% Figre 7-1. Stats of Help Desk Atomation Percentage of Instittions 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 72.4 10.6 59.5 18.8 11.1 18.1 5.9 3.6 Call database (N = 442) Call database qery and reporting tools (N = 442) 67.0 10.3 11.9 60.4 9.2 51.2 16.8 15.5 17.7 10.8 14.9 14.3 Call logging (N = 445) Call roting (N = 444) Call escalation (N = 441) Help Desk Fnction Atomation flly implemented Atomation implementation in progress Atomation planned for ftre Atomation not planned 66

featres an instittion had adopted, the more likely it was that those featres were part of an atomated system. We speclate that this is becase the featres we asked abot are commonly bndled into integrated commercial help desk systems. When asked what their approach to implementing an integrated system for help desk atomation had been or wold be, a strong majority of respondents said they sed or wold se a commercial vendor software prodct (see Figre 7-2). Comparatively few selected the open sorce, homegrown software, or other responses. Another 15.8 percent had not yet determined which approach to se, and abot half that many said they had no plans to implement an atomated system. These findings sggest that most respondent instittions are willing to accept whatever constraints come with commercial systems rather than implement and maintain potentially more flexible homegrown or open sorce systems. Help Desk Staff Tools The atomation tools discssed above are generally for help desk staff and management sage, and most are related to help desk administration rather than to the information and other services the help desk provides. We also asked abot the content-oriented tools that help desk staff se. While none approached biqity, most help desks were at least planning to implement additional tools for help desk staff sage. We asked abot a range of tools that the central IT help desk staff might se in assisting their clients, inclding a Web site for staff access to help docments; tools for remote access to sers devices (these are perhaps more correctly known as remote control tools, bt remote access was the phrase sed in or qestion); a single online stats monitor for mltiple systems; online stats monitors for individal systems; a knowledge base or expert system; and a large-screen video command center integrating system stats monitors with related help desk resorces. As Figre 7-3 shows, only the first two of these tools had been flly implemented by as many as half of or respondents. Other, 1.6% No plans to implement, 8.0% Use commercial vendor software, 63.7% Approach not yet determined, 15.8% Use open sorce software, 4.7% Use homegrown software, 6.2% Figre 7-2. Crrent or Planned Approach to Implementing an Integrated Help Desk Atomation System (N = 449) EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 67

Implementations of a Web site for help docments were in progress at 3 in 10 respondent instittions and were planned for an additional 11.7 percent, leaving very few respondents not planning to implement this tool. By comparison, the pattern for remote access tools is lagging a little, with only 2 in 10 reporting implementations in progress, a similar nmber planning them for the ftre, and 11.5 percent not planning to implement sch tools. Responses were fairly niform for individal and mltiple online system stats monitors. In each case, abot a qarter of respondents had systems flly implemented, between 15 and 20 percent had implementations in progress, abot a qarter were planning them for the ftre, and arond 30 percent were not planning them. A knowledge base or expert system was in place at slightly fewer than a qarter of respondent instittions bt was nder way at abot a third. Another near-third had ftre plans for sch systems. Only 13.8 percent of respondents did not plan to implement a knowledge base or expert system. The large-screen video command center is the rarest of these tools, being in place at only 5.3 percent of respondent instittions. Even fewer of or respondents had implementations nder way, althogh 2 in 10 said they were planning them for the ftre. At Berry College, in Mt. Berry, Georgia, CIO Timothy Farnham has installed sch a command center. The idea is for the help desk people to know abot network problems, for example, as soon as the network people do, so they can respond to callers qestions intelligently. At the University of Delaware, where Frank Eastman is camps IT associate II, the classroom technology spport grop ses an integrated command center to oversee the technology components of 150 centrally managed classrooms. We discovered that in the first one or two semesters this system was operational, we were able to respond to and resolve 50 percent of spport calls from these classrooms immediately, said Eastman. If the implementations in progress and the planned ftre implementations are sccessfl, they will represent nearly a fivefold Figre 7-3. Stats of Help Desk Staff Tools Percentage of Instittions 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 55.5 29.2 48.6 21.8 26.2 25.9 22.9 15.7 19.7 26.7 26.6 32.0 31.3 5.3 3.2 21.4 70.0 20% 10% 0% 11.7 3.6 18.0 11.5 31.4 27.8 13.8 Web site for help docments (N = 445) Remote access tools (N = 444) Stats monitor for mltiple systems (N = 420) Stats monitors for individal systems (N = 432) Knowledge base or expert system (N = 441) Video command center (N = 434) Flly implemented Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Not planned Help Desk Staff Tool 68

increase over the present level of implementation of video command centers. Nevertheless, 70 percent of or respondents had no plans to implement this powerfl bt expensive help desk staff tool. As Table 7-1 shows, abot a qarter of or respondents had implemented none of the help desk staff tools we asked abot. Another qarter had implemented one, and yet another near-qarter had implemented two. Percentages decreased dramatically for fll implementations of larger nmbers of tools. Only one respondent instittion had implemented all six. In all, 70.5 percent of respondent instittions are sing two or fewer of the help desk staff tools we asked abot. The mean for the entire srvey poplation is 1.78 tools ot of 6 (standard deviation 1.443), or abot 30 percent. Assming or list of tools has genine relevance to help desk service delivery, this finding sggests that the average help desk is ndereqipped. Client Spport Tools Many help desks provide a variety of online tools and resorces for their clients to se to resolve their own IT-related problems. Self-help tools can effectively extend the help desk s hors of availability, allowing clients to get answers to their qestions when the help desk is not staffed. Even dring the help desk s normal operating hors, the availability of self-service resorces can redce demand for direct interaction with the help desk staff while keeping service availability and qality high. Help Desk User Tools To rond ot or srvey of help desk tools, we asked abot for online tools that help desks sometimes provide: a Web site for ser access to help docments, a Web site for ser tracking of troble tickets or incident stats, a Web site for ser access to a knowledge base, and an intelligent learning and adapting FAQ system sch as RightNow Service. Sbstantially the most commonly reported of the ser tools we asked abot was a Web site for access to help docments (see Figre 7-4). More than half of respondents had flly implemented one and another qarter had implementations in progress. Of the remainder, only 3.5 percent had no plans to implement sch a tool. Jst over a third of respondents had implemented Web sites on which sers can track the stats of their help desk calls; another 2 in 10 had sch implementations nder way. Nearly a third planned sch Web sites for the ftre, while 14.2 percent had no plans to implement them. Web-based incident tracking is a common featre of integrated help desk atomation systems; with almost 70 percent of respondent instittions now sing integrated systems, we expect this featre to become more common in the ftre. Slightly fewer than one-qarter of respondents had implemented Web sites for client access to knowledge bases. While a similar Table 7-1. Nmber of Help Desk Staff Tools Implemented (N = 454) Tools Flly Implemented Percentage of Respondents None 22.7% One 24.9% Two 22.9% Three 15.6% For 9.0% Five 4.6% Six 0.2% EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 69

100% 90% 80% 35.4 23.5 6.8 8.6 Figre 7-4. Stats of Central IT Help Desk User Tools Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 56.0 27.0 19.1 31.3 22.2 40.5 26.6 57.9 20% 10% 0% 13.5 3.5 14.2 13.8 Web site for ser help docments (N = 452) Web site for sers to track incident stats (N = 444) Web site for ser knowledge base (N = 442) Intelligent FAQ system (N = 428) User Tool Flly implemented Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Not planned nmber reported having implemented a Web site for help desk staff access to a knowledge base sggesting that a single knowledge base does doble dty the overlap between these two poplations was only 58.4 percent, indicating that knowledge bases tailored to one poplation or the other were fairly common. Comments from Perry Hanson, vice president and vice provost for libraries and information technology at Brandeis University, help explain the relatively low implementation rate for knowledge bases, especially at smaller instittions. Or IT organization keeps talking abot the potential of knowledge bases. I have not seen that people actally se them. In my experience, people prefer a hman being to answer their phone call on the first ring. Usally the person is calling becase they re anxios. There is a whole care and feeding element that is part of a help desk operation. At Indiana University, where the central IT help desk serves abot 40 times the roghly 2,000 clients served at Brandeis, the experience with knowledge bases is qite different. There, Dennis Gillespie, spport center manager, sees the knowledge base as the most important online tool available to his clients. It has a lot of by-in from the instittion, he states. There are 13,000- pls docments in the Knowledge Base for anyone in the world to review. We have approximately 30 million hits a year, and as many as 25 percent of them are from non- IU sorces. Few respondents reported flly implemented, intelligent FAQ Web sites, and a majority had no plans for them. Okanagan College in British Colmbia has implemented the EdQA prodct from CstomFAQs. When asked if the prodct had met expectations, Dave Harris, director of IT services, replied with a strong affirmative. EdQA has broght s both cost savings and service improvements withot a dobt. It has a service reqest component that we really vale. We re sing the prodct not jst for IT, bt to provide online FAQs and service reqest capability for other departments. 70

While crrent adoptions of this technology are low, the relative percentages of in-progress and planned implementations sggest its growing poplarity. If all in-progress implementations are sccessfl and all planned ones are carried to frition, it will reslt in a fivefold increase in this technology s higher edcation market penetration. Abot two-thirds (65.9 percent) of respondents have implemented none or only one of the help desk ser tools we asked abot. The average nmber implemented is 1.20 (standard deviation 1.111) of 4, or 30.0 percent, which is nearly the same as that for help desk staff tools reported above and similarly sggests that the average help desk may be nderproviding tools for its sers. Self-Service Tools While we didn t refer specifically to the for help desk ser tools discssed above as examples, we did ask in an adjacent srvey qestion for respondents level of agreement with the statement that their instittions effectively employ ser self-service featres to redce central IT help desk demand. Respondents were more likely to disagree at some level (total of 43.8 percent) than to agree (total of 34.0 percent). As Figre 7-5 shows, strong disagreement otweighed strong agreement by more than a factor of two. Straight disagreement and agreement were more evenly matched. At less than a qarter of responses, netral ones made p the remainder. This bimodal distribtion of responses hints at well-developed opinions on either side of netral. Self-service tools are one mechanism for disintermediation ctting ot the middleman in IT services. Disintermediation has been cited since at least 1996 as a key trend in higher edcation IT. 1 If responses to or qestion abot self-service tools accrately depict the state of disintermediation in IT help desk services, and if disintermediation is a good thing, it appears that higher edcation IT help desks are not doing enogh of it. As a conterargment, thogh, the term reintermediation has recently crept into the higher edcation IT vocablary, describing a retrn from a technology-mediated emphasis on prodctivity, efficiency, and cost savings to a hman-mediated emphasis 40% 35.3 35% 30.2 Percentage of Instittions 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 8.5 22.1 Figre 7-5. Agreement Abot Effective Use of Self-Service Featres (N = 447) 5% 3.8 0% Strongly disagree Disagree Netral Agree Strongly agree Level of Agreement EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 71

on ser-friendliness, service qality, and convenience. 2 As Timothy Farnham pts it, As yo do more things online, yo get frther from the ser. So yor PR and yor goodwill tend to dry p. People love the attention and little personal extras they get from a personal call. We ve got to be carefl that we don t lose that. Agreement that the help desk ses selfservice tools effectively to redce service demand is significantly associated with the nmber of help desk ser tools the respondent s help desk has implemented. As Table 7-2 indicates, respondents implementing no help desk ser tools had a mean level of agreement not qite halfway between disagree and netral. Mean agreement increased as the nmber of help desk ser tools increased, to a peak halfway between netral and agree at three tools implemented. At for tools implemented, mean agreement dropped a bit, althogh this may be an artifact of an nsally small sample size. As we observed earlier in this chapter, only a third of respondents had implemented more than one of the help desk ser tools we asked abot. This low adoption rate is srprising in view of the finding illstrated in Table 7-2, which sggests that implementing even one sch tool significantly affects respondents belief that they are sing self-service featres effectively to redce demand. Smmary and Implications Help desk atomation featres were in widespread se throghot or respondent poplation, with strong majorities of instittions adopting or planning to adopt each of the five we asked abot. This endorsement of the featres we chose to ask abot likely relates to commercial help desk management software vendors typical bndling of those featres, along with others. More than 60 percent of respondent instittions told s they were sing or planning to se sch an integrated system. Respondents showed less progress in implementing tools for help desk staff to provide spport. Althogh implementations of these two tools a Web site for access to help desk docments and a set of tools for remotely accessing (and controlling) clients compters are nder way or planned at many more respondent instittions, only abot half of or respondents now provide them to their help desk workers. We fond an even lower apparent priority for deployment of stats monitors to apprise help desk staff of the health of the IT systems they spport; more than a qarter of respondents reported no plans to deploy them. Integrated video command centers were less commonly sed, with well over two-thirds of respondents having no plans to implement them. Most of the instittions we srveyed had at least one online spport tool in place for Table 7-2. Mean Agreement Abot Effective Use of Self-Service Featres, by Nmber of Help Desk User Tools Implemented Nmber of Help Desk User Tools N Mean Agreement* Std. Deviation None 143 2.37 0.962 One 151 2.85 0.957 Two 87 3.16 1.109 Three 52 3.54 0.851 For 14 3.43 1.284 Total 447 2.85 1.063 *Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = netral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree 72

help desk clients. Perhaps becase they are relatively easy to constrct and maintain, Web sites for client access to online help docments were common and, when implementations nder way are completed, will be nearly biqitos. Web sites for sers to track the progress of help desk troble tickets and Web-based knowledge bases were somewhat less common, bt 85 percent or more of respondents were at least planning them. The freqency of crrent and planned se of these client spport tools contrasts interestingly with the relatively less aggressive implementation and planning for help desk staff spport tools. We srmise that it reflects help desk priorities, with higher priority going to tools that directly serve clients and lower priority to tools benefiting help desk staff. Of the client spport tools we asked abot, only intelligent FAQ systems were in place, in progress, or planned by fewer than 40 percent of instittions. Perhaps the prchase price of these complex commercial software prodcts is prohibitive, or many see the potentially brdensome process of poplating and maintaining them as too mch of a drain on help desk staff resorces. Nevertheless, these tools in-progress and planned implementations far exceed crrent implementations, positioning this next-generation help desk technology for strong growth. In self-appraising their se of self-service ser tools to redce demand for help desk services, or respondents gave themselves srprisingly low marks. Only abot a third agreed or strongly agreed that they did so effectively. This cold be related to the nmber of help desk ser tools (from or brief list) respondents had implemented, in that those who had implemented more ser tools gave themselves somewhat higher marks. Even so, those who had implemented the most help desk ser tools seemed to agree only halfheartedly that they sed them effectively, perhaps becase they lack confidence in sch tools basic efficacy in the higher edcation IT environment. While it appears that or respondents have some help desk atomation basics, many of them provide their staff and sers with relatively primitive tools, relying on inexpensive bt labor-intensive Web content rather than smart, dynamic FAQ systems, for example. This postre may simply reflect economic imperatives, bt it may also stem from perceptions that next-generation technology isn t sfficiently matre, or from the instittions desire to preserve a high-toch relationship with clients. Nevertheless, respondents apparent dissatisfaction with their self-service tools, combined with high planned for the ftre responses in many areas we srveyed, sggests that many instittions are aware they cold be doing a better job of eqipping their help desks with today s tools. Notwithstanding this chapter s emphasis on tools, it is important to keep the help desk toolset s role in perspective. The University of St. Thomas s Samel Levy pts it this way: Tools are necessary for reporting and tracking bt do not ensre excellent service. We have been able to overcome the limitations of or incident tracking tools by interfacing personally with or clients. In this context too, then, the message comes throgh that help desk services are abot commnication. Endnotes 1. Carol A. Twigg and Diana G. Oblinger, The Virtal University (Washington, DC: Joint Edcom/IBM Rondtable, 1996), http://www.edcase.ed/ir /library/html/nli0003.html. 2. James L. Shlman, Shades of Prple or Will Collaboration Arond Technology Ever Really Save Money? in Aspen Symposim 2005: Exploring the Ftre of Higher Edcation, ed. Mareen E. Devlin (Cambridge, MA: Form for the Ftre of Higher Edcation, 2005), 5.2, http://www.edcase.ed /ir/library/pdf/ffp06w.pdf. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 73

8 Service Level Agreements Every organization of men, be it social or political, ltimately relies on man s capacity for making promises and keeping them. Hannah Arendt Key Findings Only abot 20 percent of respondent instittions have service level agreements (SLAs) in place for at least one central IT help desk service. If implementations now in progress or planned for the ftre scceed, that percentage will rise to 50 or 60 percent in the foreseeable ftre. Incompatibility with instittional cltre is the most freqently cited reason for not planning to implement SLAs. Most planned or in-progress SLA implementations have exective or management sponsors; fewer have dedicated staffing, completion dates, and/or have begn to work with clients; still fewer have dedicated fnding. SLAs are now in place mostly for academic and administrative departments, the niversity as a whole, and constitent grops sch as stdents or faclty. SLA specifications inclde lists of spported hardware and software, and goals for service availability and response time. Definition of a complaint escalation process is the only conflict-related provision inclded in SLAs by a majority of respondents who have SLAs in place. Service level agreements (SL As) are contracts, sally formal ones, between service providers and recipients. Improvement of service qality is the sal goal and the freqent effect of ptting SLAs into place. SLAs clarify the natre of the relationship between the signatories, docment the expectations on both sides, and establish methods for measring performance. In their simplest form, SLAs specify the natre and extent of the services the provider commits to deliver and that the recipient agrees to accept. Freqently, SLAs also address the recipient s responsibilities, sch as attending training sessions, directing all service reqests to a single telephone nmber or e-mail address, or adhering to specific policies. SLAs are sally developed jointly between service provider and recipient, so that the terms of the agreement are mtal and well nderstood. Becase IT environments change 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 75

rapidly, IT SLAs commonly specify a renegotiation schedle. Where IT services are provided on a for-fee basis, SLAs also specify the costs of an overall service plan or of individal services. Service Level Agreements on Camps According to the United Kingdom s Office of Government Commerce, 1 Today most organisations have introdced [service level agreements]. Or srvey reslts tell s that SLAs for higher edcation IT help desks in the United States and Canada are mch less common than that. Only abot 20 percent of or respondents reported having SLAs in se, and jst nder 10 percent said they are crrently implementing them. Lmping these with the roghly 30 percent that reported they were planning SLA implementations, and assming that most implementations will be sccessfl, we anticipate that a slim majority of respondents will have SLAs in place within a few years. The reslts reported here otline the forms that higher edcation IT help desk SLAs are taking in 2007. Implementation Stats As depicted in Figre 8-1, SLAs were in se at only 2 in 10 respondent instittions. SLA implementations were nder way at another 10 percent and planned for the ftre at almost a third; if all the implementations nder way are sccessfl and all those in the planning stages are sccessflly carried ot, the nmber of instittions reporting SLAs in se in the foreseeable ftre cold exceed 60 percent. Nevertheless, well over a third of respondents said they had no plans to implement SLAs. The occrrence of SLAs at or respondent instittions was significantly associated with Carnegie class, as illstrated in Figre 8-2. Among U.S. instittions, doctorals were most likely to have implemented SLAs. Master s and associate s instittions followed. Bachelor s instittions were the least likely to have SLAs and by far the most likely to say they had no plans to implement them. While Canadian instittions reported the lowest rate of SLA se among all respondents, they are on track to catch p qickly; their reports of implementations in progress led the entire srvey poplation, as did their implementations planned for the ftre. Canadian respondents were even less likely than U.S. doctorals to report having no plans to implement SLAs. SLAs are in se, 20.5% No plans to se SLAs, 38.1% Figre 8-1. Stats of Formal, Docmented SLAs for Central IT Help Desk Services (N = 454) Implementation is in progress, 9.9% Planned for the ftre, 31.5% 76

60% 54.0 50% Percentage of Instittions in Category 40% 30% 20% 28.8 24.3 15.3 31.5 42.1 31.4 19.8 28.7 16.1 38.1 34.9 19.0 23.1 42.3 30.8 Figre 8-2. Stats of SLAs, by Carnegie Class 10% 0% 6.6 DR (N = 111) MA (N = 121) BA (N = 87) AA (N = 63) Canada (N = 26) 1.1 7.9 3.8 Carnegie Class Not planned Planned for ftre Implementation in progress SLAs in se SLA stats also varied significantly with FTE enrollments. Instittions with 4,000 or fewer FTE were less likely to have SLAs in se or implementations in progress than midsize or large instittions. Midsize instittions with 4,001 to 15,000 FTE enrollments were only slightly less likely to have SLAs in se or implementations in progress than larger instittions. Almost half of small instittions said they had no plans to implement SLAs, compared with abot a third of midsize instittions and jst over a forth of the largest ones. Instittional control was also significantly related to SLA stats, with pblic instittions taking the lead. The percentage for SLAs in se was only for points higher for pblic instittions, bt pblic instittions were more than three times as likely as private ones to have implementations in progress. Arond 30 percent of respondents in both categories reported planned implementations, bt fewer than a third of pblic instittions reported having no plans to implement SLAs, while almost half of private ones did. One report of SLAs in action comes from the University of St. Thomas, a midsize private instittion in St. Pal, Minnesota. Vice President and CIO Samel Levy says, We have a fairly extensive nmber of SLAs. We have a well-developed, -pblished, and -nderstood set of baseline services; some of or SLAs are driven arond or promises for spporting these baseline services. We have SLAs with departments which have technology needs otside or baseline spport, too. For example, the compter sciences department needs access to different ports on the network from what the French department needs. Advice: Yo shold have what amonts to an instittional SLA that specifies the baseline services and otlines garanteed levels of performance for them. When there are divergences or different needs sch as research or discipline needs then there needs to be a particlar SLA for that sitation. I do not view SLAs as adversarial. Chapter 9 discsses the significant relationship between SLA adoption and selected IT service management practices. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 77

Reasons Not to Use SLAs When we asked respondents to select p to three reasons why their instittions had no plans to implement SLAs for help desk services, by far the most freqently reported reason (a qarter of those not planning SLAs) was that SLAs wold not be compatible with instittional cltre (see Figre 8-3). At best, this sggests a smooth-fnctioning, coevolved relationship between the help desk and the client, in which the help desk offerings are well balanced with client needs. At worst, it may mean that the relationship is so broken that agreements abot service levels wold be impossible to reach. In most cases, thogh, it probably jst reflects the complexity of camps relationships with regard to IT. David Todd, CIO at the University of Vermont, pts it this way: For s, the biggest factor in instittional cltre is the highly decentralized spport strctre at UVM. Abot 60 percent of the IT spport staff are otside or central IT organization, and while we ve standardized many of or software tools and hardware platforms, there are still sbstantial variations among different schools. And some, like the College of Medicine, have environments that are very mch tailored to their needs and se tools that none of the others on camps ever wold. The next most freqently cited reason (17.8 percent) was that higher priorities exist for central IT staff. This may mean that the central IT organization is nderstaffed and personnel can t be spared from ser spport dties to focs on developing needed SLAs. Or it may indicate that the service relationship between the help desk and its clients is close to what central IT wold like and that incremental improvements, while desirable in an ideal world, are not perceived to be as necessary to the help desk s mission as other priorities might be. Lack of acceptable retrn on investment and lack of fnds were both selected by abot 8 percent of respondents. In the case of lack of retrn on investment, it wold appear that while fnds might be available, Not compatible with instittional cltre Higher priorities for central IT staff 17.8 25.1 Figre 8-3. Reasons SLAs Are Not Planned (Up to Three Responses Allowed) (N = 173) Lack of acceptable retrn on investment Lack of fnding Lack of engagement by sers Difficlty developing IT policies and procedres Lack of instittional leadership spport 5.3 5.1 4.6 8.6 8.4 Other 4.0 Lack of staff expertise 3.1 Immatrity of indstry standards/best practices 1.3 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% Percentage of Instittions 78

the instittion is nwilling to risk them to derive whatever gains the SLA implementation might bring. Respondents may be ninformed of the benefits of SLAs or may not be confident that those benefits wold be realized on their campses. Where lack of fnding was selected as a reason not to se SLAs, the implication is that other priorities reqire all of the central IT organization s bdget and the implementation of SLAs is simply not possible, however significant the benefit might seem. Fewer than 6 percent of respondents chose each of the remaining reasons; ths, these probably exert little inflence on SLA planning at most instittions. Planning for SLAs Respondents who said they had SLA implementations in progress or planned for the ftre gave varying responses to or detailed qestions abot the stats of those projects (see Figre 8-4). Very few of or respondents efforts to develop central IT help desk SLAs, whether in progress or planned for the ftre, had been allocated fnds or assigned completion dates. Among respondents reporting implementation efforts in progress, these percentages were a few points higher than among those whose implementations were only in the planning stages, bt these differences are probably nimportant. The real story here is that more than 90 percent of SLA development efforts have neither fnding nor completion dates. This sggests that SLA development is done on the margin at most of the instittions that have them nder way. The fact that so few of the efforts nder way have been assigned completion dates sggests the low priority of those efforts. A slightly more sbstantial 10 to 12 percent of respondents efforts had participation from fnctional bsiness/academic nits or had been assigned staffing. Again, the minor differences between the stats of implementations in progress and those planned for the ftre are of little significance and the more interesting point is that so few of the efforts in qestion yet involve external entities (the term agreement does imply both parties engagement) or have been assigned staff. We 40% 35% 33.5 30% Percentage of Instittions 25% 20% 15% 11.4 10.9 10.9 14.2 18.1 Figre 8-4. Stats of Planning for SLA Implementation 10% 5% 5.0 2.2 6.7 4.5 0% Has fnding (N = 179) Has completion date (N = 179) Has external participation (N = 175) Has staff (N = 183) Has sponsor (N = 182) Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Planning Element EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 79

might explain the latter finding by invoking the notion of work being done on the margin again, bt the lack of external involvement seems contrary to the very interests that make SLAs desirable in the first place. A management or exective sponsor is a key player in SLA development, and we see some evidence of this in the sbstantial nmbers of respondents indicating that they have one. Interestingly, SLA development efforts planned for the ftre are 1.85 times as likely to have a sponsor as those crrently in progress. Two possible, if not entirely intitive, explanations occr to s. First, SLA development efforts withot sponsors may be more likely to proceed to implementation than those that have sponsors. Perhaps those with sponsors proceed more ncertainly becase of the tricky political grondwork the sponsors mst lay; nsponsored efforts may evolve more natrally and easily. Alternatively, a sponsored effort once nder way may tend to lose its sponsor, perhaps as the project takes on a life of its own and leaves the sponsor s direct control behind. We cold interpret both explanations as reinforcing the most commonly selected reason for not planning SLAs that camps cltre can play a limiting role. In the context of exective/management sponsorship of SLA development efforts, camps cltre may be synonymos with camps politics. Constitencies for Service Level Agreements The simplest way for the help desk to implement SLAs wold be to commit to one level of service for the entire camps. Indeed, a majority of respondents with SLAs in se report having done that. Help desks often find, thogh, that the most difficlt constitencies to serve well are small ones, where service needs may be very specific and highly technical. However, we fond help desk SLAs with sch constitencies to be relatively rare among or respondent instittions. A Variety of Constitents We asked the 93 respondents who reported having SLAs in crrent se to identify those client grops for which the central IT help desk had SLAs in place covering at least one service. The grops we listed were academic departments; administrative departments; the instittion as a whole; constitent grops sch as all stdents or all faclty; instittional centers, instittes, and other organized research nits independent of academic departments; other instittions within a system or consortim; external cstomers; affiliates sch as a hospital teaching program or research organization; and other. The responses, depicted in Figre 8-5, indicate that academic and administrative departments were the help desk s most common partners in SLAs. The only other grop selected by a majority of respondents was the meta constitency, the instittion as a whole. A third or more of respondents selected grops related to IT ser class, sch as all stdents or all faclty. Fewer than 2 in 10 respondents selected other instittions within a system or consortim, perhaps reflecting the fact that only a small proportion of respondents are members of consortia or systems. Only 1 in 10 respondents had SLAs in place for external cstomers and affiliated programs and organizations. This is a little srprising in that both categories exist apart from the camps mainstream, where the clients might be nsre what to expect and the help desk might be nsre of its obligations. These categories wold seem to be ideal venes for SLAs. Perhaps they were selected so few times becase relatively few respondent instittions have sch entities in their environments. 80

Academic departments (N = 91) 70.3 Administrative departments (N = 92) 68.5 Instittion as a whole (N = 93) 59.1 Grops (e.g., stdents or faclty) (N = 92) Centers, instittes, etc. (N = 90) System/consortial instittions (N = 89) External cstomers (N = 89) 10.2 19.1 33.3 44.6 Figre 8-5. Grops Served by SLAs (Mltiple Responses Allowed) Affiliated programs/ organizations (N = 90) 10.2 Other (N = 71) 8.5 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% Percentage of Instittions Finally, 8.5 percent of respondents selected Other, sggesting that or list covered most SLA constitencies bt left one or more minor ones nmentioned. As Figre 8-6 shows, 61.6 percent of respondents with SLAs in se had established them for one, two, or three of the grops from or list; almost a third (33.0 percent) had SLAs for for, five, or six grops; and only 5.5 percent served more than six. Note that these calclations inclde the Other category, and for some of the relatively few respondents who selected it, it may embrace more than one grop. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this finding is that relatively few respondents claimed to have SLAs for only one grop. It appears that once an instittion decides to move forward with SLAs, it establishes them for mltiple grops. Whole-Instittion SLAs We wondered if respondents who indicated help desk SLAs were in place for the instittion as a whole (N = 55) might have selected only that all-embracing option. We fond that 14.5 percent of that nmber did select no other options. The remaining 85.5 percent reported having SLAs for one or more other constitencies as well. The response pattern among those who have help desk SLAs for the instittion as a whole closely parallels that of the rest of the poplation with SLAs in se (see Figre 8-5), with the exception of SLAs for aggregate grops sch as all stdents or all faclty. Among respondents who did not report having SLAs for the instittion as a whole, only 18.4 percent had them for sch aggregate grops. Of respondents who did have SLAs in place for the instittion as a whole, more than three times as many (61.8 percent) also had them for aggregate grops. Ths it appears that once the idea for large-grop SLAs catches on, it is likely to spread. The presence of SLAs for the instittion as a whole was significantly associated with FTE enrollments. For smaller instittions (4,000 or fewer FTE) with SLAs in place for at least one constitency, almost 9 in 10 (87.1 percent) respondents told s they had SLAs in place for the instittion as a whole; 52.5 percent of midsize instittions (4,001 to 15,000 FTE) reported them; only 33.3 percent of larger instittions did so. We speclate that the scope and extent of large-instittion IT EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 81

Eight 2.2 Seven 3.3 Six 4.4 Figre 8-6. Nmber of Grops Served by SLAs Five For 11.0 17.6 Three 23.1 Two 23.1 One 15.4 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% Percentage of Instittions cold make a whole-instittion SLA for help desk services difficlt to constrct, let alone to flfill. What SLAs Address To get a look inside the SLAs or respondents have implemented, we asked abot two types of components: specifications and provisions. We chose these terms somewhat arbitrarily to distingish between a grop of eight bsiness as sal specifications and a grop of three provisions that wold come into play only in extraordinary circmstances. Specifications SLA specifications relating to performance goals and spported hardware and software were mch more common than those dealing with SLA processes and schedles. As shown in Figre 8-7, more than three-qarters of respondents who had SLAs in place reported that those agreements covered spported software, service availability goals, goals for ser spport metrics sch as response time, and spported hardware. Majorities also reported inclding specifications for processes to monitor and report against goals and schedled review of the SLA terms. Less common were a schedle for renegotiating the agreement and fees for services. Of the specifications we asked abot, only one was related to a key demographic variable. A schedle for the review of SLA terms was mch less common among instittions with 4,000 or fewer FTEs (25.8 percent) than at larger ones (62.2 percent at instittions with 4,001 to 15,000 FTEs and 66.7 percent at instittions with more than 15,000 FTEs). This sggests that at smaller instittions an SLA is more often considered a static docment. One reason for this difference might be a more comprehensive and less negotiable approach to IT spport in the central IT/client relationship at smaller instittions verss a wider range of options for provisioning and spporting components of the IT environment at larger ones. Provisions Finally, or respondents with SLAs in se reported the stats of three SLA provisions designed to address problems that might develop in the relationship between the central IT help desk and its SLA partners. Figre 8-8 shows that the definition of a complaint escalation process was the only 82

List of spported software (N = 92) 88.0 Goals for the availability of services (N = 90) 85.6 Goals for ser spport metrics sch as response time (N = 90) List of spported hardware (N = 92) Processes for monitoring and reporting against goals (N = 88) Schedle for review of terms (N = 90) 51.1 53.4 82.2 80.4 Figre 8-7. Specifications Inclded in SLAs (Mltiple Responses Allowed) Schedle for renegotiation (N = 90) 43.3 Fees for services (N = 91) 34.1 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% Percentage of Instittions Definition of complaint escalation process (N = 90) 58.9 Terms nder which service recipient may cancel SLA (N = 87) 29.9 Figre 8-8. Provisions Inclded in SLAs Conditions for refnd/compensation to service recipient (N = 90) 8.9 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Percentage of Instittions provision we asked abot that a majority of respondent instittions inclded in SLAs. Fewer than a third of respondent instittions inclded in their SLAs terms nder which service recipients cold cancel the SLA, while only 8.9 percent inclded conditions for refnd or compensation to service recipients. Smmary and Implications While service level agreements are crrently fairly rare among or sample of higher edcation IT help desks, implementations now in progress and those in the planning stages shold reslt in a 50 to 60 percent adoption level in the foreseeable ftre. Well-implemented SLAs promise improved service qality, achieved in large part throgh improved commnication between service provider and recipient. Becase respondents from smaller instittions and those awarding only bachelor s degrees were most likely to say they had no plans to implement SLAs, we srmise that formalizing commnications in those instittions is not generally seen as a good way to improve them. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 83

Sbstantially the most freqently cited primary reason for not planning to adopt SLAs was that they were not compatible with existing instittional cltre. Higher IT staff priorities were also cited often. Both of these reasons ring especially tre for smaller instittions where commnities are often tightly knit and have smaller nmbers of staff among whom to distribte SLA development tasks. While reports of planned and in-progress SLA development efforts sggest that this practice s penetration will more than doble in the foreseeable ftre, relatively few planned and in-progress SLA implementations were reported to have dedicated fnding or staffing, completion dates, or the beginnings of the close collaboration needed between service provider and recipient. We sspect these development efforts will be condcted on the margin, leaving their sccess largely to chance. The most positive indication concerning these projects is that two-thirds of them have exective or management sponsors. SLAs are now in place mostly for large constitent grops: academic and administrative departments, the niversity as a whole, and aggregate grops sch as all stdents or all faclty. A third of existing SLAs involve instittional centers, instittes, and other organized research nits, where becase of the nits specialized needs and their organizational distance from central IT the formal commnication that SLAs encorage may be particlarly beneficial. The most common specifications inclded in SLAs at or respondent instittions were lists of spported hardware and software, and goals for service availability and response time. Inclsion of a schedle for renegotiation of the SLA was reported mch more often by midsize and large instittions (in terms of FTE enrollments) than by smaller ones. This sggests that small instittions, where SLAs are generally less attractive to begin with, may be saddling themselves with SLAs that are relatively inflexible and may become brdensome (or irrelevant) as the IT environment changes. We asked abot the inclsion of three provisions to be invoked in the event of nsatisfactory SLA compliance and fond that the definition of a complaint escalation process was fairly common. Terms nder which an SLA cold be canceled were less common, and conditions for refnd or compensation to the recipient were rare. Rarity of the latter two items in higher edcation IT SLAs is hardly srprising: they imply rigid bsiness relationships that are only infreqently fond between entities within the academy. Endnote 1. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce, Service Delivery (London: The Stationery Office, 2001), 27. 84

9 Setting a Corse: Goals for the Help Desk First say to yorself what yo wold be; and then do what yo have to do. Epictets Key Findings Majorities of respondents have docmented goals in place for help desk service availability, ser satisfaction, and call/incident resoltion. Important drivers of central IT help desk improvement inclde improving ser satisfaction, meeting the changing needs of help desk clients, and improving help desk efficiency. Important obstacles to improving the help desk inclde rapid growth in ser demand, lack of fnding, and lack of staff expertise. Only 40 percent of respondent instittions have strategic plans in place for their help desks. Adoption of formal gidelines for for IT service management (ITSM) practices is widespread; these are availability planning, change management, capacity planning, and release management. Among instittions that se service level agreements (SLAs) for help desk services, adoption of gidelines for all for ITSM practices is 1.5 times higher than in the overall srvey poplation. In general, respondents say the help desk is adeqately inclded in central IT activities related to ITSM practices. Where this is the case, the priority that central IT places pon deploying easy-tospport systems is higher, sggesting better commnication between the help desk and other parts of the IT organization. ITSM practices and SLAs are more common where a strategic plan for the help desk is in place. Relatively few of or respondents have implemented databases for asset management, configration management, or cstomer relationship management. Becase the central IT help desk can make or break the sccessfl se of camps information technologies, and becase IT is both changing and growing constantly, it is important for any help desk, no matter how good, to seek improvement. In this chapter we examine the goals that drive service improvement as well as the barriers that inhibit it. Goals are often set in the context of a strategic planning process, and so we also examine the stats of strategic planning for the help desk at or respondent instittions. Also in this chapter, we look at for formal IT service management practices in which the central IT organization and the help desk engage as partners to improve 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 85

service qality. Finally, we examine the se of three databases related to these practices that can aid in help desk qality improvement efforts. Help Desk Goals According to most service qality rbrics, setting goals and monitoring the organization s progress toward meeting them plays an important part in improving service qality. 1 We asked or respondents to indicate whether they had docmented goals in place in nine representative areas: availability of spport services for sers (hors per day), percentage of total incidents resolved per nit time (service reqests, troble tickets, and so forth), nmber of incidents handled per FTE staff member per nit time, percentage of calls resolved dring initial ser contact, resoltion time for calls not resolved dring initial ser contact, telephone cstomer wait times, telephone cstomer call abandonment rate, percentage of sers indicating they are satisfied with services, and percentage of SLA commitments flfilled. Figre 9-1 shows the freqency with which respondents said they had docmented goals in place for each area. Majorities had goals in place for six of them. By far the most commonly held goal was for spport service availability. While we assmed that most respondent instittions had formal lists of goals for their help desk services, even those that didn t cold say they had a docmented goal for at least one aspect of availability if the hors of operation of their help desks were posted somewhere. Roghly two-thirds of respondents reported a clster of three docmented goals: percentage of ser satisfaction, help desk calls resolved at first contact, and the nmber of incidents the help desk resolved per nit time. Unlike service availability, these goals reqire considerable effort to docment and still more effort to track performance against. Incidents resolved per nit time and calls resolved at first contact are common featres of atomated help desk systems, which jst over two-thirds of or respondents say they have in place. On the other hand, ser satisfaction is a more sbjective goal to measre and, as we will see in Chapter 10 (Figre 10-5), respondents 90% 80% 84.2 Figre 9-1. Freqency of Docmented Goals for Help Desk Services Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 26.9 43.4 48.7 52.0 59.0 63.5 64.3 64.4 20% 10% 0% SLA Call reqirements abandonment flfilled rate (N = 415) (N = 416) Telephone wait times (N = 431) Incidents per staff member (N = 433) Complexincident resoltion time (N = 427) Help Desk Goal Incidents resolved per nit time (N = 444) Calls resolved at first contact (N = 434) Percentage ser satisfaction (N = 432) Spport service availability (N = 449) 86

have implemented nmeros nstrctred techniqes for assessing it. That so many respondents report having a docmented goal for percentage of ser satisfaction sggests this goal is in place not jst becase tilities for tracking it come bndled with help desk atomation software. Majorities of respondents also reported tracking the time it takes to resolve incidents that can t be resolved dring initial ser contact ( Complex-incident resoltion time in Figre 9-1) and the nmber of incidents handled per staff member per time nit. Near-majorities reported goals related to telephone contact specifically, telephone wait times and call abandonment rate. Atomated call management systems typically help track these variables, and sch systems expense and complexity may help explain the slightly lower freqency with which respondents report these goals. Relatively few respondents (26.9 percent) cite the flfillment of SLA reqirements as a docmented goal. Even so, this percentage is anomalosly high becase, as we noted in Chapter 8, only 20.5 percent of respondents report having SLAs in place for one or more help desk services. A majority of respondents (53.6 percent) reported having goals in place in six or more of the areas we asked abot. Nearly a qarter (24.3 percent) had docmented goals in place for all nine of or representative areas, and only 12.9 percent had no docmented goals. The mean nmber of goals cited was 5.26 (standard deviation 3.354) and the median was 6, reflecting the many reports of high nmbers. Service Improvement Drivers and Barriers The goals discssed above reinforce or assmption that higher edcation help desk administrators want to improve the qality of the services they provide. As we begin or exploration of the methods they se to achieve those improvements, it is sefl to know what forces in their environments are driving their efforts at service improvement and what forces oppose them. Drivers of Help Desk Improvement From a list of eight service improvement goals (pls other ), we asked or respondents to select p to three primary drivers for improving their help desks. More than threeqarters selected improving ser satisfaction with help desk services, sggesting that most feel their clients satisfaction is a good indicator of help desk qality (see Figre 9-2). Indeed, as we learned above, 64.4 percent of respondents had a docmented goal in place for ser satisfaction. Again acknowledging the client s importance, more than two-thirds of respondents said that meeting the changing needs of faclty, staff, and stdents was a primary driver. Trning to more internal concerns, fewer respondents bt still a majority cited improving help desk efficiency as a primary driver. Fewer than a third of respondents said a primary driver of help desk improvement was meeting the strategic goals of the instittion or of the central IT organization. As we saw in Chapter 4, 68.5 percent of or respondents said the primary goal of their central IT organizations was to provide IT infrastrctre and services that frther the instittion s strategic goals, yet here we find that fewer than half that nmber cite that goal as a primary driver of help desk improvement. This may represent a distinction between the strategic focs of the central IT organization and the more operational focs of the help desk. Relatively few respondents reported that a primary driver of improvement was staying crrent with best practices in help desk management. Only 1 in 10 respondents said that motivating greater EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 87

Improving ser satisfaction with existing help desk services 78.0 Meeting changing needs of faclty, staff, and/or stdents 68.7 Figre 9-2. Primary Drivers of Help Desk Improvement (Up to Three Responses Allowed) (N = 454) Improving help desk efficiency Meeting instittional strategic goals Meeting central IT organization strategic goals Staying crrent with generally accepted IT best practices Motivating greater instittional spport for IT initiatives 9.9 17.6 26.2 30.6 54.0 Redcing help desk costs 3.1 Other 2.0 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% Percentage of Instittions instittional spport for IT initiatives was a primary driver of help desk improvement, sggesting that at most instittions the help desk s performance has not been linked with past infsions of spport. While a majority of respondents said improving help desk efficiency was important, very few cited help desk cost redction as a driver. If efficiency is calclated as effectiveness divided by cost, it wold appear that help desks concerned with efficiency are more likely to prse it by increasing effectiveness than by redcing cost. Barriers to Help Desk Improvement We also spplied respondents with a list of potential barriers to improvement of the central IT help desk. While none of them resonated with sbstantial majorities of or respondents, Figre 9-3 shows that very slim majorities did select one pair. From half of or respondents we heard that rapid growth of ser demand was an obstacle. This isse resonated for Herb Wilson, director of IT spport at the University of Colorado at Bolder: It s not so mch that nmbers of sers are increasing, he said. It s that new technologies are proliferating faster than old ones can be retired. In practical terms, the more energy we pt into expanding or services, the less is available for improving the old ones. Only 3 of the 25 respondents (12.0 percent) who anticipated decreases in the next three years in their instittions spending on the central IT help desk cited rapid growth in ser demand as a barrier to help desk improvement. By contrast, 58.1 percent of those who anticipated increases cited that barrier. This finding srprised s, becase we expected that brighter fnding prospects wold raise respondents confidence in their ability to improve help desk services in the face of increasing demand. It appears instead that respondents who 88

Rapid growth of ser demand 50.7 Lack of adeqate fnding 50.4 Lack of staff expertise 31.1 Higher IT priorities for staff 28.9 Difficlty developing IT policies and procedres Lack of engagement by sers Technology isses Difficlties in working with other camps IT service providers Lack of instittional leadership spport 14.8 12.1 11.2 9.9 21.8 Figre 9-3. Primary Barriers to Help Desk Improvement (Up to Three Responses Allowed) (N = 454) Immatrity of indstry standards/best practices 8.8 Other 6.4 Lack of acceptable retrn on investment 2.4 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Percentage of Instittions anticipate fnding increases fear that the extra money will be consmed by expanded bt not necessarily improved services. Those who anticipate bdget redctions may also anticipate a redction in their clients expectations, and ths perhaps fewer of them see increasing demand as a barrier. Half of respondents also cited lack of fnding as a primary barrier to help desk improvement, not a srprisingly large response in view of or finding in Chapter 7 that 55.7 percent of respondents felt their central IT help desk fnding was less than or mch less than adeqate. Among that combined grop, almost three-qarters (74.7 percent) of respondents identified lack of fnding as a barrier. Similarly, among those who told s their central IT bdgets had been decreasing over the past three years, nearly twothirds (63.8 percent) cited lack of fnding as a primary barrier to help desk improvement. Jst nder a third of respondents cited lack of staff expertise as a barrier, and 2 in 10 cited difficlty developing IT policies and procedres. Between 10 and 15 percent of respondents cited lack of ser engagement, technology isses, difficlties in working with other camps IT service providers, and lack of instittional leadership spport as primary barriers to help desk improvement. Significantly fewer than 10 percent of respondents cited immatrity of indstry standards/best practices, and fewer than 5 percent cited lack of acceptable retrn on investment. Strategic Planning for the Central IT Help Desk Respondents to the 2006 EDUCAUSE Core Data Service srvey report that 73.4 percent of their campses have stand-alone IT strategic plans in place, and 80.1 percent report that EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 89

their camps strategic plans inclde strategies and directions for IT. 2 Whether condcted specifically for the help desk or inclded in a broader IT context, strategic planning can give the help desk a handle on its strengths and weaknesses, on the opportnities and threats present in the environment, and on directions it may want to go in the ftre. As Figre 9-4 shows, nearly two-thirds of or respondents had taken steps in this direction. More than one-third had an IT strategic plan that inclded planning for the help desk, a few had stand-alone strategic plans for the help desk, and another qarter had strategic plans for the help desk in the works. Srprisingly, more than a third of respondents had no strategic plan for the help desk at all. IT Service Management Practices Growing ot of the PC explosion of the 1980s and the radically different IT spport paradigm it reqired, the British government s Central Compter and Telecommnications Agency (now the Office of Government Commerce) developed a framework by which IT service organizations cold strctre their efforts to improve service qality. 3 This framework, now in se worldwide, is called the IT Infrastrctre Library (ITIL). Becase ITIL is more descriptive than prescriptive, many commercial entities, inclding sch well-known corporations as IBM, HP, and Microsoft, have developed more actionoriented ITIL-based service improvement methodologies and market them nder varios names. To embrace all these service improvement practices in a single term, we will refer to them collectively as IT service management (ITSM) practices. Formal ITSM implementations in higher edcation seem relatively rare. Only one of or qalitative interviewees, New York University, has carried one ot and is incorporating ITIL practices into the fabric of its central IT service organization. NYU has shared its experiences dring this process at several EDUCAUSE conferences, 4 and the niversity s efforts are the topic of one of the case stdies 5 accompanying this report. Among the other instittions we interviewed, only the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was planning a formal ITIL implementation. Priscilla Alden, assistant vice chancellor for ITS ser spport and engagement, described it this way: We are ptting together some fnding for an ITIL project as part of the central IT organization s service Help desk plan integrated into central IT plan, 35.0% No plan, 37.0% Figre 9-4. Stats of Strategic Plan for Help Desk (N = 449) Completed stand-alone plan, 4.9% Plan being developed, 23.2% 90

desk model that we re developing. I am hoping that ITIL will drive people to recognize the importance of a service desk. ITIL s nified service desk model reqires the whole IT organization to interact more effectively as a team, so it shold benefit all of s. In or online srvey, we asked respondents if formal gidelines were in place within their central IT organizations for for basic ITSM practices related to planning and management. These, and the working definitions we provided for them in or srvey qestionnaire, were capacity planning (to ensre that systems and services are sfficiently robst to spport the organization s commitments to sers); system availability planning (to ensre that systems and services are available when, where, and to whom the organization says they will be); change management (to ensre that changes to systems and services are orderly, spport the organization s commitments, and so forth); and release management (to ensre that new systems and services are well tested, that version control is maintained, and so forth). These planning and management items are only a sbset of the dozen or so areas addressed in ITIL, bt they occr at the interface between the help desk and the rest of the central IT organization. Their adoption is diagnostic of the extent to which those two entities commnicate and collaborate key elements in the sccess of a service management initiative. As this chapter s findings sggest, the ITIL service level management area (via SLAs) is also an important component of varios ITSM frameworks, and we addressed its adoption among or respondents in some detail in Chapter 8. For completeness sake we revisit some of those findings in this chapter. While not limited to the help desk, two additional ITSM areas, incident management and problem management, are integral to it. Or srvey addressed many elements of those ITSM areas in detail withot asking general qestions abot them by name. And of corse a third additional ITSM area, service desk management, is the overarching topic of this research stdy. Use of Basic ITSM Practices As we saw in Chapter 8, only 20.5 percent of respondents had SLAs in place for help desk services. The for ITSM planning and management practices we asked abot were in mch more common sage (see Figre 9-5). More than two-thirds of respondents said they had formal gidelines in place for availability planning, and more than 60 percent of respondents had gidelines in place for change management and release management. A slim majority of respondents had capacity planning gidelines in place. The many ITSM practices fnction together to enable sbstantial improvements in IT service qality. Accordingly, we expected to find all five of the practices we asked abot in se at many instittions. In fact, only 10.8 percent of respondents were sing all five. Nearly three times that many (28.4 percent) had adopted for; of these, only 14.0 percent inclded SLAs among the for they had adopted. Respondents adopting two or three practices made p 30.8 percent of the srvey poplation. Adopting only one practice were 11.9 percent of respondents, while nearly one in five (18.1 percent) had adopted none. As Figre 9-6 shows, respondent instittions that had adopted SLAs for help desk services were more likely than others to have adopted formal gidelines for practices in each of the for ITSM planning and management areas we asked abot. The average difference between bars within a pair is abot 20 percentage points. SLA implementation was also associated with the total nmber of ITSM planning and EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 91

70% 67.6 63.0 61.6 60% 54.3 50% Figre 9-5. Use of Basic ITSM Practices (N = 454) Percentage of Instittions 40% 30% 20.5 20% 10% 0% Availability planning Change management Release management Capacity planning SLAs Service Management Practice 90% 84.3 80% 79.1 74.4 70.8 Figre 9-6. Adoption of For Basic ITSM Practices, by Adoption of SLAs Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 63.3 58.7 58.2 50.0 20% 10% 0% Availability planning Change management Release management Capacity planning Service Management Practice Help desk SLAs in se (N = 89) No help desk SLAs in se (N = 337) management practices for which respondents central IT organizations had adopted formal gidelines. Among those who had SLAs in se for help desk services, more than half (52.7 percent) had adopted gidelines for all for of the ITSM planning and management practices we asked abot. This is 1.5 times the percentage of respondents in the rest of the poplation that had adopted gidelines for all for of those practices (35.2 percent). Only 11.8 percent of respondents who had SLAs in se had adopted none of or for ITSM practices, compared with 20.5 percent of the overall respondent poplation. 92

Among those who had SLAs in se, the mean nmber of ITSM planning and management practices for which formal gidelines were in place was 2.98 (standard deviation 1.367) with a median of 4, reflecting the preponderance of respondents whose instittions had adopted all for of the planning and management practices. This compares with a mean of 2.18 practices (standard deviation 1.539) and a median of 2 for respondent instittions withot SLAs in se. These findings sggest that even thogh relatively few respondent instittions had implemented SLAs, we can consider SLAs together with the for ITSM planning and management practices as a set of tools freqently sed in concert for managing the central IT help desk. ITSM and Planning Practices The total nmber of ITSM practices or respondents were sing (SLAs in se and ITSM practice gidelines adopted) was significantly associated with the nmber of goals, from or list of nine, that the help desk had in place. Help desks sing none of the five ITSM practices we asked abot had a mean of 3.56 of or goals (standard deviation 3.475), while those sing all five practices had a mean of 7.00 goals (standard deviation 2.537) almost twice as many. Mean nmber of ITSM practices (from or list of five) was also significantly associated with strategic plan stats. Respondents with no strategic plan in place or nder development reported sing a mean of 1.92 practices, those with a plan nder development reported a mean of 2.74 practices, and those with a plan in place, either stand-alone or integrated into the central IT organization s strategic plan, reported a mean of 3.06 practices. (Standard deviations ranged from 1.560 to 1.663.) Neither of these associations is srprising; both strategic planning and goal-setting are important elements of most IT service management implementation methods. The Help Desk s Partnership with Central IT The ltimate goal of the ITIL framework and the service management methods that have emerged from it is to improve IT service qality and consistency. One of ITIL s tenets is the importance of the relationship between the service or help desk and the rest of the central IT organization. Commnication is important, of corse, even if it s one way, bt inclding the help desk in central IT decision making is even more important. 6 Time and again or qalitative interviewees reinforced this point. North Dakota State University s Rosi Kloberdanz, director of IT client services and help desk manager, told s, We have help desk representation on every committee in central IT. Inevitably, everything involves help desk spport. We re not there yet we re not on all the relevant committees otside central IT. Bt distribted IT spport staff and key stakeholders come to or meetings, and we haven t had to fight to get them here. Kathy Beardsley, help desk manager at the University of Delaware, pts it this way: One of the things that has really helped with or sccess is the relationship between the help center and the other IT areas. We work with them, playing the role of the ser advocate when new projects get nder way. The days are over when a new system is implemented withot s being involved. Interviewees from Berry College, Dartmoth College, and the University of St. Thomas told s mch the same things. As Table 9-1 shows, majorities of or respondents answered affirmatively when asked if their help desk personnel were adeqately inclded in central IT activities concerned with the for ITSM planning and management areas we addressed. We asked these qestions of all respondents, not jst those who had formal gidelines for ITSM practices in place. Among all respondents, most saw help desk participation in availability planning as adeqate, followed by EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 93

Table 9-1. Help Desk Personnel Are Adeqately Inclded in ITSM Activities Percentage of ITSM Activity Percentage of All Respondents (N = 427) Respondents with Gidelines in Place (N = 224) Availability planning 71.8% 77.2% Change management 69.2% 82.6% Release management 63.1% 76.9% Capacity planning 59.2% 69.6% change management and release management. Help desk staff participation in capacity planning was least freqently seen as adeqate. These percentages track closely with those for respondents who reported having formal gidelines for these processes (see Figre 9-5). Conting only those respondents who had gidelines in place, we fond proportionately more freqent agreement that help desk participation was adeqate. The biggest differences were in the change management and release management categories, where having ITSM gidelines in place made a positive difference of more than 13 percentage points in agreement that the help desk was adeqately inclded in that central IT activity. The difference for capacity planning was 10.4 percentage points, and for availability planning it was 5.4 percent. As Figre 9-7 shows, a 41.4 percent plrality of respondents said the central IT organization adeqately involved the central IT help desk in all for of the ITSM planning and management activities we asked abot. Abot a third that many reported adeqate involvement in two or three activities, and even fewer 8.6 percent reported adeqate involvement in one. Nearly 2 respondents in 10 (17.6 percent) reported that the help desk was not adeqately inclded in any of the for central IT ITSM activities. One might expect this latter grop to be made p of respondents with no formal gidelines in place for the ITSM activities we asked abot; in fact, only 35 percent of them had no gidelines. The remaining 65 percent of this grop had implemented from one to for of them. All five grops inclded respondents with between zero and for gidelines in place. In Chapter 4 we reported on the priority the central IT organization places on deploying easy-to-spport systems. This is another area in which central IT can cooperate with the help desk to improve client service. As Figre 9-8 shows, the mean priority central IT places on easy-tospport systems was significantly associated with reported adeqacy of the help desk s inclsion in basic ITSM activities. In each ITSM activity, the reported mean priority on deployment of easy-to-spport systems was abot half a point higher, on a five-point scale, among respondents who said the level of help desk inclsion in those activities was adeqate. Ths it appears that at many instittions, inclsion of the help desk in central IT s ITSM activities is part of a set of practices that also incldes deployment of easy-to-spport systems. Use of ITSM Databases A key concept in ITIL and related frameworks is the carefl management of information abot the IT environment and those who se it. We asked abot the stats of three different databases for managing this information: asset management databases, which maintain detailed information abot capital eqipment, its natre, owner, location, and so forth; 94

For 41.4 Figre 9-7. ITSM Activities Three Two One None 8.6 15.4 17.0 17.6 Nmber of Basic ITSM Activities in Which Help Desk Staff Are Adeqately Inclded (N = 454) 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 4.0 Percentage of Instittions 3.49 3.42 3.41 3.44 Mean* 3.0 2.0 2.95 2.90 2.94 2.99 Figre 9-8. Mean Priority of Easy-to-Spport Systems, by Inclsion of Help Desk Staff in Basic ITSM Activites 1.0 Capacity planning (N = 433) Availability planning (N = 437) Change management (N = 439) Release management (N = 437) Inclsion not adeqate Inclsion is adeqate ITSM Practice *Scale: 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = moderate, 4 = high, 5 = very high configration management databases, which are an extension of asset management to inclde information abot the relationships between assets of all sorts, inclding hardware, software, and docmentation; and cstomer relationship management databases, in which information abot individal clients is stored, analyzed, and sed to improve the client s IT experience. Or respondents se of these three databases varies considerably (see Figre 9-9 ). A sset management databases were the most commonly sed, with almost 4 in 10 respondents reporting fll implementation. Slightly fewer than one-qarter of respondents had implementations in progress, and abot the same nmber were planning them; 15.7 percent had no plans to implement an asset management database. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 95

Fewer than one- qarter of respondent instittions had flly implemented configration management databases, and implementations were nder way at abot the same nmber. Another 3 in 10 were planning implementations, while abot a qarter did not plan to implement configration management databases. Cstomer relationship management databases were the least sed of these three tools, with fll implementations at fewer than 2 respondent instittions in 10. Another 14.1 percent had implementations nder way, with abot twice that nmber in the planning stages. Nearly 4 in 10 respondents said their instittions had no plans to implement a cstomer relationship management database. As of the date of or srvey, more than half of respondent instittions had flly implemented none of these service management databases (see Figre 9-10). Roghly a qarter had implemented one, and slightly more than 2 in 10 had implemented two or three. Smmary and Implications Or srvey respondents told s their help desks set a variety of goals. More than 60 percent had docmented goals in place for spport service availability, percentage of ser satisfaction, calls resolved at first contact, and incidents resolved per nit time. More than 40 percent of respondents had eight or nine of the nine goals we asked abot; the average respondent instittion had 5.26 of them. Two of the three most often cited drivers of help desk improvement were otward looking: improving ser satisfaction and meeting the changing needs of faclty, stdents, and staff. The third most often cited driver was improving help desk efficiency (althogh not necessarily by ctting costs). Likewise, two of the three most often cited barriers to improving the help desk involved external forces: rapid growth in ser demand, especially among respondents who expect increased bdgets 45% 40% 38.5 39.6 Figre 9-9. Implementation Stats of ITSM Databases Percentage of Instittions 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 23.2 22.6 22.7 23.2 15.7 29.9 24.1 18.4 14.1 27.9 10% 5% 0% Asset management database (N = 439) Configration management database (N = 431) Cstomer relationship management database (N = 434) Flly implemented Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Not planned 96

Three, 7.3% Two, 15.4% None, 53.5% Figre 9-10. Nmber of ITSM Databases Implemented (N = 454) One, 23.8% in the next three years, and lack of fnding. An internal factor, lack of staff expertise, was the third most often cited. Almost two-thirds of or respondents have a strategic plan for the help desk in place or nder development. Most of those with a plan in place (35.0 percent of all respondents) said it was integrated into the central IT strategic plan. Only 4.9 percent of respondents reported having a stand-alone plan for the help desk. A majority of respondents are sing three or more of the five IT service management practices that we asked abot. Availability planning, change management, and release management were the most commonly implemented; capacity management implementations were reported somewhat less freqently, and service level agreements mch less freqently. Among the two-tenths minority of or respondents whose help desks had SLAs in se at the time of or srvey, jst over half had implemented all for of the ITSM planning and management practices we asked abot. That is 1.5 times the percentage of those in the overall srvey poplation who had adopted those for practices. To s, this reinforces the stats of SLAs as an important component of the ITSM framework and sggests that the five practices we stdied are part of an assemblage of best practices that many help desks are adopting. Respondents with formal gidelines for ITSM practices in place or with SLAs in se were significantly more likely to have a strategic plan for the help desk in place, either stand-alone or integrated into the central IT strategic plan. Sbstantial majorities of respondents (70 to 80 percent) agreed that the central IT help desk is inclded adeqately in activities related to ITSM practices. At respondent instittions where help desk inclsion was acknowledged to be adeqate, the priority that central IT places pon deploying easyto-spport systems was higher, reflecting a climate of cooperation. Relatively few of or respondent instittions have implemented databases for asset management, configration management, and cstomer relationship management. More than half have implemented none of them, and only 7.3 percent had implemented all three, sggesting that the vale of these components of IT service management has yet to be widely appreciated. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 97

Endnotes 1. Jan van Bon, Georges Kemmerling, and Dick Pondman, ed., IT Service Management, an introdction (Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2002), 25. 2. Brian L. Hawkins and Jlia A. Rdy, EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Smmary Report (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE, 2007), 11. 3. IT Service Management, an introdction, 11. 4. R. Ben Maddox, ITIL in the Real World: NYU Leverages ITIL Best Practices to Enhance IT Organizational Processes (EDUCAUSE 2006 conference presentation), http://connect.edcase.ed/library/abstract/itilintherealworldny/38954. 5. Mark Sheehan and Robert Albrecht, ITIL at New York University: A Framework for Excellence (Case Stdy 10) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007), available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 6. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce, Service Spport (London: The Stationery Office, 2000), 175. 98

10 Evalating the Help Desk The tre measre of any society is not what it knows bt what it does with what it knows. Warren Bennis Key Findings Help desk metrics having to do with demand and with problem resoltion time seem most interesting to or respondents; telephone-related metrics seem less so. Central IT staff and management are the primary constitencies to which help desk metrics are reglarly reported. Or respondents feel they do fairly well in sing metrics to improve ser service. This is especially tre among those who report their metrics widely and in a variety of ways, and among those who se basic IT service management practices. Informal methods of assessing ser satisfaction are more common than formal ones, althogh formal srveys and Web feedback forms are also common. Respondents generally agree that the vale of the help desk is well docmented and nderstood. Agreement varies abot whether help desk costs are being well docmented, bt a majority disagree that costs are well nderstood. Help desk matrity was positively associated with the nmber of or for basic IT service management practices for which the IT organization had formal gidelines in place and the perceived adeqacy of the help desk s involvement in them. Matrity was also positively associated with more robst help desk toolsets for help desk administrators, staff, and clients; the nmber of goals the help desk has adopted; the stats of strategic planning for the help desk; and the alignment of camps expectations of the help desk with its resorces. Other positive associations with help desk matrity were the nmber of help desk metrics reglarly analyzed, the mean nmber of methods sed to assess ser satisfaction, and agreement that help desk costs and vale are well docmented and well nderstood. A set of reglarly measred performance indicators is an important tool in aligning central IT help desk performance with the needs of the constitencies it serves. To gain a sefl perspective on the help desk, its managers mst monitor progress toward goals that are focsed internally as well as others with a more external focs. As Ed Pittarelli, director of technologies at Bergen Commnity College, pts it, Withot 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 99

metrics, no one scceeds. If yo let the operation rn free-form, it gravitates to the lowest possible level of service. Obviosly, it isn t enogh to merely collect metrics; the help desk mst pt that information to work within the help desk and the central IT organization, and share it with varios constitencies to inform the camps of both the costs and the vale of its services. In this chapter, we look in depth at the choices or respondents have made in these areas. As we will see, gathering and collecting performance information, as well as the preliminary steps of strategic planning and goal setting, are matre processes, as defined by a leading process matrity model. While achieving process matrity may not be a stated goal of the help desk, we will discover that sch a goal embraces many of the more specific goals or respondents reported prsing in Chapter 9. Basic Help Desk Metrics Help desk metrics inclde sch inpts as the nmber of clients and devices spported or the nmber of spport reqests received per staff member. They also inclde otpts, sch as the percentage of problems resolved dring the client s initial contact with the help desk or the average time it takes to resolve problems that can t be resolved dring that initial contact. Beyond simple inpts and otpts, they also inclde service qality measres sch as the average time a caller mst wait before being served or the rate at which callers on hold abandon their attempts to get spport. Gathering the Data Not all help desks collect the same metrics, and the freqency with which they analyze them varies as well. Becase freqency of analysis is the better indicator of a metric s effectiveness, we chose to ask which of eight metrics central IT help desk personnel analyzed, and with what freqency (see Figre 10-1). Of the eight help desk metrics we asked abot, the help desk staff reglarly (at least once a year) analyzed only two at majorities of or respondent instittions. These were call/contact load and nmber of sers spported. Roghly an additional qarter of respondents analyzed each of these two metrics on an ad hoc basis, indicating that 87 to 88 percent of respondents make some se of that information. Abot 45 percent of respondents reported reglar analysis of three of or metrics: the nmber of problems resolved at first contact, the time it takes to resolve a problem that cannot be resolved at first contact, and the nmber of devices the help desk spports. An additional 25 to 30 percent of respondents analyzed these metrics ad hoc, indicating that abot three-qarters of respondents make some se of that information. At majorities of respondent instittions, help desk staff did not analyze two metrics related to telephone clients, nor did they analyze the nmber of help desk contacts (calls) per device. The telephone-related metrics inclded the length of time a client had to wait on the telephone before getting a response to a problem and the rate at which clients hng p the telephone rather than wait for a help desk staff member to answer. In the case of telephone wait times, not qite a third of respondents analyzed that metric reglarly, and another 12.0 percent analyzed it ad hoc. Slightly more than a qarter of respondents reglarly analyzed call abandonment rate, and slightly fewer than half that many analyzed it ad hoc. Of the eight metrics we chose to stdy, the nmber of contacts per device was reglarly analyzed by the fewest respondents: jst 2 in 10. However, almost a qarter analyzed this metric ad hoc, so nearly half of respondents analyzed it at least sometimes. 100

Call/contact load (N = 452) 11.9 23.2 11.5 37.6 15.7 Nmber of sers spported (N = 452) 12.6 29.0 30.5 20.1 7.7 Problems resolved at first contact (N = 451) 28.4 24.8 12.9 27.3 6.7 Nmber of devices spported (N = 451) Problem resoltion time (N = 451) 23.9 28.8 30.6 27.1 12.4 29.0 25.7 9.3 7.1 6.0 Figre 10-1. Freqency of Analysis of Selected Metrics Telephone wait times (N = 451) 57.2 12.0 4.9 16.0 10.0 Call abandonment rate (N = 451) 60.1 11.1 4.4 15.1 9.3 Contacts per device (N = 451) 54.8 24.6 8.6 8.4 3.5 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Not analyzed Analyzed ad hoc Analyzed qarterly or annally Analyzed weekly or monthly Analyzed daily or continosly Percentage of Instittions Almost half of respondents (49.1 percent) analyzed six or more of the metrics we asked abot. Nearly 4 in 10 (39.2 percent) analyzed three to five of them, and 6.8 percent analyzed jst one or two. Only 4.8 percent of respondents reported that help desk staff analyzed none of the metrics we asked abot. The nmber of help desk metrics analyzed varies significantly by both Carnegie class and FTE enrollments. Or findings sggest that larger and more academically complex instittions find it more desirable or necessary to formally track help desk performance than instittions that are smaller or offer fewer academic options. Sharing the Data In most cases, information abot the central IT help desk mst be shared if it is to be sed effectively. Or respondents told s that their help desk metrics were shared mostly within the central IT organization and that a variety of vehicles were sed to share it. As Figre 10-2 indicates, central IT staff and management, inclding the CIO, were the primary constitencies to which help desk metrics were reglarly reported, each being cited by two-thirds of respondents or more. Only abot half as many respondents said they reglarly report help desk metrics to senior administrators (president or chancellor, vice presidents, and cabinet-level officers). Less freqently cited as reglar recipients of help desk metrics were deans, non-it management, faclty, non-it staff, and stdents. We asked how respondents reported metrics to their varios constitencies and offered as choices six standard vehicles, as well as Other (see Figre 10-3). At 49.9 percent, the most freqently cited vehicle was Other, sggesting that or list of six missed at least one important option. While EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 101

Central IT management (N = 445) 81.8 CIO (N = 441) 78.5 Central IT staff (N = 444) 68.7 Figre 10-2. Constitencies to Which Help Desk Reports Metrics Senior administrators (N = 429) Deans (N = 427) Non-IT management (N = 432) 13.9 20.1 36.6 Faclty (N = 423) 12.1 Non-IT staff (N = 432) 10.6 Stdents (N = 434) 7.6 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% Percentage of Instittions Other (N = 381) 49.9 IT organization annal report (N = 433) 44.3 Figre 10-3. IT newsletter (N = 428) 21.0 Vehicles by Which Help Desk Reports Metrics to Constitencies Help desk Web site (N = 433) Exective dashboard (N = 431) 10.7 18.7 Other Web sites (N = 432) 7.4 Camps portal (N = 429) 5.8 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Percentage of Instittions we did not ask respondents to specify which other vehicles they sed, we speclate that many respondents wold have told s they se formal and informal written reports to commnicate metrics to some of the constitencies discssed above. Effective Use of Metrics When asked to respond to the statement that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service, nearly a third of respondents agreed and 8.7 percent strongly agreed (see Figre 10-4). Netral responses made 102

Strongly agree, 8.7% Strongly disagree, 8.5% Agree, 32.3% Disagree, 21.8% Figre 10-4. Agreement That Help Desk Uses Metrics Effectively (N = 449) Netral, 28.7% p somewhat less than a third of responses, while negative responses totaled nearly a third. As we will see later in this chapter, the effective se of metrics to improve ser service was positively associated with help desk matrity; in Chapter 11 we will see that it was also positively associated with the overall qality of help desk services. Agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively also varied by Carnegie class. Doctorals reported a significantly higher mean level of agreement (3.62, standard deviation 1.010) than other classes. Master s instittions had the lowest level of agreement, at 2.79 (standard deviation 1.042). Bachelor s and associate s instittions were nearly tied at means of 3.05 (standard deviation 1.044) and 3.13 (standard deviation 1.023), respectively. Mean agreement at Canadian instittions was 3.04 (standard deviation 1.113). Mean agreement that metrics are sed effectively is positively associated with several practices we have discssed so far, inclding the nmber of metrics help desk staff analyzed, the nmber of camps constitencies metrics were reported to, the nmber of vehicles sed to report metrics, the stats of service level agreement (SLA) se, the mean nmber of docmented goals in place for the help desk, and the nmber of basic ITSM practices for which the central IT organization had formal gidelines in place. Assessing Satisfaction Perhaps the most important metric a help desk can have is the level of satisfaction help desk sers feel with the services the help desk provides. This offers a window into its own effectiveness. Accordingly, we asked abot this metric in more detail than those discssed above. Or respondents reported sing a wide range of methods to assess ser satisfaction. Figre 10-5 shows that the most commonly sed method was gathering nsolicited inpt from help desk sers. Nine in 10 respondents (90.1 percent) receive sch inpt. Three-qarters of respondents se the more interactive method of informal meetings with help desk sers. Neither of these methods necessarily involves docmentation, and both are likely to yield qalitative rather than qantitative information. Majorities of or respondents sed two considerably more strctred methods: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 103

Unsolicited inpt from sers (N = 446) 90.1 Informal meetings with sers (N = 443) 75.4 Formal srveys (N = 447) 62.4 Figre 10-5. Methods Used by Help Desk to Assess User Satisfaction Web-based feedback forms (N = 440) Formal meetings with key sers (N = 435) Sggestion boxes (N = 436) 24.8 42.8 53.4 Point-of-service forms (N = 436) 23.4 Formal focs grops (N = 435) 17.9 Stdies by external consltants (N = 433) 12.2 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Percentage of Instittions Nearly two-thirds condcted formal srveys of help desk sers, and more than half sed Web-based feedback forms. Almost half of respondents reported formal meetings with key sers, presmably more strctred than informal meetings bt still yielding information that is more qalitative than qantitative. Methods reported by fewer than a qarter of respondents were sggestion boxes, pointof-service forms, and formal focs grops. Only 1 in 8 respondent instittions reported bringing external consltants to camps to assess ser satisfaction. Another option available to IT organizations is to contract for an externally based cstomer satisfaction service sch as that offered by HDI (formerly known as the Help Desk Institte), a membership organization for the service and spport indstry. Timothy Farnham, CIO at Berry College, has sed HDI s cstomer satisfaction service for abot a year. It s a pretty good feedback mechanism, he says, and it shold be particlarly sefl in determining sers assessment of the operational changes we have in mind for or help desk. Or srvey findings sggest that, overall, respondents have fairly good qantities of information concerning ser satisfaction. Mch of it is informal and qalitative, bt sbstantially more than half of respondent instittions are able to validate that information against qantitative information from formal srveys or Web-based feedback forms. Commnicating Costs and Vale Figre 10-6 shows that a majority of respondents (53.7 percent) agree or strongly agree that the vale of help desk services is well nderstood, and a near-majority (45.2 percent) agrees or strongly agrees that vale is well docmented. Agreement with or statement that costs are well docmented was distribted bimodally, with a majority expressing positive responses; netral opinions made p abot a sixth of the responses, and negative 104

60% 53.1 Percentage of Instittions 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 34.2 24.8 18.6 17.0 5.4 12.3 21.6 9.3 3.6 32.4 28.0 24.4 12.8 2.5 38.2 23.6 19.1 15.5 3.6 Figre 10-6. Level of Agreement That Help Desk Costs and Vale Are Well Docmented and Well Understood 0% Costs are well docmented (N = 447) Costs are well nderstood (N = 439) Vale is well docmented (N = 447) Vale is well nderstood (N = 445) Strongly disagree Disagree Netral Agree Strongly agree responses came from not qite one-third of respondents. However, agreement that costs are well nderstood was overwhelmingly negative, with almost two-thirds of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing and only one in eight agreeing or strongly agreeing. The mean levels of agreement presented in Table 10-1 clearly illstrate the discrepancy between the effectiveness of help desk commnication abot costs and abot vale. Mean agreement abot the docmentation of costs, at 3.36 on a five-point scale, came in slightly more positive than mean agreement abot the docmentation of vale, at 3.29. However, mean agreement abot camps nderstanding of costs, at 2.39, was more than a fll point below mean agreement abot nderstanding of vale (3.43). Ths, despite slightly greater effort to make costs known, overall or respondents felt camps nderstanding of costs to be inadeqate. Camps nderstanding of the help desk s costs and vale is positively associated with the alignment of camps expectations and help desk resorces, discssed in Chapter 6. Respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that vale is well nderstood expressed a mean level of agreement that expectations were aligned with resorces that was abot 0.7 points higher, on or five-point scale, than for those disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that vale is well nderstood. The pattern and level of difference were very similar for help desk costs. This finding reinforces or sense that sccessfl commnication of help desk costs and vale can contribte to the alignment of expectations and resorces. Help Desk Matrity To get a feel for the level of development of respondents help desks, we adapted for or prposes the Capability Matrity Model Integration (CMMI) framework developed by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institte. 1 The framework defines five levels of matrity that can be applied to processes like those ndertaken by a central IT help desk. Those levels, as we adapted them and defined them for or respondents, are as follows: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 105

Table 10-1. Agreement That Help Desk Costs and Vale Are Well Docmented and Understood Docmentation and Understanding N Mean* Std. Deviation Costs are well docmented. 447 3.36 1.193 Costs are well nderstood by constitents. 439 2.39 0.944 Vale is well docmented. 447 3.29 1.047 Vale is well nderstood by constitents. 445 3.43 1.075 *Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = netral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree Initial Services are sally provided ad hoc and rely on individal efforts, and past sccesses are often not repeatable. Repeatable Service responsibilities are formally assigned, sccess is sally repeatable, and basic project management techniqes are sed. Standardized Service qality standards are in place and sed, consistency of services is a priority, and process improvement is a goal. Managed Qantitative performance goals are in place, service performance is measred, and service qality is predictable. Optimized Services are closely aligned to bsiness strategies, services are easily changed to meet emerging needs, and process improvement is continos. In the following discssion, we refer to the categories nearer to optimized as more matre and those nearer to initial as less matre. Figre 10-7 portrays the range of assessments or respondents made of their help desks matrity. Slightly more than one-third of respondents (35.7 percent) reported the lower initial and repeatable matrity levels. A slightly larger grop, 40.0 percent, reported the middle level of matrity, standardized, and not qite one-qarter (24.3 percent) reported the more matre managed and optimized levels. We fond no significant association between help desk matrity level and any of or key demographics, the central IT organiza- tion s goal, the IT bdget, instittional bdget climate, or help desk staffing, all of which we might expect to affect the help desk s performance along the dimensions inclded in or matrity framework. Nevertheless, many other srvey items were positively associated with help desk matrity, as discssed in the following sections. The Matre Help Desk Toolset Among the factors associated with help desk matrity, as reported to s, was the mean nmber of tools the help desk sed and provided for its staff and its clients. As reported in Chapter 7, we asked abot the atomation of five common help desk fnctions: call logging, call roting, call escalation, a call database, and call database qery and reporting tools. Table 10-2 shows that the mean nmber of fnctions for which atomation was flly implemented was smaller for instittions reporting less matre help desks and higher for those reporting more matre ones. Similarly, respondent instittions with more matre help desks reported the implementation of significantly higher nmbers of help desk staff and ser spport tools, and greater agreement that the instittion effectively ses self-service tools to redce help desk demand. Help Desk Matrity, Goals, and Planning As Table 10-3 shows, the nmber of reported goals was associated significantly with perceived help desk matrity p 106

Optimized, 6.6% Initial, 7.7% Managed, 17.7% Repeatable, 28.0% Figre 10-7. Matrity Level of Help Desk (N = 453) Standardized, 40.0% Table 10-2. Nmber of Atomated Help Desk Fnctions, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 1.86 1.896 Repeatable 127 2.49 1.963 Standardized 181 3.12 1.790 Managed 80 3.80 1.521 Optimized 30 4.20 1.349 Total 453 3.04 1.879 to a point. From initial matrity level to managed, the mean nmber of goals reported increased from 2.97 to 6.87. The mean dropped off slightly to 6.60 for the optimized category, bt this may simply be an artifact of sample size, which drops sbstantially in this category. Or respondents also gave s reason to believe that strategic planning is positively associated with help desk matrity. Figre 10-8 shows that instittions with no strategic plan for the help desk made p slightly more than half of those whose help desks were at the initial and repeatable matrity levels. Instittions with help desk strategic plans integrated into their central IT organizations strategic plans for IT made p almost 6 in 10 of those with managed or optimized help desks. In general, the better developed and more integrated the instittion s strategic plan, the higher its help desk s matrity level. Having a stand-alone strategic plan for the help desk seems less related to help desk matrity. The percentage of optimized help desks with sch plans was 6.7, a bit more than twice as many as at the initial level. By contrast, the percentage of optimized help desks with integrated strategic plans was more than 20 times the percentage at the initial level. This spports a key tenet of the IT service management literatre that the best environment for IT services is one in which the service providers efforts are well integrated. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 107

Table 10-3. Nmber of Docmented Help Desk Goals, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 2.97 3.745 Repeatable 127 4.28 3.475 Standardized 178 5.47 3.187 Managed 79 6.87 2.366 Optimized 30 6.60 2.848 Total 449 5.26 3.354 Figre 10-8. Strategic Plan Stats, by Help Desk Matrity Level Percentage of Instittions in Category 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 52.9 52.4 41.2 27.8 16.7 33.9 22.8 38.3 17.7 15.2 59.5 23.3 63.3 10% 2.9 2.9 3.2 5.0 7.6 6.7 6.7 0% Initial (N = 34) Repeatable (N = 126) Standardized (N = 180) Managed (N = 79) Optimized (N = 30) No plan Plan being developed Stand-alone plan Integrated plan Matrity Level Help Desk Matrity and ITSM Practices At their highest levels, both ITSM and CMMI have as their goals the alignment of IT services with bsiness needs. As one might expect, then, we fond a significant positive association between the help desk matrity levels or respondents reported and the nmber of basic IT service management practices they had implemented. As Table 10-4 illstrates, 1.40 was the mean nmber of or for basic ITSM practices implemented by respondents who evalated their help desk matrity as initial. That nmber increased steadily as help desk matrity increased ntil, at the optimized level, a mean of 3.33 of or for ITSM practices had been implemented. Matrity and the Help Desk/ Central IT Partnership As discssed in Chapter 9, it is important for the central IT organization to inclde the help desk in activities that may impact help desk client services. We asked respondents if their help desks personnel were adeqately inclded in central IT activities related to or for basic ITSM practices. The nmber of activities in which or respondents said the help desk was inclded was positively associated with help desk matrity. 108

Table 10-4. Nmber of For Basic ITSM Practices Adopted, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 1.40 1.538 Repeatable 127 1.87 1.458 Standardized 181 2.40 1.530 Managed 80 3.01 1.288 Optimized 30 3.33 1.184 Total 453 2.35 1.536 The mean nmber of activities reported by respondents whose help desks are at the initial level of matrity was 1.57. Respondents at the other end, whose help desks are at the optimized level, reported adeqate engagement in twice that nmber, 3.13 activities ot of 4. This finding sggests that instittions with more matre help desks emphasize commnication and inclsiveness. Help Desk Matrity and Metrics Help desk matrity was positively associated with many of the findings related to help desk metrics that we reported earlier in this chapter. Respondents with optimized help desks reported the reglar analysis of three times more help desk metrics, comparing means, than those at the initial level of help desk matrity (see Table 10-5). Moreover, they said they reported those metrics to a mean of almost twice as many constitencies. Help Desk Matrity and Assessment of User Satisfaction As reported earlier in this chapter, respondents help desks varied widely in the nmber of methods they sed to assess ser satisfaction. Table 10-6 illstrates the positive association between that finding and the matrity of or respondents help desks. Help desks at initial matrity sed an average of 3.17 of the nine methods of assessment we asked abot. The nmber of methods rises with matrity level, leaping sbstantially from 4.21 at the managed level to 5.00 at optimized. This sggests that a focs on assessment goes hand in hand with help desk matrity. Help Desk Matrity and the Commnication of Costs and Vale Jst as commnication between central IT and the help desk was associated with help desk matrity, so was the help desk s commnication with its camps constitents abot help desk costs and vale. Table 10-7 docments this finding. As matrity level increases from initial to optimized, the mean levels of agreement abot all for aspects of the commnication of costs and vale rise. Means within a matrity level are fairly niform except that the mean for agreement that costs are well nderstood is always considerably lower. Smmary and Implications In general, or respondents help desks analyzed most freqently those metrics related to demand and problem resoltion time; they analyzed telephone-related metrics less freqently. Central IT staff and management were the primary constitencies to which help desk metrics were reglarly reported; or respondents said they reported metrics to top-level camps exectives less than half as often. These findings EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 109

Table 10-5. Nmber of Metrics Analyzed Reglarly, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 1.49 2.513 Repeatable 127 2.72 2.429 Standardized 181 3.34 2.404 Managed 80 4.79 2.139 Optimized 30 4.97 2.671 Total 453 3.39 2.568 Table 10-6. Nmber of Methods for Assessing User Satisfaction, by Help Desk Matrity Level Matrity Level N Mean Std. Deviation Initial 35 3.17 2.007 Repeatable 127 3.47 1.713 Standardized 181 4.06 1.671 Managed 80 4.21 1.847 Optimized 30 5.00 1.509 Total 453 3.92 1.782 sggest that at the majority of respondent instittions, the help desk is internally focsed in its reporting relationships. Agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service was fairly strong, with abot 40 percent agreeing, 30 percent disagreeing, and 30 percent netral. Stronger agreement was associated with greater nmbers of constitencies to which metrics were reported and greater nmbers of vehicles by which reporting is done, sggesting the interrelation of more se and more effective se of metrics. Also positively associated with agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively were SLA se, how many docmented goals the help desk had, and the nmber of basic ITSM planning and management practices for which the central IT organization had adopted formal gidelines. Ths, the se of metrics appears to be part of a clster of deliberate and organized practices that help desks and their parent organizations employ together. Respondents more commonly sed informal methods of assessing ser satisfaction than formal ones, althogh nearly twothirds also sed formal srveys. A majority also sed Web feedback forms. Agreement was generally good that the help desk s vale is well docmented and well nderstood. Agreement that help desk costs were well docmented was variable, bt a majority of respondents disagreed that costs were well nderstood. As might be expected, the more strongly respondents agreed that camps expectations of the help desk were aligned with its resorces, the greater their agreement, in general, that help desk costs and vale were well nderstood. Respondents ratings of their help desks process matrity followed an approximately normal, bell-shaped distribtion, skewed a little to the immatre side bt with 40 percent saying their help desks were at the standardized level, in the middle of the range. Matrity was positively associated with several other factors, inclding more robst help desk toolsets for help desk admin- 110

Table 10-7. Agreement Abot Commnication of Costs and Vale, by Help Desk Matrity Level Mean Level of Statement N Agreement* Std. Deviation Costs Are Well Docmented Initial 35 2.49 1.269 Repeatable 125 2.98 1.157 Standardized 177 3.45 1.127 Managed 80 3.78 1.006 Optimized 30 4.30 0.915 Total 447 3.36 1.193 Costs Are Well Understood Initial 35 2.00 0.840 Repeatable 123 2.29 0.847 Standardized 175 2.40 0.928 Managed 76 2.38 0.966 Optimized 30 3.20 1.064 Total 439 2.39 0.944 Vale Is Well Docmented Initial 34 2.32 0.912 Repeatable 126 2.92 0.917 Standardized 177 3.28 1.005 Managed 80 3.91 0.799 Optimized 30 4.27 0.828 Total 447 3.29 1.047 Vale Is Well Understood Initial 34 2.26 1.053 Repeatable 127 3.23 1.017 Standardized 176 3.51 0.986 Managed 78 3.74 0.932 Optimized 30 4.30 0.952 Total 445 3.43 1.075 *Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = netral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree istrators, staff, and clients; the nmber of goals the help desk had adopted; the stats of strategic planning for the help desk; and alignment of camps expectations of the help desk with its resorces. It was also positively associated with the nmber of or for basic ITSM planning and management practices for which the IT organization had formal gidelines in place and the perceived adeqacy of the help desk staff s involvement in central IT s ITSM-related activities. Other positive associations with help desk matrity inclded the nmber of help desk metrics reglarly analyzed and the nmber of constitencies to which those metrics were reported. The mean nmber of methods sed to assess ser satisfac- EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 111

tion rose consistently with higher levels of help desk matrity, as did agreement that costs and vale of the help desk are well docmented and well nderstood. Endnote 1. CMMI Prodct Team, Capability Matrity Model Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1 (Pittsbrgh: Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institte, 2002), 25. 112

11 Sccess of the Help Desk: Assessing Otcomes I dread sccess... I like a state of continal becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. George Bernard Shaw Key Findings Respondents help desks tend to meet most representative goals often or almost always. Respondents help desks have their greatest positive impact on central IT service reptation and the perceived vale of central IT. Instrctional and administrative activities and the workloads of central and nit-specific IT staff follow, with the lowest positive impact recorded being in the area of research activities. Positive help desk impact is greater where respondents report greater help desk matrity, more advanced strategic plan stats, stronger agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service, and a brisker pace of adoption of new technologies by the instittion as a whole. More than half of respondents rate overall help desk service qality as either very good or excellent. Respondents say their clients wold rate help desk service qality lowest in the areas of research spport and spport for administrative and instrctional applications. Service qality is positively associated with adoption of or list of for basic ITSM practices and inclsion of the help desk in activites related to them; with the se of metrics to docment the help desk s performance; and with the existence of a strategic plan for the help desk. In general, the richer the help desk toolset, the better the help desk s overall service qality. Service qality varies dramatically with the help desk s matrity level. The more matre the help desk, the higher the service qality rating. In all eight of the areas we asked abot, the extent of the help desk s positive impact is greater where help desk service qality is higher. The sccess of the higher edcation IT help desk is, in large part, reflected in its ability to meet its goals. Or respondents told s in general and on average that they often or almost always do what they set ot to do in nine representative areas. However, they also told s that they wold rate the overall qality of the services the help desk provides somewhat lower 3.55 on a five-point scale, placing them sqarely between good and very good. These findings sggest that meeting goals isn t the only key to an organization s 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 113

sccess. For example, sccess is not assred if the wrong goals are met or if low-priority goals are met at the expense of other matters whose importance may have been nderestimated and for which goals may never have been articlated. This chapter explores factors affecting help desk otcomes: the sccess or respondents have had at meeting the goals we discssed in Chapter 9, the areas in which they feel the help desk has a positive impact, and their estimations of their help desks overall service qality. As we shall see, each of these measres is associated with several help desk management practices we discssed in previos chapters. Sccess in Meeting Goals Having goals in place is a good thing, in general, and in Chapter 9 we saw that majorities of respondents had docmented goals in place for help desk service availability, ser satisfaction, and call/incident resoltion. Smaller percentages of respondents had set for themselves varios others of the nine goals we asked abot. Of corse, jst having a goal in place is no assrance that it will be met, with all the implications that failre to meet goals has for service qality and the effectiveness of the help desk. The freqency with which or respondents help desks met their goals was srprisingly niform, as Table 11-1 demonstrates, ranging from a low of 3.83 (between sometimes and often ) to a high of 4.67 (between often and almost always ). The goal most freqently met was spport service availability. As discssed in Chapter 9, meeting this goal might be as simple as opening the help desk office doors dring posted operation hors or assigning a staff member to the help desk telephone line and e-mail accont. This probably explains the difference of 0.45 points on or five-point scale between this goal s mean freqency and that of the next and considerably more complex one, incidents resolved per nit time. Other goals reported as being met with a mean freqency greater than 4.0 ( often ) inclde incidents resolved per nit time, incidents resolved per staff member per nit time, percentage of ser satisfaction, and calls resolved at first contact. Goals reported as being met with a mean freqency above 3.0 ( sometimes ) bt below 4.0 inclde telephone wait times, SLA reqirements flfilled, complex-incident resoltion time, and telephone call abandonment rate. Positive Impact of the Help Desk Looking at perceptions of the help desk s sccess in meeting its goals gives s focsed insight into particlar help desk practices bt doesn t help s gage the help desk s positive Table 11-1. Freqency with Which Help Desk Goals Are Met Help Desk Goal N Mean* Std. Deviation Spport service availability 378 4.67 0.626 Incidents resolved per nit time 282 4.22 0.732 Incidents per staff member 225 4.18 0.753 Percentage ser satisfaction 278 4.17 0.759 Calls resolved at first contact 279 4.09 0.786 Telephone wait times 210 3.98 0.935 SLA reqirements flfilled 112 3.96 1.039 Complex-incident resoltion time 252 3.85 0.841 Call abandonment rate 180 3.83 1.093 *Scale: 1 = almost never, 2 = seldom, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = almost always 114

impact on its constitents. The ideal way to assess impact, of corse, is to srvey the client poplation directly something many of or respondents do reglarly bt which is beyond the scope of this srvey. So to help sharpen or sense of help desk benefits, we asked respondents to evalate the positive impact the central IT help desk had in the following eight areas: the instittion s instrctional activities, the instittion s administrative activities, the instittion s research activities, central IT services general reptation, camps perception of the vale of crrent central IT services, camps administration s willingness to fnd additional central IT initiatives, redcing central IT specialists' workload, and redcing nit-specific IT specialists' workload. Figre 11-1 portrays the responses, with impact areas arrayed from left to right in ascending order of high positive impact responses. 1 Respondents reported that the help desk had the least positive impact on research activities: Nearly two-thirds said the extent of the help desk s positive impact was not at all or a little. Slightly more than a qarter said impact was moderate, and fewer than 1 in 10 said it was high. (Note that only 87.4 percent of or srvey poplation responded to this qestion, reflecting the many instittions at which research is not an instittional priority.) Research was the only impact area for which the percentage of low responses exceeded both moderate and high, and one of only two in which moderate response percentages exceeded high ones. As we saw in Chapter 5 (Figre 5-6), research applications is one of the for areas for which help desks provide assistance least often, no dobt helping to explain why respondents rated the help desk s impact in this area so low. Respondents gave s well-assorted responses regarding the help desk s positive 90% 80% 80.5 87.5 Percentage of Instittions in Category 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 63.7 28.2 8.1 28.6 39.6 31.8 53.4 55.6 42.8 31.5 25.6 30.2 16.4 27.7 16.7 8.9 22.9 68.2 16.6 9.6 2.9 2.9 Figre 11-1. Extent to Which Help Desk Positively Impacts Selected Areas 0% Research activities (N = 397) Willingness to fnd central IT (N = 409) Workload of nit-specific IT staff (N = 390) Instrctional activities (N = 444) Workload of central IT staff (N = 437) Administrative activities (N = 449) Perceived vale of central IT (N = 446) Central IT reptation (N = 449) Low Moderate High Area of Impact Definitions: low = not at all + a little, moderate = somewhat, high = considerably + extensively EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 115

impact on the administration s willingness to fnd additional central IT initiatives. Slightly more said positive impact was high than said it was low, while nearly 4 in 10 said it was moderate. In all the other areas, positive impact was generally acknowledged to be high. Majorities said positive impact was high, except in the area of nit-specific IT staff workload. Respondents rated the help desk s positive impact highest for central IT reptation and central IT s perceived vale. Table 11-2 presents mean vales for positive help desk impact. It shows, for example, that mean positive impact on research, at 2.16, was jst above a little and central IT reptation, at 4.31, was nearly twice as great and approached the midpoint between considerably and extensively. In several areas, mean extent of the help desk s positive impact was significantly associated with other measres. Table 11-3 illstrates the strongest of those associations: Positive impact on central IT reptation, central IT s perceived vale, the workload of central and nit-specific IT staff, and the instittion s research activities were all higher where the help desk matrity level was toward the optimized end of or matrity spectrm. Positive impact was also significantly associated with strategic plan stats in the area of the instittion s research activities. Where the instittion had either a stand-alone strategic plan or a strategic plan integrated into the central IT strategic plan, the help desk s positive impact on the research area was significantly higher. Also in the research area, positive impact was significantly associated with agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service for research activities. Higher positive impact was associated with a higher level of agreement. From these findings we can infer that having achieved a higher matrity level gives the help desk some advantage in positively impacting a range of camps activities. Along with matrity, having a strategic plan in place and sing metrics effectively to improve ser service are characteristics shared by many instittions whose respondents said their help desks positively impacted research activities. Overall Service Qality In general, or respondents took a positive tone in completing the sentence in or srvey that began, In terms of overall service qality, I believe or central IT help desk is... The list from which they chose inclded poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent. As Figre 11-2 illstrates, only 0.7 percent characterized their help desk service qality as poor, 11.4 percent said it was fair, 32.9 percent said it was good, 41.8 percent said it was very good, and 13.2 percent said it was excellent. When converted Table 11-2. Extent of Help Desk s Positive Impact on Selected Areas Service Area N Mean* Std. Deviation Central IT reptation 449 4.31 0.779 Perceived vale of central IT 446 4.18 0.825 Administrative activities 449 3.82 0.978 Workload of central IT staff 437 3.51 1.017 Instrctional activities 444 3.47 1.044 Workload of nit-specific IT staff 390 3.17 1.152 Willingness to fnd central IT 409 2.98 1.079 Research activities 397 2.16 0.969 *Scale: 1 = not at all, 2 = a little, 3 = somewhat, 4 = considerably, 5 = extensively 116

Table 11-3. Significant Positive Associations Between Extent of Positive Impact and Other Measres Agreement That Help Service Area Help Desk Matrity Level Strategic Plan Stats Desk Uses Metrics Effectively Central IT reptation X Perceived vale of central IT X Administrative activities Workload of central IT staff X Instrctional activities Workload of nit-specific IT staff X Willingness to fnd central IT Research activities X X X to a nmeric scale ranging from 1 to 5, the mean response was 3.55 (standard deviation 0.884), jst over halfway between good and very good, and the median response was 4, or very good. Using the same scale from poor to excellent, we asked respondents to tell s how they thoght central IT help desk sers wold rate the spport assistance provided for specific types of assistance. Table 11-4 lists those items and the reslts, which provide a finer-grained pictre of the perceived qality of help desk services. With the exception of assistance for research applications, the mean ratings for all types of assistance ranged between 3.26 and 3.79 roghly a qarter of a point above good to a qarter of a point below very good. The relatively low mean rating for assistance with research applications is consistent with the findings illstrated in Chapter 5 (Figre 5-6), which show that more than twothirds (67.4 percent) of respondent instittions reported providing assistance with research applications seldom or almost never. The finding abot research applications reported above helps explain that high percentage; it sggests that to some extent the research commnity was not contacting the central IT help desk for assistance with its applications becase, in or respondents estimation, researchers opinions of help desk assistance were relatively low. The low mean ratings of assistance for administrative and instrctional applications are of some concern. Along with research, these areas tend to be highly strategic for the instittion and figre prominently in instittional goals. Ratings of help desk services are higher in more tactical areas sch as spport for identity management, desktop essentials (sch as operating systems, secrity, and privacy), and commnication applications. We saw in Chapter 4 that providing infrastrctre and services that frther the instittion s strategic goals was the goal of more than two-thirds of or respondents central IT organizations. Ths, while overall service qality may be rated high, it concerns s that the help desk s services, as reflected in these mean ratings, appear not to be operating as well at the strategic level as at the tactical. 2 Service Qality and ITSM Practices Slightly higher levels of mean help desk service qality are significantly associated with the implementation of formal gidelines for the basic ITSM practices of capacity planning, availability planning, change manage- EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 117

Poor, 0.7% Excellent, 13.2% Fair, 11.4% Figre 11-2. Overall Service Qality of Help Desk (N = 447) Good, 32.9% Very good, 41.8% Table 11-4. Ratings of Help Desk Assistance Type of Assistance N Mean* Std. Deviation Identity management 444 3.79 0.938 Desktop essentials 442 3.77 0.879 Commnication applications 446 3.68 0.889 Personal prodctivity applications 434 3.64 0.939 Camps IT infrastrctre 437 3.57 0.949 Instrctional applications 407 3.38 0.957 Administrative applications 399 3.26 0.961 Research applications 219 2.53 1.037 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent ment, and release management. Table 11-5 presents the relationship: Among respondents who had adopted a given practice, we see a positive difference of abot a third of a point on a five-point qality scale over those who had not adopted that practice. By itself, SLA implementation, another ITSM-related practice, is not significantly associated with overall service qality. In Chapters 9 and 10, as part of or discssion of the partnership between the help desk and the central IT organization, we discssed the adeqacy of help desk staff inclsion in central IT s activities in for ITSM-related areas. As Table 11-6 shows, the greater the nmber of ITSM activity areas in which the help desk is adeqately inclded, the better the overall qality of help desk services. The data as presented above mask marked increases in the mean nmber of ITSM activities help desk staff are inclded in, especially at the high end of the qality scale. Figre 11-3 orients the data differently and reveals the pattern. Becase only three respondents reported poor service qality, we disregard 118

Table 11-5. Overall Service Qality, by Adoption of Basic ITSM Practices ITSM Practice N Mean* Std. Deviation Capacity Planning No formal gidelines 191 3.39 0.851 Formal gidelines in place 231 3.73 0.849 Total 422 3.58 0.865 System Availability Planning No formal gidelines 137 3.36 0.872 Formal gidelines in place 294 3.67 0.861 Total 431 3.57 0.875 Change Management No formal gidelines 157 3.36 0.892 Formal gidelines in place 266 3.71 0.853 Total 423 3.58 0.883 Release Management No formal gidelines 161 3.37 0.907 Formal gidelines in place 259 3.70 0.858 Total 420 3.58 0.891 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Table 11-6. Overall Service Qality, by Nmber of For Basic ITSM Activities in Which Help Desk Is Adeqately Inclded Nmber of ITSM Activities That Inclde Help Desk N Mean* Std. Deviation None 79 3.13 0.911 One 38 3.42 0.793 Two 76 3.41 0.751 Three 69 3.61 0.911 For 185 3.81 0.850 Total 447 3.55 0.884 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent that finding; where qality is better, we see a clear pward trend in the nmber of ITSM activities with adeqate help desk inclsion. Respondents reporting excellent service qality also report nearly twice as many ITSM activities with adeqate help desk inclsion as those whose service qality is only fair. In smmary, these findings show that ITSM practices and help desk service qality go hand in hand. Adoption of formal gidelines for each of the ITSM practices we asked abot was associated with higher overall service qality. And the association between qality and the extent to which help desk personnel are inclded in the central IT organization s ITSM activities was even more dramatically positive. Service Qality and Basic Organizational Parameters The central IT help desk s overall service qality was significantly associated with several EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 119

4.0 3.24 Figre 11-3. Mean Nmber of For Basic ITSM Activities in Which Help Desk Is Adeqately Inclded, by Overall Service Qality Mean Nmber of Activities 3.0 2.0 1.0 2.00 1.76 2.24 2.78 0.0 Poor (N = 3) Fair (N = 51) Good (N = 147) Very good (N = 187) Excellent (N = 59) Overall Service Qality basic characteristics of the help desk, the central IT organization, and the instittion. As Table 11-7 shows, perceived adeqacy of help desk fnding increased from a mean of 2.94, jst below good, where fnding was seen as mch less than adeqate, to 3.92, jst below very good, where fnding was seen as more than adeqate. Only one respondent said help desk fnding was mch more than adeqate, so the mean of 3.0 at that level is best ignored. We fond no significant association between overall help desk service qality and the nmber of fll-time eqivalent staff working at the help desk. Service qality is also associated with the pace at which instittions and their central IT organizations said they adopted new technologies. Table 11-8 portrays the differences in overall service qality for each of three paces of adoption. In general, overall help desk service qality was a bit higher relative to the instittion s adoption pace than to the central IT organization s pace. Whichever entity s pace we looked at, mean service qality was highest among early adopters (3.81 to 3.89, closer to very good than to good). Among mainstream adopters, mean service qality was a third of a point lower (3.54 to 3.56, halfway between good and very good), and among late adopters it was three- or fortenths of a point lower still (3.15 to 3.32, relatively low in the good range). These findings sggest that at most respondent instittions the additional spport brden of early adoption of new technologies does not negatively impact overall service qality. We might even speclate that earlier adoption of new technologies lends a positive glow to help desk services, at least in or respondents eyes. Finally, Figre 11-4 shows that as help desk qality increased, so did mean agreement that camps expectations of the help desk were aligned with its resorces. Mean overall service qality was lower where respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that camps expectations and help desk resorces were aligned, or where respondents were netral. In these categories, mean service qality ranged from 3.24 to 3.38, less 120

Table 11-7. Overall Service Qality, by Adeqacy of Help Desk Fnding Adeqacy of Fnding N Mean* Std. Deviation Mch less than adeqate 47 2.94 0.987 Less than adeqate 195 3.51 0.821 Adeqate 177 3.83 0.772 More than adeqate 13 3.92 1.038 Mch more than adeqate 1 3.00 N/A Total 433 3.59 0.870 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Table 11-8. Overall Service Qality, by Pace of Adoption of New Technologies (N = 444) Adoption Pace N Mean* Std. Deviation Pace of Instittional Adoption Early adopter 46 3.89 0.795 Mainstream adopter 317 3.56 0.875 Late adopter 81 3.32 0.920 Total 444 3.55 0.886 Pace of IT Organization Adoption Early adopter 94 3.81 0.752 Mainstream adopter 310 3.54 0.868 Late adopter 40 3.15 1.075 Total 444 3.56 0.880 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent than halfway between good and very good. Where respondents agreed that expectations and resorces were aligned, service qality was mch closer to very good than to good. Among the 21 respondents who agreed strongly abot alignment, mean overall service qality was a third of the way between very good and excellent. It ths appears that where the alignment of camps expectations and help desk resorces is perceived as better, service qality is markedly better. Where alignment is seen as poorer, service qality is also poorer, thogh the relationship is more diffse. Service Qality and Help Desk Toolsets Overall help desk service qality is also associated with the richness of the varios toolsets the help desk ses. For example, in Table 11-9 we see that mean help desk service qality increases with increasing agreement that the instittion ses self-service tools effectively to redce help desk demand. We also fond that service qality increased as the nmber of atomated help desk fnctions increased and was significantly greater for respondent instittions whose atomated help desk fnctions were part of an integrated system. In general, service qality increased as the nmber of help desk staff spport tools implemented increased. The relationship between service qality and the nmber of ser tools the help desk had implemented was more complex: We fond a striking difference in qality between respondent instittions with no ser tools implemented (mean overall service qality of 3.30, stan- EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 121

5.0 4.33 Figre 11-4. Mean Overall Service Qality, by Agreement That Camps Expectations and Help Desk Resorces Are Aligned Mean Overall Service Qality* 4.0 3.0 2.0 3.24 3.38 3.34 3.79 1.0 Strongly disagree (N = 33) Disagree (N = 131) Netral (N = 98) Agree (N = 157) Strongly agree (N = 21) Level of Agreement *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Table 11-9. Overall Service Qality, by Agreement Abot Effective Use of Self-Service Featres Level of Agreement N Mean* Std. Deviation Strongly disagree 38 3.16 0.945 Disagree 154 3.43 0.847 Netral 97 3.61 0.885 Agree 134 3.72 0.862 Strongly agree 17 3.88 0.993 Total 440 3.55 0.889 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent dard deviation 0.858) and the 14 instittions where all for had been implemented (mean 4.63, standard deviation 0.633), bt among respondents who had implemented one, two, or three sch tools, mean service qality was fairly niform, ranging from 3.62 to 3.72. All the findings reported in this section reinforce the idea that better help desk toolsets are associated with better help desk service qality. Ths it appears that if qality help desk services are a goal, at least one contribtor to small improvements wold be investment in a robst set of help desk tools. Service Qality, Goals, and Planning Figre 11-5 shows the clear, significant association between mean overall service qality and the nmber of goals the help desk met often or almost always. Instittions reporting no help desk goals rated mean overall service qality at 3.04 (standard deviation 0.892), good on or five-point scale. Service qality increases steadily as the nmber of goals met increases. Where all nine goals were met often or almost always, mean overall service qality was 4.19 (standard deviation 0.681), jst over very good. 122

5.0 4.08 4.19 Mean Overall Service Qality* 4.0 3.0 3.04 3.30 3.54 3.65 Figre 11-5. Mean Overall Service Qality, by Nmber of Goals Met Often or Almost Always 2.0 1.0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Nmber of Help Desk Goals *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Respondents meeting intermediate nmbers of goals had service qality ratings between these nmbers. Viewed as mean nmber of help desk goals met often or almost always, by overall service qality, this relationship holds as well. Among respondent instittions where service qality was poor or fair, the mean nmber of goals was 1.30 (standard deviation 1.500). Where qality was very good or excellent, the mean nmber of goals was three times higher, at 4.80 (standard deviation 2.940). Strategic planning and mean overall service qality were also significantly associated. Where no strategic plan was in place, mean overall service qality was 3.40 (standard deviation 0.895). Where a strategic plan for the help desk was integrated into the IT instittion s strategic plan, mean overall service qality was almost half a point higher, at 3.86 (standard deviation 0.776). Where the strategic plan for the help desk stood alone, mean service qality lay between these figres. These findings reinforce what seems obvios: A healthy set of goals and a strategic plan for the help desk go hand in hand with service qality. Service Qality and Metrics In or data set, positive associations are present bt not strong between mean overall help desk service qality and both the nmber of metrics the help desk analyzed and the nmber of constitencies to which it reported those metrics. On the other hand, respondents agreement that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service is more persasively associated with service qality (see Table 11-10). Respondents strongly disagreeing had a mean service qality of 2.86, jst nder good, while those strongly agreeing had a mean service qality of 4.05, jst over very good. We fond that reglarly analyzing more metrics and reporting them to more constitencies were not associated with impressive gains in overall help desk service qality. However, when we asked a more probing qestion abot the effectiveness of the help EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 123

Table 11-10. Overall Service Qality, by Agreement That Help Desk Uses Metrics Effectively Level of Agreement N Mean* Std. Deviation Strongly disagree 37 2.86 0.918 Disagree 98 3.27 0.926 Netral 127 3.57 0.822 Agree 142 3.80 0.755 Strongly agree 38 4.05 0.769 Total 442 3.56 0.884 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent desk s se of those metrics, or respondents reported a more compelling positive association with service qality. While service qality may benefit from having metrics in place and reporting them to the appropriate entities, these findings sggest that these steps alone are not sfficient. Or analyses fond no significant association at all between service qality and either the nmber of methods sed to assess help desk ser satisfaction or the se of any of the individal assessment methods. While assessing ser satisfaction may very well have benefits in planning, steering, and evalating help desk services, it appears neither to drive overall help desk service qality nor to be driven by it. Service Qality and Commnication of Costs and Vale The extent to which the camps is aware of the central IT help desk s costs and vale is positively associated with help desk service qality. As Table 11-11 shows, for each of the for statements we proposed, respondents who strongly agreed had sbstantially higher mean overall service qality than those who strongly disagreed. For the statements abot help desk costs, service qality among those who strongly agreed was abot nine-tenths of a point higher on or five-point scale. For the statements abot help desk vale, the difference was between 1.6 and 1.7 points. From these data it appears that sccessfl commnication of the costs and vale of help desk services goes hand in hand with service qality. Service Qality and Help Desk Matrity As discssed in Chapter 10, we asked respondents to characterize their central IT help desks in terms of their organizational matrity. Not srprisingly, matrity is dramatically associated with mean overall help desk service qality, as depicted in Figre 11-6. Mean overall service qality at instittions whose help desks are at the optimized level is nearly two points higher on or five-point scale than among instittions with help desks at the initial level. This section s findings speak to a dramatic and statistically strong 3 association between overall service qality and help desk process matrity. As always, however, it is impossible from the analyses we have done to confidently infer the direction in which the association between these measres operates. Do more matre help desks reslt in higher-qality services? Does having a higher-qality service site incline the respondent to say the help desk is more matre? Or does some other factor or combination of factors positively impact both service qality and matrity? It is probably safe to sggest that help desk leaders who prse both matre practices and service qality will find synergy on their side. 124

Table 11-11. Overall Service Qality, by Agreement Abot Commnication of Costs and Vale Level of Agreement N Mean* Std. Deviation Costs Are Well Docmented Strongly disagree 24 3.04 0.859 Disagree 111 3.19 0.900 Netral 73 3.63 0.773 Agree 151 3.66 0.825 Strongly agree 82 3.95 0.830 Total 441 3.56 0.883 Costs Are Well Understood Strongly disagree 54 3.31 0.968 Disagree 230 3.42 0.881 Netral 94 3.82 0.803 Agree 39 3.77 0.810 Strongly agree 16 4.19 0.750 Total 433 3.55 0.891 Vale Is Well Docmented Strongly disagree 11 2.55 0.820 Disagree 107 3.07 0.882 Netral 125 3.42 0.835 Agree 143 3.87 0.694 Strongly agree 55 4.24 0.637 Total 441 3.56 0.885 Vale Is Well Understood Strongly disagree 16 2.69 1.014 Disagree 83 2.99 0.876 Netral 105 3.45 0.734 Agree 167 3.68 0.809 Strongly agree 68 4.29 0.600 Total 439 3.55 0.890 *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Service Qality and Positive Impact of the Help Desk Looking at mean positive impact as it relates to help desk service qality, Figre 11-7 shows a general pattern of higher help desk service qality where the help desk has high positive impact and declining help desk service qality where positive impact is lower. For two areas, however, the difference was especially great: central IT s perceived vale and its reptation. In these cases, service qality appears to fall away qickly as the help desk s perceived positive impact declines. Again, we cannot say for certain in which direction this association operates, bt it seems intitive that where service qality is low, what sffers most is central IT s reptation and perceived vale. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 125

5.0 4.57 4.0 3.70 3.99 Figre 11-6. Mean Overall Service Qality, by Help Desk Matrity Level Mean Overall Service Qality* 3.0 2.63 3.09 2.0 1.0 Initial (N = 35) Repeatable (N = 125) Standardized (N = 178) Managed (N = 78) Optimized (N = 30) Matrity Level *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent 5.0 Figre 11-7. Mean Overall Service Qality, by Extent to Which Help Desk Has Positive Impact Mean Overall Service Qality* 4.0 3.0 2.0 3.42 3.94 3.75 3.83 3.83 3.56 3.36 3.31 3.23 3.73 3.77 3.76 3.44 3.47 3.22 3.15 3.11 3.04 3.68 3.73 3.01 2.76 2.25 2.17 1.0 Research activities Workload of nitspecific IT staff Willingness to fnd central IT Administrative activities Instrctional activities Workload of central IT staff Central IT reptation Perceived vale of central IT Limited positive impact Moderate positive impact Area of Impact Extensive positive impact *Scale: 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent Definitions: limited positive impact = not at all or a little, moderate = somewhat, extensive = considerably or extensively 126

Smmary and Implications In general, or respondent instittions did well at meeting their docmented goals, with mean freqencies of sccess ranging from 3.83, jst below often, to 4.67, not far below almost always. Goals met most often were for spport service availability, incidents resolved per nit time, incidents resolved per staff member per nit time, percentage of ser satisfaction, and calls resolved at first contact. Presmably these goals prevalence reflects their priority among most of or respondent instittions help desks. Among the nine areas we asked abot, the help desk had its greatest positive impact on central IT service reptation and perceived vale. Becase responses for these two similar areas were nearly identical, we assme that the distinction we were trying to draw, between doing things right and doing the right things, may have been nclear to many of or respondents. In any case, the work of the help desk seems to have a strong inflence pon perceptions abot central IT, reinforcing the idea that the help desk is in many practical ways the pblic relations face of the IT organization. The help desk also has a sbstantial effect on instrctional and administrative activities and the workloads of central and nit-specific IT staff. Srprisingly, the help desk had little positive impact on the camps administration s willingness to fnd additional IT initiatives, which sggests to s that sch fnding is most often based on other considerations. The help desk has the least positive impact in the area of spport for research activities. This is explained at least in part by or finding that the research area is one in which or respondents help desks least often provide assistance. Positive impact in several areas was higher where the help desk was more matre; in the research area, it was also higher where strategic plan stats was more advanced and where agreement was greater that the help desk ses metrics effectively to improve ser service. We speclate that help desks that try harder in these ways may improve their chances of providing beneficial services to the demanding research constitency. Overall service qality is or primary measre of help desk otcomes. In general, we fond that respondents were positive abot the qality of the services they provide, with more than half rating overall qality either very good or excellent. Only three respondents characterized their help desk qality as poor, and only 51 (11.4 percent) rated it as fair. While it might be tempting to interpret these low negative responses as exaggeration or braggadocio, we saw in or investigation of help desk matrity that nearly three times as many respondents (35.7 percent) were willing to rate themselves in the lower two of or five matrity categories. While there may still be some self-praising bias in respondents service qality ratings, the low nmbers reported for poor and fair overall service qality may also reflect natral selection at work: Help desks that provide trly poor-qality service may simply not srvive. When asked for their ratings of service qality in specific areas, respondents rated research spport lowest, midway between fair and good. This goes along with or finding that help desks report the research area as one in which they least often provide assistance; only 337 of or 454 respondents offer any assistance for research applications, and nearly half of them report providing sch assistance seldom or almost never. We don t know whether this is becase the help desk doesn t have the skills needed to assist in the research enterprise or is simply not asked to do so; we sspect that in some cases both explanations apply. Administrative and instrctional applications also received relatively low marks, averaging less than halfway between good and very good. These areas can be very demanding and are freqently spported by EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 127

specialized help desks; or findings may reflect both of those factors, bt they also sggest that the average respondent s help desk is of only tactical importance in these areas of strategic importance to the instittion. The remainder of the areas we asked abot IT infrastrctre, personal prodctivity applications, commnication applications, desktop essentials, and identity management were rated more than halfway between good and very good. Service qality was significantly positively associated with the adoption of formal gidelines for ITSM practices sch as capacity planning, availability planning, change management, and release management. In general, the more of these practices an IT organization adopts, the higher the level of service qality. The greater the extent to which the central IT organization incldes help desk staff in those activities, the better or respondent instittions mean overall help desk service qality. None of these findings is particlarly srprising; a primary goal of ITSM practices is the improvement of service qality. While or analyses don t lend themselves to identifying casality, these findings related to ITSM and help desk service qality at least give s no reason to sggest that ITSM does not work. The se of SLAs was not significantly associated with mean overall service qality, despite SLAs important role in ITSM. This does not sggest that SLAs are ineffective, thogh. Becase only 20.5 percent of or respondents are sing SLAs, sorting those responses into or five service qality categories reslted in statistically nsable sbsample sizes. Not srprisingly, service qality was also higher where help desk fnding was adeqate or better, the instittion and the central IT organization were more aggressive in adopting new technologies, the help desk s toolset was robst and integrated, a strategic plan for the help desk was in place, and respondents rated the help desk as more effective in the se of metrics to improve ser service. Reinforcing both conventional wisdom and ITSM doctrine, we fond that commnication between the help desk and the camps was also associated with help desk qality. In general, the better the instittion s help desk service qality, the more likely respondents were to agree that help desk costs and vale were well docmented and well nderstood by the help desk s constitents. Overall help desk service qality varies dramatically with the help desk matrity rating. The more matre the help desk, the higher the service qality rating. This association might owe some of its strength to some respondents failre to distingish between help desk matrity and overall service qality; for them, or two qestions wold have been asking the same thing, and their responses wold have been highly correlated. We discont this explanation for two reasons. First, while or qestion abot service qality offered no definitions for its options poor throgh excellent, we did provide clear definitions for the matrity-level options we offered, and only one of them mentioned qality. Second, as mentioned above, the distribtion of responses to the qality qestion was mch more generally positive than for the matrity qestion. Finally, in all eight of the service areas we asked abot, greater positive impact is associated with higher service qality levels. This trend is consistent across the dataset, althogh in the areas of central IT s reptation and perceived vale, qality is more dramatically associated with positive impact than in the others. Or interpretation is that while the other areas appear to reflect service qality to some extent, qality heavily inflences reptation and perceived vale. 128

Endnotes 1. Note that or initial five-point scale inclded the responses not at all, a little, somewhat, considerably, and extensively. To simplify presentation we compacted that scale into a three-point scale inclding low ( not at all + a little ), moderate ( somewhat ), and high ( considerably + extensively ). The significance of the statistical relationships within the data was not meaningflly changed by this compression of the response scale. 2. For a discssion of the help desk s strategic vale, see the accompanying case stdy: Jdith A. Pirani and Robert Albrecht, Bowdoin College and Colgate University: Using the Help Desk Strategically to Revitalize the IT Organization (Case Stdy 7) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007), available from http://www. edcase.ed/ecar. 3. The ANOVA significance of this association is.000, indicating a vanishingly small probability that the relationships among the nmbers are de to chance. ECAR seldom reports associations whose significance is higher than.000. For this association, as for all or comparisons of means, we also calclated Eta, a coefficient of nonlinear variation that speaks to the strength of an association. For this association, Eta was.553, indicating one of the strongest associations among all those reported in this stdy. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 129

12 On the Horizon: The Ftre of the Help Desk I look to the ftre becase that s where I m going to spend the rest of my life. George Brns The metaphor of the help desk on the front line sggests varios other images. We may envision the help desk staff in the trenches, dg in, nder fire, and so on. Unpleasant as these images may be, they can t be far from the minds of most help desk staff after a shift on the phones dring the first week of the semester any semester. The stresses involved in help desk work encorage a focs on the here and now, keeping one s head down, meeting the objective at hand, and jst getting throgh the day. Help desk leadership can t rely solely on intelligence from the field, sch as trends in demand gleaned from meetings with help desk staff and clients, or from the troble ticket system s logs. While information gained in this way may have tactical vale, it does little to help inform long-range direction setting. Strategic information is reqired as well, and gathering that reqires raising one s head and scanning the horizon. This chapter identifies for cardinal points toward which or respondents are looking and smmarizes what they and we see ahead of s. The Client Commnity One of or respondents chief concerns is the pace of increase in demand for help desk services. As we reported in Chapter 9, half of them told s that this is one of the primary barriers to their improvement of help desk services. Some of this stems from technological developments, and we address that in the next section. Bt many of the signs of stress emerging from or srvey reslts and interviews relate to changes in how the client commnity ses existing technology. Video projectors are not new, for example, bt only in recent years (and not yet on all campses) has every classroom been eqipped with one. To name jst a few examples, the PowerPoint presentation, the DVD video, and the live demonstration of online information resorces have penetrated the crriclm to the point that often, if the classroom technology is not working, class is canceled. Several of or respondents reported making sweeping changes in help desk procedres (and sometimes technologies) to garantee a 5- or 10-minte response to technology problems in the classroom, and we predict that more campses will move in this direction soon. Similarly, technology plays an increasingly pervasive role in the lives of the higher edcation IT help desk s clients. For example, the proliferation of laptop compters allows more faclty, staff, and stdents to work off camps and otside of normal bsiness hors. Distance-learning activities, as well, occr and reqire spport at varied locations, arond the clock, and with the 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 131

increasing globalization of higher edcation services in a variety of time zones. The personal habits of college-age stdents have always had a strong after-hors component, bt with today s highly available learning management systems and Internet research resorces, serios technology-based academic work can occr at any time, day or night. All these phenomena complicate technical spport in several ways (distance from the client, off-camps network configrations, and the like), bt the conventional help desk may have the most troble with the need to offer technical spport well beyond normal camps bsiness hors. As we learned in Chapter 5, very few of or respondents offer 24 x 7 help desk spport, althogh many of their clients are coming to expect that level of availability. Commercial Web sites reinforce this expectation by offering 24 x 7 availability of cstomer spport services. In the foreseeable ftre, this trend will likely not only persist bt also accelerate, and the help desk that wishes to remain relevant will need to address it. The client commnity is changing, as well, in terms of its technological expertise. In a recent isse of its e-mail newsletter, The Mns Report, the help desk membership organization HDI pblished an article, Service Desk 2010, 1 that discssed likely ftre scenarios for help desks and related organizations. Among its many specific predictions, HDI foresaw cstomers becoming more knowledgeable and therefore placing more rigoros demands on service desk personnel. Or respondents and interviewees have seen this happening as well. Jeanna Reedy, manager of the IT help desk and IT labs at Sinclair Commnity College, observes, Or help desk calls have been lasting three mintes; five years ago, it was one minte. The problems we rn into now are harder. We have a self-service password reset now so we don t get as many of those simple calls anymore. Bt the technology is driving the difficlty of the qestions, too. Everything is so mch more complicated. The changes in the client commnity we ve discssed so far have been incremental or evoltionary. At the moment the horizon is clear of the kind of revoltionary change in client behavior that came with the personal compter revoltion of the 1980s, in which every compter ser became an amater system administrator, or the Internet revoltion of the 1990s, in which networked information trned or compter screens into windows on the world. To date, client behaviors associated with the likeliest candidate for revoltionary change agent social networking and other manifestations of Web 2.0 appear to have had only an evoltionary impact on the help desk. Of corse, it is the natre of trly disrptive technologies 2 to be invisible to all bt the most prescient of s ntil the moment they change or lives. The Technology Environment Driving many of the changes in the help desk client commnity are changes in technologies themselves. Often these changes derive from revoltionary advances in miniatrization that allow the integration of mltiple technologies into complex, converged devices for example, mobile telephones that also fnction as handheld personal compters. Other changes, particlarly in software, have revoltionized IT device and application ser interfaces, enabling the emergence of sch potentially transformative technologies as online collaborative spaces and virtal worlds. Higher edcation has niqe characteristics with regard to technological change. The evoltion of the technology environment in the governmental and commercial sectors often proceeds at a moderate pace, being driven by bsiness decisions abot what is necessary and gided by centralized IT 132

management with absolte control over technology prchases. In higher edcation, however, technological evoltion seems to be driven more by what is possible, and technology prchases are often controlled loosely, if at all. In the academy there is little if any lag time between the emergence of a new technology and its adoption, official or nofficial, on camps. The help desk s challenge is to keep p with this rapid pace of technological change. One specific challenge for the help desk is that new technologies come onto the scene more rapidly than old ones can be retired, which sometimes reqires difficlt choices. At Dartmoth College, Vice President for Information Technology Ellen Waite-Franzen cites this example: Dartmoth is not a BlackBerry camps; we are a flavor-of-themonth camps. While that level of flexibility is part of a strong cstomer service ethic, Waite-Franzen acknowledges that in the ftre, we might have to choose services for which we provide premim spport; others may receive less comprehensive spport. Priscilla Alden, assistant vice chancellor for ITS ser spport and engagement at UNC Chapel Hill, cites the transition from Windows XP to Vista as another example of the stresses technological change places on the help desk. Self-service will eventally replace hman intermediation for most repetitive, rotine help desk fnctions, freeing the help desk to address more difficlt problems. Bt that process will take more than three years. Change and increasing complexity extend well beyond operating systems, of corse, to integrated enterprise resorce planning systems, learning management systems, and portals, not to mention the latest generations of personal prodctivity applications. Dean Williams, director of client services at the University of Vermont, reinforces the point with an example from the classroom, where personal entertainment technologies are finding a place. Most of the pervasive se of ipods or msic players is recreational crrently, Williams says. As academic ses of adio and video increase, spport for those devices will rise to a new level when it impacts stdents academic sccess. Technological change per se is nothing new in higher edcation; it is something or help desks have faced for decades. Bt the crrent drive toward integration of technologies and applications has advanced past the expectations of many help desk staff, and responding to it is changing the help desk s role. John Underwood, help desk manager at North Dakota State University, smmarizes the sitation this way: Today the help desk has to look more at how the components of integrated systems fit together not jst at applications, bt how clients interact with it all. It s not nsal for s to bring three or for specialists together to solve a problem. The new role of the help desk is to get everyone talking together. Emerging Web 2.0 technologies sch as blogs, wikis, trackback, podcasting, and videoblogs, and social networking tools like MySpace and Facebook 3 may have a shortlived social and recreational poplarity among college-age stdents, bt they are already being harnessed for instrctional and research prposes in meaningfl ways. They seem poised to become revoltionary, transformative tools, and they are in or midst right now. That they are often hosted off camps has mixed implications: While off-camps hosting may redce the spport brden on the central IT systems managers and, to a lesser extent, on the camps help desk, it takes potentially important crriclar tools ot of their control, posing risks to system longevity, stability, and the secrity of sensitive information. Mobile technology is the area that HDI predicts will have the greatest impact on the help desk between now and 2010. 4 Crrently a lack of standards stymies broad academic adoption of mobile compting technologies sch as PDAs and smart- EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 133

phones, thogh of corse those devices are becoming essential gear for most college-age stdents. Instittions sch as the University of Cincinnati 5 have developed services for camps-provided cell phones, bt projects to press stdents smartphones into academic service are still on the horizon. HDI made two other predictions abot mobile technologies: that service desk agents themselves will increasingly se wireless devices to serve clients, especially when dispatched to provide services at remote sites, and that help desk staff will need to be eqipped with the technologies their clients are sing. Both predictions are relevant to higher edcation, bt the latter will be especially challenging, given most instittions complete lack of inflence on the personal mobile technologies their stdents bring to camps. While the emergence of mobile commnication technology was more gradal than that of many other disrptive technologies, no one walking across a camps between classes cold disagree that the mobile telephone has revoltionized how stdents (as well as most faclty and staff) commnicate with one another. The recent emphasis camps administrations have pt on obtaining stdents mobile telephone nmbers for se dring emergencies indicates that the instittion increasingly sees vale in having a two-way radio in essentially everyone s pocket. Harvesting that benefit for prely academic prposes now seems only slightly below the horizon. Spport Tools and Methodologies The technologies the help desk ses to provide spport for IT sers are many. Natrally, as HDI has pointed ot, those tools mst begin with the spported technologies themselves; help desk staff mst be not jst familiar bt also accomplished in their se if they are to assist others. If HDI perceives this as a significant, ftre-oriented isse in the commercial and governmental sectors where most of their client base operates and where close control of the instittional IT environment is sally a fairly simple policy matter it mst be dobly significant in higher edcation, where sch control is rare. Or srvey respondents told s that integrated software sites for managing the help desk are fairly pervasive among higher edcation help desks. Also common are Web-based tools sch as spport docment repositories and knowledge bases for both help desk staff and client se. Bt both of those poplations sed some technologies only rarely. For at least two of them largescreen video command centers for help desk staff and intelligent, learning and adapting FAQ systems for help desk clients crrent implementations may be few, bt planned implementations promise to mltiply their penetration into the higher edcation market severalfold in the next few years. An example from the University of Delaware makes clear the importance of the large-screen video command center in managing explosive growth in the se of classroom technologies, one of or points from the Client Commnity section above. As Frank Eastman, camps IT associate II, describes, Two years ago we investigated control system programs to control the media in the classroom. A vendor approached s with their software that monitors, controls, and spports the eqipment in the classroom via the network. Conseqently, we otfitted the 150 centrally managed classrooms with, first, an IT camera that is focsed on the screen to visally see the sorces going throgh the video projector; second, an IT phone so the faclty member can call directly to or call desk withot leaving the room to find a landline or to se his/her cell phone; and third, the vendor s control software. All the classrooms controls are standardized, so 134

no matter what room the faclty member teaches in, the controls are the same. We discovered that in the first one or two semesters that this system was operational, we were able to respond and resolve 50 percent of the calls immediately. Also poised to become many times more pervasive than at present are interactive, text-based commnication modes between the client and the help desk. Internet-based instant messaging is now the most pervasive of these spport methods, with almost 7.0 percent of respondent instittions sing it. If implementations planned and nder way are sccessfl, its penetration will increase eightfold, to abot 57 percent, in the foreseeable ftre. Chat rooms and cell phone based text messaging, each sed by abot 3.0 percent of respondent instittions help desks, shold increase to 40.8 percent and 32.4 percent penetration, respectively, in the same time frame. Chat-based cstomer service featres are available on many high-profile direct marketers Web sites and have led the crrent generation of central IT help desk clients to expect that service option there as well. At the University of Alberta, where the development and deployment of ser selfservice tools has been a priority, 6 chat has been a poplar addition to the spport modes available on the help desk s home page. According to Alberta s Brian Acheson, director, central systems and spport, The se of chat wasn t forced pon the sers; it was developed with the knowledge that chat was becoming a poplar method of commnication, and it was an addition to the varied methods of contacting or help desk. All of or other help desk fnctions remained available. Nonetheless, chat adoption by the camps commnity has skyrocketed! Other spport technologies or respondents and interviewees told s were on the ascendant in their environments were tools for remote control of clients desktops, atomated tools for pshing software pdates to clients workstations, and disk cloning technologies, sch as Ghost, which simplify the rebilding of compromised systems. All of these technologies promise to save the help desk time and effort and provide a more seamless client experience. Or findings sggest that two spport methodologies have potential for sbstantially changing if not revoltionizing the natre of IT spport on camps. The first of these is otsorcing, which we discssed in some detail in Chapter 5 of this report. According to David Gregory, chief information technology officer at Colgate University, otsorcing can be transformative, if not revoltionary, in allowing the niversity s own help desk personnel to concentrate on more strategic, higher-level problem solving. Gregory s advice to instittions thinking abot otsorcing is, Otsorce yor nonstrategic services and focs yor staff on what is strategic to yor instittion. Offer high-vale services that essentially spport and frther the mission of the instittion. Frankly, any skilled technical operator can answer tier-one help line calls. It s important to get yor local spport staff trained to assist faclty and staff with their specific problems. Those are the strategic problems. The other potentially transformative spport methodology is the se of IT service management databases. Nearly 4 in 10 of or respondent instittions already se asset management databases; if planned and inprogress implementations are all sccessfl, this percentage shold rise to 45.8 percent in a few years 1.2 times crrent sage. Only abot 2 in 10 respondents now se configration management and cstomer relationship management databases, bt again, if planned and in-progress implementations all scceed, they will grow to 2.3 times crrent sage. The IT service management (ITSM) literatre pts great store in these tools and their ability to impact the qality of service the client receives. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 135

Again, the only revoltionary spport tools on the horizon are embedded in Web 2.0. Becase these tools are highly ser-centered, the camps may sacrifice a good deal of control in adopting them. A technical spport wiki, for example, bilt by the help desk bt expanded and edited by the client poplation, cold become an effective self-service spplement to help desk assistance; bt it cold also become a maintenance nightmare if help desk staff take responsibility for the accracy and appropriateness of its content. W hile none of or inter viewees mentioned sch a project nder way, we look forward to the day when the camps help desk has a branch office in Second Life and stdent avatars, with bit-for-bit accrate virtal representations of their laptop compters nder their arms, walk into it for technical spport. Management Practices The final direction in which we look for predictions abot the help desk s ftre is toward practices in place for organizing and administering IT organizations. As we have maintained throghot this report, the service framework and body of practices lmped nder the term IT service management, largely based on the U.K. Office of Government Commerce s IT Infrastrctre Library, looks to be the standard for the early part of the 21st centry, at least. However, as we pointed ot in Chapter 9, in or pool of qalitative interviewees the freqency of formal ITSM implementations was qite rare, with only New York University reporting a formal ITIL implementation project a very sccessfl one nder way. The reasons ITSM projects are nderrepresented in higher edcation are complex. Jack Probst, exective consltant for Pink Elephant, a firm that specializes in ITIL implementations, offers the following explanation: I am aware of only abot a dozen niversities that are in the throes of implementation. The higher edcation environment is a very difficlt one to implement ITIL within becase of the fragmented governance strctres that exist relative to technology se and deployment. And to make matters worse, IT normally has its hands tied when dealing with the administration, academics, and researchers. They basically have to figre how to respond as qickly as the academics wold like (which is sally yesterday) and do so withot damaging the environment. 7 The sitation Probst describes cries ot for a new method of bringing best practices in IT service management to higher edcation. It is a market niche that, as far as or research can determine, has not yet been effectively filled. Perhaps when several more implementations like NYU s are completed and their sccesses are docmented and shared with peer instittions, demand for higher edcation specific ITSM implementation methods will stimlate the market to respond. Smmary We have seen how the ftre of the help desk may be affected by both evoltionary and revoltionary changes in for areas: the client commnity s needs, expectations, and behavior; change and the pace of change in technology itself; evoltion in the tools and methodologies the help desk ses to assist its clients; and more speclatively, the potential for change in central IT management practices that cold impact help desk services. Or vision of the ftre comes from many sorces, and the overall image strikes s as something like what a dragonfly mst see throgh its mltifaceted eyes a jaggy, pixilated view of something we will comprehend mch more flly when we are closer to it and some of its component sb-images converge. 136

Despite this lack of continity in or view of the ftre, or overall impressions are clear enogh to share. The findings we have shared in this report sggest that while its clients vale the central IT help desk as a stable sorce of spport, constant chrn in the IT indstry ensres that client expectations will contine to broaden and deepen while help desk resorces, if they increase at all, do so at a mch slower pace. The particlar challenge of the central IT help desk is to adapt rapidly to fast-paced technological change while providing its clients with a reliable, seamless, and comfortable spport environment. All good help desks will do this; the best will make it look easy. Endnotes 1. Ron Mns, Service Desk 2010, The Mns Report 6, no. 16 (2007), http://www.thinkhdi.com/pblications/mnsreport/viewmnsreport.aspx?mnsreportid=192. 2. The term disrptive technology applies to a technology that eventally spplants the existing eqivalent technology. A contemporary example might be the in-progress, widespread replacement of incandescent light blbs with more energy-efficient compact florescents. 3. Bryan Alexander, Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? EDUCAUSE Review 41, no. 2 (2006): 32 44. 4. Mns, Service Desk 2010. 5. Frederick H. Siff, Mobility and Higher Edcation: Not Jst the Next Big Thing (Research Blletin, Isse 22) ( Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2006), available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 6. Don Spicer and Jdy Pirani, University of Alberta: Using Online Help Desk Tools to Enhance Client Service and Department Operations (Case Stdy 9) (Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for A pplied Research, 20 07), available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 7. Jack Probst, e-mail message to athor, October 10, 2007. Qoted with the sender s permission. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 137

Appendix A Instittional Respondents to the Online Srvey Acadia University Agnes Scott College Alabama A&M University Arcadia University Arizona State University Arizona State University West Armstrong Atlantic State University Art Center College of Design Athabasca University Abrn University Astin Commnity College Azsa Pacific University Barnard College Baylor University Benedictine University Bergen Commnity College Berry College Bishop s University Blinn College Bloomsbrg University of Pennsylvania Blefield College Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia Boise State University Bowdoin College Bradley University Brandeis University Brazosport College Bridgewater State College Brigham Yong University Idaho Brown University Bena Vista University Btler Conty Commnity College Caldwell College California College of the Arts California Institte of the Arts California Ltheran University California Maritime Academy California State Polytechnic University, Pomona California State University, Bakersfield California State University, Fllerton California State University, Office of the Chancellor California State University, Stanislas Camden Conty College Canisis College Capital University Carleton College Case Western Reserve University Cedar Valley College Central Connectict State University Chesapeake College Christopher Newport University Cincinnati State College Citrs College Clark University Clarkson College Cleveland State Commnity College Clovis Commnity College Cochise College Colby-Sawyer College 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 139

Colgate University College of DPage The College of New Jersey College of New Rochelle College of Saint Elizabeth The College of Saint Scholastica The College of Westchester Collin Conty Commnity College District Colorado Montain College Colorado State University Colmbia University Concordia College Moorhead Concordia University at Astin Connectict College Corinthian Colleges, Inc. Cornell University Crown College Cyahoga Commnity College Dakota Wesleyan University Dartmoth College Delaware State University Denison University Dickinson College Dominican University of California Doglas College Drake University Dke University Eastern Mennonite University Eastern Michigan University Eastern Oregon University Eastfield College Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Elmhrst College Elms College Elon University Embry-Riddle Aeronatical University Emory University Emporia State University The Evergreen State College Fairfield University Ferris State University Ferrm College Fielding Gradate University Florida State University Foothill-DeAnza Commnity College District Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Frederick Commnity College Fresno City College Friends University Frman University Garden City Commnity College Genesee Commnity College The George Washington University Georgetown University Georgia State University Germanna Commnity College Glendale Commnity College Gocher College Grand Valley State University Granite State College Grant MacEwan College Green River Commnity College Gilford College Gstavs Adolphs College Harford Commnity College Harrisbrg University of Science and Technology Hawaii Pacific University Heidelberg College Holy Family University Howard Commnity College Hmber College Institte of Technology & Advanced Learning Illinois Wesleyan University Indiana University-Prde University Indianapolis Iowa State University John Brown University John Carroll University The Johns Hopkins University Johnson Conty Commnity College Joliet Jnior College Kalamazoo College Kansas State University Kentcky Commnity & Technical College System Lafayette College Lake Forest College Lasell College Le Moyne College Lee College Lethbridge Commnity College 140

Lewis & Clark College Lewis University Linn-Benton Commnity College Longwood University Loras College Loisiana State University Lther College Lther Seminary Lynchbrg College Lynn University Lyon College Macalester College Mansfield University of Pennsylvania Maricopa Commnity College District Marshall University Marygrove College Massachsetts College of Art McGill University Medical College of Georgia Medicine Hat College Menlo College Mercyhrst College Meredith College Metropolitan State College of Denver Miami University Mid-America Christian University Middle Tennessee State University Middlebry College Mills College Minot State University Mississippi State University Monmoth College Monmoth University Montana State University Bozeman Montana State University Great Falls, College of Technology Montgomery College Montgomery Conty Commnity College Moravian College Mont Aloysis College Mont Mary College Mont Mercy College Mont Royal College Mont Vernon Nazarene University Mt. San Antonio College Mhlenberg College Mrray State University Mskingm College Nashville State Commnity College Nevada State College Nevada System of Higher Edcation New College of Florida New England Conservatory of Msic New England Institte of Technology New Jersey Institte of Technology New Mexico Institte of Mining and Technology Nipissing University North Central Texas College North Dakota State College of Science North Dakota State University North Dakota University System North Park University Northampton Commnity College Northeast State Technical Commnity College Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Northeastern University Northern Arizona University Northern Illinois University Northern Kentcky University Northwestern College of Iowa Northwestern Health Sciences University Northwestern University Nova Scotia Commnity College Nova Sotheastern University Oakland University Oakton Commnity College Occidental College Oglethorpe University Ohio Dominican University Ohio Northern University The Ohio State University The Ohio State University at Lima Camps The Ohio State University Newark Camps Ohio Wesleyan University Okanagan College Oklahoma Christian University Oklahoma State University Oregon Health & Science University Oregon State University EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 141

Otis College of Art and Design Ottawa University Oachita Technical College Pace University Pacific Ltheran University Parker College of Chiropractic Pearl River Commnity College Pepperdine University Philadelphia University Phoenix College Pima Conty Commnity College District Pomona College Prairie State College Prince George s Commnity College Princeton University Prde University Calmet Qeen s University Qeens College/CUNY Raritan Valley Commnity College Reformed Theological Seminary Rhode Island School of Design Rider University Roberts Wesleyan College Rollins College Roosevelt University Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science Rtgers, The State University of New Jersey The Sage Colleges Saint Joseph s College, New York Saint Leo University Saint Lois Commnity College Saint Mary s University of Minnesota Saint Meinrad School of Theology Saint Michael s College Salem State College Sam Hoston State University Samford University San Diego State University Santa Fe Commnity College Saskatchewan Institte of Applied Science & Technology Seattle Pacific University Seattle University Seton Hall University Seton Hill University Shepherd University Siena College Simmons College Sinclair Commnity College Skidmore College Soka University of America Soth Carolina State University Soth Dakota School of Mines & Technology Soth Dakota State University Sotheastern Loisiana University Sothwest Tennessee Commnity College Sothwestern Assemblies of God University Sothwestern University St. Clod State University St. John Fisher College St. Lawrence University St. Olaf College St. Philip s College Stanford University State Fair Commnity College Stony Brook University SUNY College at Brockport SUNY College at Cortland SUNY College at Fredonia SUNY College at Geneseo SUNY College at Plattsbrgh Sweet Briar College Syracse University Taylor University Texas A&M University at Galveston Texas Christian University Texas Wesleyan University Thiel College Thomas Nelson Commnity College Thompson Rivers University Toccoa Falls College Trinity University Trckee Meadows Commnity College Tfts University UCLA Ulster Conty Commnity College Union Conty College United States Air Force Academy Universite de Montreal University at Bffalo 142

University of Alabama at Birmingham University of Alabama in Hntsville University of Alaska University of Alaska Anchorage University of Alberta University of Arizona University of Arkansas at Little Rock University of Calgary University of California Office of the President University of California, Berkeley University of California, Davis University of California, Irvine University of California, Merced University of California, Riverside University of California, San Diego University of California, Santa Crz University of Central Florida University of Central Missori University of Chicago University of Cincinnati University of Delaware University of Denver University of Detroit Mercy University of Florida University of Idaho University of Illinois Central Administration University of Kansas University of Kentcky University of La Verne University of Loisville University of Maine University of Mary Washington University of Maryland University of Maryland, Baltimore University of Maryland, Baltimore Conty University of Massachsetts Amherst University of Memphis University of Michigan Ann Arbor University of Michigan Flint University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Dlth University of Mississippi University of Missori Colmbia University of Missori Kansas City University of Missori Rolla University of Missori St. Lois University of Montana University of Nebraska Lincoln University of Nebraska University of Nebraska at Kearney University of Nebraska at Omaha University of New Brnswick University of New Brnswick, Saint John University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Pembroke University of North Dakota University of North Florida University of North Texas University of Northern Colorado University of Notre Dame University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center University of Oregon University of Pittsbrgh University of Regina University of Rhode Island University of Richmond University of San Diego University of San Francisco University of Soth Carolina University of Soth Carolina Aiken University of Soth Carolina Upstate University of Soth Dakota University of Sothern Maine University of St. Francis University of St. Thomas (Hoston, TX) University of St. Thomas (St. Pal, MN) University of Tampa University of Tennessee at Chattanooga University of Tennessee at Martin University of Texas at Arlington University of Texas at Dallas University of Texas Medical Branch University of Texas of the Permian Basin University of Texas System University of the Sciences in Philadelphia University of Toronto University of Tlsa University of Vermont University of Washington, Bothell University of Waterloo EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 143

University of West Florida University of West Georgia University of Wisconsin Green Bay University of Wisconsin La Crosse University of Wisconsin Madison University of Wisconsin Milwakee University of Wisconsin Stevens Point University of Wisconsin Stot University of Wisconsin Sperior University of Wisconsin Colleges University of Wisconsin Extension University of Wyoming Ursline College Villanova University Virginia Military Institte Virginia Tech Wagner College Walsh College Walsh University Washington & Jefferson College Washington University in St. Lois Weber State University Webster University Wellesley College Wesleyan University West Chester University of Pennsylvania West Liberty State College West Texas A&M University West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Western Iowa Tech Commnity College Western New Mexico University Whitman College Wilfrid Larier University Willamette University William Paterson University of New Jersey Williams College Wisconsin Ltheran College York College of Pennsylvania York University Zane State College 144

Appendix B Interviewees in Qalitative Research Bergen Commnity College Ed Pittarelli, Director of Technologies Berry College Timothy Farnham, Chief Information Officer Boise State University Mark Fitzgerald, Manager of User Spport Bowdoin College Mitch Davis, Chief Information Officer Brandeis University Perry Hanson, Vice President and Vice Provost for Libraries and Information Technology Calvin College Bill Vriesema, Assistant Director of Technology Spport Services Colgate University David Gregory, Chief Information Technology Officer Dartmoth College Ellen Yong, Conslting Services Manager Ellen Waite-Franzen, Vice President for Information Technology Indiana University Se Workman, Associate Vice President for Spport Dennis Gillespie, Spport Center Manager Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Pblic Health Jon P. Garvin, Associate Director, Information Systems Metropolitan State College of Denver Denise Schette, Cstomer Spport Services, Information Technology 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 145

New York University Marsha McMillan, Associate Provost and Chief Information Technology Officer R. Ben Maddox, Director of Client Services North Dakota State University Rosi Kloberdanz, Director, IT Client Services, Help Desk Manager John Underwood, Help Desk Manager Nova Sotheastern University Ginny McLain, Vice President for Information Technologies Wayne Gooden, Manager, Help Desk Greg Horne, Exective Director Okanagan College David Harris, Director, IT Services Parker College of Chiropractic Rob Robitaille, Coordinator of Academic Compting Regis University Vivianne D. Johnston, Help Center Manager Sinclair Commnity College Jeanna Reedy, Manager of the IT Help Desk and IT Labs University of Alberta Alex Nagorski, Team Lead, Otreach Brian Acheson, Director, Central Systems and Spport Brent Voyer, AICT Helpdesk Analyst University of Colorado at Bolder Herb Wilson, Director, IT Spport University of Delaware Christine Mrphy, Systems Planner Kathy Beardsley, Help Desk Manager Karl Hassler, Associate Director of Network and System Services Frank Eastman, Camps IT Associate II University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Priscilla Alden, Assistant Vice Chancellor for ITS User Spport and Engagement University of St. Thomas (St. Pal, MN) Samel J. Levy, Vice President and Chief Information Officer University of Vermont Dean Williams, Director of Client Services David Todd, Chief Information Officer 146

Appendix C Bibliography Alexander, Bryan. Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? EDUCAUSE Review 41, no. 2 (2006): 32 44. Brooks, Peter, Jan van Bon, and Tieneke Verheijen, ed. Metrics for IT Service Management. Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2006. CMMI Prodct Team, Capability Matrity Model Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1. Pittsbrgh: Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institte, 25. Czegel, Barbara. Rnning an Effective Help Desk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Hawkins, Brian L., and Jlia A. Rdy. EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Smmary Report. Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE, 2007, p. 11. International Organization for Standardization. ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005: Information Technology Service Management Part 1: Specification. 2005. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. International Organization for Standardization. ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005: Information Technology Service Management Part 2: Code of Practice. 2005. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. Maddox, R. Ben. ITIL in the Real World: NYU Leverages ITIL Best Practices to Enhance IT Organizational Processes. 2006. EDUCAUSE 2006 conference presentation, http://connect.edcase.ed/library/abstract/itilintherealworldny /38954. Mns, Ron. Service Desk 2010. The Mns Report 6, no. 16 (Agst 1, 2007), e-mail newsletter, http://www.thinkhdi.com/pblications/mnsreport/viewmnsreport.aspx?mnsreportid=192, accessed 10/13/2007. Pirani, Jdith A., and Robert Albrecht. Bowdoin College and Colgate University: Using the Help Desk Strategically to Revitalize the IT Organization (Case Stdy 7). Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. Salaway, Gail, and Jdith Borreson Carso, with Mark R. Nelson, introdction by Chris Dede. The ECAR Stdy of Undergradate Stdents and Information Technology, 2007 (Research Stdy, Vol. 6). Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. Sheehan, Mark C., and Robert Albrecht. ITIL at New York University: A Framework for Excellence (Case Stdy 10). Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. Shlman, James L. Shades of Prple or Will Collaboration arond Technology Ever Really Save Money? Mareen E. Devlin, ed., Aspen Symposim 2005: Exploring the Ftre of Higher Edcation. Cambridge, MA: Form for the Ftre of Higher Edcation, 2005, 5.2, http://www.edcase.ed/ir/library/pdf/ffp06w.pdf. 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 147

Siff, Frederick H. Mobility and Higher Edcation: Not Jst the Next Big Thing (Research Blletin, Isse 22). Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2006, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. Spicer, Don, and Jdy Pirani. University of Alberta: Using Online Help Desk Tools to Enhance Client Service and Department Operations (Case Stdy 9), Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. Twigg, Carol A., and Diana G. Oblinger. The Virtal University. Washington, DC: Joint Edcom/IBM Rondtable, 1996, http://www.edcase.ed/ir/library/html/nli0003.html. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce. Service Delivery. London: The Stationery Office, 2001. United Kingdom Office of Government Commerce. Service Spport. London: The Stationery Office, 2000. Van Bon, Jan, Georges Kemmerling, and Dick Pondman, ed. IT Service Management, an introdction. Zaltbommel, NL: Van Haren Pblishing, 2002. Yanosky, Ron, with Gail Salaway. Identity Management in Higher Edcation: A Baseline Stdy (Research Stdy, Vol. 2). Bolder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2006, available from http://www.edcase.ed/ecar. 148