The Technology and Planning Section

 

Fourth in the series ...

Let us now look at a new section in the Computing Services Centre, the Technology and Planning Section.

The Technology and Planning Section

In late November 1994, a small new section was born in the Computing Services Centre (CSC) - the Technology and Planning section. This little section was given great missions - to assist the Director of the CSC in strategic planning and to introduce the best computer technology suitable for the department so as to the University. It was a brave move as this was new among the Centres of local Universities although most of them have staff implicitly involved in these activities. Surely it will arouse the interest of many. The success of such a move will mean the success of the CSC.

The Rationale Behind

As information technology advances and evolves in a stunning pace, it becomes progressively harder for the management to make prompt decisions and accurate choices on technology for the benefit of the users. It relies on people who have insight and closely follow the trend of technology so as to be able to give advice. Some technologies are not trivial, especially when we are talking about a mixture of technology implemented on University-wide basis for different desktop environments. Intensive and detailed examination and evaluation are often required. Dedicated people freed from regular routine works are thus necessary for the tasks.

A well developed supporting centre usually has most of its staff tied up with many regular and routine systems support, maintenance and developments. Staff can hardly concentrate and find time to upgrade themselves in their own discipline let alone paying attention to other technology trends outside their specialties. They need some efficient way to keep up their knowledge. On-the-job training and outside courses have time and budgetary constraints which at most only solve part of the problem. An internal team heavily involved in exploring new techniques and evaluations in major areas can fill the gap by assuming the role of internal technology transfer.

The Formation

Six energetic members with various backgrounds were selected to join the section. This includes experienced staff in Unix system support, PC desktop and LAN environment, Windows environment, multimedia and database administrator. Job duties previously taken up by these members have to be shared by other sections. The transition took about half a year to complete, during which arrangements have been made to ensure smooth hand over and train up new staff if experienced and suitable staff could not be readily found.

The Focus

Much discussions have been made both at the senior management level and within the section to fine tune the responsibility of the section. The mission for the section is to bring in and promote the appropriate information technology for use by the University with an aim to achieve the maximum efficiency and productivity while maintaining high quality.

The major focus of the section has been identified to be:

User Desktop environment - this involves the studying and recommendation of suitable integrated servers and desktop systems which include hardware, software and user interface. It is targeted at providing an efficient, convenient and easy to learn and use environment for users to carry out their day to day activities and their teaching and research work.

Campus network - it is comprised of the campus backbone, the department LANs and the student LANs, the host systems and their operating system(s). Focus will be placed on the projection of network growth and the provision of necessary bandwidth for the sharp increase in demand and dependence of network solution for activities such as the workgroups, information retrieval and exchange, multimedia, client/server applications and high bandwidth research.

Off-Campus access - this aims at the promotion of all the Internet services and accesses such as email, web, news, wais, gopher etc. so as to facilitate knowledge exchange among staff, students and the outside world. Technology in enhancing dial up access to campus is studied. These will help in the teaching and research activities.

Multimedia - the application of multimedia in teaching and research is investigated. Tools for assisting staff in hardcopy and multimedia production will be provided. Major emphasis will be put on recommending the right tools and transferring the techniques and know-how to teaching staff for preparing teaching materials. The campus-wide media services such as video-on-demand will be addressed so that the education materials can be accessed everywhere and electronic clips of various forms such as video, voice, fonts, pictures and clipart libraries can easily be included into teaching materials.

Chinese - Chinese language capability is essential in today's computer system. The objective is to integrate Chinese in all the information systems and data processing systems. A more ambitious goal will be to provide standard multi-lingual environment to every desktop.

Client/Server application - hot topics such as datawarehousing, RAD tools, team development, distributed database and object technology will be studied. The goal is to support quick decisions for the management and increase the productivity of each individual through the provision of convenient, fast and secure data access.

Office Automation - identify suitable messaging system such as electronic mail, fax and workflow, as well as electronic document filing and sharing systems for improving office efficiency and, at the same time, maximizing the productivity through sharing information and collaboration.

We believe that these technologies are crucial elements in enabling business process re-engineering, maintaining and improving quality services which the University is pushing hard.

The Activities

Over the months, the section has actively involved in major events such as the design of the Windows implementation for the whole campus, the study of the Campus network upgrade and the study of provision of network access everywhere within the Campus. Various work forces such as the office automation, client/server group have also been set up. Others are going to kick off soon.

The team has also taken up numerous evaluations, both hardware and software, recommending tools and standards, and reviewing existing services.

The section is not working alone. It works closely in harmony with other sections in the Centre.

Summary

In short, the section will act as a catalyst in the information technology (IT) deployment - to make it happen, to make it go, to make it work, and to make it perfect. To stimulate and promote the best computer technology suitable for the University and to facilitate research and teaching, the team members are working with high spirit striving for quality services and user satisfaction - always look ahead, think practical, and devoted.

Computing Services Centre City University of Hong Kong ccnetcom@cityu.edu.hk