On Fri, 12 Oct 2001, Gareth Ridings wrote:
> I am presently at Loughborough, and the main reason for this is the red tape
> surrounding purchasing, and networking of PC's.
...and that's because of the constantly changing senior management
'strategy' <ahem> regarding IT resourcing of all types. <rant mode on>
While I worked there the University Council and senior management (ie. at
Pro-Vice Chancellor level upwards) pulled us in about as many different
directions at once as was physically possible.
That led to some unfortunate schisms between 'us' (ie. the providers of
services, whether hardware, software, networking, DNS, DHCP, web caches,
support, you name it) and 'them' (ie. the end users, or, in some cases
colleagues in the different teams). The insistence on bouncing everything
- and I mean EVERYTHING - we planned to do off of three Faculty IT
Co-Ordinators resulted in delays, shortfalls in service provision and
other ridiculous rules and/or decisions which basically meant we were
trying to second-guess every move we had to make and the effect that it
might have, rather than carrying out real trials.
In the end I left after some eejit at the top of the organisation decided
we were to provide out-of-hours support and basically get no extra benefit
for doing so. I was sad to do so, but the abject insistence on sticking
fingers in everywhere really got on my nerves in the end.
> Though i am happy to say i have my own red hat machine fully networked.
Lots of staff do; however even though there is a large Linux userbase it
is *still* not an offically supported OS. Stoopid. But that's modern
academia for ya.
> There is a supposed group for linux at the university, but alas
> contributions are a bit thin on the ground. So how about a bit of support
> from the Loughborugh crew, or even just a hello opn the newsgroup just to
> know you people are alive!
I guess that's because most of us know each other rather well so tend to
discuss things over a pint or three.
As far as I'm aware I'm the only 'lulu' list member who's on this list
aswell, unless anyone would like to raise their lurking hands?
G
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