Nineteen months after the Office of Computing and Information Technology was renamed the Office of Information Technology, and eight months after the complete restructuring of campus information technology services, administrators said they are pleased with the results of these changes.
The Office of Computing and Information Technology was formed in 1986 under the leadership of Chief Information Officer Ira Fuchs as an attempt to unify technological services on campus.
In September 2001, with new CIO Betty Leydon in charge, CIT was reborn as the Office of Information Technology, and in July 2002 OIT was significantly restructured to provide better services to the University.
"The focus during CIT was to provide great technology to campus. The focus was building [the campus] network," said Steven Sather, Director of OIT Support Services.
"Now that network is in place, so the focus [of OIT] is providing the best possible services using that network," he said.
According to Serge Goldstein, OIT Director of Academic Services, the restructuring lets OIT be more receptive to campus needs. For example, one of the committees formed comprises several information technology experts and several faculty members to provide more effective computing resources for research.
The transition from CIT to OIT did not involve any layoffs, but many of the department's staff of 300 were shuffled from one team to another as the reporting structure was streamlined.
Several groups, which had independently been performing similar functions, were unified under OIT. "There has been a consolidation of information technology groups into OIT," Goldstein said. OIT is "a larger and more cohesive body than CIT was," he added.
According to Leydon, Goldstein and Sather, this past weekend's laptop trade-in offer was a perfect example of what the new OIT can accomplish.
In two days, OIT staff helped 150 students transfer all of their data from old, defective computers to new, more powerful units.
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