[comp.edu] Providers of computing at academic institution

djds@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (DARYL JOHN D'SOUZA) (03/21/91)

I hope this is the appropriate news group for what I am about to say.
If not, please advise, and I will re-post.

I am currently involved in a debate about who should be the provider of
computing facilities at an academic institution.  Most academic institutions
(in Australia at least) are organised into Faculties which, in turn
comprise of several departments.  There are also special Divisions and
Centres which fulfill other requirements of the Institute.  One such
Centre is often called the Computer Centre which, traditionally at least,
provides for the bulk computing needs of the Institute's activities.
Such activities usually fall into  one or more of the folowing domains:
teaching, administration, research or consulting.

With the special needs of various domains and the varying scales of computer
power (supercomputers, parallel machines, general mainframes, minis,
superminis, personal computers, etc...) available, the debate about 
Centralisation vs. Decentralisation becomes a major issue.  Centre managers
usually like to insist that the computer centre should be the sole provider
of all computing needs, whilst many others would tend to disagree.

I'm sure there are groups out there who have produced proposals (or
even definite plans) as a result of such discussions.  I am interested
to hear from them and indeed have access to publicly available descriptions
of such "IT Strategy" plans.  I am not interested in vision/mission 
statements nor the broad goals and objectives of such a strategies, but
rather in a description of what is seen as a satisfactory implementation
of one of these strategies.  The infrastructure details of facilities
management (what the facilities are and who controls it) of the various
(functional) domains, is what I am after.

Mail direct to me, please.



Daryl D'Souza
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dept of Computer Science
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
124 La Trobe St
Melbourne, Victoria 3000
AUSTRALIA

PHONE:  +61 3 660 2348 

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