From: "James O'Donnell" Message-Id: <199605311721.NAA15607@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> Subject: restructuring ISC To: IT Steering; Comp-Restruct; Super-Users Group Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 13:21:56 -0400 (EDT) With apologies to those colleagues outside ISC whose overlap on some of our lists may get you more than one copy: this is an announcement that went to all ISC staff yesterday afternoon. Comments and questions welcome: send to me directly. Jim O'Donnell James O'Donnell wrote: From: "James O'Donnell" Subject: restructuring ISC To: ISC Staff Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 14:38:41 -0400 (EDT) Restructuring ISC With this announcement, plans for phase one of internal restructuring of ISC are complete; some of what is announced below takes effect immediately, the rest as soon as paperwork can be completed (by 1 July on all points). I apologize for the delay and the concomitant anxiety that many have felt and can only say that this has come about because it has been more important to me to do the right things and do them in the right way than to meet a self-imposed deadline or even to calm nerves that deserve to be calmed. By "phase one" I mean the part that falls immediately to me on coming in the door, the review of the overall structure and the makeup of the senior management team. Restructuring ISC is far from over, but it is now *our* job. I expect to work with senior staff and directors over the next six months to a year to do a thorough review of our practices and structures to bring them into line with the model for restructuring computing across Penn that came out of the task force work last fall. I have two *very* strong personal commitments in all this, which those of you who work with me will tire of hearing -- but I am quite serious about them: 1. Customer satisfaction is our principal metric of success. We cannot always satisfy them and they are not even always right -- but their errors are no excuse for failures on our part to work harder to make partnerships that work. We are charged by the University with creating a "culture of measurement" to give objective evidence of our success as well -- I will place the highest priority on responsible measurement of the effectiveness of our services and our customer satisfactions. (One point of customer satisfaction, of course, is cost-effectiveness. We will continue to review everything we do to keep costs as low as possible.) 2. Internal cooperation among ISC staff across the entire organization is a necessity and a given; we are members of one organization and no single part fails without reflection on the entire organization. For some of you the most dramatic development is in bureaucratic terms the simplest. The separate organizational identities for DCCS and UMIS will be abolished. There are arguments to be made in favor of keeping those fences around those particular parts of ISC, but it is my strong belief, reinforced by detailed discussion with some of our most important clients, that the overall negative effect of keeping pieces of ISC separate from each other far outweighs the benefit of cohesiveness and identity that the names impart. I'll say again, ISC is one organization. When you doubt this, think of Ben Franklin and what he said to John Hancock on 4 July 1776: we shall all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. One of the particular implications of that increasing connectivity will be active review of the relations between operational units across ISC and, I expect, their increasing consolidation over the months to come, where that consolidation gives increased quality of service. The disappearance of the DCCS and UMIS names for groups of units will take place over a similar time frame as we review the day-to-day administrative implications and take appropriate steps; but it would be good practice to begin *thinking* in terms of ISC as a single organization immediately. It is to achieve these goals that I am announcing the following senior staff assignments. These will be my direct reports, the team with which I will work most closely. Two members of senior staff will have primary responsibility for managing our relations with our clients on campus. There will be some places where the line between their responsibilities will not be crystal clear, but they will work together to keep responsibilities clear and assure customers of seamless contact with ISC: Robin Beck will serve with the title of Associate Vice President and be responsible for relations with clients dealing with administrative services. She will continue to take direct report from Applications Development, but she will also sit as my designee at John Fry's Senior Management Team and deal directly with the Vice Presidents who meet there; she will also deal with the schools on issues that pertain to administration rather than to research and instruction. She will also continue to be our team leader for Project Cornerstone. Mike Eleey will continue as Associate Vice Provost and be responsible for client relations dealing with matters involving research and instruction. He will continue to take direct report from CRC, First Call, and TLS, with a mandate to work with those units to transition ISC out of the business of "primary support for free" over the next year or so. He will also oversee "distributed staff" for virtually all customers who make such arrangements with us (including administrative units). The Communications Group will continue to report to him, and will be increasingly involved in the ISC WWW site and in the Penn Web site production as well. Donna Milici will continue to report to Mike and will be consolidating ACS with new functions of responsibility for site licenses of all kinds across ISC and for continuing the benchmarking support which was such a signal success of the task force work last fall. Carl Abramson will serve as interim Executive Director of Operations for ISC with Tech Resources, Operations, Diaster Recovery, and Facilities Management reporting to him. Mike Palladino will serve as Director, Network Planning and Operations. He will continue to be responsible for forward planning and design of network facilities, especially coordination with telecom and HUP, but also for managing the operational business of the network. Mark Wehrle and his shop will report to Mike, as well as network operations staff and the Penn video network. Noam Arzt will serve as Director, Information Technology Architecture and Network Services. He will be responsible for linkage between network staff and the to-be-built network "public utilities commission" and will supervise the setting and enforcement of network policy and rates; continuing as Director, Information Technology Architecture, with renewed mandate to be our scout at the bleeding edge, and thus he will coordinate ISC forward technology planning in cooperation with other University centers. He will now take direct report from network engineering. (Both of Mike and Noam's network assignments should be viewed as interim while we review the need for additional staff in the wake of George McKenna's reassignment. I will be working closely with Mike and Noam, as well as with Deke and Mark, to define those needs and meet them at an early date.) Jeanne Curtis will continue as Data Administrator with burgeoning responsibility for the Data Warehouse as it becomes more central to the management of the University's information assets, with and after the roll-out of FinMIS. Bonnie Gibson will continue as Director of Finance and Administration, responsible for ISC financial affairs and relations with Human Resources. She will be tasked over the coming year to transform ISC business affairs in line with the restructuring possible from FinMIS and to expand the model of the ISC-wide virtual business office in a way that does justice to our business needs, and supports our identity as a single organization. ISC financial staff currently reporting on a unit basis will report centrally to Bonnie, and will work with her to serve all of our financial and administrative needs. Linda May will continue as Director of Planning and take on new responsibliity for coordinating with what I am calling "external non-client relations" -- nurturing ISC's diplomatic relations with the President's, Provost's, and EVP's centers and with the schools, as well as coordinating our community relations involvements. Her skill in areas of organization and management will be called on repeatedly as we work through the restructuring issues that remain before us. As announced previously, Cathy DiBonaventura will be reporting to Linda, with an enlarged role specially directed towards community outreach. There will be an all-staff ISC meeting the second week of June at which there will be ample discussion of these changes (and non- changes) and their implications for the future. I encourage each of you to take that opportunity to speak up and take a part in shaping the future of the organization. The success of the one organization that is ISC depends on the commitment of all hands. I'm impressed with what we have. jo'd