Sheri Bigelow, Happiness Engineer at Automattic, gives tips on providing technical user support to WordPress bloggers. Her tips easily can crossover to other customer support tasks in the information technology field.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 5

Recommendations for the Field Office IT User Support Program

Author's Note: The original professional report was written in the Spring of 2005. Applications suggested for use were suitable solutions in 2005 and may not represent the author's choice today. Applications suggested for use should be seen as examples an organization may use but not necessarily the application that should be chosen. For your organization, these implementation strategies should be discussed by the managers, IT staff, and users before considering full implementation.

So far the focus by the author has been on identifying the information system needs for meeting the requirements of the IT users. Weaknesses in the current information systems have been identified and the ideal information systems for the field offices are identified. With the characteristics of the actual and intended information systems known, improvements and implementation strategies can be recommended.

The recommendations in this report are seen as key actions necessary for improving the field office IT user support programs. In some cases, implementation strategies have been provided with the recommendations. These implementation strategies should be discussed by the managers, IT staff, and users before considering full implementation.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 1 (continued)

Author's Role and Position in the Organization

The author has been employed by the Organization for nearly 15 years, with the first 10 years working in the Operations Unit of the Organization's field offices. During this tenure, the author was also given IT related responsibilities that include software configuration of a Doppler radar system and management of the office's Internet Homepage. During the last five years, the author has been employed as the Information Technology Officer at his current field office.

The position of Information Technology Officer (ITO) is a relatively new position for the Emergency Field Office with responsibilities encompassing the operations, management, and administrative computer systems of the field office. The Information Technology Officer has been given responsibility for five critical IT elements at the field office (see "Performance Plan" in the Appendixes). Those elements include: (a) user support, (b) software development, (c) information systems analysis, (d) information technology program management, and (e) quality assurance and professional development. When a previous Assistant Administrator for Emergency Services was asked to describe, from his perspective, the role the Information Technology Officer position should play in the field office, he responded by saying:

The ITO [Information Technology Officer] is expected to focus on information technology needs of the EFO [Emergency Field Office], working closely with the Science and Operations Officer, Electronics Systems Analyst, and appropriate program leaders, under supervision of the [Manager]-In-Charge. The ITO's primary function is to optimize the performance of EFO system software and applications that contribute to accomplishing our mission. (Smith, 2003, Director's Dialogue, ¶ 6)

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 4

Documentation for the User

Documentation as User Support

As mentioned earlier in this professional report, one of the key services of IT user support in the Organization is to provide documentation. The IT staff in the field office is required to provide user documentation for both installed applications and applications that are either locally developed or modified. The IT program is also responsible for providing and developing system operating manuals and application software user manuals. While the functions of user support through documentation have been specified by the Organization, the format and means for providing the documentation to the user have not been specified.

Because of the absence of standardized practices for managing the documentation in the field offices, most field office users have access to literally hundreds of documents in inconsistent formats utilizing many different methods for retrieving the documents. For example, users may have to go to the office intranet to retrieve the latest office computer usage policy. The user may then need to dust off a binder to retrieve a "hardcopy" of an e-mail containing instructions on how to reboot a system. Files that have been digitized are in various file formats such as ASCII text, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word Document, and Rich Text Format. A user manual for one application may be found by the user in a hardcopy "software binder", but a user manual for another application may only be available on a computer screen through the program's "Help" menu.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 3

Information Technology Changes for the User

Introduction to Change Management Systems

Ideally, formal procedures should be in place for IT users to be able to request IT hardware and software changes, for users to be notified whether the requested changes are approved, and for users to confirm that the tasks performed to address the requested changes are completed. Actually, informal procedures are often followed by users to initiate changes in IT. A review of available literature shows that informal procedures to manage change could pose an obstacle for the efficient use of resources and for ensuring that projects meet organizational goals (Damodaran, 1996). Without formal procedures, it is unlikely that adequate communication between the user and IT staff would be possible, hindering the benefit of the participatory design process.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 2

Previous Analysis of Field Office User Support

During the five years that the author has been in charge of the IT program for a government field office, a number of formal and informal user surveys have been conducted by various IT groups within the Organization. The intention of the surveys was to identify how IT could provide improved support to the users. In most cases the results from the surveys identified no significant problems in the area of user support or, more disturbingly, the surveys were left unanswered and the results were inconclusive. Current organizational performance measures used by the organization for user support also did not give a true measure of the quality of support being provided to the user. Informal interviews with IT professionals conducted in the past few years by the author have revealed that IT managers have difficulty in identifying the improvements needed for their own user support programs.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 6

References

Baker, K., & Badamshina, G. (2002). Knowledge management. In Management Benchmark Study (chap. 5). Retrieved April 20, 2005, from http://www.sc.doe.gov/sc-5/
benchmark/Ch%205%20Knowledge%20Management%2006.10.02.pdf

Bergman, S., Yassine, A., Roemer, T. (2004). Competencies development framework based on best practices. Knowledge Systems Management, 4, 1, 35-53.

Bickerton, P., Bickerton, M., & Simpson-Holley, K. (1998). Cyberstrategy: Business Strategy for Extranets, intranets, and the Internet. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

Bieringer, P., & Ray, P. (1996). A comparison of tornado warning lead times with and without
NEXRAD Doppler Radar. Weather and Forecasting, 11, 1, 47-52.

Collins, H.. (2004). Setting a one-company content strategy: Mapping people to content in a 'knowledge organization system'. Knowledge Management Review, 7, 1, 12-15.

Analysis and Recommendations for Information Technology User Support Provided to a Government Field Office

Chapter 1

Introduction

Through the history of the Organization, improvements in emergency services to the public were, in part, accomplished by the implementation of advanced information technology (IT) at the Organization's field offices. In the forward of the Organization Strategic Plan for 2005 - 2010, the Assistant Administrator for Emergency Services reiterates that "from our beginnings in the 19th century, the Organization has depended on our employees, partnerships, advances in scientific understanding, and improvements in technology to carry out our core mission of protection of life and property and enhancing the economy." The Organization also expects that the advances in emergency services will continue, as the 21^st century "promises significant improvements to public safety and economic well being" through the utilization of "rapid science and technological advances" (Organization, 2005, p. 5).