Technology in Education

I have a friend that was recently asked what he thought about splitting up his IT staff across the geographical expanse of his organization. This would, he was told, place IT staff in key locations to be able to assist other staff with issues in a more expedient fashion. Interesting concept, here is the real story however.

The IT department is made up of just a few dedicated support personnel. Key job titles include a developer, telephone support specialist, network administrator and LAN tech to name a few. The total membership in this department is around a dozen and they support, in total, close to 800 people and that’s just within their organization. This doesn’t include the outside institutions that they support via telephone and with itinerant workers.

The majority of the support provided to these employees is done remotely or in some other on-line fashion as with training or other materials that can be used to educate the users as to how to effectively use their technology. There is almost no face to face support provided by the IT department currently unless you include training (either in a class environment or in 1:1 situations) or when the employee is asked to stop by the IT department to drop off or pick up equipment/supplies.

So, here is the dilemma; how can a splintered IT department work? Can it work in an environment where the vast majority of the full time IT workers are responsible for systems or processes that are in constant need of attention or are in a state of continual upgrading or feature addition/change to support staff needs? Should those workers be subjected to questions by end users who have forgotten how to empty their trash in Outlook when their primary task is writing code or configuring servers?

Do you know of any situation where this has been attempted and succeeded? Do you know of any instances where this was attempted and failed?