Balancing Dollars & Demand

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IT Funding & Finance

Balancing Dollars & Demand

9/1/2007

By Charlene O’Hanlon

CT: Let's talk about the cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure. How do you factor in the human element and budget for it? Is it becoming more difficult to manage each year, and hit goals?

Engorn: My concern—and I think many institutions would agree—is that with a relatively small staff, you usually get a lot done. So, when upper management is looking at your accomplishments and project completions for the year, they say, "Well, you did X amount of work this year and you got it all done." But I'm asking for more staff because I'm actually working my great staff way too many hours to get the job done, and they're not going to be able to continue at this pace. I'm trying to communicate to the administration that I really need people in certain areas just in order to maintain. And as the institution is growing, individuals lose sight of the fact that you just can't grow an institution, at least at our pace, and not increase the IT staff.

"We have to be very conscious of our compensation packages because we recruit someone, send them to school, and allow them to dabble with all this high-tech stuff, and the next thing we know, corporate America comes along and sweeps an entire network division, or systems administrators, or network administrators." —Stan Gatewood, The University of Georgia

Gatewood: We're running into another issue, too: We have to be very conscious of our compensation packages because we recruit people, send them to school, and allow them to dabble with all this high-tech stuff, and the next thing we know, corporate America comes along and sweeps an entire network division, or systems administrators, or network administrators. So we're in the process of taking a very serious look at the job descriptions and the role and scope statements and things like that, because recruiting [good people] is one thing, but retaining them is very important as well. Yes, we do factor in that we're going to have to give bonuses and merit raises, attract them to begin with, and then bring them in at a salary comparable to [that of the private sector in] Atlanta, which historically pays more than the state, or the state system or state schools.

Laus: At Central Michigan, we're severely understaffed. We even had a survey conducted a couple of years back and found that we're running at about a third of the staff we should be carrying for an institution of our size. The networking group, for instance, is a staff of about four, when we should be up somewhere around 11. So staffing has always been an issue for us, but it's the same problem: We do it fairly well, and even though our network continues to grow, we're just expected to keep up with it and continue doing the good job that we're doing. Some of that is finding pieces of technology that can help you manage or make your jobs easier, and free up some time to do more of the core networking things that we need to do.