Business case for additional IT staff

[nightblade]

Hi All

I need to produce a business case for addition staff and was looking to see if anyone has done this / has a document or guidance. this would be for an additional term time IT technician.

Thanks for your help

[ChrisH]

Make sure you mention plenty about how it currently affects teaching and learning or how extra staff would improve the experience for T&L as problems fixed quicker, more proactive maintenance improving things, that sort of thing. That is the kind of talk SLT/Governors will be interested in. If you have anything dealt with by external contracts, can this be brought in house to be more cost effective and receive a much better service eg not waiting hours/days for someone to visit.

[HarryMonkey]

You need to call up all of your logged calls to show how busy you've been compared with this time last year. SLT will normally only look at extra staff if there is hard evdence that they are required, namely that the job is far busier (as borne out by the number of support calls you are now taking), the fact that you now have more equipment to deal with, that the systmes have become more complex, that you have had to take on extra tasks.

[witch]

That's what I was going to say. You need to be able to show them details of your calls and how they are not getting sorted quickly enough due to lack of personnel. If you can point to things that have been added to your workload then all well and good and it is a very good point about how it affects T& L.
When trying to get more hours just for me I did try and point out that there needs to be time for forward planning and the boss pretty much said "why?". I did try to explain but it got me nowhere

[Dagaz]

Also if it is suitable quote how much it equipment you had 5 years ago and staffing levels and how much now. sometimes it can show the equipment has doubled but staffing does not reflect this.

[twin--turbo]

As stated.

Equipment leveles
Equipment Diversity
Helpdesk Tickets ( See next point )
Are you developing, standing still or loosing ground ( if you don't have a helpdesk you need to develop one into your mix )

Rob

[GrumbleDook]

Having a support desk solution that allows you to put in SLAs also allows you to show why you might fail to meet KPIs, including the lack of appropriate staff.

When you do your 5 year planning (refresh of kit, planned upgrades, etc) you should also try to indicate the staffing levels needed to deploy and maintain each area. This way you can get it in early when a school is expanding and even have set triggers so that if you school has put in 3 extra rooms, 2 extra trolleys of slates, etc ... SLT automatically know that you have hit a magic number and need to recruit before any further expansion / change.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Having a support desk solution that allows you to put in SLAs also allows you to show why you might fail to meet KPIs, including the lack of appropriate staff.

When you do your 5 year planning (refresh of kit, planned upgrades, etc) you should also try to indicate the staffing levels needed to deploy and maintain each area. This way you can get it in early when a school is expanding and even have set triggers so that if you school has put in 3 extra rooms, 2 extra trolleys of slates, etc ... SLT automatically know that you have hit a magic number and need to recruit before any further expansion / change.

Excellent idea about putting this in five year plan, will add this to my list.

Agree with what has already been said.

Also things you could include if relevant other systems that are now in place that weren't there a few years ago were applicable VLE, Parental Portal, Remote access etc.
Other things you could look at developing if you had extra staffing.
Perhaps more support to other areas MIS etc.
Issues caused if a member of IT staff was off long term sick because you are already short staffed and impact this would have on the school and lessons (Teaching and Learning) problems not resolved quickly so staff couldn't use equipment due to this.
Could provide more staff training in the use of ICT equipment and possibly produce extra staff userguides.
Help staff more to develop Curriculum resources Video, pod casting, VLE resources etc.

I would try to look at it as well as I need help what extra you could provide so positives where possible.

[nightblade]

Thank you to everyone for their input. Some great points made and will certainly be used.