School ICT Policies Thread, The perfect IT Handbook in School Administration; Yeah ... I know ... it doesn't exist.
But this is another one of those "what would you include" posts ...
But this is another one of those "what would you include" posts ...
Although I have a heap of stuff from FITS, and several AUPs, bits from NAACE and ACITT there is always something else that could be included ...
If you can spare the time please answer the following questions:
Do you have internal documents for policies and procedures (including SLAs, AUPs, etc)?
Are they published, and who to?
What sources did you use to create them? (BECTa, NAACE, NCSL, etc)
----------
I know most of this will end up in the wiki, but I am want to keep some of this site quiet ... the last thing most of us want is to be followed into here be the people that keep asking us "why won't the mono-laser printer do colour?" ... but I don't want to create yet another site for techies ... to go along with this one ... all the mailing lists ... the newsgroups ...
Talking of FIT's. Ric and I attended a FITs lecture in a very northern county a couple of months ago.
How we laughed when the Becta gentleman talked about how our support 'teams' should change our method of working.
Hear the gasps of wonderment as we were informed that the office lady could also be employed as first line support on top of their usual tasks.
Pull yourself up from the floor after the 'Staff should no longer expect nor receive immediate support' speech
And as a grand finale the budgetary speech which let us all know just how much of our ICT maintenance budget should be set aside for administaring FIT's.
All in all, a fine days entertainment and highly recommended.
How does one implement and enforce internal SLA's?
With external SLA's if a vendor, service supplier etc broke a service agreement one could follow some kind of recourse - terminate the contract, compensation or even sue in extreme cases.
I just can't see how SLA's can work within a school, unless they are nothing more than guideline documents with a fancy name
How does one implement and enforce internal SLA's?
With external SLA's if a vendor, service supplier etc broke a service agreement one could follow some kind of recourse - terminate the contract, compensation or even sue in extreme cases.
I just can't see how SLA's can work within a school, unless they are nothing more than guideline documents with a fancy name
Internal SLA's are linked to Performance Management (buzzword alert! buzzword alert!)
It boils down to targets that are set that various people have to meet so that they are able to say they are doing the job damn well, and they deserver their wages, and even deserve a raise too.
It is important to stick in clause in internal SLA's that allow for targets not being met due to things outside of your control (external SLA's, idiocy of users, etc)
If your school is going for things like NAACEMark (or even the new ICTMark when it appears next year) then this sort of thing is looked at (or should be depending on your assessor)
<prod> <prod> Nope, this thread isn't quite dead yet.
<zzap> Right, that should resurrect it. :P
Ok, we've recently (finally!) got our Staff ICT handbook complete and distributed so I thought I would share it with you. When I get some time, I'll try & get it on the Wiki too.
Please let me know what you think (no outright flaming though...), and just remember that it's only the very first draft and I'm crap at writing manuals.
Sorry, completely forgot that I've actually finished the form. We haven't implemented it yet though as I haven't had time. (Spending two days vomiting this week hasn't helped any!)
Talking of FIT's. Ric and I attended a FITs lecture in a very northern county a couple of months ago.
How we laughed when the Becta gentleman talked about how our support 'teams' should change our method of working.
Hear the gasps of wonderment as we were informed that the office lady could also be employed as first line support on top of their usual tasks.
Pull yourself up from the floor after the 'Staff should no longer expect nor receive immediate support' speech
And as a grand finale the budgetary speech which let us all know just how much of our ICT maintenance budget should be set aside for administaring FIT's.
All in all, a fine days entertainment and highly recommended.
Just to let you know, He read this post!
FITS doesn't cost anything to administer. If your serious about providing the best technical support for your school you would be using FITS. I did, our support improved immensly. In fact it improved so much that I got another job on the back of the level of performance I achieved there.
FITS is based on ITIL, ITIL is the IT Information Library; the industry standard was of delievering IT support. Its recognised as the best way to provide the best support to your organisation.
When creating FITS, it was recognised that schools wouldn't be able to easily implement ITIL because its quite a large set of documentation to get through and its also quite intensive to read. FITS on the other hand is easy to read and can be implemented in a reasonable amount of time without to much hassle (I've been there and done that).
As for cost, FITS costs less than posting to EduGeek. the time its taken you to find this post and read it, you could have read the Service Desk process.
The whole point of a SPOC (Single Point of Contact) is to enable you to focus on fixing problems rather than dealing with staff face to face. The SPOC can be anyone in the school who spends most of their time next to a phone. Its not like there is a lot of extra work for them to do, its just a matter of writing down (on paper is fine) the details of the call and then passing this on to the technical support staff. Thats is.
-Kev
FITS Evangelist to the stars & FITS OM Author
As for cost, FITS costs less than posting to EduGeek. the time its taken you to find this post and read it, you could have read the Service Desk process.
Reading your posts anyway!!! :P
Sounds good Kevin. My Head took over my management. Seems I now have a backlog where I never did before - and my role is more to work on stuff required for political reasons than technical.
With the workload agreement stuff I think she's correct not to let either admin or curriculum heads line manage me - but her doing so is proving disasterous. Any suggestions?
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by kgcs 
