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BY ERIC MILES GLOVER

In print | Published March 31, 2005

Information Technology Services is considering working with an outside firm due to a recent increase in both help requests and complaints about assistance from ITS. The firm would provide basic telephone and e-mail support.

“Over the past three years, ITS has been faced with an extreme increase in requests for help through our help desk,” Client Services Associate Director Robin Jacobsen said in an e-mail.

The number of help requests has increased dramatically in the past three years. ITS received 3,802 calls in 2002, but in 2003 and 2004, the numbers rose to 7,120 and 10,698, respectively, Jacobsen said.

“This level of growth has presented us with a very difficult sustainability problem,” she said. “As the volume of calls and e-mails has increased, our ability to deliver the quality of service expected by the community [has] diminished.”

The requests for help began to increase two years ago when the Blaster Worm, a defect in Microsoft Office software, infected student computers and prolonged the network registration process. The problem has somewhat improved because students are now required to install anti-virus software on their computers.

“It’s a lot better now because we bought a license from McAfee Virus that we install on all student computers on campus,” Jacobsen said.

Due to an increase in malicious software such as spyware and adware, however, requests for help continue to increase.

Originally, ITS tried to deal with the increase in requests by hiring student workers. The solution proved unsuccessful, as student workers were not available 24 hours a day and were often unprepared to handle complex technical problems.

“Instead of the phone ringing here,” Jacobsen said, “it would ring off campus.” The outside firm would answer the phone, representing Swarthmore’s help desk, and then address the caller’s problem. The solution would be reached by the outside firm or ITS, depending on the gravity of the situation. Should the outside firm encounter a serious problem, ITS would be notified immediately.

ITS is confident that outsourcing will achieve fast and convenient problem solving, especially in residence halls, since the help desk is only open eight hours a day. ITS believes outsourcing will free it and student workers to focus on solving serious problems. The outside firm would focus primarily on more common problems, leaving room for ITS to respond to more serious concerns. “When there are big problems, the time to identify and respond to them should be smaller,” Jacobsen said.

Networking and Systems Associate Director Mark Dumic said the outsourcing plan reflects student demand. “In general, what we have seen is that a more sophisticated level of support is being required by students,” he said. The goal is for outsourcing to solve between 70 and 80 percent of support problems, according to Dumic.

Jacobsen has contacted organizations of higher learning institutions including Ithaca College to assess the costs and benefits of outsourcing. “If we were to do this, we’d probably work with [the private firm] this spring in order to set up [service level] agreements,” she said.

These agreements would include conditions requiring that e-mails be replied to in four hours’ time and calls answered in 60 seconds’ time.

The outsourcing plan would cost about $150,000 according to Dumic. The money will come from less student workers and cuts in other operational costs. “We’re hoping it will reduce our need for student employees,” he said.

In addition, ITS would accustom the outside firm to Swarthmore’s technology. “We need to make sure that we are providing [the outside firm] with the right answers to our problems,” she said.

This acclimation process would last from one month to six weeks and culminate in a pilot program, where the efficiency of outsourcing would be assessed. The outside firms ITS is currently exploring as possibilities are IntelliMark and Distributed Systems Services. If one is chosen, it will begin working with ITS in July — as the college prepares to enter the academic school year — without affecting the regular services offered by the help desk that include computer hardware repair.

Head dorm technician Adam Gerber ‘05 expressed support for the outsourcing plan. "I think it’s a great way to use our resources at ITS efficiently," he said.

Gerber said outsourcing will allow ITS to filter problems in a regular and comfortable way as well as allocate and track the workloads of student workers.

In addition to exploring outsourcing, Dumic said ITS is in the process of fixing problems with the TWIG program that operates Swatmail. The problems, which include sluggish e-mail, are the result of student inboxes with large amounts of e-mail that remain undeleted. Before returning to the IMP/Horde program that operated Swatmail at the beginning of the school year, ITS plans to fix the existing problems with TWIG and guarantee similar problems will not arise in the future with IMP/Horde. “Our plan is to move to IMP/Horde by the fall,” Dumic said.

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