Building Partnerships between Research and IT (IDM)

DATE and TIME: Thursday, May 26, 2011, 1:30pm

CONVENER: Angela

SCRIBE: Jim Beard

# of ATTENDEES: 13

MAIN ISSUES DISCUSSED

  • When there are clear benefits that are beneficial
  • Hard to promote, need to market
  • Cornell works more with academic / administrative, not as much research
  • Hard to get different groups to simply talk
  • Need to make things cheaper faster better to get buy in
  • Different groups try hard to maintain their autonomis nature
  • Once people know about available technologies, then the challenge is group knowledge of the technologies
  • U of Toronto's approach is to create central documentation that covers local options, the "Hitchhiker's guide to single sign on - Don't Panic", available for sharing
  • When mainframes died, groups went off and did there own thing.
    • Mainframes would ensure a central communication channel, that channel doesn't seem to have been replaced.
    • Wisconsin approach to support research maintains a full time employee in IT dedicated to research support.
    • Communication problem is not just local to a campus, research happens across campuses, so the communication needs to be across campuses
    • Portals could have (but likely haven't) filled that gap of a central communication channel
    • Trying to funnel folks centrally can be viewed as a hurdle (more work the end user needs to do to accomplish what they want)
  • Funding is a problem too, because a lot of it is from grants that have stipulations how it can be spent, and it often ensures they build their own solutions, often for acquisition and not on going maintenance.
  • Is there somewhere a new professor or research can go to and ask to have various services set up for them?
    • More informal channels then formal channels
  • A lot of researchers are members of professional organizations that relate to their field.
    • Communicating to those organizations help communicate across organizations.
  • Penn State has a "Faculty Communities" project, a combination of drupal and confluence, pre-populated with people based on their college affiliation. 
    • Ranges across 22 campuses.
  • Central IT tends to think of itself as mainly supporting Administrative Computing
  • Leveraging Virtual apps as a way to make research connections (offering services)
  • Offering services (backups) has helped spur communications
    • Funding can be a challenge for central IT offerings to other departments
  • Upcoming NSF data rules / regs may (or already) starting to spur communication back to central IT
  • Relationship Management is a way to approach central communication
    • Penn state has someone that fills the role of Central IT reaching out to Researchers
  • Central IT has a fear that they have services to offer, but no funding to support them offered campus wide
  • Some researchers will feel that their needs aren't entirely met when using central IT (need of SLAs, and meeting them)
    • Challenge of central IT moving slow, and researchers moving fast or at their own pace
  • Are central IT groups really providing a public list of services available (30% of room maybe)
  • The need for someplace to go that is going to provide pertinent info about services available
  • At UBC a central research office exists where formal grant proposals are reviewed prior to submitting.  They are trying to get IT involved in that process.
    • Cyber-integration technology office (3 staff) that help researches, often on a .5 fte tied into the grant funding
  • HPC seems to be a common thread of researchers that are able to collaborate with central IT.
  • Need to find the things that have value for the researchers.
  • Some success building hubs (not a big portal) for research groups, assuming they can bring some funding to the table.
  • If research papers contained discussion about how projects were built it could help foster advancement
  • Researcher needs are often unique, which presents challenges to structure central IT
  • Question: How important is a background in research for a research advocate in IT.  Answer: Very important, they should be viewed as a peer.
    • Question: How difficult is it to find someone with that background for the job.  Answer: Look for people that have fallen off of the tenure track.
  • Are there research support IT groups? Conferences? Organizations?
    • Educase has had special interest meetings in the past.
  • How much do faculty listen to communications from the provost?
  • What about providing computing support information to new faculty during the on boarding process?
  • If departmental IT people are provided with research support information they can use that information when researchers come to them for support.
  • It's a cultural change that is needed to grow an organization from little central IT research support to more research support
  • Common thread of a need to have a dedicate research advocate in IT to guide researchers

ACTIVITIES GOING FORWARD / NEXT STEPS

  • Sharing of U of Toronto's document.
  • Sharing of the job descriptions of the Customer Relations Manager, or the central IT research support staff member.

If slides are used in the session, please ask presenters to convert their slides to PDF and email them to SteveO@internet2.edu

Thank you!

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