Issue link: http://uwashington.uberflip.com/i/223926
Service Made Simple Partnering to pioneer a new tool for one-stop, end-to-end IT service M ick Westrick, IT Director for the Foster School of Business, understands why his customers sometimes get confused or frustrated trying to get IT services. "It can be tough to know who to call," Westrick said. "For instance, if you have a broken projector bulb in your classroom, you need to call a different group than if you have a broken lightbulb. The same is true for different types of IT issues. Should I call my School's IT department—or UW-IT?" Multiply this problem by the number of local IT support staff across the University, and the need for a simpler, more efficient method to get help becomes clear. That's one key reason why UW-IT is partnering with the Business School to implement a new IT service management platform. The new application will support the lifecycle of IT services, from the time they're developed until they're retired. It will let users easily report issues, automatically route them to the correct place and track progress until the problem is solved. It will also create a selfhelp knowledge base, establish a standard terminology for IT issues, address duplicate services and more. Westrick and the Foster School are UW-IT's initial partners for the pilot effort to build and test the system. Over the next year or so, UW-IT will begin to integrate the new service management application into almost every aspect of its business. Eventually, UW-IT plans to offer this new toolset to local IT departments across the UW, with the goal of creating a unified, automated system for accessing and delivering help. 10 UW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY