Organizational Relationships Among Service Providers

  The organization of the networking environment at the University of Florida is highly complex because of funding, history, and administrative structure.  The University receives  state funding in three distinct operating budgets, one for the Health Science Center, another for the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and the third, Education and General, which supports all of the other academic and research programs of UF.  Administratively, the University is highly decentralized; colleges and departments enjoy a good measure of autonomy.  Thus,  as the need for networking services began to be felt, the budget units and colleges within these units responded in differing ways, depending on resources available to them and the priorities they placed on access to computing and networks for their faculty, staff, and students.

  As a result, the development, operation,  and maintenance support for data communications is a series of shared responsibilities.  From the budget framework, four network organizations have emerged:  HEALTHNET, ICON, NERDC, and Network Services.

  The organizational chart in Appendix 3 shows the relationships among these major providers.  More detailed mission statements are also included in Appendix 3.

This division of responsibilities and sharing of resources for network communications recognizes the historical and budgetary distinctions within the University wherein each of the units described above has its own special mission and constituencies.  At the day-to-day operational level, there seems to be fairly general agreement that relationships among these service providers are reasonably effective and have substantially improved over the past several years, perhaps in part because each manager, as a Council member, has had continuing opportunity to interact on a regular basis with his or her peers in the resolution of networking problems.  In addition, the interactions between faculty and staff on the three very active standing committees of CITS have resulted in some positive contributions to our networking environment.

  However, when it comes to describing current relationships within a formal document, differences in perspective are clearly evident.  A self-description of service providers is attached (see Appendix 3.) There are instances of overlap between, ambiguity within, and even disagreement with, the self-described role, scope,  and responsibility of each.  Though these formal differences sometimes cause serious, often heated disagreement, the professional commitment of the people involved has tended to minimize the impact of these disagreements upon daily operations, especially in the last three to four years.  More importantly, these differences in perspective also show up in expressions of viewpoint on where -- organizationally, fiscally, and technically -- the University should head in providing its critical network functions.  At present there is no consensus among the network services leadership on that direction and there are strongly held and articulated visions regarding it.  Yet, robust and comprehensive network services are critical to our future as we move into the next century.  There will never be enough resources, neither money nor personnel, to allow duplication of services or warfare over turf and technology.  These differences in perspective and vision must be resolved and resolved in such a manner that no resource is wasted nor energy lost as we build for the future.  No one knows the future;  we must forge consensus and allow for the flexibility we shall need to meet the challenges of the year 2000.

  We need to resolve the incongruities which render dysfunctional our abilities to establish clear organizational relationships and responsibilities among the network service providers.  The resources that we have must be utilized to provide the full range of services without unnecessary duplication and without territorial disputes at the expense of seamless service to the end users.  Meeting the networking needs of 1999 will require the full range of expertise we have on campus working in concert to meet our common goals.

  Recommendation OR1:  CITS needs to facilitate the establishment of clear working relationships and responsibilities among the major network service providers.