Provide customer support service in the use of various electronic communications tools for accessing network services, applications and information including such services as installation, testing, training and documentation.

IMPORTANCE TO UNIVERSITY MISSION:

• Assists the university community with creativity in the discovery & communication of knowledge.
• Supports serving the cultural needs of our community and society.
• Supports the goal of reducing bureaucracy at McMaster by making it easy to inform people.
• Supports the goal of originality in research and learning by providing a gateway to the world.
• Supports the goal of developing partnerships by making access to others simple.
• Supports collaboration, the sharing of information, sharing of expertise very economically on an international basis.
• Assists university members to keep current with peers and colleagues at other institutions as well as communicate with various associations and special interest groups.
• Provides increased accessibility on campus by reducing communication time lags, and bureaucracy.

The McMaster community (faculty, staff, students), including alumni and retirees, prospective students (grads and undergrads) and faculty, other institutions, international community; potentially anyone on the Internet.

HOW WELL IS IT DONE? HOW DO I MEASURE?

(a) Achievement of Objectives

-Approximately 5100 faculty and staff have an account that allows the use of electronic mail on CIS managed equipment as well as access to listservs, usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web. This includes approximately 2000 faculty and staff associated with the Faculty of Health Sciences. In addition, 2300 graduate students and 13,500 undergraduate students also enjoy these same services as provided by CIS.

-Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly summary statistics are kept regarding accounts and services accessed.

-Conduct occasional customer surveys.

-Training sessions include time for suggestions, comments and questions.

-Email Accounts are available to all students and employees at no charge.

(b) Service Level

Service descriptions are made available to the campus community.

(c) Cost

- Hardware costs are approximately $50K per year, 2 FTEs plus parts of numerous other FTE's.

Electronic communications and information tools have become integral to University operations. Provides contact with colleagues and the international community via ONet and to the world internet. Increasingly, commercial and government agencies now choose to communicate with the University community electronically. (NSERC, various Government ministries, businesses or commercial enterprises as well as Alumni and prospective students from around the world)