Informationsinfrastrukturen im Wandel. Changing ... - DINI

228 Ulrich Hohoff, Leopold Eichner
The four pillars of information and communication supply
The model of Augsburg University‟s new IT service center is based on
the assumption that the range of information and communication tasks can
be subdivided into four main areas. These four pillars are the competence
for infrastructure in the sense of ‚technology‟ (computers and networks)
and ‚content‟ (content mangement), which are supplemented by the competence
for workstation support (decentralised IT service of the faculties) and
combined with the competence for continual ‚innovation‟ of the information
and communication services.
All areas that participate in supplying information and communication
services are included into the ITS. Its core are five components of the university
infrastructure, namely, the university library, the computer center,
the video laboratory and two departments of the university administration:
the DP department and the department for machine technology/information
technology. Together with the decentralised IT service provided by the
faculties and the central institutions, they represent the ‚classical‟ area of IT
services. Experience has taught that the individual chairs add their own
contributions to the supply of information and communication services,
mainly to satisfy their own respective needs. The total of these contributions
by individual academics to the supply of information and communication
services at least equals the contributions of the classical suppliers of
information and communication services. Thus, it is only consistent to integrate
the academic staff into the organisational structure of the ITS. The
valuable capacities gathered this way shall in future be used to spur on the
innovative development of the supply of information and communication
services; these capacities shall no longer be wasted on redundant work, as
is often the case today.
Members and tasks of the governing committee
For the organisational implementation of this cooperative model, every
one of the pillars described above will be represented by one person in the
ITS governing committee. Its members, who may also be specialists from
outside the university, will be appointed by the university management and
officiate for a set time. In the setting-up phase of the ITS the following
persons will be members of the governing committee: for the pillar ‚innovation‟,
the academic director of the computer center (who also holds one
of the chairs for informatics), for ‚infrastructure‟, the director of the univer-