General Services
General Services
For context, General Services is one of three NSIT Service areas: Academic Technologies, Administrative Systems, and General Services. General Services focuses on that broad spectrum of services generally available to the University community. In designing General Services, NSIT brought together client-facing services and applications delivery capabilities in order to bring technology services closer to the interactions with clients. In 2006, the client-facing parts of General Services included Computing help services, Voice Services, Desktop Support and Leasing, Hardware and Software Sales (formerly the Campus Computer Stores), the Identification and Privileges Office, and applications delivery and management provided by Network Based Services. The Network Security Center also operates through General Services.
NSIT General Services Mission Statement
NSIT General Services provides communal IT products and services that meet University of Chicago customer requirements. Through collaboration and interaction with customers and colleagues, we deliver and support technologies appropriate to the high standards of the entire university community. We work to balance customer needs while being responsible for the efficient allocation of resources.
General Services Statistical Abstract
These statistics from fiscal year 2006-2007 represent only a brief overview of the daily operational volume managed by General Services.
- Tech Support had 20,000 contacts with approximately 5,700 different clients across campus.
- Desktop Leasing & Support provided comprehensive services to 55 departments.
- Campus Computer Stores had total orders of almost 13,500, including almost 5,400 CPUs (Wintel, Apple, Unix) sold.
- Identification and Privileges Office had over 11,000 Chicago ID Card transactions: new cards, replacements, terminations, and over 2,400 photo rosters for classes.
- Voice Services had over 125,000 telephone calls offered by Operator and Repair services with an average speed to answer between 5-8 seconds. They had over 3,700 voice trouble tickets handled for telephone adds, changes, moves, and disconnects.
- Network Based Services managed over 1,000,000 email messages per day; over 14,000 webmail users, managing over 4,000 lists.
Recently, General Services has implemented a number of new capabilities to enhance services to the community: for example, xMail, Webshare, Spam Filtering, new ID card capabilities, Exchange calendar, and new list management. Each of these new services require expert development, management, and client support. Even as new services are made available, there are, as always, exciting projects already in development to keep pace with the technology and business needs of the university. More detail about activities in the past year is available through the General Services Quarterly Reports.
You can also view the list of technology services that General Services provides to the University.
Last updated: 7/21/08