Question about computer policy at university

In My Humble Opinion
41

But when a low-level IT person makes a unilateral decision like this without even asking the end users what sort of useability they need, and without any consultation whatsoever with the faculty who paid for the computers or the grad students who them, then there’s a problem.

Actually, the large computer labs that do allow students to save files are overseen by the campus’s main IT desk, with a staff of people who know what they’re doing and who have set up those computers so that the hard drives can be used without causing any major problems.

Our department, on the other hand, is having its policy dictated by an IT guy who was originally hired as an administrative assistant in the departmental office, and who graduated to IT when a hole opened up for someone who was not knowledgeable enough to be on the proper IT team, but who knew sufficiently more about computers than the department’s professors to be able to help them with software installation, antivirus updating, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m not ridiculing the guy. He’s a nice bloke, he seems to work hard, and i’m sure he knows more about computers than i do. But, as micco correctly guessed, this is a guy with “low-to-moderate technical qualifications and zero management qualifications” who may well have made this decision “because it made his life easier.” This happens far more often than it probably should in universities, leading to situations where use of technology is potentially dictated by the IT person’s lack of expertise in his or her field.

Actually, as i’ve stated more than once (are you actually paying attention?), this policy will have zero effect on me. I have probably sat in front of those computers twice in the past year, and both times was merely to check my email when i happened to be on one of my infrequent visits to the grad lounge. I do all my own work on my home computer.

No, i haven’t said that at all. Some of the reasons given have been very good reasons—if applied to different situations. Most people who have offered specific reasons (hard drive usage; users bothering IT people all the time; data and overall system integrity, etc., etc.) have also noted that such problems are particularly prevalent on systems with high numbers of users. Most of the problems they describe could be avoided IN THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION by setting up the computer properly, communicating certain requirements about its use to the end users, and monitoring the computers every so often to ensure that security software is up to date. The small number of people who use the systems, the fact that they all want the computers to work properly, and the fact that very few (if any) of them seem interested in installing wacky and wierd stuff or surfing to dodgy websites means that, with a bit of care, the computers should be fine.

Now you’re just projecting.

Not at all.

First, all i want is for these IT policies to be decided after the tiniest bit of consultation with the people who might actually be affected by them. The final policy won’t affect me at all, as i don’t use the machines in questions.

And, as i’ve already pointed out, the answers provided by other people are not “wrong” in any generic sense. It just seems to me that they don’t apply particularly well to THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION (are you getting it now?), and that there are workarounds which would allow the hard drives to be used without seriously compromising system integrity and without placing an undue burden on the IT person.

And to all the IT people out there: i’m not down on IT people. I know some people who work in my university’s IT department, and some of the stories they tell about idiotic users are enough to make you tear your hair out. And i’ve seen plenty of rants about stupid users from IT people on this very board. I have a lot of sympathy for those IT folk who have to deal with morons on a regular basis. But, as in most other areas, there is no “one size fits all” way to do things, and policy should be decided based on the particulars of each situation, and in consultation with those who actually need to use the machines.

42

Actually, most of the problems are directly and simply avoided simply by locking down the computer and asking users to save their files on a USB drive. The reality is that it’s not inconvenient to save something on a USB drive. Nothing is preventing you from accomplishing what you want to with the computer, and the actual change that the Grad students need to make is negligible, so I’m not sure why a pre-consultation with the users would be necessary.

The key question that has been asked multiple times, but not answered is what’s so inconvenient about using a USB drive instead of the hard drive? The answer is “nothing”.

Regardless of how you feel about the IT guy and consistency between how the departments computers are managed vs. the computer lab, the department’s IT guy is accountable for managing the department’s computers in an efficient manner, and helping ensure the technology environment for his department is usable and available. Given that you haven’t articulated what the inconvenience is (because there isn’t one) I’d argue that he’s doing a good job - it’s just that you need to get into the mindset that he was hired to manage the department’s computers and he’s put in a fairly non-disruptive, but effective process to help him do that.

43

I completely understand the OP’s point of view as I had to endure the same level of totalarian authority of IT staff when i was doing my undergraduate studies as a computer science student. While understanding the need to maintain the campus network to its maximum efficieny , the main idea of having a computer network is to support the students and let them reap the full benefits of technologies.

If there are problem such as spyware,viruses DEAL with it. Thats why the university management pay them a salary and keep them as IT support!! Although USB is a very handy tool, how many times do you get caught in situations where USB is not available handily?

And most of these IT staff doesnt have a clue about computing needs of the students. Heck , we pay awful lot of money to get a crappy service?

Although my uni had a network space for each and every student, but we didnt have the rights to install any software on pc’s. We did get lot of network related project demos to do for our course work and these guys DID NOT let us use the lab pc network for this purpose with our custom built software. If we cant use the PC’s for their real potential why the hell we pay for them through our course fees??
IMO saving a file is basic right of a computer user. If we have USB’s that fine. But IT staff doesnt have the ethical right to dictate such terms to the users without porper explanation.

44

It seems to me that the Dopers have come forth with their thoughts on reasons behind the policy. It further seem that you don’t consider these reasons justification for the policy in this case. Seeing as this is GQ not GD its not going to do any good to debate the reasons with us as we have no control over the policy in question. You should likely take up the argument with the IT guy or, if you feel you must, with his superior. That is the only way that the situation has any real chance of changing in your favor.

45

Moved to IMHO.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

46

As i said earlier, i have emailed him asking for an explanation. That was on Monday. I’m waiting to see if he will deign to reply.

47

I agree, which is why I explained what I consider to be the qualifications for making this kind of policy. I deal with the security issues constantly, so you and I are on the same side regarding how the policy should be set. I was simply responding to the OP’s situation where the policy was pretty clearly made by someone who shouldn’t be making policy in the first place. The OP wanted to know why anyone would make this policy and, IMO, the answer is that the IT guy set a policy that was most convenient for him without regard to other issues. I doubt he even seriously considered the security issues aside from the fact that this policy would make his life easier and not hurt security (since CYA probably edges out laziness for the top spot on his priority list).

48

What issues weren’t being regarded when this policy was being set? Maybe the new policy was set because, from the point of view of the IT guy, “this makes life a whole lot easier for me, and it doesn’t hinder use of the computers because they can still save their files on removable devices.” If he’s failing to take some particular usage scenario into account with this policy, it might be because nobody has been able to articulate a usage scenario that’s actually affected much at all by the new policy.

So, once again: you claim that they have basically made these computers useless, saying the new policy “defeats most of the purpose of the machines.” So what was it that these people were doing that they can’t do now?

I hate to break it to you, kid, but it’s somewhat unusual for a university computer lab to have their computers set up in such a way that you can save your files on it and expect to come back the next day and have your files still be there. And it’s especially unusual for campus IT people to respond well to indignant students demanding computer priveleges when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Yes, I’m getting it loud and clear. You don’t think any of the reasons apply to your situation, but you have no good reasons for thinking that. You’ve made a lot of absurd statements in this thread that make it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that is why the IT guy has a lot more say in policy than you do. No, he should not be able to single-handedly set draconian policy that adversely impacts use of the computers. But for the millionth time, how does this policy make the computers “effectively useless” as you claim?

49

That’s the second time in two posts that you’ve referred to me as a child. Your patronising tone might make you feel special, but it makes me disinclined to offer you any response acceptable in this forum.

50

I understand what you’re saying, but that’s far from “pretty clear.” Imagine yourself in the IT guy’s shoes. The hard drives are a mess and you’re constantly having to clean them up. You ask your bosses if the students really need to be able to save files on the hard drives, explaining that USB drives and floppies will still be available if you lock the hard drives down, and explaining that freeing up this time will give you N more hours per week to do your TPS reports. They say that it’s not strictly necessary to have write access to the hard drive. You “single-handedly” institute a new policy based on your knowledge of the requirements of the machines. The students, having failed to distinguish between “removal of a privilege” and “violation of a right”, are, of course, outraged.

In this situation, you’re not a power-hungry IT guy looking to hobble your users with unreasonable limitations. You’re just trying to meet the basic needs of your users with a minimum of effort, because you’ve undoubtedly got other things to do besides babysit these three computers all day long.

51

Ok, I take that back. Now, how is this policy hindering use of the computers?

52

That is indeed the question. I am sitting here trying to think of a file type that can’t go conveniently on a USB drive, is important enough to want to save yet not so important that its loss by cleaning the hard drive occasionally is a disaster. The only data I can see that fits that criteria is massive pirated files. The OP says that is not being downloaded and is not the problem. I am at a loss how this is such a huge imposition.

Call me cynical, but giving 20 people reasonably anonymous access to a broadband connection almost always IME leads to at least some pr0n/warez showing up on a computer.

53

Thirding the request that the OP explain how, exactly, being forced to use removable rather than fixed storage when the user presumably has no other administrative rights renders the computers unusable.

I’m a network admin for a company with fifteen employees. I give my users two choices: save everything on the file server, or don’t save anything. The only people who have full administrative access to their machines are the developers and other admins, and they’ve got full responsibility for their own boxes.

54

One more thing: I can see the utility of setting up a ramdisk (if you can even do that in Windows) or maybe opening up C:/tmp for certain situations where the users might be working with particularly large files, like in a special purpose graphics lab or something.

But for history students? No way. I used to be a history student, and I don’t ever recall using anyting but Word an possibly Excel.

55

I was in college for 4.5 years. Spent hours each day in front of campus computer and it never once occurred to me that I SHOULD have file-saving privelidges.

USB drives weren’t around then, so everyone had to carry a 3.5" floppy. Some carried Zip discs too. When you did orientation, they supplied you with a floppy on which to store all your email (they didn’t have Webmail yet).

I wasn’t privy to any “graduate student lab” but I spent alot of time in the journalism labs. They required us to use Zip discs to save everything - except in the newsroom, where your stories belonged to the newspaper anyway.

I REALLY don’t see the problem here…

56

there are two types of people: 1) those who have lost data, and 2) those who will.

while the intent of your post was not to reveal the merits of restricting hard-drive access, the IT guy may have prolonged your status in category 2.

57

So, any news? Did they tell you their reasons?

58

Nope. I’ve had no reply as yet. I’ll give them until early next week before sending another request. As soon as i hear something, i’ll report back.

59

sigh Never mind. I thought this was the new thread, but that’s the one in the other tab. Didn’t mean to resurrect the dead. Sorry, gang.

60

Coming in late to the thread, sorry.

I, too, have access to computers in a history graduate student office. The new policy sounds absolutely bizarre to me. We can save whatever we want on the hard drives, which I never do - as we also have our own personal storage space on the network.