Office of Information Technology
About
The Office of Information Technology (OIT)
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) delivers high-quality information technology solutions and services that further Brown University's ability to achieve its mission of excellence in education, research, and public leadership.
To this end we strive to:
- Encourage, enable and drive collaboration both across and beyond Brown through services, training, and tools
- Empower University decision-makers through transparent access to enterprise data
- Deploy technology resources creatively in support of Building on Distinction
- Keep abreast of emerging technologies and practices and drive innovation
- Develop forward-thinking, innovative strategies to support teaching and learning and state of the art research
- Provide a robust, reliable, and secure environment
OIT is the centralized computing department at Brown, with over 180 staff. OIT supports over 120 services.
DCCs and Sysadmins
While many academic and administrative areas of Brown are supported by OIT's own IT Help Desk and IT Support Consultants, the IT Support community at Brown also includes a number of Departmental Computing Coordinators (DCCs) and System Administrators (Sysadmins). These are computer support staff employed directly within a department, division or school.
If a department has a dedicated support person, they are encouraged to designate that person as a Departmental Computing Coordinator. The purpose of this program is to recognize the important role local Coordinators play and to help them do their job. The role of a DCC depends upon the skills and specialization of the Coordinator involved, the needs of the individual department and the time that the appointed Coordinator has available to devote to the task. A Coordinator might act in one or more of the following capacities:
- Sharing information about campus computing directions, activities and opportunities with other members of the department.
- Planning or assisting in planning departmental computing directions to meet existing and expected computing needs.
- Implementing new systems and applications and upgrading existing facilities (e.g., hardware installation and maintenance, programming, software installation, hardware and software upgrades).
- Training and supporting departmental users (including writing documentation).
- Administering shared systems such as network servers and printers.
- to help DCCs do their jobs
- to encourage interaction among DCCs for the exchange of ideas and problem-solving strategies
- to provide a forum in which DCCs can discuss computing issues and trends
- to provide timely information about campus computing activities, services and directions
- to make special services available to them
- Monthly meetings to provide an occasion for getting to know other DCCs, to exchange ideas and questions, and to hear speakers address relevant computing topics and/or issues. Meetings are held on the 2nd Wednesday of every month.
- An electronic conference to share information among DCCs and with OIT staff.
- Priority service from OIT in addressing problems. OIT recognizes that DCCs will be resolving problems for others, and to assist DCCs in doing this will give priority to resolving DCC questions over individual users' problems.
- Specialized training courses covering topics ranging from trouble-shooting computer problems to new products and technologies.
- Early access to new services and systems before they are generally released on campus by OIT. Involving Coordinators in testing helps DCCs to anticipate usage within their departments and to learn in advance about new services. At the same time it helps OIT uncover unforeseen problems before release.
The DCC program is currently run by a steering committee of seven DCCs and OIT support staff from various disciplines across campus plus an OIT liaison. If you would like more information on this program, please contact the OIT DCC liaison.
Departmental IT Groups
Several Brown academic and administrative units have internal IT groups, including:
- Advancement Systems
- Department of Computer Science
- Institute for Computational & Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM)
- Library Systems
- Population Studies and Training Center
- Research Administration Information Systems
- School of Engineering
Advisory Groups
- IT Advisory Board (ITAB)
- Council on Computing and Information Technology (ACCIT)