Craig, Andrew, Wesley, etal -
I appreciate your responses to my email.  I know I am not the only one
frustrated with this situation and I think there have been some good
suggestions about how we can begin to solve this dilemma.  I believe that
CIT does a great job with the limited resources (both staff and $$$) they
have.  But given their limited resources and the fact that neither CIT nor
any other UVM entity seems to have the authority to take the lead on these
important issues, I am hoping that the VPLIT will or that a grassroots
effort will solve the leadership issue.
There are a couple of other issues I believe are extremely important
campuswide besides the software purchase/conformity issue (and that is a
big one in my book).   2.  Creating and updating departmental Web pages -
who is/should be doing this?  How this is/should be funded? How much are we
currently spending at UVM on this?  Are there more efficient/less expensive
ways of doing this?   3. Electronic data and creating databases for
electronic forms.   A lot of time could be saved at UVM if we eliminated
some of the paper forms and other paper data collection we do.  After the
electronic form is created there is then the issue of getting this data
into a USABLE format (a bunch of data in an email just doesn't work for
me).  There is no central support to do this, and for many of the people
whose work life this affects, these are not necessary simple, fast skills
to learn.  Again, this is not a CIT problem, it's an institution-wide problem.
Craig's idea for folks to meet every 2 months sounds like a good start -
how do others feel about this?  Depending on the timing, that might be a
little too much time between meetings for my needs (I will start Training &
Development Course planning in January for summer, so any new training
needs requiring software purchases has to happen in the next 6 - 8 weeks
for me).  How do others feel about meeting?
Thanks for listening, Lynn
Lynn