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Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 1998-99

Introduction

1 This report from the Information Technology Syndicate, which develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service, covers the year from August 1998 to July 1999. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services; breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available at http://www.cam.ac.uk/CS/ITSyndicate/AnnRep/stats98.99.html on the World Wide Web. Please note that the statistical information is not intended to be fully comprehensive, but only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.

Syndicate matters

2 Professor Weiss retired as Chairman in December 1998 and was replaced by Professor Longair. Another departure during the year was that of Professor Needham, who had served on this Syndicate (and before that on the Computer Syndicate) in many capacities over many years. Mr Robinson, Director of Management Information Services in the University Offices, was co-opted to improve liaison on administrative computing matters. The Technical Committee, under the chairmanship of Dr Heath, continued to produce extremely useful input on the technical aspects of a wide range of Syndicate business while also initiating useful proposals for action in other areas, including the managed PWF cluster service (see below).

3 The volume-based charges for incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic began on 1 August 1998, and quite early in the Michaelmas Term it became apparent both that the total use was larger than expected and that students in Colleges were responsible for a very large proportion of it. The Syndicate re-affirmed its decision to top-slice the charges for the first year but obtained approval to pass on the costs to individual institutions from 1 August 1999. In May, the Joint Information Systems Committee responded to the budgeting difficulties encountered by some other universities by deciding that for 1999-2000, each HEI should pay a fixed amount set in advance on the basis of actual use in 1998-99 (with that for 2000-01 depending in turn on actual use in 1999-2000). The Syndicate however doubted the wisdom of leaving such a long interval between the actual use and the charge made on account of it, and decided that the bills to individual institutions should reflect their actual share of the total Cambridge use in each particular quarter.

4 While the official transatlantic traffic information only provides a breakdown to the level of individual institutions, reducing the traffic effectively requires action by the owners of individual computers connected to the Internet. At the prompting of the Syndicate, the Computing Service developed and distributed very widely advisory material on how to stop accessing Web material directly and start using the (free) local and national caches. The Service also developed tools for investigating unusual patterns of use at the level of individual Internet addresses, and procedures for informing institutional staff so that they could give appropriate advice to the persons concerned. This policy was suspended for a time after being queried on privacy grounds, but following discussions involving the Technical Committee and the Senior Tutors' Committee, suitable safeguards were devised for its continuation.

5 Other issues discussed by the Syndicate included Computing Service priorities for dealing with different kinds of problems which might arise in early 2000, the security of the University Data Network, and operational concerns about the resilience of critical Service facilities (all dealt with in more detail below), and also the additional resources which will be required by the Service when the rest of the Computer Laboratory moves to West Cambridge.

6 While the General Board did not adopt the Syndicate's precise proposals for adjusting the lower grade Computer Officer salary scales to make it easier to recruit good young staff, enough freedom of action was provided by other means to alleviate the main problems. In July 1999, the Syndicate proposed the establishment of a single Appointments Committee to deal with all computer staff appointments, while the reorganization of the senior managerial grades following the introduction of the grade of Senior Lecturer is to be discussed early in 1999-2000.

The University Computing Service

7 The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:

Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;

Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but are similar to the facilities which some institutions provide in-house for their own staff and students;

Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;

Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff, and a wide range of training courses.

8 During the year, the Service was organized in five divisions, three looking after centrally-managed facilities and providing specialized technical support, and two supporting users, either individually or by institution.

The Network division ran the University Data Network (CUDN) and the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), and provided support for institutional networking;

The Systems and Development division was responsible for the PWF and the Pelican archive service;

The Systems and Unix division was responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services, and the provision of Unix support to individual institutions;

The User Services division had two Sections: Technical User Services was responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, technical user support, the hardware maintenance service, and the video-conferencing service. The responsibilities of Information, Sales, and Administration included information provision, user administration, software sales, hardware purchasing advice, the printing service, and the photography and illustration service;

The Institution Liaison division maintained contact with Heads of Department and other senior staff concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters.

9 The table above gives the estimated cost of each of the individual services provided by the Computing Service, with the 1998 figures in italics. All expenditure is included, whether funded centrally or by making cost recovery charges to end users. The latter were somewhat less heavily used this year (£1,316K in 1999 compared with £1,475K in 1998), but still accounted for 27.5% of the total.

Three major issues affecting many parts of the Service are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.

Year 2000

10 During the year, the Computing Service completed the replacement of all equipment which had been identified as non-Year 2000 compliant; although this involved considerable expenditure on new CUDN routers and CUS and Hermes fileservers, substantial performance and reliability benefits were also realized. The Year 2000 Web pages, intended to inform users, were regularly updated with the latest information from suppliers and other sources, while staff continued to attend the Treasurer's Year 2000 Working Party and spent some time evaluating departmental responses to the questionnaire about identifying critical systems and formulating appropriate action plans. The Service also considered contingency plans for January 2000 and decided that, except as otherwise constrained by major problems such as the loss of essential services, its order of priority for dealing with requests for help would be safety and security of the GBN and CUDN, advising Techlinks, institutional networks, servers, and other shared facilities, and the recovery of lost data. Advice to ordinary users would be limited to problems with central facilities and could be given a low priority in the event of a support crisis.

Network security

11 The last report drew attention to the problems which can be caused when unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world gain unauthorized access to the CUDN and the computers attached to it. During the year, the Computing Service continued to carry out regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, in order to identify instances of known security weaknesses and to feed back the results and recommendations for remedial action to local computer support staff. This procedure has worked very well, and a high degree of co-operation has been shown by all concerned, but the multitude of hackers and the rate at which new security loopholes are being discovered and posted on the Internet make it inevitable that some attacks will be successful and will cause considerable disruption.

12 The worst single incident caused the CUS to be disconnected from the network for two and a half days in the middle of November while staff tracked down the cause (a known loophole, but in code which ought not to have been present in our version of the operating system). All 8,000 CUS users needed to change their passwords and in a major exercise for staff and users alike, one-third of them were dealt with in the first 48 hours after service resumed. A second breach of CUS security was discovered on 1 April and also involved large numbers of enforced password changes. In June, an intruder used a new script to probe all the systems in the University and was successful in breaking into over 40 of them; if sniffer programs had also been installed to collect user passwords, then it would almost certainly have been necessary to disconnect the whole of Cambridge from JANET until the mess had been sorted out. The local Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) also investigated many other attacks which only affected individual institutions or even single machines.

13 Apart from repeatedly exhorting the managers of all the machines on CUDN to make sure that they are running the latest secure versions of system software, and regularly inspecting Web sites where the hackers post the latest loophole information, there are few precautions which the Computing Service can take without adversely impacting bona fide network use. Blocking a particular internet port (except for traffic to specially registered machines) was employed in March to cut off a continuing flood of junk mail being relayed through Cambridge servers, and other ports may well have to be blocked selectively in the same way in the future. Fortunately, and not least because of the work going on behind the scenes to keep the misuse in check, most users still find that as far as they are concerned the advantages of using networks far outweigh the occasional difficulties.

Resilience of critical Computing Service facilities

14 A number of incidents brought home the extent to which thousands of people throughout the University now rely very heavily indeed on the CUDN, electronic mail, and similar services for their day to day work. Losing CUS for three days in November (due to hacking) badly affected those users who still relied on it for e-mail, while the subsequent increased use of the Hermes mail store showed up a file server software problem which required several weekend file copying and redistribution sessions to maintain service until the whole server could be replaced. The CUDN's good reliability record was spoilt when a router fault at power-up, after scheduled work on the electricity supply in February, shut down the whole network for most of a day and left some institutions disconnected for almost three days.

15 The Computing Service and the IT Syndicate looked very closely at how to improve matters and concluded that there was no real shortage of equipment funds (indeed the CUDN fault was harder to deal with because it happened halfway through the installation of improved router equipment, when the network was temporarily in a rather non-standard state). The main problem was a shortage of posts, which meant that staff with the expertise to design resilient systems and to put things right quickly when they went wrong were spread much too thinly (typically only one per service). As a result of strong representations on this issue, three additional posts have been provided and more are likely to be requested in due course.

16 Finally, the early summer months were punctuated by a series of power outages for reasons ranging from scheduled work at the electricity substation through thunderstorms to careless cleaners. Detailed equipment and procedural changes have been made in response to individual incidents, but a more general solution is proving elusive. There are very real practical difficulties which seem to rule out installing on the crowded New Museums Site an uninterruptible power supply and diesel generator with the capacity to maintain indefinitely enough of the network and network-related services to be worthwhile. Instead various alternatives are under active consideration with the intention of having something in place by the summer of 2000.

Network

JANET and SuperJANET

17 During the year, Cambridge was twice cut off the network for extended periods (of 16 and 42 hours); UKERNA have been asked not only to ensure that this does not happen again, but also to change the design of the network so that when the link to London goes down, it does not also cut access between the University and local institutions with their own SuperJANET connections, such as Homerton and the Sanger Centre. During the year, the capacity of the transatlantic link was first increased to 155 Mbit/s and then doubled; this was successful in removing congestion but also caused a sharp increase in the charged transatlantic traffic. By the end of the year, the 8 Mbit/s limit on all outgoing traffic to SuperJANET was regularly being reached; while additional capacity is available it will have to be paid for.

18 Another outline bid for funding for a regional network was made under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative. EastNet will link seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Luton), Homerton College, the Norwich School of Art and Design, and Writtle College (Chelmsford). The bid is understood to have been successful and the next steps will be the establishment of an organization to run the network and the invitation of tenders for its installation.

Cambridge University Data Network

19 The Annex contains information on CUDN connections of various kinds at the end of 1998-99. The little-used X.25 service is to be withdrawn at the end of September 1999, while the surviving asynchronous lines are only retained for special purposes. The number of ethernet connections continues to increase and 22 out of 141 are now rated at 100 Mbit/s or faster. Although the ethernet connections (at 10 or 100 Mbit/s) certainly carry the vast majority of CUDN traffic, their numbers alone are somewhat misleading because a single ethernet link may well be used to connect extensive local area networks (LANs), covering a whole building or even a whole Department. A far better indicator of the continuing and explosive growth in network activity and in the number of computer systems attached to the CUDN is given by the total of Internet addresses issued for the University and Colleges; at the end of 1998-99 this was over 29,500, rather more than 50% up on the total of 18,900 at end of 1997-98.

20 The institutional ethernet links are connected to a backbone of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres. During the year, the last of the older and non-Year 2000 compliant routers in this backbone were replaced, with the result that all CUDN client sites can now have 100 Mbit/s connections. Although over 2,200 people (mostly staff and graduate students) are now registered to use the charged Magpie fast modem service, no congestion has been encountered since the installation of a further 30 ports in November. By July, a service to the V.90 56 Kbit/s standard was in place (although not all users found it worked well for them), and a pilot service for access using the ISDN protocol (e.g. via BT Highway) was imminent.

21 Staff continued to put much effort into advising institutions on how to wire up buildings, establish LANs, and connect them to the CUDN, although once again difficulties were encountered when Departments which had located groups in accommodation on remote sites not served by the GBN, without considering either the practicality or the cost of network connectivity, nonetheless expected the Computing Service to provide a CUDN connection at extremely short notice. The reductions in CUDN charges from 1 August 1998 clearly encouraged many institutions to install 100 Mbit/s ethernet service connections or to upgrade existing 10 Mbit/s ones; most CUDN charges are down again from 1 August 1999, while Virtual Private Networks are now available (in suitable cases) for the first time.

Granta Backbone Network

22 The Computing Service continued to carry out all operations on behalf of the Granta Backbone Network Management Committee (as described in its Annual Report). The programme of installing additional cables on congested routes, where almost all the original 62.5 μm fibres were already in use, was completed and restored the ability to provide links between any pair of GBN sites. Diversions were required on account of new buildings at Madingley Rise and Chemistry, the latter bringing to light duct damage which dated back several years, but only showed up when staff tried to install an additional cable. While the CUDN remained the largest single user of GBN fibres, there was also a steady demand for new links for other uses.

Network-related services

Electronic mail

23 The reconfiguration of the Hermes mailstore and the installation of new equipment during the summer of 1998 produced a system which coped well with the load at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, despite a late scare when an apparently routine system software upgrade led to severe performance problems, which were only solved with a day to spare. With the (considerable) exception of the file server problems already mentioned, Hermes then worked well for the rest of the year, delivering a total of 150 GB of mail (compared with 77 GB in 1997-98). The number of messages increased by only 50% (showing that individual messages are getting longer), and user accesses by around 30%. Despite these successes, the rise in demand seems unending and the present system will not scale indefinitely, so staff are already thinking about the need for a rather fundamental 'under the covers' redesign.

Information services

24 The World Wide Web search engine (web-search.cam.ac.uk) introduced in the summer of 1998 uses commercial search engine software (Ultraseek) to produce a single index of the contents of all relevant local Web servers, and allows outsiders to find what they are looking for without needing to take into account the complicated internal structure of the University. It was heavily used (41K searches in its first month), although it took users a little while to work out how to tailor their search requests to find just what they wanted, without also producing a great deal of extraneous material.

25 The Information Group completed the redesign of the Computing Service Web pages to orient them around user needs rather than the Service's internal structure and expects to have a Web-based information system for the PWF ready by October 1999. More input was provided to the development of the World Wide Web server at the University Offices (including the thorny issue of the design of the University's home page), while much general University information, including student prospectuses and Continuing Education information, continued to reside on the Service Web server. Staff also continued to provide taught courses for new and liaison meetings for all Webmasters, both being very well attended. Printed documentation was not ignored and a steady stream of new or updated material was produced, particularly that required by users of the Windows NT system now in use on the PWF.

26 During the year, requests to the Computing Service Web server (www.cam.ac.uk) totalled 29.8m (compared to 14.5m in 1997-98), with daily peaks of over 150K; in response, 118 GB of data (69 GB) was sent to computers in over 180 country-level domains (160). Although the rate of requests to Webmaster also increased initially, it later fell back to the same level as in 1998, presumably because of the success of the Web search engine. A pilot for a managed service to help institutions which are capable of Web authorship but lack the technical expertise to run their own Web server proved very successful and a full service will be introduced shortly. The second table below compares server activity in July 1999 and 1998.

27 The use of local and national cache server facilities to reduce external network usage by automatically maintaining local copies of recently referenced Web documents assumed much greater importance this year, with the emphasis on keeping down transatlantic traffic charges. This is clearly demonstrated by the data for server activity in July 1999 and 1998 in the table below.

28 With the equipment in the enlarged local cache functioning reliably, attention focused on how the overall performance of the local and national caches compared with fetching material directly. Cambridge staff initiated some major statistical investigations which were later taken up by the JANET national cache team, and traced the primary causes of some serious performance problems during early 1999 to network congestion, both within JANET and on the transatlantic link, rather than at the national cache itself. Some well-timed JANET upgrades removed these problems, a much-improved version of the cache software was installed, and some of the national cache systems were moved to London. Performance monitoring confirmed the significant improvements produced by these changes, which show that, at the present state of the art, caching on a large scale is no easy task. Towards the end of the year, further disc and memory upgrades were installed in the local cache systems.

29 The USENET news service provides Cambridge users with access to thousands of local and worldwide newsgroups, providing a forum for discussion and for the dissemination of information on a very wide range of topics. After last year's transfer to new and substantially more powerful hardware, the service functioned well and reliably.

Centrally-managed services

Public Workstation Facility

30 By October 1998, all PCs in the three teaching rooms (i.e. the Phoenix Room used primarily for training courses and the two newly-refurbished rooms in the Old Music School used primarily for undergraduate teaching) were set up to run Windows NT, although half the seats in the other public areas continued to have Windows 3.1 because some of the wide range of PWF applications would not then run under NT. The need for this gradually lessened, the remaining Mond Room seats were taken out of service by December, and all seats, including those in the departmental classrooms at Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics, will be running NT by October 1999. In July, the rather elderly Macintoshes in the Balfour Teaching Room and at Sidgwick Avenue were replaced by new G3 machines.

31 The Technical Committee working parties on Windows NT and on Novell Netware, both with members drawn from the Computing Service, Departments, and Colleges, continued to prove very useful for exchanging ideas and suggesting policy developments. The NT party produced a number of papers distilling the experiences of existing users for the benefit of those looking to set up NT systems for various purposes, while the Netware party came up with the idea of the managed cluster service, whereby the Computing Service would undertake (for a fee) certain aspects of facilities management for personal workstation clusters in Departments and Colleges. Great interest has been expressed in this, and a pilot scheme involving three Colleges and two Departments is underway.

32 The following table summarizes the use of the PWF in terms of users and sessions for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The number of active users dropped slightly, but the number of sessions was up by over 50%, while there was little change in the division of use between University and College registered users (the latter including all undergraduates).

Public Workstation Facility

Central Unix Service

33 The Sun SPARCserver-based Central Unix Service is widely used by researchers throughout the University while the similar Thor teaching facility supports taught Unix-based courses, primarily in science and technology. The CUS suffered so severely from the same operating system upgrade performance problem as Hermes (see above) that it was necessary to restore the previous version of the operating system just before the start of the Michaelmas Term; had this not been the case, the major security incident in November might have been avoided. In July, a new CUS fileserver introduced for Year 2000 compliance also produced improvements in performance, capacity, and support for a wider range of user accounts. The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1998-99, with that for 1997-98 in italics:

User administration

34 As a result of previous experience, the 1998 pre-registration of new undergraduates and postgraduates and the annual Magpie re-registration exercise all went very smoothly. The need to change all CUS passwords in November stretched staff and users to their utmost (see above); fortunately the improved procedures developed as a result of this incident (including ways of checking by telephone the identity of the surprising number of users who may be abroad but still need to access the CUS) could be applied when mass password changes were required again in April. Staff also took in their stride several smaller-scale password-changing exercises required as a result of security breaches in individual institutions.

35 The user administration manager was also responsible for the front-line investigation of almost 400 security and other incidents, both on Computing Service facilities and elsewhere in the University. While most attention was obviously focused on the serious network security breaches with external origins discussed above, these took place against a steady background of other incidents, including large-scale junk e-mailings ('spam'), offensive e-mail, pirated software, and harrassment of various kinds. As a sign of the times, information about a small number of specific incidents was requested by and provided to the police and other authorities.

Pelican data archive service

36 The Pelican data archive service continued to be widely used, with particularly large amounts being stored for University Library projects, including their collection of scanned photographic data. In July 1999, the archive contained 136 GB of data (compared to 118 GB a year earlier) which was being stored for 923 different users (884). During the year, plans were made to take advantage of falling prices to move the Pelican hardware from DAT-tape and robots to large amounts of disc storage, while replacing the existing Epoch hierarchical storage management software, for which maintenance support was being withdrawn, with a simpler version which would be written in-house and would maintain the existing user interface. To avoid any potential Year 2000 problems, the change will be completed by December 1999.

Advanced computing

37 The Computing Service continued to provide the Hitachi multiple parallel processor project (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.

Support services

Software Sales

38 Software Sales supplies members of the University and Colleges with a range of competitively priced software for personal computers and scientific workstations and also administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Users can consult a Web version of the software product catalogue and send order enquiries directly from its pages. The table below summarizes software sales for 1998-99, with the figures for 1997-98 in italics.

39 Monthly summaries of the time taken to process a request for software and have it ready for collection by the user showed that 70-90% of items ordered were available either immediately or within a week, while less than 6% were still outstanding after four weeks. Early in the year, discussions with Microsoft about site-wide agreements for the UK HE community were not altogether satisfactory, although the supplier did agree to extend its Select scheme, including concurrency, for a further two years until November 2001. In July, details of the cost of site licences under the latest version of Microsoft's Campus Agreement became available, and some other HEIs, including Oxford, have already decided to take part. Cambridge will have to decide early in the new academic year whether or not to follow suit.

Unix support

40 Unix Support experienced great difficulties in early 1999, when vacancies and long-term sick leave left the service's manager temporarily alone in post; fortunately by May the group was back to establishment. Although the service is meant to provide general support for the managers of Unix-based computing facilities in University institutions, in practice security requirements dominated all year and when staff were not out on site restoring the operating system of machines broken in the latest attack, they spent most of their time on preventative measures such as 'friendly probing', or closing loopholes before the hackers could get to them. Late in the year staff produced a CD of software which allows users to log in securely to CUS, Thor, and Hermes from most parts of the world; much interest has already been shown in it and the Computing Service intends to encourage use by making copies available free of charge.

Support for purchases of personal systems

41 Computing Service staff continued to advise both individual users and institutions about personal computer systems for particular needs and where to buy them most cheaply, based on regular meetings with major suppliers and the collation of information from vendors and other sources. Hundreds of University users came to the third successful annual Demonstration Day in November to see hardware and software vendors exhibit their wares.

External hardware maintenance

42 The Engineering Group provides many institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis. A computerized system for logging and tracking repair work was introduced, and steps were taken to be able to handle warranty repairs on certain Viglen PCs bought within the University and to qualify as an official Apple repairer so that the same can be done for Macintoshes. The following tables summarize work carried out during 1998-99 with figures for 1997-98 in italics; the 'other equipment' category includes over 80 monitor repairs under each heading and almost 100 laptops among the non-contract repairs.

Printing and Reproduction Service

43 The Xerox Docutech, the Xerox and Agfa colour machines, and the new booklet-making machine all continued to work reliably. In the year to July 1999, the Xerox Docutech produced a total of 1.68m impressions for the Computer Laboratory (up from 1.64m in the previous year) and 0.7m for external customers (0.9m). Colour copies totalled 16K for the Laboratory (12K) and 38K for external customers (19K).

Photography and Illustration Service

44 During its first full year as part of the Computing Service, this service processed 185K colour prints (up from 125K in the previous year), 800 black and white photographs (1,200), 10K films of transparencies (12K), 10K new or duplicate slides (10K), and over 900 posters (800). Photographs for sale were again taken at Congregations, both inside the Senate-House and on the Lawn, while staff were available to take pictures for other institutions as required. A new illustration technician post was created in order to give the manager of the service more time to become familar with new developments, particularly in digital photography. New equipment puchases included a digital camera and a replacement film recorder.

Video-conferencing Service

45 In October, the Computing Service began to offer a charged video-conferencing service using the suite and equipment left behind by Audio-visual Aids. Although the equipment worked very well and early users, including the Vice-Chancellor and principal officers, were successfully connected to locations around the world, it soon became apparent that the present studio was both too small and badly located for the out-of-hours use often needed for international sessions. Approval was therefore obtained to create a larger facility in a more central location (using the same equipment); this is expected to be in use by the end of 1999.

Advice and consultancy

Technical User Services

46 In addition to the activities described in the next two sections, Technical User Services (TUS) maintains a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. In response to the increased use of Windows NT networks throughout the University, a pilot WINS server was set up to evaluate the problems of resolution between Windows names and IP addresses; a production service is now imminent. Viruses remained high on the group's agenda, and much effort was put into both increasing user awareness and into finding Web-based means to facilitate the widespead distribution of anti-virus software to users with personal computers.

47 During the year, the joint Service/Library Electronic Reference Library server was provided with a WebSpirs interface so that users could access it using an ordinary Web browser. In addition to the Medline and MathSci databases, a small number of licences were obtained for GeoBase, GeoRef, Psychit, and Criminal Justice Abstracts (and more may be obtained if user institutions fund them). Medline continued to be the most widely and heavily used, with a maximum monthly connect time for the latest version of over 2,500 hours.

Consultancy

48 General user consultations on a wide range of topics are provided by staff from Technical User Services (TUS), while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) provides a specialist service for the humanities. In addition, a member of TUS is one of the two people in the Sidgwick support team, which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for all Departments on that site. The following table summarizes the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The 'External' heading includes both time spent responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide and the charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for institutions around the University.

Consulting Hours

Help Desk and Techlink

49 The following table summarizes Help Desk calls for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics:

Help Desk Calls

While the total number of calls increased only marginally, the smooth running of most services at the beginning of the academic year meant that for the first time October did not generate the largest proportion. In a continuing trend, only 32% of calls were made in person (compared with 39% in 1997-98, 45% in 1996-97), but 41% by telephone (35%, 33%) and 28% by electronic mail (26%, 22%). While a great many calls were well known and easily answered, some were complex and had to be passed on the relevant Computing Service expert; overall 83% of calls were closed within one hour, 89% within 24 hours, and 91% within 48 hours. Rather less than 3% of the calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about about a non-Computing Service facility.

50 The Computing Service encourages users with problems not directly related to the use of its facilities to start by approaching the local computer staff in their own institution, and in turn provides those staff with 'fast track' backup and general support by means of the TechLink scheme, which had over 240 members by July (compared to 200 a year earlier). Help Desk calls from Techlinks were 12.3% of the total (8.8% in 1997-98) but accounted for 19.3% (13.6%) of the total time spent answering calls. Many Techlinks continued to find the weekly 'troubleshooting' seminars at a fairly elementary level very useful as a complement to the less frequent and more advanced workshops on new developments.

Training

51 Providing training courses on network-related and centrally-managed services and on popular applications software reduces the advice and consultancy load, and enables computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. The up-to-date computing and audio-visual equipment in the 25-seat Phoenix Teaching Room, opened in May 1998, was heavily used for Computing Service training courses throughout the year, while from October the similar facilities in the Old Music School were used by the Computer Laboratory and other Departments for undergraduate teaching. Courses on the World Wide Web and Microsoft Office Applications were oversubscribed and repeat sessions had to be held. Web or e-mail registrations accounted for 75% of the total, and record rates for satisfaction (95%) and turnout (80%) were achieved. The following tables give a summary of statistical information on taught academic courses for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics.

Course types

Course Attendance

52 While most courses for academic staff and students are free and given by Computing Service staff, a very good response was obtained to three charged courses on NT Server Administration and Novell Netware, organized by the Service but given by external trainers; more courses of this kind on specialist topics are planned. The modular training courses for assistants, provided with financial support from the Assistant Staff Office, continued to be popular; six new Microsoft Office 1997 modules were developed and 31 half-day (39 in 1997-98) and 5 full-day (6) sessions were given during the year. Similar courses were again given on a charged basis to staff from Colleges generally, while on several occasions staff gave specially tailored versions of standard courses to staff from a particular Department or College. The self-teaching courseware library, expanded by 11 new courses, was again heavily used and there was much demand for the Excel and PowerPoint work packs and C and C++ CDs.

Directorate and liaison

Institution Liaison

53 Institution Liaison has only two staff who, with help as required from the Directorate, Network Support, and Technical User Services, liaise on computing matters at institution level with senior management and computer support staff. During the year, they chaired the working parties on Windows NT and Novell Netware, organized several meetings of local support staff from Departments and Colleges, maintained the close Computing Service/University Library liaison through regular meetings of separate policy and technical groups, and were involved in planning for the refurbishment of the Raised Faculty Building. In response to requests, staff attended almost 150 School, departmental, and College computer committee meetings, assisted in the selection process for 23 computer staff appointments in University institutions and 10 in Colleges, and helped introduce several of the new appointees to the Cambridge computing scene. The annual survey of College student computing facilities was carried out with a much simplified questionnaire and resulted in a 100% response; having this information is very useful for those departmental staff who plan to give computer-based teaching courses.

Retirements

54 In October, Mr R. A. Kimpton retired after just over 50 years of service (having started straight from school in 1949), and Mr J. H. Loker after almost 40 years; the Vice-Chancellor made the presentations at their very well-attended leaving party. In July, Mrs B. Bown, Mr P. J. L. Crofts, Mr B. Landy, Mr A. F. O'Dell, Mr R. W. Perks, Mrs D. Simpson, and Mr K. N. Warner took early retirement (although most will be back part-time for a period). Almost all of them had worked for the Computing Service for well over 20 years, and several had started in the pre-1970 days before the Mathematical Laboratory changed its name. In the same year that many staff took part in the EDSAC99 meeting to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the running of the first program on the first computer in Cambridge, it was good to have Professor M. V. Wilkes (who himself retired as long ago as 1980) present at their leaving party to wish them well.

Statistical Annex

[Note: the figures and tables of the Statistical Annex are not reproduced online - please consult the paper edition of the Reporter.]

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Cambridge University Reporter Special, 17 January 2000
Copyright © 2000 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.