A cultural shift in mindset was among the successful outcomes of the NUS IT Shared Services (ITSS) initiative. As Initiative Owner (IO) Ong Chin Hwa, Head of Faculty Systems at NUS Information Technology observed, IT staff who were challenged to look at service quality, rapid growth in technological changes and other tasks from a different perspective became more proactive and motivated to tackle issues innovatively and improve their services.
Ong Chin Hwa and Co-IO Yeo Ann Kian, Director at Dean’s Office, NUS Computing, recently led a team of seven to implement ITSS. This initiative aims to consolidate and professionalise the scattered IT manpower resources on campus, develop strategic and business partnerships with the departments and standard service catalogue with committed service levels, as well as provide staff training and learning opportunities for career progression.
“During the matching phase, there was anxiety among some staff as most of them had been doing the same scope of work in their respective departments for many years. With the setting of clearer objectives, scope of services, roles and responsibilities, as well as training strategies to upskill their expertise, these fears were slowly replaced with a sense of trust and confidence,” said Chin Hwa. He noted that regular communication with the staff was key to their success.
End users now have better access to one-stop, localised and face-to-face support from a shared pool of technically competent support staff, who were trained on a wider range of IT services by domain experts from NUS IT and CIT.
Ann Kian highlighted another positive outcome from ITSS, “We now use common support processes and the same software to create and track issues which help in facilitating knowledge sharing and troubleshooting. Common processes and same software are also necessary components to enable staff movement across faculties. Furthermore, data can be generated and consolidated across Faculties and Schools for dashboard reporting for management.”
Currently, the team is working to extend ITSS to cover Robotic Process Automation, Dashboard Visualisation, Web Publishing, Online Form and Workflow.
“I feel very privileged to lead this major exercise which has provided us with the opportunity to work with different levels of staff across departments. Through service data collection and the Business Process Reengineering course, we also have acquired the essential knowledge to bring about improved work processes and services,” added Chin Hwa. “It has been exciting to see the progress from conception to execution of the entire operation.”
For more information on ITSS, please visit: https://ssit.nus.edu.sg/
Members of the ITSS task force (from left): Nur Jannah Binte Mohamed, Manager, NUS Arts & Social Sciences; Tan Keok Tay, Associate Director, NUS IT; Ong Chin Hwa; Yeo Ann Kian; Susan Tan Hui Leng, Director, NUS Science; and Lai Zit Seng, Senior IT Architect, NUS Computing. Absent from photo: Felyn Tay, Senior Manager, NUS IT
OE is a strategic initiative undertaken by the University to develop best practices for an efficient and world-class administration to better support NUS’ Vision and Mission. It aims to bring about improved work processes and policies as well as create opportunities for talent development and growth.