Organization
Overview
The Information Technology department (IT) provides support for the UTHSC-H by planning, developing, delivering and supporting reliable, timely, secure and cost-effective systems and services to transport, process and store information throughout the institution.
IT is the central information technology service provider for the campus. The Medical School, School of Public Health and Harris County Psychiatric Center have IT departments which provide specialized IT services for those entities. These IT departments have a ‘dotted line’ reporting responsibility to the CIO who leads IT. The School of Health Information Sciences also has its own IT staff for special support unique to a school that teaches information technology in a health sciences setting. The School of Nursing and the Dental Branch obtain IT services from Information Technology. GSBS has onsite IT staff and also receives support from Academic Technology.
The needs of research can be so unique as to require dedicated technology specialists. While not reporting to the central IT department, these support staff are still responsible for following UTHSC-H policy and generally accepted IT standards, policies and procedures. As appropriate, researcher’s technology needs can be handled by Academic Technology or a school’s IT department.
View the IT 2008 Organization Chart (PPT)
(best viewed when downloaded and opened within MS PowerPoint)
View the IT 2008 Organization Chart (PDF) (Opens in new window)
Departments
| Office of the CIO |
The CIO provides leadership and oversight for the IT department. The CIO is the primary liaison to other UT components, UT System and the Department of Information Resources (DIR) in Austin. The CIO represents IT on various councils, committees and task forces.
For more information, please visit the CIO website.
| Administrative Technology |
Administrative Technology implements and maintains technology solutions to assist the university with administrative tasks and includes:
- Student information applications
- Financial management applications
- Human resource management applications
- Records management applications and services
Departmental administrative applications support may be provided by this group or may be provided by vendor packages or outsourced.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Administrative Support |
The administrative support team works with the CIO and IT department heads to provide coordinated administrative support to the entire IT department.
Administrative support includes:
- Maintaining budgets and financial records
- Procurement
- Travel
- Supplies
- Processing personnel transactions
- Maintaining departmental files
- Coordinating activities and follow-up for the CIO
For more information, please visit the website.
| Academic Technology |
The primary responsibility of the Office of Academic Technology is to enhance and sustain an environment within the university in which integrated, computational solutions are developed to meet educational, clinical and research requirements.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Clinical Technology |
The role of Clinical Technology is to:
- Promote the use of technology in a clinical setting,
- Coordinate campus activities in this area and
- Provide campus-wide clinical applications.
Clinical Technology is still largely fragmented among practice plans and HCPC. As technology supports consolidation of services into a single provider, this fragmentation will decrease. At present, Clinical Technology is largely a collaborative effort providing central direction and services.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Communication Services |
Communication Services implements, maintains and operates the wide area network for the campus, provides voice services through a network of PBX’s and provides internet connectivity. The wide area network is the transport for voice, data and video traffic for a wide variety of applications.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Data Center Operations and Services |
The Data Center Operations group operates the university’s primary data centers at the Medical School and UCT. The group also administers standards for other data centers on the campus.
The UCT data center is staffed 24/7 with computer operators and production schedulers. Unix and Windows Technical Support teams provide support for servers including implementation and maintenance of operating systems and utilities. These teams also provide standard or custom hosting services for departmental systems.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Desktop Support Groups |
Desktop support is coordinated through a collaboration of the Medical School IT department (MSIT), the SPH IT department and the central IT group. These three groups together set standards and coordinate activities in behalf of customers in general administration, PBS, Medical School, SON, Dental Branch and SPH.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Helpdesk & Training |
The Help Desk is a central call center for IT customers seeking support for their technology. The Help Desk:
- answers questions,
- logs calls,
- dispatches assistance and
- tracks resolutions
Training provides training in campus-wide applications to end users.
For more information, please visit the website.
| Project Support Office |
Provides support for IT projects across the campus. Activities include:
- Project management
- Development and application of a system development methodology (SDM)
- Project planning
- Project budgeting
- Project monitoring
- Coordination of projects with IT and Procurement
For more information, please visit the website.
| Security & Disaster Planning |
The IT Security and Disaster Recovery Planning group provides:
- security awareness training,
- IT security policy development,
- Disaster recovery planning for critical services,
- Firewall services,
- Intrusion detection and intrusion prevention services and
- Network and server vulnerability scanning.
IT Security does not have responsibility for application security. Application security development resides with the developers and administration of application security belongs primarily with application owners.
For more information, please visit the website.