How many legislative members do you serve?
177
How long are you normally in session (number of days and hours per
day)?
January–May + two weeks of veto session in November
anywhere from 2-12+ hours/day
What other entities besides the legislature itself do you serve?
Tier 1: members, House and Senate operations staffs, bill-drafting
agency
Tier 2: legislative commissions (research, fiscal, etc.)
Tier 3: legislative caucus staffs
Tier 4: state agencies, lobbyists, general public
How big is your support staff?
10 direct, 12 indirect
What particular skills are represented among those staff?
Hardware, NT, Win 95/98, MS Office, LAN, TextDBMS, programming
What are your open-for-business hours?
Session: 7 a.m. – 2 hours after adjournment / Interim: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
How do you handle after-hours support (pagers, overtime, etc.)?
Lots of pagers, lots of overtime (most staff can choose between compensatory
time or pay at time-and-a-half)
Do you outsource any support? If so, what?
No, unless you count standard hardware maintenance
Do the members have laptops?
Yes (4 years)
To what extent do you use IT in your chambers?
Laptops have all legislative info; front desk is partially automated
Do you provide support in chamber during session? If so, what responsibilities
do those personnel have during interim?
Yes. We rotate regular staff on the floor (which most of them despise).
That means they all can’t wait to get out of here once session is over,
and many of them have accumulated a large amount of comp time, so there’s
no one around to get the regular work done.
Do you provide support to member offices in the Capitol? In their
districts?
In regards to the laptops and associated systems, yes. The respective
caucus staff provides most other support, though we assist at times.
What types of hardware support do you provide?
Tier 1: everything
Tier 2-3: advice and trouble-shooting
Tier 4: minimal
What types of software support?
Same as hardware
What other types of support?
While we don’t advertise or encourage users to view us as one-stop
support, we try to do anything that’s reasonable to help them out, as long
as it doesn’t prevent us from accomplishing our primary mission of serving
the legislature.
If you provide support to entities other than the members themselves,
how does it differ from the support you provide to members?
As above
Is any of your support billable in any way?
No
Do all these questions make you regret offering to be on this panel?
I figure I ought to do what I ask the panelists to do, so it’s my own
fault. Hopefully it will be useful to someone else.
Have you produced or used particular documentation, manuals, CBT's,
etc.?
Only minimal printed "manuals"
Do you offer training? If so, in what?
We will train in anything and everything we offer and have at times
also contracted with local trainers on mainstream applications as needed.
Who conducts the training?
See above
How much participation do you get in training (particularly among
members)?
With the first batch of laptops in 1996, we conducted training in chambers.
It was chaotic and mostly a waste of time. With batch #2 this year, we
offered to do individual training anytime and anywhere the member was ready.
That eventually reached maybe 50%; many of the rest were either able to
pick it up on their own or from a colleague or staff. And of course, there
are a few that resist (they have yet to realize that resistance is futile).
Do you use inducements? If so, what? Do they work?
No, other than the floor is basically paperless now, so if they want
to know what’s going on, they either need to use the laptop or rely on
staff.
Do you provide support for non-legislative use of IT by members?
Officially, no. Unofficially, sure, although we try to keep it from
interfering with "real" work.
In particular, what impact does the Internet and all its associated
capabilities have on the support you provide?
The members have Internet access on the laptops both on the floor and
in their Capitol offices, so we get lots of usage questions. The new floor
system is browser-based and has driven the development of our Internet
site. And internally we rely heavily on the Internet for research, support,
and entertainment.
What packages do you use to provide support (home-grown, purchased,
brown paper tied up with string)?
None.
What have you tried that has failed miserably?
Top of Mind (a help desk package)
What are you particularly proud of?
Our staff, which has endured an awful lot over the years, especially
the last five with circumstances not of their own making. They have risen
to the occasion time and again. Somehow, they always manage to get the
job done.
What cool new technologies are you using (or just considering) to
help with support?
It’s hardly cool, and we didn’t get far with it in previous versions,
but it looks like we’re going to give SMS 2.0 a try.
If a genie (or even the Speaker) would grant you three wishes to improve your support efforts, what would they be?