[itdiscuss] Personal laptops on church network

Tue Sep 9 17:15:41 EDT 2008

I think I should clarify my position on this issue. 

I mentioned in yesterdays email that we allow personal devices on our network but only on wireless and on a separate SSID that lives on a firewalled vlan. We don't yet allow them on hard wired ports until we can get Packetfence (for network access control) implemented. 

Someone made the comment that a church should provide the resources (IT, specifically but everything generally) for a staff member. And, to an extent I also agree with this. However, hillsong church, primarily in london and cape town, are being staffed by volunteers who see it as their ministry to do so. For example, there is no full-time on-staff IT manager in the london church, but there is a highly competent IT guy who is doing a great job, ably assisted by a Helpdesk-style guy on the ground. A "no-volunteer-hw" policy just wouldn't fly. And this style is starting to take hold hEre in Sydney. Instead of kicking against it, find creative ways to assist it. 

When I started here almost 6 years ago, I changed the name of the team from I.T. Department to Technology Services. There were many reasons for the change but the primary one was to reinforce the primary mandate for our team: we are here to provide a "service" to the whole of Hillsong Church in all areas of "technology" to assist and empower the church to go forward. This is a major change for a lot of IT teams, mentally, because we, as geeks, either consciously or not, adhere to the idea of a technocracy - the alpha geek wins. And that mentality runs counter to the "service" mentality needed to progress a Church IT team imho

There my $0.02 worth. Eat the fish, spit the bones, your mileage may vary. The opinions of the author are his and his alone. I'm wearing my asbestos suit so flame away.  :)

S

Best regards,

Steve Ollis
Manager, Engineering & Projects
Technology Services
Hillsong Church
"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed." - Storm Jameson

----- Original Message -----
From: discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org <discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org>
To: IT Discussion Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org>
Sent: Tue Sep 09 23:42:08 2008
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] Personal laptops on church network

Ditto! Reading this post reminded me of MTW's experience almost to a T.

Like Dan, it took time but the Lord has helped us move to an organizational structure where we have pretty clearly delineated the lines that distinguish personal from MTW ministry. Our setup is pretty much like Dan's.

One part of the process that has helped a lot is to make sure users can get to their MTW "stuff" 24/7/365. To accomplish this, we worked hard to get to a "standard" desktop and this has saved us tons of time as we now provide that desktop primarily via terminal services (we're stuck on Microsoft). We also got rid of about 90% of the desktops and are now working to get rid of the laptops (moving the thin client laptops -- this one will be exciting!). Our goal at this time is to be somewhere close to 95% of our users on thin clients working via RDP or web apps that give them "their" desktop (we've worked hard at figuring out how to manage profiles so that the user experience doesn't constantly change and is "theirs".) hopefully by the end of 2010 (the laptops is the last big hurdle).

Our next challenge is: can we do this for the 500+ missionaries serving around the world? We'd love to be able to offer them a "virtual desktop" where, no matter what, when or where, they can access it to do email, word processing, prayer letters, etc. -- essentially never getting "stuck" with a system that doesn't work.

Yup -- we too do some personal help desk stuff but, these requests are very few these days.

If you'd like to see our "standards" docs (applications and systems) feel free to drop me a note -- would be happy to send that to you.

Ken Thompson
Mission to the World
Ken.thompson at mtw.org

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org] On Behalf Of Dan Barber
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9:10 AM
To: 'IT Discussion Forum'
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] Personal laptops on church network

Austin,
I think you bring up a great point of policy/practice here. This is probably a whole lot longer than you wanted, but I had to make a case for this very thing, and so I thought maybe it would interest more than just yourself.

When I took over my current job over a year ago, the IT was in shambles. Moreover, because of a (perceived) lack of help, users were used to circumventing IT and just going out and doing whatever: buying new computers, setting up their own wireless, purchasing software, etc.

This, of course, creates a bigger nightmare than originally intended. Now staff can't share files because "no one else has that program," and, well, you know the rest. It also meant that those with bigger budgets consistently had better computers, regardless of who actually needed those computers. In the end, though, IT has to support personal computers if they are on the network and being used for church business. Here's the scenario:

Your pastor or admin assistant brings in their home laptop because they have a program you don't have at the office. Then something happens and they can't get it to print and they "used to be able to" or "really need to today." I am sure you have heard it before. The reality is, IT is a service position: our task is to further the ministry of the church or the business in its ministry and organizational goals. Period. So what ends up happening in reality? You end up supporting that person's home laptop.

One of the first policy decisions I fought for was to disallow personal computers, software, etc., on the network, and to move all software/hardware purchasing and installing back through IT (with a few exceptions, of course). And this has been huge.

First, if you were to walk into any business for a job, would they not provide you a computer? Of course they would! Why should the church be any different? If it is valuable enough to the church to have a person perform those tasks, then equip the person with the tools they need (computer, software, etc.) and consider that just part of the cost of that position-because it is.

Second, it communicates a good boundary to the staff person. It lets them leave home stuff at home and focus on work stuff at work. Kind of makes you wish sometimes that you could give everyone work cell phones! It also communicates to them that the church is willing to give them the tools to make them successful. As church staff members yourselves, you all know what it is like to be asked to make bricks any not get any straw.

Third, it makes your job a lot easier. I can't tell you the number of "personal" laptop calls I get every month. But that number is dramatically lower now that we don't allow personal computers and software on the network, except for guest wireless access. IT does not end up supporting more computers than it actually is responsible for.

Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org] On Behalf Of Austin
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 9:53 PM
To: discuss at itdiscuss.org
Subject: [itdiscuss] Personal laptops on church network

Just curious on how others in church IT feel about allowing personal laptops to have access on there cooperate network to work on files, etc when the user is issued a desktop computer.

I do not usually allow this - as I believe if a user needs a laptop for their job at the church - we will provide one to them (because their supervisor would have requested it when filling out the paperwork for a new employee).

What do you all think?
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