By JAY HOWSER
A merger between University Computing, Media Services, and Telecommunication Services will occur this semester, according to Kelly McDonald, executive director of Information Technology Services.
The merger will consolidate all services offered by the three departments, McDonald said.
“In the past there have been 3 former groups with varying degrees of interaction with the students. Now there will be a unification of computer services into one unit,” he said.
Students have previously had to contact many separate departments for computer-based services such as phonemail, network connections or long-distance.
As a result of these changes students will only have to contact one centralized department, McDonald said.
“I hope it will benefit the students,” said Jim Edvalson of Media Services. Past problems with overlapping of services will be solved with the change, Edvalson said.
The department will be known as Information Technology Services after the restructuring.
The policy-change was actually made official September 1 when President Bateman announced the project, McDonald said. Now it is up to the departments to act on the decision.
The transition will not be overnight, however.
“All three groups offer a lot of services, so it will take time,” McDonald said. “President Bateman has asked us to be completely merged by December.”
McDonald said he hopes to have the top-level organization identified by the end of this week.
The implementation of new policy will follow in the next couple of weeks or months.
This policy change closely follows the recent appointment of Eric Denna as vice president of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at BYU.
Denna will oversee the formation of Information Technology Services.
Denna said he is excited about future of technology at BYU. He was recently quoted as saying that “President Bateman has pulled the curtain back at BYU and given us a vision of what the future will look like.”
McDonald said that President Bateman has been anxious to implement this kind of change.
