Technology at UC Davis:

One of the major themes of Seibel's May 13 presentation addressed viewing technological advances as part of a culture of ongoing change. "Success" for the Administrative Information Systems department at Lawrence Livermore has been "a close integration and partnership between the user community and technical people," Seibel says.

While he acknowledges that the organizations of Lawrence Livermore and UC Davis have their differences, he sees a number of similarities as well. Training, for instance, is a crucial issue for all staff working with information technology.

"We're all drinking out of a fire hose in terms of changes in technologies," he said. "We have to continue to deliver satisfaction to the customer, but sometimes we have to pull people away from their day-to-day tasks to give them training. We have to develop competencies before we can deploy good systems."

In his tour of the campus, Seibel was particularly enamored with the Center for Advanced Information Technology (CAIT), housed on the first floor of Shields Library.

"I was really impressed with the equipment, capabilities, resources, and technology tool assessments going on there. It was a real surprise and I was pleased. Information technology development at UC Davis seems to be going in the right direction."

One observation that saddened Seibel in his tour of the campus were the "traffic jams" outside student computer labs.

"I was shocked to see students lining up for access to technology," he said, adding that he worried about the unavailability of technologies to students.

On the whole, his impression was a positive one, and he called UC Davis "very, very innovative in its use of technology. On the educational side and in running the campus from a business perspective, people should be pleased with the uses of technology in both educational and administrative arenas."