NEWS COMMUNITY
FOCIS on Detroit issues Forum sheds light on city’s financial woes
CHRISTOPHER EHRMANN News Correspondent It is no secret that Detroit has been having financial problems. Wayne State’s Forum on Contemporary Issues in Society held a special event in conjunction with the Eugene Applebaum Chair in Community Engagement June 6 for citizens of Detroit to help figure out a way to save the city from financial ruin. “This is a citizen education effort of FOCIS at Wayne State University, and it continues a program we started last year and it gives citizens an opportunity to select choices that would address the city’s financial emergency,” said Bettie Buss, senior research associate for Citizens Research Council of Michigan. According to Buss, last year the event happened four times and was considered more of a budgeting exercise. This year, Buss said they are trying to figure out what to do to fix the city and some of its problems like the deficit, decline in revenues and balancing the budget. FOCIS was established in 2007 by its
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director and former president of WSU Irvin D. Reid as a special initiative designed to focus the university’s problem-solving abilities and resources on different topics to bring together people to, according to their website, “advance the frontiers of knowledge, promote informed debate and encourage responsible citizenship in an increasingly fast-paced, interconnected and complex world.” FOCIS also addresses certain topics that directly affect the citizens of Detroit, as well as America and the world. One of the subcategories under FOCIS is Citizen Detroit. “I decided that I wanted to facilitate the dialogue between the university and the broader community. To bring a kind of presentation to the community that it ordinarily would get that you would expect from a university. We broadened that to include a program like Citizen Detroit which allowed citizens of the city to dialogue with each other on topics of importance to them, but also to contemporary issues — everything from education to crime to governance. And so that’s what Citizen
Detroit is,” Reid said. This year, the program decided to schedule an event that deals with Detroit’s emergency manager and deficit problem. At the event, citizens sit at different tables, each representing a different district. On each table there are cards for attendants that stand for the EM as well as city council members. The citizens role play as these members and together they have to find a way to resolve the financial emergency facing the city of Detroit. The goal was to avoid bankruptcy. “Our credit rating is so bad, it’s CCC, and I didn’t even know that there was even such a rating. CC and CCC are designations that (show) the Wall Street bond rating agencies expect the city to go into bankruptcy,” Buss said. “I participated last year. I thought it was a very eye-opening discussion and eye-opening topic to put myself in the position of the decision makers of the city. I am absolutely enjoying myself,” said Brandon Wilkins, a Detroit resident. “I live in the City of Detroit, District
6, and so I can be in conversation with the person I am supporting if they should win on and be able to explain to the community some of the issues of balancing the budget,” said Otis Mathis, a retired education coordinator at WSU. Former Detroit City Council member Sheila Cockrel was also present at the event. “Working with Dr. Reid was a natural outcome from deciding (not to run) for political office,” Cockrel said, “I wanted to find other ways to work on them. There is a lot of discussion and debate going on here, and the net of this is that people are getting more information, better information, that they can use to evaluate candidates that are running for office and what is going on in the city. I would absolutely say it was a success tonight.” The event concluded with one member from each district addressing the other districts and members with their best plan. For more information on the next meeting, visit focis.wayne.edu.
Can you hear me now? Campus, SOM’s tech support get revamped
DEBANINA SEATON Contributing Writer Wayne State’s Computer and Information (Technology) department and the WSU Medical School Inormation System – MSIS – have created a new system known as the Wayne State Tech Support service which will serve as a one stop shop for technical services to both campuses. According to main campus and SOM officials, there were several systems used by both campuses over a number of years. Jill Zeller, Senior Director of IT Customer Services and Telecommunications at WSU said the university needed to provide enhancement that [had] home-grown design. “We were looking for something that would enhance our customer experience and improve our IT service delivery, as
well as provide issue resolution. It also uses ITO – Information Technology Infrastructure Library Philosophy – for its core functioning,” Zeller said, “We were looking for improvements across the board so we used a product that had all these components.” According to Zeller, the idea for a new system was led by a team of C&IT staff who had been researching for a number of years for a system that could replace CallTracker. Last summer the team gave their input on what should be selected along with a rigorous review of all the products and eventually the new system was selected. The new system, originally known as FootPrints, was rebranded for WSU as Tech Solutions. The system is a comprehensive incident and problem management tool. When someone visits the Tech
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Solutions website they will be able to report any IT problems and submit any IT service requests. The previous systems for the main campus SOM – including CallTracker – was a functional help desk style system but did not function at the level each campus hoped it would. Zeller said the Medical school was having some of the same problems the main campus was having, so the two decided to partner together. Ed Bogardus, Associate Director for Desktop Services of the SOM, said the campus partnered with the main campus to replace their current home-grown ticketing system TIMS. The TIMS system, which stands for Ticketed Information Management System, received and kept tracks of calls from employees and faculty
from the start of the phone call to the very completion the call started according to Bogardus. “The previous system was really good allowing things not to slip through the cracks, but It really didn’t add any value from a desktop standpoint,” Bogardu said, “When it came to being efficient at what we do, it did not keep the Knowledgebase part of the solution, have asset inventory control and it didn’t have a good reporting mechanism -- it just really allowed for us to keep track of tickets but it didn’t add any value or efficiency within IT.” The SOM utilized CallTracker for about 14 years before switching over to the TIMS system in 2000. Realizing there was a need for something better suited to its needs, the SOM will once again revert to the use of CallTracker.