CSS IT realigned to Office of the CIO

I’m pleased to announce that, effective immediately, CSS IT is moving to report into the Office of the CIO. The practical side of this is that Jerry Yerardi will now report directly to me.

The larger context on this move is the restructuring of Campus Shared Services into the regional support model. VC for Administration Marc Fisher will be making a broader campus announcement about progress thus far on that effort in the next few weeks.  

Hopefully, you are all aware of the broader campus context announced by Marc Fisher last fall: the central Campus Shared Services structure is being replaced with 6 regional centers, each of which will provide HR, Purchasing & Reimbursements, and Research Administration support for campus units. While campus leadership believes the regional structure will work better for the areas mentioned, there is widespread recognition that CSS IT is working quite well, so the existing centralized support approach will continue. There is already strong synergy between CSS IT and IST on things like the Berkeley Desktop, ServiceNow, IT Security and the Tier One Service Desk. This move will build on that partnership.

Jerry and his team have done a phenomenal job building an effective and responsive support organization for the campus as well as a robust measurement program to track and report on their service levels. It’s to their great credit that they have been able to maintain--and indeed improve on--service levels despite significant budget and staff reductions as part of the year-after-year budget cuts we’ve all had to absorb. This will be a continued area of concern and focus going forward.

With the implementation of the new regional model for CSS more broadly, I think it’s appropriate to “rebrand” CSS IT and we will be communicating on that at a later date.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this move.

Larry Conrad

Associate VC for IT and CIO

UC Berkeley