Being the Director of IT (Network Overlord) I consider it my responsibility to share with you any information I consider relevant or potentially useful in assisting you when making your decisions or understanding IT as it develops in the church.
I have always said to management and other technicians that they each know how to do what they do better than I know how to do what they do. But my role includes providing advice and direction regarding the things I do and know, and areas that I have demonstrated expertise.
IT - General Points
Information Technology comprises many disciplines that each focus on a specialized component within a computer system. Regardless of the physical size, number of devices, or purpose of the network, the majority of specialized disciplines are still present and require detailed/skilled administration.
Use a car as an example. A typical car is a collection of many components that work together in order to achieve a system that reliably solves a problem, or provides a service. The components include; electrical (the flow and uses of electricity to power the lights, ignition, windows, radio, sensors etc), digital (all of the sensors, monitors, and so on), chemical (gas, oil, brake fluid, coolant, and so on), structural (the frame, springs, glass, center of gravity, distribution if weight, power train, and so on).
However, in every case, the system needs to be maintained. Oil changed, gas filled, battery charged and replaced, doors shut, heater/cooler powered, failed components identified and replaced - and each of these requires skill, tools, experience, and dedication. Volunteers may have some experience, but seldom have the right experience or the time required to continually learn these tasks as they evolve. Not to mention the tools, skills, or knowledge to identify and address problems before they become disruptive.
In each case, we as users/consumers are only interested in the ability it gives us or the service it provides. But to deliver on the spoken and unspoken expectations, administration, management, security, extensibility, life span, and replacement must be effectively provided.
Technology makes a deliberate effort to 'hide all the gory details', and make it easy and intuitive to make effective use of it. Layers of abstraction - which means moving from the machine friendly formats to the human friendly formats using several layers. Even encapsulation (wrapping material within other material, within yet some other material) applies here.
CPUs can only do integer addition. 1s and 0s do not exist - differential Manchester encoding. Want to talk about quantum mechanics?
A successful system requires someone to make use of it and someone else to maintain it. These require very separate skill sets and aptitudes. And as bad as it sounds, the general opinions of users are disruptive at best when it comes to the mechanics.
Imagine someone who has watched a few episodes of Joel Olsine and then discussed them with some friends over some beers advising you regarding the trinity, transubstantiation, the tetragrammaton, or the comparative approaches of millinisim.
The components that comprise the CCCC network include;
User computers (batteries, memory chips, disk media, removable media, input devices, output devices, networking (wired and wireless, Bluetooth, GPS…) Cabling infrastructure including; CAT6 cable of appropriate lengths, RJ45 connectors, and the tools and skills to physically build, troubleshoot, and if need be to outsource them
Why In-house IT support is necessary
From the first computer until ~2013 the church's IT was handled by very well meaning people who usually had IT experience, but little to no education/training/awareness of the principles associated with the many aspects of IT and its administration.
About 4 years ago or so, CCCC's digital infrastructure (network) grew from being a small business class network to an enterprise class. While the difference is usually based on the number of employees, in our case the deciding factors were the large variety of ways the network was being used, and its increasing complexity.
As with most organizations that have adopted IT, they have been guided by people with agendas other than that of the organization, severely lacking in long term planning, unaware of the best practices that apply to the many aspects of IT systems, along with people who consider themselves IT savvy.
I have never observed a vendor who knew the infrastructure, components, vision, priorities, lessons learned about your network. Vendors are great at doing directed tasks, but they are not intended to realize your dreams or expectations.
This is where hiring a service breaks down. Their business model involves selling and upgrading products and services - not optimizing your investment, pursuing your vision or mission, or helping you succeed. They and you define success very differently.
If you contract out your online presence, you will be seen through the lense of the contractor. The contractor is invested in their success, not yours. The contractor has hundreds of other clients just like you. So rather than develop your online presence so that it uniquely and accurately represents you and your mission, they fit you into one of a few templates they happen to have and that they are comfortable with. Templates that will minimize the support they might need to provide. And, they use templates that can be rolled out quickly so they can move on to the next client.
IT is largely conceptual. Ideas and mental images mixed and matched to create and illustrate tangible things that have no physical aspect. Of course IT, to a degree, is implemented in the physical world, but it is not conceived of, discussed, defined, exclusively built, or understood in terms of physical components.
Take for example code. Code makes all of IT work. Without code all you have is inert chunks of metal and plastic.
But what is code?
It is concepts, descriptions, and directives illustrated as symbols. Those symbols arbitrarily represent processes encoded on physical material according to the principles of quantum mechanics which are inherently separate from and antagonistic to the observable physical world. Code is concept that relies on the collapse of possibility into conceptual form.
This involves, for example, books, magazines, time for online reviews and courses, not to mention in-house discussions and information sharing. For IT practitioners, the details of commands, algorithms, sachems, flow charts and their combinations are continually developed, used, repaired, reviewed, and reinvented. For leadership, a strategic vision that recognizes opportunities and possibilities of concrete improvements and advancement, as well as the dead weight and dead-ends to be avoided also requires continual review and consideration of the particular adoption, application, and management of information technology.
Information technology is most often selected, implemented, used, and managed very poorly, every ineffectively. IT is not commonly understood, even though it is commonly used. Similar to a car, we are all comfortable using them, and feel as though we are experts. But very few of us understand today's cars to the point they can actually function as a mechanic. Leadership too frequently sees hobbyists and volunteers as a source of (free) IT support. In fact, that path is guaranteed to result in disaster.
But what is code? It is concepts, descriptions, and directives illustrated as symbols. Those symbols arbitrarily represent processes encoded on physical material according to the principles of quantum mechanics which are inherently separate from and antagonistic to the observable physical world. Code is a concept that relies on the collapse of possibility into conceptual form.
Several Points