“A Day In The Life” is a new feature for TechTalk.  Communications employee Dana Graham, once a month, will follow around two of DIT’s “front-line” employees in order to gain a better understanding of their unit and job functions.  This information will be shared with all of DIT’s employees in hopes that we can better understand the inner workings of the department, as well as seek out areas for improvement.

This month, TechTalk features Matt Doty and Malcolm Cleveland, both technicians in our Field Services Division.  Matt and Malcolm allowed Dana to spend some time with them, taking photos and gathering information for the TechTalk articles.  By sharing both the joys and frustrations of their work, Matt and Malcolm gave us all an idea of how the Helpdesk works, and also what we can do to improve customer service.

Stay tuned each month for new “A Day In The Life” features.  If you know of an employee you think should be spotlighted in this new item, email Dana at grahamd3@michigan.gov

Malcolm Cleveland is an ITT for the Department of Information Technology.  He transitioned to DIT from Treasury, where he started in the mailroom and worked his way up over 20 years.  He is now a lead worker for Team 1C in Lansing.  His training is in Programming from Oakland University.  Malcolm is stationed at the Operations Center at the State Secondary Complex and works on a variety of hardware and software problems assigned to him.

One of the projects Malcolm was working on while I visited him was to reconfigure a computer’s operating system for a Treasury office in Detroit.  Rather than traveling to Detroit to make the changes, Malcolm worked on the same model computer here in Lansing and will mail the finished hard drive to his customers in Detroit.   Techniques like these allow the department to save both time and money.  Though he enjoys coming up with such innovative solutions to problems, Malcolm says that, by far, his favorite part of the job is helping people.  He comes to customers who are very frustrated and at a standstill.  Malcolm says, “then I “work my magic“ and they are so happy to be working again.  I enjoy being a small part of that – especially when the Division is having a pot-luck day.”  Malcolm also enjoys that every day is different and interesting; his work is never boring.

He does, however, face some frustrations.  “We’re not getting enough information beforehand,” he says.  Too often, Malcolm says, decisions are made at a high level without enough consideration for the ‘front-line’ employees they will affect.  He thinks improved communication would help.  Malcolm also feels that far too often, techs are assigned to fix something they have no knowledge of.  Therefore, any and all training would be valuable.  A final frustration he faces is that often, he has to service in-house programs that were not very good to begin with, which makes fixing them all the more difficult.

One way that Malcolm’s team works to overcome these problems is to utilize a documentation directory.   Every software installation has a piece of documentation which can also be used to help with debugging problems.  If a new problem is encountered, a new piece of documentation is created.  By sharing this information, the techs in Malcolm’s area are able to improve their skills as a group and better serve their customers.  “A documentation directory available to all of DIT’s techs would be an extremely useful tool,”says Malcolm.

By working to understand the daily challenges techs like Malcolm face, we can work to improve what is a very integral part of the Department of Information Technology.