by Willie Pritchard, Vice Chancellor and Chief Technology Officer

Each year we conduct the ETS Technology Survey to understand how you perceive and use technology and how well ETS is meeting your needs. The 2004 results are in, offering information that will help us better serve the District's technology needs in 2005.

The full summary and results are in this issue of News Bytes, but here are a few broad highlights:

• More users (396) responded to the survey than ever before.


• In general, technology users feel more positive about their computers than they did in 2003.


• User-satisfaction levels remained high, despite budget cutbacks made to ETS in 2003.


• 81 percent of users indicated they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the Call Center.


• 64 percent of users reported that they feel News Bytes keeps them informed about technology.


• 85 percent of users said they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the District's network performance.


• 60 percent of users prefer a Mac, while 56 percent prefer a PC. (The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because users could identify multiple preferences.)


• 96 percent of users say they use a computer at home, and 86 percent say they use their home computer for work activities.


• 56 percent of faculty indicated that they believe technology has a major impact on student learning.

Although some of these summarized results reflect positively on the service ETS is providing to the District, we know there is still room for improvement in what we are doing.

We value your input and do make adjustments to improve our service. In the next issue of News Bytes we plan to summarize the steps we are taking as a result of the feedback you provided to us in this survey.

One article in this issue of News Bytes hits upon a key topic addressed in the survey: the importance of addressing malware, or any type of malicious software. The War on Malware covers ETS' investigation into several types of anti-virus and spyware removal and prevention software.

District Firewall Stops 60 Percent of Spam / Viruses also addresses reducing spam and viruses in the District. To address low scores in this area from the 2003 survey results, ETS implemented a strategy to reduce the large amount of spam and virus attacks by implementing a firewall. You can read more about the effectiveness of this firewall in this issue of News Bytes; it has essentially reduced the amount of spam users receive in their inboxes by 60 percent.

Finally, please be sure to check out the story on three new staff who have recently joined ETS. All three are filling vacant positions in ETS, some of which have been vacant for almost a year, and they each bring incredibly rich skills and experience to their jobs. So let me introduce to you Dan Frandy, Mahmood Hasan, and Bill Matsumoto. We are pleased to welcome them to the ETS family. See the story for more information.

I would like to thank the District technology users who took the time to participate in the 2004 Technology Survey. We continue to analyze the results and will use them to determine our next steps regarding technology for the District. We will keep you updated on our progress in future issues of News Bytes.