P2 – Explain the impact of organisational policies and procedures on the provision of technical support
Policies and procedures to support technical support have saved hours and hours of time over the years. It
is always recommended to create a plan of action before executing something, in order to perform that
support with efficiency and perfection.
Organisational Guidelines
Internet use – To maintain focus on work and for general professionalism, companies make employees
agree to terms that if they access anything unrelated to work, they’ll have to face consequences. This
includes social media, illegal sites or gaming sites along with the usual sites you shouldn’t visit anyway.
This is breaking a typical company policy and the procedure that occurs could be suspension, paying
the hours you wasted or even being fired. This way, the employees will be more focused on their
duties, being more careful on what they search only out of fear. Some employees may argue about this
as controlling what they do but when you’re in the workplace you should be doing your job, not having
free time.
Service-level agreements – An SLA is a contract agreement between a service provider and its internal
or external customers that documents what services the provider will issue and defines the
performance standards the provider is obligated to meet. An agreement will be different depending on
the company, for example, the contract could be between the board and the IT support staff on what
they need to do. Birkbeck University’s IT services as listed below:
o Manage and develop a secure, resilient and high performance College network
o Infrastructure for data and voice (including provision for remote and wireless access)
o Provide a set of core C&IT services which are secure, up-to-date, easy to use and meet the
actual and perceived needs of users. These include:
o Authentication and authorisation (user account provisioning)
o Email
o Web (institutional websites, intranets and web content management system)
o Virtual learning environment (Blackboard)
o General purpose application software
o Data storage and backup
o Network printing
o Anti-spam and virus protection
o Workstation rooms for open access and teaching
o Management information and administrative systems
Confidentiality – There’s always some sort of confidentiality in an organisation in the IT element it’s a
very big deal. When you relate IT and business together, you may immediately think about data which
is what companies tend to keep secret. The biggest suspects in the workplace when confidential
information is stolen would be the employees as they’re the only people who would know where that
information is kept. Having a policy about this information and a procedure on how to deal with stolen
information will make devious employees think twice before stealing from the workplace. This also
includes showing customer details to other people without consent as this is a violation of the data
protection act, resulting in a possible lawsuit.
Policies and procedures to support technical support have saved hours and hours of time over the years. It
is always recommended to create a plan of action before executing something, in order to perform that
support with efficiency and perfection.
Organisational Guidelines
Internet use – To maintain focus on work and for general professionalism, companies make employees
agree to terms that if they access anything unrelated to work, they’ll have to face consequences. This
includes social media, illegal sites or gaming sites along with the usual sites you shouldn’t visit anyway.
This is breaking a typical company policy and the procedure that occurs could be suspension, paying
the hours you wasted or even being fired. This way, the employees will be more focused on their
duties, being more careful on what they search only out of fear. Some employees may argue about this
as controlling what they do but when you’re in the workplace you should be doing your job, not having
free time.
Service-level agreements – An SLA is a contract agreement between a service provider and its internal
or external customers that documents what services the provider will issue and defines the
performance standards the provider is obligated to meet. An agreement will be different depending on
the company, for example, the contract could be between the board and the IT support staff on what
they need to do. Birkbeck University’s IT services as listed below:
o Manage and develop a secure, resilient and high performance College network
o Infrastructure for data and voice (including provision for remote and wireless access)
o Provide a set of core C&IT services which are secure, up-to-date, easy to use and meet the
actual and perceived needs of users. These include:
o Authentication and authorisation (user account provisioning)
o Email
o Web (institutional websites, intranets and web content management system)
o Virtual learning environment (Blackboard)
o General purpose application software
o Data storage and backup
o Network printing
o Anti-spam and virus protection
o Workstation rooms for open access and teaching
o Management information and administrative systems
Confidentiality – There’s always some sort of confidentiality in an organisation in the IT element it’s a
very big deal. When you relate IT and business together, you may immediately think about data which
is what companies tend to keep secret. The biggest suspects in the workplace when confidential
information is stolen would be the employees as they’re the only people who would know where that
information is kept. Having a policy about this information and a procedure on how to deal with stolen
information will make devious employees think twice before stealing from the workplace. This also
includes showing customer details to other people without consent as this is a violation of the data
protection act, resulting in a possible lawsuit.
