Austin Anders

ITS Division: Customer Support & Student IT Enablement

Service Area: Customer Services

What services do you and your teammates provide to campus?

As the knowledge management supervisor for ITS Customer Services, my team authors, reviews, and maintains relevant knowledge articles and technical documentation for all things IT related at UK.  We then make these articles publicly available on the Tech Help Center (techhelpcenter.uky.edu) so the entire UK community can access our Knowledge Base.  Additionally, we make these articles available inside of ServiceNow for ITS staff to use when solving customers’ IT issues.  The knowledge articles we create range from simple IT how-to articles, like resetting your linkblue password to more complicated instructions such as installing Statistical Analysis System software.

What campus units do you collaborate with?

My team collaborates with all other campus units that want to contribute and document their IT knowledge, processes, and solutions.  This way individuals can use the knowledge base to attempt to resolve their own IT issues without ever contacting ITS Customer Services or their departmental IT unit. 

What are your workplace values?

My biggest workplace values are open communication, honesty, and transparency.  Because my team works with knowledge content from all the teams in ITS and other campus IT units, we must constantly be in touch and collaborating with our subject matter experts (SMEs) on all IT projects, whether they are small system updates or large-scale IT initiatives.

What is your favorite part of working in ITS and UK?

My favorite part of working in ITS and at UK is all of the diverse individuals I get to work with every day.  I love meeting folks from different backgrounds and discussing technology, so I feel my role with ITS helps fulfill these passions.  My favorite aspects of my job and the interactions I enjoy are probably best summed up by a quote from knowledge management pioneer Ikujiro Nonaka.

"In the act of creating, people argue.  They have heated dialogue. They get upset!  Without real exchange, you can't create knowledge.  Knowledge creation is a human activity."