We will retain the basic technical staff that we have employed for Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh's first two years. This includes a Technical Project Manager, a Project Engineer, a System Programmer and an Applications Programmer. As we move towards the Urban Research Laboratory, we are expanding the Technical Project Manager's position from 0.5 FTE to 0.75 FTE.
Since the Urban Research Laboratory will serve a larger user population, we will add one technical staff member to deal with the additional user devices. Unlike the other technical staff members who work for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the new User Specialist will be employed by the Pittsburgh Public Schools. This position will facilitate the transition of technical support from the research environment of the Supercomputing Center to the production environment of school district.
The tasks of the technical staff will continue to be in four broad areas -- connectivity, network management, servers, and client hardware and software. Technical staff will also provide for the needs of the assessment group, supplying data on usage patterns across the project.