New Telecom Service Request Procedures

By Bill Buntain, Director of Networking and Communication Services

Effective June 1, 1998, the Telecommunications Department was moved into the Computing Center [see the June Campus Computing News for further information]. As part of that move, the billing function which was performed by Telecommunications staff was moved to Claims Accounting. After a review of departmental procedures, it is clear that the practice of accepting requests for changes to telecommunications/telephony services via telephone calls does not meet basic auditability standards for transactions with financial implications. Whenever there is a request for service that involves an expenditure from an account on either a one time or ongoing basis, that request must be made through a person who has signature authority on that account and that person's authorization must be in a form that can be audited.

Therefore, requests for telecommunications/telephony services that involve expenditure of funds will no longer be accepted based on telephone calls to the Telecommunications Department. E-mail requests from a documented signature authority will be accepted as will paper documents. Requests for payments for services from grant accounts will have to be pre-approved by Grant Accounting and all requests will be subject to budget checking to verify that the proper source of funds is being used for the service(s) requested.

There may be additional guidelines coming out concerning justification of personal service items, such as pagers, cell phones, and lines installed at locations away from campus. We will try to communicate these to you as the requirements become more clear to us.

We will be investigating automation of the approval and request tracking process in order to streamline the ordering of services from the Telecommunications Department. We appreciate your cooperation in this change to the department's procedures. n