"Fixing the mail server has been very demanding work," Groppi says. "HASCS needs to be better supported by the University. There's a lot more stuff they could be doing if they had more resources."
The turnover in the UNIX group has left several projects undone and made the installation of the new FAS and mail servers particularly difficult.
Faculty and students have criticized HASCS for installing the new machines at the start of school, when the load increases the most. Installing the machines at the start of the summer would have been far more efficient, faculty and staff say.
But Steen says the machines were not installed earlier because the UNIX group had to stabilize before it could carry out the planning and installation.
The turnover has led to a loss of institutional memory and forced employees to acclimate themselves to Harvard's system.
"Turnover makes anything difficult," Osterberg says. "You lose your internal consistency when you bring new people in and they have to catch up and we have to get them used to our needs and our environment."
This turnover, and the unprecedented usage, has made coordinating ongoing projects and providing consistent service difficult.
"HASCS has to do a lot of firefighting," says Seltzer, a member of the IT committee.
For instance, HASCS has planned to work on authentication systems so that the College can provide grades and other sensitive material via the World Wide Web, but "we've had problems with UNIX staff turnover," Steen says.
HASCS has also worked on improving security on the FAS network but has thus far been unable to complete the job, according to Steen.
Presently when someone enters their password to log into their machine, it passes clearly over the network.
"With the right equipment, I could sit in the middle and watch your whole telnet connection with FAS, including what mail you send," Osterberg says.
HASCS's security efforts have emphasized to students the illegality of breaking into other people's accounts.
People who are caught are sent to the Administrative Board for disciplinary hearings, according to Steen. But he declined to say how many students are Ad Boarded each year because of computer violations.
The focus on keeping the system running also prevents HASCS from providing services including group accounts, mailing lists and Web pages to student groups. This service is instead handled by the Harvard Computer Society (HCS), which now serves 170 student organizations for free.
Groppi, who is HCS's director of account services, describes HASCS's refusal to help student groups as "unforgivable."
Groppi and HCS President Daniel A. Lopez '97 say HCS is happy to provide services to student groups and plans to continue its efforts.
But they say HASCS should be responsible for providing the services.
"We don't mind doing it, but Harvard should take a stand and make this an official service," Lopez says. "The need is big enough."