After a brief delay, "A Day in the Life" is back! This time, we traveled to Flint and Detroit to shed some light on the issues facing non-Lansing employees.  Remember, if you know someone who should be featured on "A Day in the Life," contact Dana Graham at grahamd3@michigan.gov

Theasess Keys is the first manager featured on “A Day in the Life.”  She oversees a staff of 13 on Detroit Field Service Team 3A.  Together, they service over 6300 workstations in 11 state agencies at 76 sites throughout Wayne county. The sites include both state and privately owned facilities.  Theasess and her team also assist with support of over 100 servers, switches, routers and the networking infrastructure for all of Wayne county.

Team 3A is the  “eyes and ears” of the Server Services Team, which does not have a presence in Detroit.  So Theasess and her team help support and oversee the server room in Cadillac Place, which is home to many of Detroit’s State Employees.  In order to make sure all of her employees are “in the know” on all the Remedy cases in the team Queue, Theasess has implemented contact days scheduling, to make sure that each person on her team can back up in case of her absence.  Some of the special events they service are unique, as well.  First, team 3A gets to work at the Michigan State Fair, supporting the Department of Agriculture.  They service all of the technology equipment set up at the fair.  In fact, Agirculture's Information Officer, Lyn Draschil, just sent an e-mail commending the team on their strong work.  Another highlight for the team is supporting the Secretary of State’s machines at the North American International Auto Show, held at Cobo Hall in Detroit.  Theasess said this assignment is so popular, she has to draw straws to decide which employees get to go.

Besides the special events held in Detroit, Theasess' team supports state facilities that also involve city, county and federal agencies.  For instance, Herman Kither and Walter Reuther hospitals are state-funded, but work closely with the city and county.  Also, two of Theasess’ employees are with Disability Determination Services, a federally funded agency.  These federally funded employees are available to service any federal desktops in Detroit, but can also work on state machines.  However at this time, state employees cannot work on the federal equipment.  The substantial depth and breadth of what Team 3A does makes them very unique, Theasess says.

As a manager, Theasess feels one of the biggest challenges she has faced has been to make a team out of people who came from multiple state agencies.  They service 11 agencies, but don’t have expertise in all of them.  To overcome this, Theasess has begun to implement a creative, low-cost solution.  Using an extra room in Cadillac Place, Theasess hopes to create a training room stocked with equipment from Salvage/Surplus.  They’ll create a PC environment for each of the agencies the team does not have expertise in, so that they can practice and learn from this training environment.

There are many issues that Theasess and her team encounter daily due to the geographic distance from DIT central office in Lansing. Because of this Theasess and her team must function independent of resources available to other field service teams through out the state, which she thinks creates a more complex work environment.

Overall, Theasess thinks she has developed a strong team.  “This is a great team.  What more could I ask for?” she says.  The members of her team seem to work well together.  In fact, while we were visiting, one of Theasess’ employees came by to ask that a Remedy Ticket be switched to her queue.  The ticket was originally assigned to another team member, but since the employee was already in the area, she fixed the problem.  Theasess said that was just one example of the teamwork her staff displays all the time.

Theasess came to DIT from FIA, where she started as a worker and moved up to Departmental Analyst.  From there, she was able to transition into the Tech side of things.  Before working for the state, Theasess worked at Toys R Us and United Airlines.  A Detroit resident since the age of 4, Theasess received her degree from UofM-Dearborn, with a double major in Business and Psychology, and a minor in Information Systems.  She says the psychology major has helped her tremendously as a manager at the State.  Theasess has been married to her husband, Robert, for 21 years and they have a 13-year-old daughter, Tiffany. Tiffany has received a full academic scholarship to attend University Liggett High School. Theasess is very proud of her baby.