NCSA's Director visit to Sector Mons

On 21 January 2009, Director NCSA, Lt Gen Wolf paid a visit to NCSA Sector Mons.  He was escorted by the Sector Commander, Col Paul LaDue. 

The visit provided an opportunity for Lt Gen Wolf to personally visit the over 220 NCSA military and civilians that provide local CIS services to the SHAPE estate.  The first place the Director visited was the Customer Support Centre which is the interface to the user community and responds to an average of 155 helpdesk calls a day and almost 37,000 a year.  Next he visited the Automated Information Systems and Technical Control Centre which form the core of SHAPE’s CIS services.

Following this the Director visited the SHAPE ADP Training Centre with its staff of highly qualified and dedicated personnel.  The ADP Training Centre gives introduction courses to all newcomers and also provides dedicated CIS courses on local SHAPE applications for those who want to update their computer skills.  Finally he toured the logistics depot where all CIS equipment for SHAPE is processed and distributed. 

Sector Mons is one of ten Sectors belonging to NCSA, all of them serving NATO missions and exercises within their areas of responsibility.  Although the core functions of all Sectors are the same, they differ in some areas.  In the case of Sector Mons they do not simply support an HQ, they support SHAPE and its tenant organizations numbering over 3000 users.  This alone is a challenging task, but they also provide the day-to-day CIS support to their own higher HQ – NCSA, collocated in Mons.  Supporting any type of customer is always a difficult and daunting task, but providing CIS support to CIS specialists is even more challenging.  However this is a challenge that Sector Mons continues to meet each day as they provide first-class CIS support.