IT support hit hard by UCPH administration shake-up

After much controversy, the new administrative structures at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) took effect in March of 2025. Staff and students have now had six months to adjust to the aftermath.

In a series of articles on the university’s intranet KUnet, deputy directors of UCPH’s eight corporate units have shared their impressions of the first few months and provided updates on their own administration domains.

We’re running a parallel series at the University Post. Here we speak with employees and union representatives in the different units.

Now it’s the turn of the UCPH IT unit.

Three units doing the same thing?

Lennart Amden is an IT specialist in the ‘Platforms and Applications’ unit — they are the people that make sure that things like, say, meetings in Teams actually work. He hasn’t felt the effects of the reform directly: the systems he handles need to run no matter what label is on the office door, as he puts it.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not concerned. He’s been at UCPH for 14 years and has been through multiple shuffles of the organisation chart.

There’s one change he can’t quite make sense of this time: UCPH IT has been divided into seven areas, three of which are called ‘Digital Solutions’ — with separate focuses on research, education, and administration.

This parallel structure could lead to the same issues being solved in different ways across the three tracks, according to the IT specialist. While the digital needs of research, teaching, and administration differ, there’s still overlap, he says:

»I’m afraid we’ll end up reinventing the wheel in three different places.«

Project manager Claus Grainger, who works in the administration-focused Digital Solutions track, shares his concern.

»I’ve actually done tasks in the other two tracks as well, because they couldn’t get their scheduling to work out,« he says.

Before the reform, Grainger was part of a central project management unit, which has now been disbanded.

»It worked really well before. You could catch issues before they escalated, and you had an overview of what was going on in other projects.«

It’s almost impossible to do project management now

Claus Grainger, project manager at KU IT

That overview is now gone, says Claus Grainger. He agrees that the three separate Digital Solutions tracks make sense — just not for project managers.

»I don’t see why we had to be split up. We could’ve remained a cross-functional resource,« he says, adding that with over 30 years’ experience, he’s rarely faced worse conditions for doing his job.

One of his frustrations is that time registration has been scrapped, making proper budget tracking impossible:

»It’s almost hopeless trying to manage a project now,« he says. »They’ve really sabotaged their own work. A lot is lost with the setup that they have chosen.«

»Challenging for project managers«

Programmer Søren Højbjerg also works in Digital Solutions, but in the education track’s ‘Integrations and Dataflow’ unit. From his perspective, the risk of duplication hasn’t increased:

»Once an organisation gets past a certain size, there’s always a risk that people will do the same things in parallel,« he says.

»The question is whether the new setup makes that easier or harder to avoid. Honestly, I think it’s more or less the same.«

In general, Søren Højbjerg doesn’t think UCPH IT has been hit as hard by the reform as some of the other areas.

»But I’m old and have been through so many reorganisations,« he says. »So I just think: Oh well — they’ve come up with something new. Let them get on with it.«

That there is the risk of duplication across the three Digital Solutions tracks is not a major concern of management. On the contrary, the new structure has made it easier to meet UCPH’s many different IT needs, according to the deputy director at UCPH IT Karen Rahbek:

»I think it’s helped us better match the specific requirements of researchers, teachers, and the administration. But I fully acknowledge that this is a challenging process for the project managers,« she says.

»And I’m aware that several of them disagree with management on this. We’re in ongoing dialogue about this.«

As for the scrapped time tracking, Rahbek says she can’t promise an alternative any time soon:

»But I don’t think tracking time is the most important part of project management. The key is making sure the deliverables are actually delivered,« she says.

Support unit was hit the hardest

Another aspect that is puzzling to both IT expert Lennart Amden and project manager Claus Grainger is what has happened to IT support in the new setup.

Put simply, support has been split into two — with one part now outside the UCPH IT in terms of the organisation. They also lost several staff members in the process.

»That’s insane. If there’s one thing I know from project management, it’s that support is the first to feel the heat when something goes wrong in an IT project,« says Grainger.

»They’re the ones answering the phones when users start calling. But as far as I can tell, the new structure has just made things harder for them.«

Raheel Mahmoud, an IT supporter with 14 years experience at UCPH who works on North Campus, can confirm:

»Above all, we are more busy,« he says.

There are two reasons, he explains. First, fewer colleagues — some have quit and haven’t been replaced:

»Managers are holding back on reallocating resources right now,« he says. »They keep saying they’ll hire more, but we just have to wait until the reform settles down.«

Second, splitting the support team has increased the workload. Now, Service Desk handles phone calls and front desk tasks, while On-Site Support has to handle physical tasks like fixing docking stations.

He believes this has led to inefficiencies and longer turnaround times:

Before the reform, I’d just walk over. Now I have to set up a ticket

Raheel Mahmoud, IT supporter in Service Desk

»It could be a five-minute task — setting up a new workstation, for example. Before the reform, I’d just walk over. Now I have to set up a ticket,« he explains.

The ticket is then assigned to a colleague in On-Site Support, who is then allowed to walk over.

»And then it might take half a day before someone is available. I just don’t get why they’ve chosen to do it this way.«

READ ALSO: Administration reform: University’s finance staff reveal contrasting journeys

Another issue that support staff mention is the lack of prior warning on work surges. This hasn’t improved since support was removed from UCPH IT, says Raheel Mahmoud.

He recalls learning about IT system changes only when users called in needing help:

»Users tell us there is now Single Sign-On or multi-factor login for a system. It would’ve been nice to know that ahead of time. Often we’re the last to hear about these things.«

No plans to hire more

Deputy director Karen Rahbek is aware that support staff don’t always get enough information about things that might trigger a surge in calls:

»This sounds like a familiar issue — one we also had before the reform,« she says.

»And I completely agree it’s something we need to improve on. We’re working on it. Of course support should be kept informed.«

However, not all pressure points can be predicted, she adds.

»Sometimes it’s spontaneous technical problems that cause a surge.«

Or it could be Microsoft suddenly enabling two-factor authentication across all its programmes — something that recently happened — which UCPH IT cannot control, she notes:

»And I know support had an extremely busy time because of that. That’s obviously tough. But it had nothing to do with the reform.«

Rahbek does not believe more support staff are needed in general:

»The point of the reform was that we saw potential to do things more efficiently. So yes, there are fewer employees now than there were before.«

Is it more efficient if one employee has to create a ticket, and the user then waits for someone else — rather than just solving it on the spot in five minutes, as Raheel Mahmoud describes?

»The split allows us to specialise and plan tasks that require physical presence in a more streamlined way. A single employee can handle multiple tickets in one round, instead of one ticket at a time.«

Rahbek stresses that Service Desk staff can still go out for urgent tasks — as long as someone remains at the front desk and on the phones.

But that’s often not the case, says the supporter, because they’re too busy and too few?

»We’re monitoring the load, and things have stabilised to a more manageable level recently,« says Rahbek.

»Sure, some days are busier than others. But the whole administration is busy right now. My sense is that on an average day, the pressure on support is at a bearable level,« she says, adding:

»But we’re always happy to talk to our staff about what we can do to ease the workload.«

Warned against the University Post

In preparation for this article, the University Post emailed UCPH IT employees asking if they wanted to contribute to our series on the effects of the administration reform.

A few responded quickly, and the article was nearly finished when we received a wave of new messages — apparently triggered by an internal UCPH IT meeting where the deputy director brought up our inquiry.

One person wrote:

»I’m emailing from a fake address because of what the deputy director said at a recent all-staff meeting.«

Several sources independently confirmed that at the meeting, the deputy director stressed that this was not an invitation from management to talk to the University Post.

Another wrote:

»If Karen [Rahbek, ed.] hadn’t more or less warned us at the last department meeting not to contribute to the University Post because she said you were confrontational, I probably wouldn’t have written.«

That employee completely misunderstood what I said

Karen Rahbek, deputy director at KU IT

A third message began:

»I hesitated because management directly warned us against contacting you.«

Karen Rahbek, did you warn staff against talking to the University Post?

»No. That employee completely misunderstood what I said. Of course our staff are free to talk to the University Post — I told them that. I just informed them that you’re an independent media outlet.«

Five different staff members confirm that you called the University Post confrontational and warned them against speaking to us?

»Then I expressed myself poorly. That wasn’t my intention. I clearly said it’s up to each employee whether they want to contribute. I just wanted to clarify that you’re not a management media.«

Why was that clarification needed?

»Because in the past, some employees felt caught out after speaking to you, not fully understanding what the University Post is.«

So it was to help them?

»Yes. But I obviously phrased it poorly — I can hear that now.«

One of those who contacted the University Post after the meeting was project manager Claus Grainger. He says he wrote to us because he was provoked by the remarks from the deputy director:

»I just thought — enough is enough. She shouldn’t interfere like that.«

What was it exactly that provoked you?

»It came across as her trying to shut things down or signal that we should only get in touch if we had something nice to say.«

That was never her intention, insists Karen Rahbek, who also points out that she herself agreed to be interviewed:

»I’m happy to talk to the University Post — and all employees are more than welcome to do so too.«

This article was first written in Danish and published on 13 November 2025. It has been translated into English and post-edited by Mike Young.