Well, there was an IT department, and it could basically hang on by the edge of its nails in terms of keeping servers and desktops running without too much issue, but anything new or requiring development would have to be bought, which meant it usually didn't work the way we wanted it to, and instead we had to work with it. New Director has spent his first year upgrading network capacity and hardware, in anticipation of being able to roll out a unified desktop image and to reorganize the department so that we have server people, desktop people, software developers, and so forth. If they can deliver, we'll have a real IT department and, presumably, a system in place that's supposed to foreground the knowledge we need, provide actual mechanisms for feedback, and offer us tools other than email, phone, and meetings to do collaborative work.