At the University of New Orleans, IT workers couldn't begin returning to the school's campus until mid-November, said Jim Burgard, assistant vice chancellor for university computing and communications. And it wasn't until the start of January that all of those who remained on the IT staff were back working on campus, he said.

Even now, the university is still running its mission-critical applications at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on 25 servers -- some taken from its own data center, and some donated by LSU. But the New Orleans school is installing an uninterruptible power supply and a new generator powered by natural gas at its own facilities, Burgard said. When that work is completed in about six to eight weeks, the applications at LSU will be shifted back to the campus in New Orleans.

But, Burgard added, the university plans to leave the servers in place in Baton Rouge and mirror data to them so that the LSU location can function as a hot site if another disaster occurs. That strategy is also geared toward eliminating some of the problems the university had retrieving its backup tapes after Katrina, he said. Although the school didn't lose any data, it had to wait three weeks to access the tapes, which were stored on the sixth floor of a building in downtown New Orleans

Meanwhile, Burgard is still trying to replace eight IT workers -- nearly one-fifth of his 45-person staff. A recent advertisement for a senior networking position that before the storm would likely have garnered about 20 resumes netted just four, he said. In addition, he received only two resumes for a senior database administrator slot.

Also working to fill IT positions is Ochsner Clinic Foundation, which operates a 600-bed hospital on its main campus in New Orleans and 35 clinics throughout Louisiana. Ochsner lost 23 workers from its 150-member IT staff after the storm, said Bill Saussaye, director of information services operations. The health care provider has managed to fill some application development jobs with local people but is using contractors to temporarily fill positions in networking and communications, he said.