Information and Communications Technology Strategic Plan, 2005-06 to 2009-10

The ICT Budget and Priority Plan

Introduction

218. Section 5 defines an approach, together with a set of principles, for the development of an ICT Budget and Priority Plan. This is a five-year central ICT expenditure plan.

219. The Oxford central ICT expenditure plan has been produced for the first time. It must be stressed that the amounts shown in the ICT expenditure plan are illustrative.⁴⁴

220. Centrally funded ICT projects have been assigned priorities, based on the requirements identified in sections 1 and 2 of the ICT Strategic Plan.

221. A full explanation of the central ICT expenditure plan is given in Appendix A.

222. The five year central ICT expenditure plan reveals the need for a consistent approach to establishing the costs of central ICT activities, and scopes the projected investment which will be needed to roll-out and maintain mission-critical central ICT services. Of necessity, this exercise is a very first attempt, the amounts are only illustrative, and much more detailed analysis will be required within the implementation phase of the ICT Strategic Plan.

223. An initial comparison between expenditure foreseen in the ICT expenditure plan and the amount allocated to ICT in the University’s Capital Projects Register reveals a significant discrepancy. This emphasises the importance of being able to terminate ICT services provided by the centre which are no longer essential.

Principles

P23. ICT pervades Oxford academic and administrative life. It is critical to fulfilling both individual and organisational aspirations. The establishment of a central ICT expenditure plan, therefore, which enables the collegiate University to anticipate and prioritise central ICT expenditure and development, is an essential outcome from the ICT Strategy Programme.

P24. The University requires a five-year rolling plan for central ICT expenditure (hereafter referred to as the ‘ICT Budget and Priority Plan’). Central ICT expenditure is an investment which has consequences for the whole collegiate University, and the investment must be managed, kept within a specified allocation, and priorities for expenditure specified, collectively.

P25. The academic community must determine the essential components within a prioritised central ICT expenditure plan; this process itself is dependent on appropriate ICT coordination and decision-making processes being in place in divisions and across the colleges.

P26. The ICT Budget and Priority Plan must take local ICT requirements and investment as its initial focus. It must identify the shared and central ICT services which are essential for the local services to operate effectively.

P27. The ICT Budget and Priority Plan must cover central expenditure on ICT in teaching, research, and administration (including services provided by OUCS, OULS and BSP). It must also foster conditions for local innovation and sustainability. Where appropriate the Plan must allow for, and fund, the scaling-up of local developments into Oxford-wide shared services.

P28. The ICT Budget and Priority Plan must take into account the University’s strategic objectives and the increasingly complex statutory requirements.

Recommendations

R21. Define an approach and a set of principles to develop a five-year University ICT Budget and Priority Plan covering the services funded centrally.⁴⁵

R22. Enable users across the collegiate University to specify priorities for central ICT investment; the Plan should be updated yearly, and should offer a single consolidated view of central ICT investment.

R23. Provide a breakdown of ongoing operational expenditure and a descriptive and prioritised list of major new central ICT investments.

R24. Place the new five-year University ICT Budget and Priority Plan, and the process used to maintain it, under the ownership of the Director of ICT, and oversee its development through the PRAC ICT Sub-committee.⁴⁶

R25. Establish processes to appraise expenditure on ICT in teaching, learning, research and administration, to measure total cost of ownership, to prioritise expenditure on new central ICT projects, and to establish and keep within a specified budget.

R26. Address the apparent discrepancy between the resources allocated for centrally-funded ICT in the University’s Capital Projects Register and the indicative amounts required for central ICT services in the five-year ICT expenditure plan.

ICT Budget and Priority Plan

224. An ICT Budget and Priority Plan is derived from analysis of local requirements within Oxford, the projects foreseen by the central ICT providers, and consideration of ICT requirements which enable Oxford to meet both its strategic objectives and the increasingly complex regulatory requirements.

225. A prerequisite for establishing an agreed ICT Budget and Priority Plan is to ensure an appropriate ICT Coordination and Decision-Making (CDM) structure is in place (see Section 6). The amounts in the Budget and Priority Plan presented here are illustrative.

226. The ICT Budget and Priority Plan tabulates central ICT applications and services which are currently foreseen, and assigns priorities on the basis of feedback received in sections 1 and 2. Central investment must be driven by the services and the environment that they provide for local users.

227. The relevant principles are to:

invest in central ICT services which provide local users with the ICT environment they require, and enable local ICT services to work effectively;
enable the collegiate University to set central ICT priorities for expenditure;
ensure that there are adequate resources to ensure high-priority ICT services are resilient, robust and reliable and effective;
terminate central ICT services which are no longer the highest priority ⁴⁷;
ensure that overall central expenditure is contained within a limit set by the collegiate University in competition with other calls on expenditure.

228. In some cases, investment is to provide infrastructural glue to make the local ICT services work effectively (e.g. underlying network).

229. In other cases, it is for applications to enable local services to interoperate with other local services or central services (e.g. Identity Management).

230. For some applications the best means to deliver an ICT service to Oxford is to operate it centrally (e.g. Finance system) – see section 3 for a discussion of the three-layer model.

231. An initial presentation of an ICT Budget and Priority Plan, or ICT plan for proposed central ICT expenditure, is presented in Appendix A - Table A1. It should be stressed that the quantities shown in the table are illustrative, in the sense that substantial further analysis will be required to ensure a consistent costing algorithm (see Appendix A for details).

232. The purpose here is to propose a process by which Oxford will be able to construct a Budget and Priority Plan for central expenditure on ICT in coming years. It will be a blueprint for future procedures, and will be refined by the new Coordinated Decision Making structure.

233. The result of the exercise is a five-year ICT Budget and Priority Plan for central expenditure, with priorities set by Oxford, aimed to maximise the return for local units and users, and to facilitate long-term strategic ICT planning.

234. The University has conducted an exercise in parallel with the ICT Strategic Programme, undertaken by the Services Funding Working Group, with a remit, 'To consider and make recommendations to PRAC about the basis on which the cost of IT services should be met in the future'. The five year Budget and Priority Plan will be refined by using the outputs from this working group which includes a detailed analysis of current ICT services and funding models.

235. Proposed central expenditure given in Table A1 is classified according to the following Categories:

Category 5 – funding already agreed by central University;
Category 4 – very strong user requirement and/or underpins other high priority pilots, projects, services;
Category 3 – potentially very important, and worth funding as a pilot;
Category 2 – very important for parts of Oxford but not an enterprise-wide service; should be funded through cost-recovery;
Category 1 – potentially less important than higher categories but worth considering to be funded as special project through Development Office.

236. Figure 2 below provides a plot of the data from Table A1, shown as a function of Category (5-1 upwards).

Figure 2. Plot of proposed central ICT expenditure for 2005-2010, by category.

237. Figure 3 below shows the result of adding the current baseline budgets (assuming the baselines are held constant) to the above plot (represented in the lowest strip).

Figure 3. Plot of proposed central ICT expenditure for 2005-2010, including baseline budgets.

238. Assuming the current central ICT provider baseline budgets are maintained,⁴⁸ the University is committed to approximately £11m/year plus Category 5 expenditure.

239. The central ICT expenditure plan has been created to be compatible with, and indeed supportive of, the Capital Projects Register, used by the University’s Capital Steering Group. An initial comparison between the expenditure foreseen in the ICT Budget and Priority Plan in its current state (remembering the uncertainties listed in Appendix A concerning the calculation of the amounts) and the proposed ICT expenditure in the Capital Projects Register, indicates that funding anticipated in the latter will only cover the capital ⁴⁹ costs of all Category 5 projects and a fraction of the Category 4 projects.

240. It will be essential for the collegiate University, through the new Coordinated Decision Making structure described in section 6, to specify central ICT priorities, and to ensure that mission-critical central services deliver effectively for the user and receive adequate funding in order to operate robustly, reliably, and effectively.

241. It is expected that all mission-critical central ICT services will be appraised as soon as possible, and risk assessments made to establish the likelihood of serious failure. This will make it possible for the Coordinated Decision Making structure to make informed decisions concerning where resources are most needed.

242. Not all items in Category 4 and no items in Category 3 are fundable within the ICT budget foreseen by the University’s Capital Steering Group. The Coordinated Steering Group structure will need to establish the amount of funding the collegiate University is prepared to allocate to central ICT provision (in competition with other priorities), to ensure ICT expenditure priorities are agreed within this overall allocation, and to ensure that key mission-critical ICT services are appropriately funded in order to be resilient, robust and reliable.

243. Table A3 in Appendix A offers a holistic view of ICT expenditure across Oxford. Taking the total spend from Table A2, the projected spends from Categories 1 and 2 (these would be cost-recovered and would not be borne by the Centre), an approximate total divisional spend on ICT (based on one Division’s approximate numbers), approximate college expenditure (based on the extrapolation from the spends of a few colleges), and finally some known ICT funding from external agencies (mainly Research Councils and JISC), gives an overall annual spend for ICT across Oxford in the region of £50m.

Key Priorities

244. In general, ICT priorities should be determined by the degree to which the investment enables the University’s strategic objectives to be met and according to the following criteria:

meeting the academic and administrative needs of users;
sustaining or benefiting the day-to-day processes of the University;
meeting the University’s statutory requirements;
the feasibility of the project;
value for money measured across the lifetime of the service.

245. There is a general belief that many of Oxford’s mission-critical ICT services have not had sufficient investment. As a consequence, there is a risk that they are insufficiently robust and there is inadequate redundancy. A key priority is to address this by identifying the high-priority services and allocating sufficient resources (possibly at the expense of others).

246. The remainder of this section describes the ICT priorities for Oxford. The first grouping is based on the types of requirements identified in sections 1 and 2. The second set is the result of applying the categorisation metric described above.

Mobile Computing and Communications

247. Improvements underway in departmental and college connections to the University backbone network will lay the foundations for a campus-wide wireless network.

248. Investigations are already underway to see whether a future University wireless service could be integrated with an Oxford city-wide service. Experience elsewhere has shown that this may be the most cost-effective approach.

249. The telephone infrastructure is based on ageing analogue technology (albeit reliable and maintainable). Increasing demand for new services will require a change of technology to Voice-over-IP (VoIP). The technology will be piloted within, for example, the Radcliffe Infirmary development, but a wholesale transfer of the University telephone infrastructure to VoIP should be started within the next five years, contingent on suitable infrastructure.

Resource Integration and Personalisation

250. Throughout this period the University will need to review, as a matter of some urgency, its groupware solution (e.g. an integrated email, calendaring, scheduling, and messaging system). This will be undertaken alongside developing the ECE but would be hosted by OUCS. The costs for this will vary considerably depending upon the solution adopted.

251. Email services are a critical requirement throughout Oxford. The bulk of email traffic flows through the centrally supported mail facilities. Further investment is required to ensure that the infrastructure can meet increasing demand whilst providing the level of resilience required for essential services.

252. The development of an institutional portal framework has the potential to deliver user interfaces and behind the scenes interoperability between, for example, a groupware solution, the development of a Virtual Research Environment framework, and the Virtual Learning Environment.

Management of Information and Data

253. Rolling out the student records system fully to colleges and departments will offer major benefits to Oxford.

254. Upgrading and enhancing the Financials system is essential in order to keep in step with the software manufacturer’s supported applications.

255. An identity management and directory service to provide data for authentication and authorisation services is required by applications across Oxford.

256. An identity management service will help facilitate the implementation of a Campus-wide access management system to enable single sign-on to diverse resources, including via any institutional portal.

257. A strategic review of personnel and payroll systems should be undertaken. The present approach is to outsource payroll processing and retain and support in-house the Opendoor software for HR. The University relies heavily on Opendoor, and delayed replacement will create an acknowledged risk. Many consider that an integrated HR/payroll solution should be a long-term high priority aim (for 2009/10); the college dimension will be a crucial consideration for any future system.

258. The importance of the University’s web presence cannot be over-emphasised. Increasingly it is the main showcase for all the University’s activities, for the general public, applicants, and the academic community. There is a pressing need for a content management system, aligned with the Oxford ICT Structure, to support Web development.

259. There should be a piloting of a University ‘Smart Card’ as part of an overall access management strategy and which may be used by departments and colleges to control access to buildings and the use of selected facilities (e.g. Library borrowing, photocopying, catering).

260. The research grant costing service, currently provided by Resolve, should be upgraded in order to provide better interoperability with, for example, the financial system and external grant proposal submission processes.

261. The integration of University buildings information within an estate management system is required.

Secure Data Storage and Access

262. The amount of data held within Oxford is growing exponentially, and there is at present no data storage framework for managing those data reliably and securely. In addition, there are areas of new and pending legislation which will impose obligations across Oxford, and where it is necessary to be able to demonstrate compliance. Increasingly, intellectual assets are held only in digital form. There is an urgent need to develop a data storage infrastructure which provides a range of facilities including access management, repository services, secure backup, and offline facilities.

263. Backup and archival services comprise a mixture of centrally supported and local facilities. Over the next three to four years there should a more unified approach to supporting departmental backup. Other areas that may need considering in the future include a backup service usable by undergraduates, and for PDAs and other mobile devices. Greater security would be provided through the provision of a second off-site storage location.

264. Institutional repository infrastructure includes an agreed framework for the development and delivery of interoperable digital repositories for e-prints and other forms of research output, learning objects, research data, and library, museum and archive collections in digital form.

Flexible Desktop Computing

265. Three central departments (Central Administration, Computing Services and Library Services) are building and deploying an Enhanced Computing Environment (ECE). This requires an initial outlay, to bring the three units to a common standard, and to create the new environment. After three to four years, this will result in an overall saving of resources.

266. Once the ECE is established in the three units, the service will be offered to Oxford on a cost-recovery basis. Some modest investment may be needed to get this established.

Resilience of ICT Systems

267. Some of the current network infrastructure was installed in 1984. It is essential that the network provides the appropriate level of resilience to ensure that teaching, research and administration demands are met.

268. A further upgrade to the backbone network switching structure will be required in the next four years to ensure that Oxford meets the continuing requirements for capacity and efficiency.

269. The current OUCS Computer Room is full to capacity and, as the location of many core infrastructure services, represents a potential risk to the business continuity of the University should the facility be subject to a prolonged outage. The provision of a modern, secure University-wide computer room facility is recommended in order to distribute and duplicate (as backup) key server and network infrastructure. It will be offered to units across Oxford to use on a cost-recovery basis.

Research

270. The long-term vision for Oxford’s Supercomputing facilities requires consistent capital and recurrent investment over the next five years, much of which will be recovered through fEC.

271. The newly formed Oxford e-Research Centre, and its CampusGrid, will have most of its activities funded through fEC and research income, but some investment from the University will be required.

272. The development of a Virtual research environment framework offers the potential for supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary research across the academic divisions; addressing the needs of particular research communities through offering reusable tools and shared resources within an interoperable framework.

273. A Research management and reporting system is essential in order to meet the requirements of the RAE for 2008 in particular and the need to report and disseminate information about research more generally. In the longer term the service should interoperate with, for example, institutional e-prints and data repositories and personalised virtual research environments.

274. The Research Discovery Service, piloted in the Medical Science Division, should be considered for wider use across Oxford, and if appropriate, funded centrally.

Teaching and Learning

275. There should be a rolling program for upgrading the IT and audio-visual facilities in teaching spaces across the University (e.g. Examination Schools, lecture rooms, seminar rooms, etc).

276. Weblearn, the centrally supported Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), requires continued and adequate investment to ensure its long-term sustainability and continuation of its flexible and modular approach to the development and deployment of tools.

277. A Lecture, tutorial, and exam scheduling tool suited to Oxford’s teaching requirements, including an online searchable database of lectures and classes is desirable.

278. An integrated examinations management and classification system is required, including either the replacement or the further development of Mark-IT. It is important that any classification system can be easily adapted by departments to suit local marking schemes.

Cost-effective ICT Purchasing

279. A voluntary purchasing framework, as operates in other similarly sized institutions, will be made available. Staff and students will be able to make purchases from a set of companies within an overall framework, possibly shared with other universities.

280. In addition to guaranteeing competitive prices, this results in reducing procurement overheads, shortened order times, and greater uniformity of equipment.

Developing ICT Support Staff

281. A small budget allocation is foreseen for the ICT Forum to fund meetings, travel, buy-out of staff time for central and shared activities, and small ICT projects.

Enabling Coordinated Decision Making

282. To encourage innovation and enable flexibility in responding to new developments, an annual fund should be made available to support innovative projects in ICT that match the University’s strategic goals. The fund should also be available to allow projects to migrate to services, within the context of the ICT Budget and Priority Plan.

Categorisation of ICT Priorities

283. Each of the projects has been classified according to the categorisation scheme described above. The central funding for Category 5 projects has already been allocated (mainly in 05/06). Category 4 projects have not necessarily been allocated resources but are considered to be the highest-priority activities. Category 3 projects are also desirable but may benefit from a pilot project to demonstrate their value before subsequent investment. Category 2 projects, mostly relevant to specific Oxford communities, are likely to be offered on some form of cost-recovery basis whilst Category 1 projects, though interesting, are currently considered a relatively low priority for internal funding, and rely on development funding to go ahead.

284. The following list orders projects first by their categorisation and then by size in terms of budget. In subsequent revisions of this exercise, the scope and status of each project will be specified. Illustrative budgets for each activity are indicated in Appendix A.

Category 5 – funding already agreed

Library Management System: OULS project to roll-out a new Library Management System (LMS) tailored for the Oxford environment and which will integrate closely with the University's new administrative systems, the Virtual Learning Environment and a broad electronic information environment.
Financials hardware upgrade: Upgrading hardware is a pre-requisite to upgrading the software to version 11.5.10, and is also required in order to address performance issues.
ISIDORE Phase 3: Improved security features via IGS.M upgrade; piloting of online graduate applications and self-service registration.
ISIDORE Phase 2A: Roll out of new student administration processes and access to OSS to colleges and departments, and also development of enhanced reporting facilities.
Finance process review/training: Review of processes and provision of relevant training for Oracle Financials
Transfer payroll to ASP (first stage): Interim payroll project to move payroll processing from OpenDoor to an external bureau service.
Central Admin desktop refresh: Replacement of desktop machines within University Offices.
Enhanced Computing Environment Project: Enhanced Computing Environment (desktop) for University Offices, OULS and OUCS.
Estates Directorate Planon Phase 1: Planon replaces the existing estate management software; initially replacing the ProMaster helpdesk system and interface with the Insite space management system.
University Web CMS Phase 1 (Pilot): Implementing a Content Management System (CMS), and carrying out a pilot conversion of the University’s ‘Statutes and Regulations’.
Lecture lists development: Implementation of an online searchable database of lectures and classes, which is expected eventually to replace printed lecture lists (Facility CMS).
RAE data collection tools: Data collection and verification for RAE2008, based on staff data held in OpenDoor, augmented by information obtained from Oracle Financials, Oracle Student System, and Divisions.

Category 4 – highly desirable

Campus groupware: Funding for the development/procurement of an integrated email/calendaring/file sharing application.
Mobile computing/telecommunications: phase 1 (wireless): Equipping up to sixty University buildings with wireless networking to enable roving access to the University network and beyond.
Undergraduate admissions project: This project will be required if the University decides to implement a standard admissions process across all subjects and colleges; includes integration of functionality provided by ADSS and Admit more closely with OSS.
Institutional filestore – phase 1: Development of data storage framework to manage the University’s data reliably and securely; enable digital files and data held anywhere in the University to be accessed by anyone with appropriate authorisation; provide a high-performance repository with secure backup and offline facilities.
ISIDORE Phase 4: Online graduate applications rollout, self-service registration rollout, workflow pilot and online supervision reports.
Institutional Repository: Implementation of an institutional repository infrastructure to manage and provide access to the range of digital resources produced as a result of the University’s education and research activities.
Examinations management and classification system: Development and implementation of a system to manage the process of setting exams and classifying candidates
ICT office: Budget allocated to ICT office to fund ICT Director post, support staff and non-staff costs.
ISIDORE Phase 5: Possible implementation of modules to support collection of student fees.
MSD Content Management System: Deployment of Content Management System within Medical Sciences to assist with maintenance of distributed websites.
Institutional filestore – phase 2: Continuation of Phase 1.
ALMS system replacement: Replacement of the ALMS database currently used by the Development Office to maintain external contact details, including alumni, and manage fund-raising campaigns.
Backbone network switching upgrade: Upgrading the backbone network switching structure to take advantage of higher speeds etc.
Establish ICT forum: Budget allocated to ICT Forum to fund meetings, travel, buy-out of staff time for central and shared activities, and small ICT projects.
Network cabling replacement: Review network ducting and cabling to increase capacity, update cables and provide extra resilience.
HR/payroll process review: A strategic review of personnel and payroll business processes.
Central Backup (HFS): update servers/disk storage: Expansion of Hierarchical File Service ( HFS) to allow use by researchers remotely from Oxford, undergraduate access,and more seamless department backups (Stage 3b).
Virtual Learning Environment: Developing and maintaining Weblearn, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
Replace Latch software for Land Agent: A new property management system is needed for the Land Agent, to replace the legacy ‘Latch’ system.
Oxford Digital Library: Implementation of a filestore to manage data produced as a result of the Oxford-Google project and the Oxford Digital Library.
Oracle Fixed Assets module: Implementing relevant Fixed Assets module within Financials to permit identification of asset costs to individual departments.
Software upgrade to Oracle Financials 12: Upgrading to version 12 of the Oracle Financial software as a pre-requisite for adopting the ‘Fusion’ product.
e-Research infrastructure (initial): Investment through the Oxford e-Research Centre to develop CampusGrid and other aspects of e-Infrastructure (before covered through cost-recovery).
Software upgrade to Oracle Financials 11.5.10: Upgrading Oracle Financials and underlying database from the current version 11.5.7 to version 11.5.10.
Upgrade to email infrastructure: Upgrade email service to provide additional mailstore capacity and extra backup facilities.
Central backup (HFS) off-site tape/library drives: Expansion of Hierarchical File Service ( HFS) to allow use by researchers remotely from Oxford, undergraduate access,and more seamless department backups (Stage 2).
Central backup (HFS) replace central tape library/update drives: Expansion of Hierarchical File Service ( HFS) to allow use by researchers remotely from Oxford, undergraduate access,and more seamless department backups (Stage 4).
Central backup (HFS) unify departmental backups: Expansion of Hierarchical File Service ( HFS) to allow use by researchers remotely from Oxford, undergraduate access,and more seamless department backups (Stage 3a).
Transfer payroll to ASP (second stage): Continuation of project to transfer payroll functionality to an external bureau.
MSD Research Discovery Service: Deployment of Research Discovery System to expose the range of research and expertise within the Medical Sciences Division.
Identity management: To develop a ‘metadirectory’ of information which will greatly improve access to networked resources and systems by users entitled to do so; ensures that such data is derived only from authoritative sources; and enables the development of new services within the University, whether by departments or central services.
Estates Directorate Planon: phase 3: Rolling out Planon to departments to provide access to buildings information for administrators.
Financials enhanced reporting: Replace the Discoverer reporting tool with a more appropriate tool better meeting the University’s requirements.
Estates Directorate Planon: phase 2: Planon system to replace functionality provided by InSite.
University Web CMS Phase 2 (Rollout): Depending on outcome of Phase 1, converting centrally maintained web pages to Content Management System, and retraining staff to use the new tools.
OUCS Teaching rooms upgrade: phase 1: Upgrade of final teaching room within OUCS to modern facilities to promote and share a collaborative learning space, available for departments to use.

Category 3 – desirable (e.g. pilot)

HR/payroll implementation: This project will replace OpenDoor with a new integrated HR/payroll package, depending on the outcomes of the business process review.
Mobile computing and telecommunications: phase 2 (VOIP): Migration of telephone infrastructure to Voice-over-IP (VoIP) in response to demand for new services; migration strategy required with initial installation expected as part of Radcliffe Infirmary site redevelopment.
ISIDORE Phases 6, 7 8: May include developing OSS to support electronic dossiers for graduate admissions, implementation of a solution for OUDCE’s ‘open access’ programmes, implementation of OSS functionality to support recruitment and enquiries.
i-Procurement: Implementing the i-Procurement module in Financials to improve methods of entering data at the front end of Oracle purchasing.
Central Web consultancy team: phase 2 (service): Operate support/development team to offer advice and help set up standards-compliant web sites.
Implement Oracle Fusion product: Oracle planning to release ‘Fusion’, which is intended to combine the best elements of the Oracle Student System (OSS) with the best elements of the PeopleSoft ‘Campus Solutions’ product
Research Discovery Service: Potential rollout of Medical Sciences Research Discovery System as a service to other Divisions.
Institutional portal: Implementation of an online, personalised gateway to University resources and services for staff and students.
e-expenses via payroll bureau: Implementation of e-expenses through the bureau service.
Replace/ upgrade Resolve: Review of Resolve, for costing grant-funded research, with a planned closer integration with Oracle Financials.
Central Web consultancy team phase 1 (pilot): Establish a support/development team for departments and research projects to advise on setting up standards-compliant web sites.
OUCS Teaching rooms upgrade phase 2: Expansion of IT training facilities due to increased demand for courses and teaching space, by furnishing a fifth lecture room at OUCS.
Automatic timetabling pilot: Use of Facility CMIS to provide automated timetabling facilities for lectures and classes.
Card system ‘smart’ card pilot: Upgrading University Card hardware to pilot ‘smart’ cards for interested departments or colleges (running costs to be borne by participating units).

Category 2 – funded through cost-recovery

New University machine room: Second machine room to overcome serious risk issues concerning sole point of failure in OUCS machine room.
Oxford Super Computer: Capital and running costs for Oxford Supercomputing Centre (funding sources include SRIF3 and RAE Strategic Investment initiative).
e-Research infrastructure: Operating services for the research community (eg CampusGrid), funded through fEC.
Campus Grid: Maintenance of University computational grid for data-intensive research needs.
Virtual Research Environment service: Development of generic services which support collaborative virtual research environments serving the needs of researchers across disciplines.
Campus scheduler: Implementation of a service to enable scheduling of meetings, classes, room bookings and other events.

Category 1 – consider through development funding

ICT innovation fund: An annual fund to support innovative projects in ICT that match the University’s strategic goals and enable flexibility to respond to changing requirements.

Notes

44.

Illustrative in the sense that substantial additional analysis would be required to give reliable investment predictions produced against consistent criteria. Activities are underway to specify criteria which define the funding components within ICT capital projects.

45.

Including the services provided by OUCS, BSP and OULS.

46.

Described in section 6.

47.

While the amounts in this section are illustrative, there are indications that the foreseen capital budget for ICT is unlikely to fund all the services in the ICT Budget and Priority Plan.

48.

The central ICT provider baseline budget should be evaluated and appraised.

49.

The amounts shown under the capital columns in Table A1.

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