These are brief notes taken by Mike Fraser and do not necessarily represent his view or that of anyone involved in the ICT Strategy Programme. They are a simple record of discussion during the meeting and should be treated as such.
(Paul is speaking here in his role as Acting Strategic ICT Director)
Slides (PDF)
(These are the answers given by ITSS present at the briefing)
Duplication of intent – what would be useful is an over-arching contex in which efforts can be co-ordinated and improve life for students; initially, a communications mechanism to expose the common ground that already exists. PJ: forum to connect together for sharing and learning? Ability to liaise.
Develop a knowledge base e.g. documentation on procedures and solutions.
What areas can be centralised, which areas best handled by units (e.g. anti-virus, mirrors etc).
More information about scale of IT in the University. There are apparently 200 separate IT units and 500 ITSS. What is the overall spend on IT?
OUCS provides support for teaching and learning but who helps with open days, administration etc? (Tony Brett answers OUCS via ITS3)
Clear idea about what users actually do and how they interact with IT. Users work in different roles on different sites but not necessarily with joined-up IT (e.g. accessing resources between depts and colleges).
(again, answers given by ITSS present at the briefing)
Users, including students, confused about VC talking of operating in business terms. With ICT someone has to take responsibility – how do we know it's better than before? PJ: need to ensure a change of culture and investment made wisely. If we can take the more routine IT activities then we can focus on the special needs of the IT units.
a slide suggested that collegiate University should set priorities but services offered by [central] University – what is meant by the different terminology? PJ: In general, we should be delivering for the University (RAE etc). How we run the IT fabric needs to be decided across the collegiate University. Response: getting at Central vs Colleges – where decision-making happening? PJ: Difficulty is that by April it will be a more general framework which applies to the collegiate University.
Most depts and units share information informally or via existing (but narrow) channels. We could have more ITSS sitting on others units’ committees.
Anne Trefethen asked ITSS to complete WT B questionnaire on behalf of WT D.
IT strategy focus should be on quality which can be measured. If we are going to be measured it should state how the measure will take place. Else there is a danger of a broad and subjective Strategy which is difficult to implement and align unit strategies. PJ: difficult since we are in a chicken and egg situation – not having the right structure first, Auckland etc. April will be phase one with implementation in phase two though this is not satisfactory. The structure has to be right to measure improvements.
What is meant by strawman strategic plan? Original idea was to build Plan in Feb but now we are creating the Plan structure with emerging ideas, to test.
What dates the initial strawman released? PJ: currently a personalised version which needs to be reworked by first week of Jan.
One of the most important things is to change IT culture? Surely we need to change the culture after working out the strategy? PJ: well yes, but this is a bit chickens-and-egg and the balance needs to be got right. Change of culture relates to communication structures. The five year plan needs to encompass the collegiate University not just the Centre.
What evidence from IBM that in three years we will be uncompetitive? PJ: IBM/Gartner experience. University has no formal view of the future currently for ICT. Other institutions can answer cross-institution questions which means an incredible layer of integration for knowledge management.
“ICT institute” – how would that fit in with current IT structures? PJ: In general, strucutures may well change and ICTC may not remain in its current form. The IT institute is nothing to do with governance but rather a way of 'us' getting together to look at the big issues.
What kind of activities might be included within the Plan or indeed not included? PJ: there will be the five year plan and priorities; governance and management structure; what the University thinks are the IT needs; what relationship between ICT and business systems; but probably not anything specific about hardware/software and individual units. What is coming out of WT E is a sense of an interface with individual units rather than knowing the gory details of internal operation.
Any sense from other universities about procurement? PJ: Yes, but probably voluntary through common procurement service. This has not been considered in depth yet but will be as part of the strategy programme.
How will IT strategy fit into other activities – many other activities are underpinned by ICT and need joining-up. PJ: We don't have an information strategy to which this relates. We try to go forward else nothing would happen awaiting everyone else.
IT institute: one of the requirements seems to be to allow liaison between ITSS. However, is this not already in place? Maybe grow the ITSSG into a more formal body? PJ: if so then University would need to recognise is terms of reference and give it a budget. Freeing up time through de-duplication. But how is paid for, to dedicate a proportion of time to a central institute? In Manchester the merger was used to change contracts to include cross unit working in job descriptions. In any case, need to explore how this might be taken forward. A Rotation scheme may also work as a way of making time for ITSS to work with other units.
Possible way forward to assist ITSS working together: encourage local growth of an IT support staff structure (e.g. small teams) which will give better resilience. Small units currently appoint in isolation and cannot even contribute much to their local context (e.g. Division).
Slides (PDF)
Has any attempt been made to look at other universities, especially Reading? LB: Not looked at Reading but have included UCL and Cambridge.
Any proposals to bring ECE to systems such as authentication, networked systems etc? LB: There is an unresolved issue about how far the provision of these services falls to the ECE team.
Are handhelds included in the ECE? LB: Well, given the picture [of John Hood and his Blackberry] I've just shown, yes I suppose so...
Will you be giving this presentation via the ECE? LB: Any type of networked-hosted service relating to communications has the potential to be included else what is meant by 'enhanced'?
The three units have unique email arrangements. Do you envisage imposing a single solution or separate solutions? LB: Much easier to answer after the consultants have reported. Personally, email services tend to rely on some aspect of central provision and a central solution would seem to be better. Not a disaster if overlapping solutions are used at least for a transitional period.
New technology is on the verge of service-oriented architectures. Have the consultants been made aware of this? No, the consultants asked to look at current provision and recommend how this might be done better but without future scoping.
Would have been nice to add OxGrid to the consultants spec. LB: Yes, this has been brought to their attention. [David Wallom introduces himself and the OxGrid.]
ECE seems to have taken people from other depts and formed a large team. Are there any lessons to learn for future integration between smaller units? LB: requires willingness to listen to and understand each other’s needs. Also successfully recruited a new post to look after the Team.
If the solution proposed by the consultants involved an architecture change would the University go out and buy new systems? University will make a decision based on knowledge of implications. However, throwing away the existing hardware is certainly viable in at least two cases...
These are brief notes taken by Mike Fraser and do not necessarily represent his view or that of anyone involved in the ICT Strategy Programme. They are a simple record of discussion during the meeting and should be treated as such.