Feedback on one-to-one meetings
In earlier newsletters there has been some general information about the feedback that I received directly during the one-to-one sessions with everyone in IT Services. When I met with a number of you I promised to provide an anonymised summary of the information and the issues that it raised. I have done that now and it is attached to this newsletter in a tracker format. During 2009, we will begin to work our way through the 71 challenges that you raised with me. I hope that you are able to see your words and phrases in this document directly but let me know if you feel anything has been mis-interpreted.
Change Management Programme
This programme is now up and running and Peter Bollands has begun introductory meetings with some of us. You can find the documents at H:/Exchange/ProjectManagement/Projects/IT Services Change Management/. There are going to be a lot of discussions in January and February and a program for this will be published to this directory shortly. One of the first things that Peter is going to facilitate is a self-assessment workshop over four half days based on the Information Systems Management and Governance framework published at http://www.ismg.ac.uk/. Philip Briggs attended a one day event hosted by Manchester University and UCISA which showcased this framework and its use in several UK Universities and a commercial organisation (Hewlett-Packard) and we feel that it will highlight strengths we already have as well as areas for improvement. Robina Chatham begins working with LSS Board members at an event on January 9th. We are all busy completing Myers-Briggs assessments at the moment. Jermyn Consulting are also now contracted to work on the service and business continuity work and will meet with Jeff Lucas towards the end of January to begin that process.
Student PC cluster provision
In the last newsletter there was an update on a review conducted with the student union of current provision. As a direct result we have been obtaining quotes from two University-approved furniture companies for replacement chairs and new mobile/flexible furniture for group study space. Budget has been agreed to begin the process to improve some of this facility especially in terms of "health and safety" and it will improve our student experience. If you haven't had the time, I would urge everyone to visit F Floor Richmond Building to have a look at the brand new thin client student cluster facility where the old refectory used to be located. This is a fantastic environment and sets a high standard for future student PC cluster provision on campus. Many thanks to Sara Eyre and the team in technical services who are bringing all this online for January 2009.
Consultation on Making Knowledge Work - corporate planning event
Thank you to those who took part in Wednesday's consultation events around the University's values and internal communications. This was a face-to-face meeting rather than an email! If you are interested in the feedback from the two sessions or making comments then its all posted here
Regular Meetings with PVC Rae Earnshaw
These weekly meetings have continued. Rae has been working on a couple of priority areas for the next Information Strategy Committee at the end of January. The first of these relates to information access/security recommendations and is a joint piece of work with Susan Mathews. The other area is a proposal to ISC that the University undertake an "options appraisal" for providing its student email - which includes continuing as we are, but also introduces the options of outsourcing student email, as well as not providing it at all (students bring their own). This is a developing area in the sector with about 15 UK Universities choosing to outsource student email to Google or Microsoft. It is important that we evaluate and respond to what is going on in the sector - especially when it directly impacts student experience. Some email facts that you may be interested in thanks to Geoff Bell:
We delivered around 400,000 messages last week, so around 22 million this year.
We currently reject around 95% of email that is sent to us because it is spam. If we didn't do this then we would have to have a much larger primary email system. The AntiVirus software and hardware system costs us around £10k/year.
Total cost ~£70k/year, or about 1/3p per delivered message.
There remains a standing invitation for anyone who wishes to use this meeting as a way to communicate with the PVC and senior management to just let me know.
Some other bits of news in the last month
Thanks to Mark Jones, new data storage capacity was added for our G and H Drives in Learner Support Services and the rest of Corporate Services over last weekend without service interruptions.
Thanks to Rick Graves and colleagues for the first time we have been able to publish individual web-based personalised student exam timetables. These have been issued to all students for January exams.
Following discussion at the LSS Board meeting a number of cases for training support were approved within IT Services. This process is open to all and four staff in IT services made proposals. As a result Ray Brown and David Dodwell will be completing the Comptia A+ network and certification courses, Mahmood Tariq will be undertaking a Part-Time BA in Computer Systems Administration (at Bradford) and Andrew Nicholson will be taking part in a German Language BA module (at Bradford). Look out for the next round of proposals if you wish to pursue further training opportunities funded by the University
And Finally
A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all readers.
Thank you for all that you have achieved in 2008 - have an enjoyable break and see you in 2009.
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