Feedback on Self Assessment Toolkit for IT Services

In the last week a small group of us in IT Services (five) together with invited assitance from others, have worked our way through a self-assessment exercise for IT services. Each of the four assessments has taken 3 hours so it has been a significant time commitment for those involved. The toolkit is something that was put together at Strathclyde University using funding from the JISC and was promoted towards the end of last year by UCISA at a one-day event which one of us attended. The feedback from that event suggested that the self-assessment had demonstrated value and benefit to those who had undertaken the exercise as presented in a number of case studies. Overall, we have identified a number of our strengths at this University and areas where we benchmark well against the proforma questions. We also identified a number of gaps and development areas, some of which we have never really had in place, and others which we used to have in place at some time in the past but which may have lapsed. It is often difficult not to be over-critical but on balance I think we demonstrate many areas of good practice and we should celebrate the fact that we are in the minority of Insitutitions that have taken the time to undertake such a comprehensive self-assessment exercise at all. There are also questions that the toolkit didn't ask (such as internal and external communications strategy, fit for purpose physical space/resources etc) so there is more work to be done.