IT Services Newsletter #23

Short IT Review
Over the Summer, there has been a short University-wide IT review undertaken by an external consultant. The consultant worked with the University Senior management on two other reviews of IT in recent years. This review was initiated through the information Systems Committee (ISC) and was sponsored by LSS and began in February 2010 with a very short workshop event involving IT Services, Finance and HR representatives. This part of the review over the Summer involved two one day workshops. The first involved the Academic School IT Managers, and the second involved the IT “systems” teams in Corporate Services. A wide ranging set of recommendations were made by both workshops which have now been prioritised and also cost-benefit impacts analysed. This report will soon be circulating to all those who participated and then it will be widely circulated in time for the next ISC to consider in January 2011. More information will follow shortly.

IT Investment Plan 2009-14: an update
The investment plan document has now been presented to Information System Committee and the senior management team. It is competing with a wide range of other things, and it is not yet clear what funding will be available as a result of both the Browne review and CSR announcements of the last few days. Never the less, we have decided to proceed “at risk” with the Collaboration Project proposal (to the stage of having a full business case) and also the Green IT project (external funding opportunities). Both of these projects are “invest to save” projects that may reduce our costs after we have made the initial investment up front. Take a look at the summary which is attached – if you want the full report with attached business cases send me an email.

Elluminate
The University has signed a three year licence agreement to continue use of Elluminate. If you want to find out more about Elluminate have a look here. This is now part of the Blackboard Collaboration Suite, and we have a campus licence for all staff and all students. We are meeting shortly to discuss how we bring this into life as a fully supported service beyond its initial pilot. It is an expensive licence and it has lots of potential in both learning and teaching, research and potentially administrative/support environments. All ideas on this are very welcome as it could mean we can use to the tool to “do things differently”.

Physical Zoning of student (and staff) spaces (JBP level 01)
We are making progress now on getting final quotations for zoning parts of Level 01 for student use only (and conversely for staff use only). This has been passed by the Fire Safety people. It’s not yet clear whether we would enforce zoning at all times or just outside normal office hours. There are pros and cons to physical separation of the two spaces, including the impact it might have on our visitors both internal and external to the University. I’d be interested in hearing your views on this.

Annual Reports (09/10) and Student Summary
The final versions of our IT Services reports are now loaded up in accessible formats on the IT Services web pages. This includes a version that is directed at students – just a short overview of the student related highlights from last Session. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the development of this year’s report and more importantly its contents.

Visitor parking
We’ve been having some issues with visitors taking ages to park and also finding car parks full. I raised this with Peter Haines and he reminded me about the information sent via staff briefing a little while ago. I hadn’t read this properly (oh dear) so probably worth circulating to everyone so that you have a chance to make better plans than me:
Visitors' car parking arrangements – City Campus
There is currently no designated visitors car park at City Campus following the closure of the car park outside of Horton A. Due to the ongoing works around Richmond and Horton buildings there is limited parking available in that area and usually by 10am there is only visitor space in the Shearbridge Green car park (accessed from Great Horton Road) and Longside Lane car parks accessed via Shearbridge Road and Longside Lane.
All visitors requiring parking should, where possible, be sent a permit in advance and go directly to one of the above named car parks. If you are unable to send a permit out in advance, please still request that all visitors go directly to one of the above named car parks and then come to either the Richmond Building Reception or other appropriate reception point to collect their parking permit to then be displayed in their vehicle windscreen. This will alleviate congestion on Richmond Road caused by visitors parking outside the front of the Richmond Building to collect a parking permit, only to be redirected back around the outside of the University to an available car park. Staff assistance, by issuing clear instructions and maps to all visitors, to help manage this problem would be greatly appreciated. A new visitors car park will eventually be created in the current Prof’s car park once that is relocated to the rear of the Richmond Building.

Office Moves and Changes
Not a great deal further to report since last time although some further moves have been postponed which means we can continue to use the “un-numbered” room for a little while longer. The fridge and microwave have been relocated from room 01.8. If no-one objects, it seems like we could rationalise down to one fridge and save some electricity (the unused fridge kept as spare). The printers from 01.8 will be relocating shortly to the same space. Two of the easier things on the “wish list” have been done – a subscription to “stuff” and a clock. There is now a coffee-making machine of the filter variety. Thank you to everyone who has come along to the Friday coffee mornings. These will continue so long as there is interest, but there won’t be invitations any longer (10:30-11:00 weekly everyone welcome). The idea of this space, as well as promoting a chance to meet colleagues informally, is also to encourage us away from our desks at regular intervals during the day – health and safety guidelines say:

Plan work so there are breaks or changes of activity
As the need for breaks depends on the nature and intensity of the work, the Regulations require breaks or changes of activity but do not specify their timing or length. However the guidance on the Regulations explains general principles, for example short, frequent breaks are better than longer, less frequent ones. Ideally the individual should have some discretion over when to take breaks.

And Finally.........Announcing a Photo Competition
It turns out that we have a lot of people interested in photography in IT Services. One of the recent suggestions has been to put some of our own photographic work on display in our space on level zero. If there is sufficient interest we could arrange a display of work curated by the Fellow in Arts. In the meantime, anyone interested in participating is invited to bring along your favourite photos in digital or analogue form to 01.59. Watch this space (for real!).

Real Ale Trail

Official route map and website is www.realaletrail.net.

Using iPhone as a "dongle"

Probably very boring if you already know how to do this sort of thing. This is in case I forget now I worked out what to do:

You have to follow the instructions on the apple site here, which includes loading iTunes onto your laptop if you haven't got it loaded already.

Then you set tethering up on the iPhone using settings>general>network>internet tethering (slide from off to on)

Then you go to the laptop and enable the connection via settings>control panel>network connections

Now I know how to do it I think it will take about a minute to get this working anytime anywhere

We do not have unlimited iPhone data on the University Vodafone contract at moment - it's £10.50 for line rental which includes 1GB of data then after that its £4 for every 500 MB. That's You can check how much you've used by going to the iPhone settings>general>usage

University Halls - tests show internet speed differences

Buried a little deep in the student newspaper out this week is an article unattributed on broadband tests that students have been running in various private and university Halls. There is a facebook page the students have set up. Its been inspired by a national television appeal for ISPs to be honest about the internet speeds they provide. So after a week long test the results are published. Perhaps its too easy to pick at the unscientific nature of the analysis or the fact that some of the results do not seem feasible. Anyway, for the University's part, we are concerned about the specific mention of taking 3 hours to download a lecture off blackboard. So we followed that up and have found that indeed there are some lecturers who have loaded material up into Blackboard that are so "large" that they really will take 3 hours to download........there are other solutions to that specific problem which we are now followingup with the lecturers concerned. For the record, all of the University supported resnet Halls in Bradford are supplied with just over 1 Meg download and 0.5 Meg upload with an enviable contention of 10:1 (most ISPs run at much higher contention levels). We also put no limit on data transfer in a month. There have been no significant reports since the start of the new Session through our service desk (available 24x7x365) of either service interruptions, service response issues or performance problems. We have dealt with one or two specifics and also of course the somewhat routine "banning" of accounts due to undesirable network traffic through virus, trojan or some other effect. We may be able to do something about that more proactively and are looking at implementing a solution to improve that situation.