IT Services Newsletter #40

We have dealt with the start of a new academic year with some success and a number of new and updated services have been launched which are mentioned below.  Thank you for making that happen – it is rarely anything other than a team effort.  They say that change is a constant, and with the announcement of the Vice-Chancellor’s departure I guess we can expect further turbulence ahead as the process to appoint a successor begins.  Closer to home, I am sure that you will join me in wishing Priscilla Preston well in her new role at Leeds Metropolitan.  We have had a lot of change over the Summer and it’s  good to see new folk settling in and getting a warm welcome.

Recruitment News – our team

There have been a significant number of staff changes since the last newsletter. These have been announced in separate staff announcements.  Since September, we have recruited five new people for the IT Systems Team to support investment plan projects and for the IT Support Team we have two colleagues in new roles.  We have also shortlisted external candidates for the vacant Grade 4 role in IT Support and have interview dates set for late November.

Recruitment News – project management framework

Over the last few months a cross-functional team has been working on a procurement framework for project management resource.  This process has led to a framework agreement for the next three years.  It will provide services which include management of IT projects, business process change projects, change management projects and general (non-technology) projects.  We provided a case study based on CRM (customer relationship management) to the candidates at shortlisting and the response provides a rich resource for any future activity in this area.

Launching the Annual Report 2011-12

We have completed the consultation on the content of the annual reports for last academic session.  This is now published on our usual web pages where reports for the last four years are available.  Once again, we have also provided a short student-focused summary of activity.  Please take a look a the document and at what we have achieved.  There are no plans to produce a “glossy” version for paper circulation.

IT Services web-site re-launch

This is an update on the project to migrate web content to the University content management system (CMS).  When this was first started, IT was at the “back of the queue” as our web presence was in pretty good shape and others took priority.  This Summer there was a major launch of the Library web presence which appears to have been very successful.  We are now commencing the process of auditing and moving the IT web site content to the CMS.  There is a timeline available which begins with benchmarking and gap analysis.  LSS Customer Services will be doing much of the redesign, content and training the new CMS contributors and moderators as this becomes devolved.  Obviously, throughout the whole process the team involved will be speaking to various staff in IT services. The aim is to launch by August 2013.

In Other News

·         The project to deliver on-line applications for student accommodation (e-apps) was successfully launched in late September.  New undergraduate and postgraduate students can now begin the process of applying for accommodation using the on-line service which is integrated with other University systems including SAINT and Room Service.  Congratulations to the team involved with this project.

·    The University systems were updated to deal with the fee processing for the £9k student fee from September 2012.  On the 23^rd October the annual invoice run took place creating over 10k invoice lines with a total value of £50.4 Million.  This is a significant piece of systems integration which is effectively a  once a year exercise.  In future years, we may introduce further process improvements to the data transfers.

·    Eduroam – a new wireless service - was “soft launched” in September and is working well.  It is available to students and staff and also visitors (if they have eduroam at their home institution).  Eduroam is available in the same locations as RoamNet and has a number of benefits including automated connections to avoid multiple authorisations, added security and you can use eduroam at other institutions worldwide (if those institutions provide the eduroam service). There is more information here,  and thanks to the IT Infrastructure Team for making this happen.

·    The piece of work to provide all new students with a print credit on the Pharos printing system has now completed.  Every new student received  a £1.25 credit to their online print account.  Over £5k has been credited so far.  General speaking, the investment in new MFD devices throughout the LSS estate has gone well and devices are now distributed through the buildings and appear to be working effectively.  If you are set up to use the IT Services MFD why not try printing on other student enabled devices across the campus.

·    There have been a number of service interruptions reported through IT Board.  We are continuing to write up reports which get to the “root cause” of issues.  When appropriate, these are published on the service status page so look out for a number of updates coming through after the November IT Board meeting.

·    Projects are progressing on Unified Communications for students and staff with recent workshops on Microsoft Lync and a further event covering Sharepoint.  We have obtained a full set of legal documents from JANET for the migration to Office 365 technology and technical documentation from external partner Salford Software.

·    Work has been progressing on attendance monitoring solutions and a short-term fix has been developed rapidly which has been a  team effort-  involved with the production of tender documentation and also supporting external experts on a register production and scanning system.  For a full update on all the projects we are working on take a look at the IT Services rolling plan.

IT Services Newsletter #39

It’s nearly the end of the Summer, and it feels like it has been especially busy this year. There have been building works all around us in the JBP Building, demolition works for the Kirkstone and Bradford Halls, and the development of SEC and two new sport facilities on the doorstep. The campus has changed a lot this Summer and of course, so too have some of the virtual and physical technology services. Some of these are reported below. It has also been a very challenging year for student recruitment and intake from the perspective of bringing good quality high tariff students into our courses, as well as a couple of technology challenges! My understanding is that we are still some way off the recruitment targets for some Academic Schools. This may mean some re-calibration is needed in academic delivery and related administrative/support activity. It is therefore timely that the University is also beginning a review of all its professional services following the academic school reviews last session. Let’s hope for a relatively smooth start to the new year which is always a fantastic time to see the students back on campus again.

Recruitment News

 

We are continuing to recruit to a number of fixed term vacancies in the IT systems team (5 posts) which mainly relate to the University investment plan. We have shortlisted candidates and are now moving to interview stage. You may not be completely surprised to hear that we failed to find a replacement for Christine Thacker despite external and targeted advertising, so some interim arrangements are now being proposed, while we take stock. There are Request for Staff Appointment (RSA) forms in the system for a replacement for Hanif Sidat, which we hope to announce in due course.

Continual Improvement Update

 

The recommendations made by this team last year, have led to the creation of a co-ordinated University enrolment helpline which was established a week ago when the pre-enrolment portal (PEP) was launched for new students. There have been a number of process improvements to the online process which have involved a number of people in IT Services, LSS Customer Services and the Hub. The PEP was launched to plan with particular thanks to Richard Davis for making that happen. Within 12 hours of launching the system to the first batch of 1500 Home students, over half of those students (760) had logged on to the PEP and one third (479) had completed the process. Since then further students have been released into the system successfully. We also took the decision to separate the PEP processes from IT account registration – new IT accounts are all automatically processed when students change status on the admissions system. As at September 5th over 3,200 new IT accounts have been automatically created since the first days of clearing and over 2,500 students have already self-registered by setting up all their password details and shared secrets etc – which is almost 80%. That is really excellent and our thanks to Steve McCain and Jacqui Cuthbert in particular, for their efforts in simplifying and streamlining the process and also the support documentation.

 

Clearing 2012

 

Following on from the recent recruitment update from the Vice Chancellor to all staff, I would like to add my own thanks and appreciation to everyone involved in making the results day, clearing and confirmation processes as relatively smooth as we could make them, in all the circumstances. We’ve obviously been dealing with a recurrent SAINT service interruption (now “fixed”) but that did not affect any business operations in a critical way. We have also been dealing with a very specific voice related issue which only affected a few extensions but they happened to be partly in the Admissions Office in Richmond Building. Typical! It is only because we have people who know what they are all doing, and know the University systems inside out, that we continue to manage this and deal with problems when they do arise in a calm and professional manner. Although I’m not sure it felt quite like that at 4pm on Bank Holiday Friday! Students are still applying and being recruited albeit in much smaller numbers now and the final numbers are hard to predict accurately – but see above for creation of 3,200 new IT accounts so far for a performance indicator!

 

Multi-Function Devices (MFD) for Printing and Copying

 

If you have wandered around the Library Building you will have noticed the arrival of lots of shiny new Hewlett Packard MFD’s for the re-launch of this important student service at the start of a new academic session. There are about 20 new devices being commissioned to replace a mixture of printers, copiers and previous generation Ricoh MFDs. All the devices that are being replaced are completely “worn out” after years of good service and were struggling to provide a great student experience towards the end. This new fleet should make a real difference to the service. You will have also noted that we are “taking our own medicine” and have launched a shared staff print service on the IT Services MFD. This uses the pharos account system to “pull” printing securely when you go and fetch your print output. All appears to be working well and thanks to Dougie McHattie for setting all that up, providing the instructions and managing the “change control” process.

 

In Other News

 

• The Key Information Sets (KIS) return was submitted to the deadline at the end of August. Most of the work has taken place around data collection and verification processes, however, it has also used a brand new module in the SAINT student system for this purpose. My thanks to those involved in putting the system “live” and putting the various upgrades to it, as we went along, and to some very tight timescales. This is now an ongoing piece of work and will be routinely submitted for comparison by students and potential students with other Institutions.

 

• For students at the start of the new term, we have moved the PC cluster from Chesham to Student Central permanently – to enable major refurbishment of Chesham for EDT and provide open access PCs in the Learning Mall. We intend to close the elderly JBP small cluster rooms on level 01 – kit will be relocated to the refurbished spaces on floors 1 and 2 of the new Library refurbished space – with light, air, and space! The flagship PC cluster room (JBP 01.53) has new paint, new flooring, (some) new chairs and also brand new state of the art computers. We have launched a brand new scanner service to replace the old facility on Floor 0.

 

• For academic staff, we have replaced and upgraded all the lecture theatre (GTA) computers to a standard high spec for Windows 7, we have set up an auto start and auto update procedure for out of hours updates to things like virus software/windows, and we have re-implemented the power saving on these computers.

 

• We held a second “IT and Estates Working Together Event” last Friday. It was a half day event covering a wide agenda from wiring closets, new builds, managing contractors through potential for shared servicedesk systems/operations. The event also included a presentation by Margaret Ekpo who has been working in Estates as graduate intern on reducing business travel with a particular focus on evaluating and making recommendations on “virtual meetings”. This was really helpful, including a set of specific recommendation and was followed up with a presentation to all interested University staff at a lunchtime briefing today. We will discuss the recommendations at the September IT Board.

 

• We are preparing for the BASE conference which happens on Tuesday September 11th. As it is a one-day event there is a lot less involvement than with the British Science Festival, however we are making various support arrangements including supporting the exhibition to be held in the Richmond Atrium, and also the provision of wi-fi for up to 600 campus visitors. The event has been advertised on the University home page where you may have spotted Ken Livingstone, who is one of the keynote speakers.

 

• The professional service reviews are beginning. IT Services has been invited to participate as a panel member for each of the reviews that are planned over the next 6 months. The panel will also include external membership. We look forward to making a constructive contribution to these activities, with a particular interest in technology and how we future proof the University in respect of its current and future requirements.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity that are crossing my desk and which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for a future newsletter. 

Bearing the Mace

Bradford College management seem to have blundered into a Public Relations disaster with the decision to invest many thousands in a ceremonial mace.  As a seasoned and veteran mace bearer having had the priviledge of carrying the university mace at least once at almost every degree ceremony since starting at the university I am reminded of a few things which may be state secrets:
(1) The University Mace fell off the podium (before my time) and had to be "fixed" in the engineering workshop labs between degree ceremonies.  It still has a distinct "wobble"
(2) The City Mace (and mayoral chain) are solid gold and their value is significant (priceless?).  The chain is so heavy because each mill owner who took the chain of office wanted to provide an even bigger and better contribution to the chain.
(3) The only time that the Mace should officially be used is to protect the Chancellor I think.  On the one occasion that someone approached the stage (wearing a rucksack) and in the middle of an acceptance speech, everyone, inlcuding the macebearer stood and stared and sat transfixed.  It was in fact the photographer's assistant providing some gear to the photographer on stage..
(4) When the chancellor (Imran Khan) was presiding a student produced a cricket bat and marker pen with a flourish from under his gown for autographing.  The Mace was not deployed!

The S-Lab Conference (York)

Visit to the University of York with a few hours of general discussion about shared interests e.g. service performance and monitoring, student systems, timetabling, research MIS and the migration to Google Apps for staff and students which is going very well.  We also talked about some of the shared applications like Blackboard and e-learning generally.  We then went on a visit to a newly refurbished space adjoining the Library which has been made available for a wide variety of group and individual learning, teaching and research activity - I haven't heard the term "research hotel" before. The furniture and use of light (atrium and wells) was very impressive:

It was good to see the University of Bradford was leading the 2012 S-Lab conference taking place in the National Science Learning Centre.  I attended an hour's pre-conference session by Iceotope (one of the corporate sponsors and nice to see a new British company with innovative engineering coming out of Sheffield).  The following sessions were mainly focused on high performance computing and the potential for various different approaches to deliver performance and energy efficiency - great examples from Leeds and Leicester among others from the audience.  Plenty of big brains in the room today (and mine wasn't one of them).

Research articles on disruptive innovation

Been collecting articles about "disruption" in various industries including education and perhaps there is nothing particularly "new" about what any of them are saying, but worthy of consideration.  This is the Educause article on innovating the 21st century university and this is a link to Clayton Christenson's research on disrupting college.  Worth putting these into your e-Library.

Beacon Walk for the Queen's Jubilee

Amongst the various things that we have done over the last long Jubilee weekend a small party from three directions walked to Churn Milk Joan on the top of Midgley Moor to witness the beacons being lit on Scout Road and Stoodley Pike.  About 30 of us were all gathered.  There was little to see from such a distance but it was an atmospheric night improved by a nip of rum.  And yes, we did put a coin in the hollow.  Ted Hughes' poem is below:

"A lonely stone
Afloat in the stone heavings of emptiness
Keeps telling her tale. Foxes killed her.

You take the coins out of the hollow in the top of it.
Put your own in. Foxes killed her here.
Why just here? Why not five yards that way?
A squared column, planted by careful labour.

Sun cannot ease it, though the moors grow warm.

Foxes killed her, and her milk spilled.

Or they did not. And it did not. Maybe

Farmers brought their milk this far, and cottegers
From the top of Luddenden valley left cash
In the stones crown, probably in vinegar,
And the farmers left their change. Relic of The Plague.

Churn-milk jamb. And Joan did not come trudging
Through the long swoon of moorland
With her sodden feet, nipped face.
Neither snow nor foxes made her lie down
While they did whatever they wanted.

The negative of the skylines is blank.

Only a word wrenched. Then the pain came,
And her mouth opened.

And now all of us,
Even this stone, have to be memorials
Of her futile stumblings and screams
And awful death".

Churn-Milk Joan
By Ted Hughes

For the uninitiated, Churn Milk Joan is a boundary stone above Mytholmroyd in the Calder Valley, close to Crow Hill.

IT Services Newsletter #37

A busy month with lots of things going on – and some nice sunny weather in amongst. For those who follow league tables the University had a disappointing result in the Guardian League Table for 2012 last week, dropping 5 places to 86. However, we got a First Class Honours award from the People and Planet Green League. Today it has been announced that we are in the top 20 of Universities under 50 in the Times Higher League Table.  One thing’s for sure: there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

This first item is an invitation:

IT Services invites you to an event which will be held on:

Wednesday 20th June 2012 from 11:30-1:30 pm including lunch (location TBD dependent on numbers)

IT Services is hosting an event which will showcase some of the innovation and research-related activities that we have recently been involved with. The aim is to provide a number of short presentations on relevant topics followed by an informal networking session with invited colleagues across the University. So far, we plan to present updates on:

(1) The YHMAN Shared Virtual Data Centre concept – session led by Ed Carter, University of Leeds
(2) Business Travel and technology alternatives – session led by Ben Tongue, Estates and Facilities
(3) Green IT on the desktop: launch of the Nightwatchman service – session led by Dave Ewen, IT Services
(4) New authentication services for staff and students (Athens) – session led by the Library Systems Team
(5) What’s been happening this year with student email (Outlook Live) and plans for Microsoft Office365
(6) Plus other topics to follow (if you have one please let me know)

All welcome, please confirm your attendance so we know the numbers for catering by emailing.

One Click to Key Information
During the one-to-one meetings I took an action to try and find an easy “one click” way of updating our team with key documents and information. A new web page has been set up here, which is linked from our IT Services home page under Staff and IT Board Documents. Each month after the IT Board meeting I will provide the latest update to our working documents which include account management and the IT Services rolling plan.
Updates from the IT Systems Team – XCRI in the spotlight
There are a number of major projects that are in progress which many of us are involved with. A group of these projects are being co-ordinated by a Student Overview Group. It is a fairly complex set of projects which are inter-related and it is useful that these are being brought together round the table to ensure that they are joined up. This is an externally funded project by the JISC and regular update reports are sent to keep them informed of progress. I am attaching to this newsletter a document which explains what it is, and a document that summarises the range of student projects that we are also involved with.

Microsoft IT Academy
During the last week we have approved our membership of the Microsoft IT Academy Program. This Program provides our staff, students and IT experts with essential and advanced level e-learning resources, through to exams, across the wide range of Microsoft products. The Program is being led from our LSS Customer Services team, and there will be further news and information about this over the coming months. In the meantime, if you want to start accessing resources on Word, Excel through Sharepoint, Exchange and Dynamics then this is all available.

Degree Congregation Volunteering
If you have already done this in the past, you will know that it is wonderful to be part of the annual celebrations as students attend their graduation ceremonies. I have gotten so old that I will be attending our daughter’s graduation on Thursday July 19th at Sheffield University. Volunteers are always needed and I have put my name down for one of the evening ceremonies. Please take this as an invitation to put your name down for one of the ceremonies this year by contacting the lovely people in the Hub.

Award Submission – Innovation Nation
Geoff Bell has been heavily involved as our YHMAN Director in a pathfinder project which is receiving national attention. The YHMAN’s Shared Virtual Data Centre initiative has been shortlisted in the Collaboration category of this year’s Innovation Nation Awards, in conjunction with The Guardian. The closing date was 30th May so we await the outcome. At the very least we can claim to be runners up as there were two shortlisted projects in this category. Further details here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/innovation-nation-awards/innovation-nation-shortlist-collaboration

Floor 01 Refurbishments
The Glee project is continuing to make real progress. Our colleagues in Estates are very keen to make further progress on completing our building including the refurbishment of level 01 (our floor). A bid is being prepared for a £1.5-2 Million investment via a TSB funding source. It is outline at the moment. I would encourage any of you who have not done so, to take a trip to either floor 1 or floor 2 and take a look at what the space looks like when you strip everything out. Imagine what an open plan space approximately half the size of either of those floors would look like as a working environment.

Reminder: IT “At Risk” – dates for your diary
The “at risk” dates were approved at ISC4 on May 17th and are published here.

Reminder: Data Protection Act – compulsory training
This is the link to the module.

Telephonica Article (May 2012)

Hewlett Packard article (May 2012)

Samsung stats on sales

PIN numbers

How not to pick a PIN number

Green MBA article

Interesting because of recent discussions about the Circular Economy MBA developments with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

The Bradford Student (newspaper)

Three articles scanned from the new paper.  All relate to work that we are involved with.  It's good to see our work picked up in the student union's own publicity stuff.  The e-voting system has made a big difference to the turnout and the 24x7 nature of the service.

Eddie Obeng

Speaker at UCISA12 conference showed this video.  Take a look - it's worth 9 minutes of your valuable time:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yVIe1MOpiHU

Green IT - managed PC shutdown

IT Services launching new power saving initiative on Monday 19 March – Managed PC shutdown


Starting on Monday, any staff desktop computers that are not in use after 19:00 will be automatically shutdown to save energy. Any Microsoft Office ® documents left open and unsaved on your PC will be automatically saved for you to continue working with when you re-start your PC. Other documents will not be saved, and we would therefore remind you to save your work regularly, and certainly before you leave your PC unattended.

A new piece of software, which has been deployed on all University computers, will start checking for any user activity on your PC from 18:30, and if no keyboard or mouse usage is detected will shutdown the computer at 19:00. The process will be repeated at 19:30 and 20:30.

The user guide for the system can be found here.

Why is this being launched?

During the last three months, our monitoring has indicated that a significant number of computers are left on and unused for long periods of time. Preliminary analysis of the data shows that we can save around £29,000 per year by shutting down PCs that are not in use. This equates to 315MWh of electricity and 171 metric tonnes of CO2 which is the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 31 buses.

More information

We have consulted with pilot areas, and staff feedback has been positive, but if you experience any difficulties then ICT Service Desk is always on hand to help on ext. 3333 or email ictservicedesk@bradford.ac.uk

IT Services Newsletter #34

Trying to keep up with sending these newsletters out is always a bit of a challenge as there is a long list of other things on the “to do” list.

One of the things that I have been doing since the start of this calendar year is monitoring my own “work/life” balance so it does mean that I’m trying to prioritise some of the time I spend on different things each week. I’m sure that we all do similar sorts of things whether we call it monitoring or not, but I’ve found it quite interesting to just be more aware of this one a week-by-week basis.

The following is a fairly random selection so apologies if your own news is not here.

JBP Building Level 1 and 2 Changes
You should be aware now of the £1.5 Million investment plan to make the next phase of major changes to these levels of the JBP Building to improve energy assessments and also deliver a major change to the student experience. These will be starting shortly in terms of enabling works and will be ready for some time around the beginning of the new academic session. The impact on the floor that we occupy is significant during the building works. There has been quite a bit of fluidity to the plans which is why I am circulating the latest known information on the project although it is subject to change. It appears that the start date for building works proper will be after exams i.e. end of May, but the enabling works will continue at pace until then.

The following rooms will have a change of use as follows:

• The Student PC Clinic – will be shelved for books moving from other floors. The clinic will be re-located to JBP Building Level Zero (Group study room 4)
• The meeting room (01.4) – will also be shelved for books.
• The “old” machine room (01.42/01.13) and adjoining space (01.8) will be shelved for books.
• Some of the space that is currently in the staff “access” zone will also be shelved for books (01.17, 01.22. 01.35) – this will be a service that is provided on a “fetch” basis
• Library Systems Team will be relocating to 01.26, 01.26 and using 01.27 for storage for the duration of the building works - likely moving date towards end May
• It is possible that some of the walls/doors around the machine room area (01.8/01.42) will be demolished. Hence printing services currently located in the Level 01 lobby will be moving to 01.44 and 01.53 (one printer and release station in each room).

Consultation on IT “at risk” periods
The IT Board is currently consulting on IT “at risk” periods and there is a document on the department web pages seeking views and feedback on the proposed options and any other alternative that might emerge. The closing date is March 16th. We will decide at the next IT Board. The link is here

Clearing “embargo”
We are also recommending a change to the Clearing “Embargo”. In recent years, Estates and IT Services have been instructed via the Confirmation and Clearing Working Group to suspend infrastructure (voice and data related) activity for an extended period up to ten days before “A” Level results Sunday until the last day of Clearing operations. Any changes to the SAINT system are approved by the Director of Academic Administration. The IT management team have debated the pros and cons of this approach with respect to risk management and concluded that, although a Clearing “embargo period” could remain, all work should not be affected by it. Go ahead/completion of jobs during this period should be considered on a case-by-case basis, via a Change Management approval process. Approval for this recommendation will be sought at the next Clearing and Confirmation Working Group meeting (April 2012) and is going to next week’s Information Systems Committee (ISC).

Emergency Contact Details
There will shortly be a mini-campaign by the HR team to try and improve the quality of the contact information held on the HR system and accessible self-service through MyView. It has been trialled and it means that some basic personal details can be updated and saved directly to the HR system. The driver for this partly relates to meeting obligations around data protection (keeping personal data accurate) but also for emergency purposes if necessary. You may spot a change to the MyView interface when this is launched.

Benchmarking Updates (Tribal)
Still nothing to report on this which might lead you to conclude that the results were not quite as expected i.e. we perhaps benchmark better against the selected “aspirational” peer group than had been expected. Briefing sessions have been going on with Deans and Directors on a one-to-one basis and the one for LSS is scheduled for late March. There will be more detail to report after that.

Reminder: Green IT Nightwatchman launch
This energy saving initiative is due to launch in the week commencing March 19th. There will be marketing information circulating shortly. The impact on us should be none or minimal. However, although the system has been running in the background for some months the actual “policies” for hibernating and suspending monitors and PCs has not been implemented. If you are interested in more information on this then please ask Dave Ewen. It would be helpful for all of us to be aware of this high impact change in case it has unintended consequences. The service will save around £30k per annum in electricity costs.

Performance Recognition and Re-Grading

LSS has set a date for the next performance recognition process in mid May, and HR has also informed us that the University has moved to a quarterly re-grading process on a rolling basis. The latter process used to be annual I think, but has recently been somewhat ad hoc. These are the more formal ways that the University recognises our performance and contributions. On a day to day basis lots of people do great things for the department, for LSS and for the University and quite often these are directly for our students, academics or administrators. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in the last few weeks in upgrading the payroll and HR system and servers so that we are ready for the April tax year-end and to pay our wages! It has been a team effort across IT services involving at least some of the following people and I apologise if you have had some involvement and are not mentioned here: . Our colleagues in other areas may not realise how much impact a service upgrade can have, and perhaps that is how it should be. Thank you for making this happen.

Smaller Successes

We now start our monthly IT Board meetings with an agenda item celebrating some small (and it turns out not so small) successes. This idea was shamelessly borrowed from the CED team:

•  Replacement air conditioning unit now installed in E60 – there have been intermittent failures since Summer 2011 – it’s now “cold” (even though the weather is also “cold”!)
• The presentation to ISC on “student feedback and future landscapes” was well received and is now being repeated at Learning and Teaching committee.
• Housekeeping tour of all server rooms had taken place – the rooms are in a good state
• Seven systems are in the process of being switched off: Powersolve, ICON, Research Grants, ORBIT purchasing, Business Objects v5 and v6, INGRES Data warehouse.
• There had been over 2,500 RMS “quick” jobs entered by the LSS customer services team in the last month as a result of the enabling work by the continual improvement team.
• There had been a very successful day long IT and Estates “working together” event using web/video streaming technologies (UCISA event was running in parallel in Birmingham). 

Library Systems

There was a JISC/SCONUL workshop on the future of library systems in January 2012.
This was posted by Ben Showers with some useful links to follow up

====
Firstly, I just wanted to say many thanks again for your contributions and hard work during the recent Library Systems workshop. I found the two days incredibly useful, as well as interesting, and I think the two days worked well as a way to flesh out some of the issues and considerations around a complex area like library systems and services.

I wanted to let you know I have written a blog post about the event: It includes some links to presentations and Lorcan’s video (note: At the time of writing this Lorcan’s presentation isn’t posted on OCLC’s YouTube channel yet – but I’ll link directly via the post when it is up).

SCONUL are also adding the presentations to their website so these will be available there shortly too.

The workshop was intended as a way to inform the library systems funding call I have recently been drafting, and I think has helped shape a potentially very valuable piece of work. I would urge you all to keep your eyes peeled for the announcement over the next couple of days (I believe it will be very early February): If you have any ideas etc then do please feel free to contact me or pass my details onto colleagues.

I also wanted to point you all to David Kay’s short synopsis of the prioritisation activity you all undertook around the Library Systems ‘objectives’: http://bit.ly/zW9dep I think this captures those areas well, and gives a good sense of some of the areas that might be beneficially pursued in developing a new vision for library systems.

Ben Showers

Programme Manager, Digital Infrastructure

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

University of Bradford UCU local association blog

It was useful to find a link to the blog and a recent posting about the introduction of e-marking.  It appears that the introduction of a pilot service has been extended and with some negative consequences for some UCU members.  That is regrettable.

IT Services Newsletter #33

This is the first newsletter of the new year. A belated welcome to 2012! There has been an awful lot happening as usual so this update will only cover a few of the things that might be of interest.

As always, comments, feedback and input for next time always welcome.

Benchmarking Updates
I understand the initial findings of the TRIBAL benchmarking survey are now with the Senior Management Team at the University. This was mentioned at yesterday’s Information Systems Committee (ISC) where there was a comment during our presentation on the 2011 student survey that benchmarking seemed to indicate that we had fewer computers for students than comparators. That’s quite interesting for our marketing – the prospectus currently boasts an enviable student/PC ratio. During the last couple of months we have been working with Purchasing and LSS admin to benchmark our University IT operating costs. We used a company called Mercato to help with the analysis and a summary report was also presented to ISC yesterday. If you want to see that please let me know. Basically it says we are overall achieving “best in class” costs for IT consumables etc (defined as cost price + 3% average). There is however, a good deal of variation around the average and therefore some things are apparently under cost price, but others exceed it by a greater margin. Therefore there are some opportunities for us. We have signed a two year deal with Mercato to benchmark every 6 months and also to provide the online tool for spot price checking - this will also be available to all the School IT people as well.
Business Continuity Planning
The recent fire in the Richmond Building (Life Science laboratories) has once again focused attention on this topic mentioned in the last newsletter. There were already activities taking place with insurers to develop more robust departmental plans. As a result of our work with Jermyn Consulting we are a little ahead of the game as we have a plan prepared (although not yet tested fortunately). We welcome your views on that plan and whether we have captured the key processes. Please ask your manager for a copy if you are interested in this topic and wish to contribute. The closure of the Sports Centre due to Legionella in late 2011 provides an example of the type of interruption that is predictable and can have significant financial and reputational consequences.

Hotmail Issues – now resolved
This was also reported at ISC yesterday – although now resolved it took a lot of time and effort, particularly from infrastructure team to put mitigating actions in place. A full report is available if you are interested let me know.

Green IT news
This is about the PC power down project (using some software called Nightwatchman) which we have been working on for the last few months. Dave has been doing a fantastic job on getting it rolled out across the whole campus almost transparently to the user in a monitoring mode to being with. The first set of baseline analysis from the service which is now installed on almost 2,500 devices (PCs and laptops) across the campus. This is for the 18 day period January 9-26th. If we implement the proposed power saving patterns (i.e. evenings and weekends), it would appear that the power management service will save in the order of £30k in the first year in electricity costs (based on current pricing) and 179 metric tonnes of CO2. There is a very detailed set of data/reporting available. This will provide a payback on investment that is well within 12 months period. Not many Green IT projects are able to say that I suspect (or even Green projects generally!)

Room 01.8
The LSS admin team have really made a difference to our objective to clear level 01 a room at a time in the hope that the refurbishment work will start soon. We continue to live in hope and will be ready when the investment funds are released. In the meantime, the latest room to be tackled is 01.8:

• The porters have remove the umpteen bags of rubbish that we filled the other Friday afternoon;
• The locksmiths have dismantled the old safe and taken it away;
• The joiners have been in a dismantled the wooden shelving in room 01.8 and reassembled in Room 01.23 (you probably see a charge for this work on your accounts);
• The cleaners have been in to wipe the shelving down and vac up the detritus resulting from the shelving being put up in Room 01.23;
• Once Room 01.23 is cleaned, we will move their equipment onto the shelving;
• …and Room 01.8 will be looking a little clearer although you might notice the flotsam and jetsam on the floor but I’ve suggested to cleaners that the room is cleaned once everything has gone from the room rather than doing it in stages….
• Some things still to be done in Room 01.8, metal stuff and old equipment to go - but little steps and we are getting there.

Some news items from the IT systems team
• eMarketplace went live during December, initially just for Life Sciences. eMarketplace is an extension of the Purchasing process, allowing staff to purchase from the Science Warehouse web site but keeping the order details in E5.
• Pre-Award Grants was launched live on 12th December. Pre-Award Grants allows for the processing of research grant bids to the point where the grant has been awarded, when it is picked up by a different part of E5.
• Both eMarketplace and Pre-Award Grants were part of the FBSS project. Further FBSS-related modules (Travel Expenses, Purchase Card) would be handled outside the project as both had outstanding issues which needed sorting before any work was even started, this could take some time. As a result the FBSS project had now been closed, there will be a Lessons Learned exercise around March 2012.
• The tool for Mobile support had been completed by and handed over to Servicedesk, being favourably received.

Staff Retirement
Just in case there is anyone not aware (you never know) Christine Thacker has given us notice that she is retiring from the University at the end of July 2012. Christine has been such a long-serving member of our team and the Computer Centre before us. She knows so many people throughout the University – perhaps almost everyone will have spoken to Christine at one time or another? There is very little that she hasn’t seen or heard over the years at this place, and to capture that experience and knowledge is going to be impossible. Of course we will be celebrating all this a bit nearer the time as we approach the end of an era!

Continual Improvement Team
This initiative was introduced as a result of our plans to extend the concepts of ITIL (best practice IT service management) and in particular focus on the start of the new academic year. A small team of people who have contributed to this work over the last 3 months with colleagues from both IT Services and LSS Customer Services. We think it has been a really useful exercise and it has mostly met its original objectives, and also provided some other unanticipated benefits too. Therefore we are going to extend the activity for another 3 months with a revised brief and membership which we are just agreeing. The informal report and recommendations which relate to intake etc are attached with comments and feedback welcome.

Access Cards
We had a request to obtain a couple of access cards for the “staff zone” on level 01. This was for occasional contractors and visitors (and for staff who might have forgotten their card too!). There are now two visitor cards available from the LSS admin office which can be booked out in the usual way.

A fitter department – one kilometre at a time?
For those who are not aware, there is a challenge which started in January to try and cover 2012 kilometres (or miles) in 2012 the Olympic Year. A number of us are having a go at this and I am also going to try and do a charity ride in the Summer to Amsterdam (which as someone has already pointed out will be mostly by sea!).
Smaller Successes
LSS Managers attended a new staff induction session in January. Reported back that one person waxed lyrical about our IT systems - he said this was the first institution he'd been to where "the IT systems work for me", and he'd not had to do battle to get access to things or make them work. Well that’s one satisfied customer at least!

Until next time