IT Services Newsletter #42

The first newsletter of 2013 (belatedly published) with plenty to report since the start of the New Year. There does appear to be lots happening across the University, and Prof. Shirley Congdon’s briefing to all staff illustrates the scale of some of those changes and the significant number of these activities which are technology-enabled. Thank you to everyone who is continuing to work hard and to juggle a number of competing demands to the best of our abilities.

Small Successes
At the start of our monthly IT Board we begin by sharing small successes over the last month. Among other things, we found out that:

• A facility called “Groups” is now operating to collect information on IT accounts which use Open Athens to access learning and research materials. This has been made possible by recent changes and upgrades to authentication systems and will mean that we can collect and report on better management information into the future.
• The Christmas and New Year period passed without incident or service interruption. It was the first extended break where there has not been a “call out” for some reason or other (although not always related to technology!). Our thanks to those who participated in monitoring the services over this period.
• We reported that a service improvement to the email server had been successful during the IT “at risk” period – this was at the third attempt – plenty of perseverance demonstrated on that one.
• We reported successful changes to the Secure Global Desktop service and the consolidation of SAINT “S drives” during the IT “at risk” period. The subsequent snow day in mid January demonstrated how even when the University is shut the IT Services remain open for business. On that day the statistics show that we have had over 200 people use the SGD system. There have been almost 1500 accesses to the SGD service since the beginning of January 2013.
• The order was placed for new call recording software which will enable specific calls/phone extensions to be recorded “for monitoring and training purposes” etc. The first roll out of this system will be in the Hub and our own ICT Servicedesk with a target for launch in the Spring.

Project News
At IT Board we reported on the latest rolling plan for IT Services. This document and others (like our org chart, account management documents, lessons learned and plans etc) are all published here. There are 78 items we are tracking on the plan (up from 67 last time) and 36 of these are live activity (versus suspended or waiting for approvals etc). There were 6 items that were reported as completed and/or now business as usual since the last meeting.

New Mobile Phone Framework
A small team led by IT Services has sorted out the new purchasing framework for our corporate mobile phone supply and service. We are remaining with Vodafone under improved terms and conditions resulting from adoption of the Public Sector Networks (PSN) Framework. Based on the previous tariffs etc and assuming similar levels of business we expect a saving to the University users across campus.

IT Services “on tour”
Following in the footsteps of Library colleagues in LSS who have “been on tour”, we undertook the first IT Services event where we camped out in Richmond Building K Floor for most of the day on January 16th. The event was well publicised in the School of Life Sciences who were the target audience. It was a quiet day overall, which could be interpreted in various different ways – either positive spin or otherwise. We thought it was a good enough idea to give it another go, and therefore the next “victims” of the IT Support team’s enthusiasm will be LSS! The date is February 22nd and the location is JBP Building Group Study Room One at the entrance to the building. All welcome with your IT questions and issues – including those of us in IT Services who sometimes suffer from “cobblers shoes”.

Office Moves and Changes
Now that most of the library books have left Floor 01 we are beginning to get space back which is gradually being re-purposed. There is an overall plan which is being overseen by a small “Tidy Up Group” post refurbishment project. Pat and team have done a great job and for example, 01.4 is now fully back in action again. The student PC Clinic is going to be re-located to Floor 01 in the foyer area - some people call this space the “old shop”. An office space (01.45) is also being prepared for occupation by people mainly working on projects and also a “hotdesk/shared desk”. This space also in the foyer area will be occupied during week commencing February 11th.

Upgrades to the Learn Higher Room
Completing a campus-wide upgrade to lecture/teaching facility, two new PCs have been installed in the Learn Higher Room running Windows 7/Office 10 etc. These have been tested and are working with the extensive AV equipment in that room. Thanks for assisting the AV Services team with the launch of that. We are now working on Summer plans to upgrade/refresh the AV capability and layout of the PC Cluster Room (01.58) and the AV facility in Richmond Building J Floor.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity 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 the next newsletter.