Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #4

Last week I worked on a number of documents and researched Digital Strategy developments.  These included a write up of my key objectives; a document setting out the why, what, who, how of developing the Digital Strategy together with a number of outputs from desk research (as a scanned set of documents); and finally a current state analysis which included key initial findings, key points identifies so far, and a series of appendices.

I have been thinking about the briefing last week on the software lifecycle and Apps Anywhere next steps.  There were a number of specific recommendations that we worked through.  One of the strategy elements that we need to work on is the risk appetite of the University regarding its software portfolio.  We have a lot of software and it isn’t all running at the latest available release.  With aspirations to operate as a Digital University, we need to embrace and resource an approach which says, for example, “that we will operate our business using the latest available version of software”.  Such a strategy has implications of course which could be worked on in terms of the technology roadmap.  We also picked up in the discussion that we might not be maximising our investment and relationships with suppliers regarding student access to campus software.  We also bumped into another management issue which is how we monitor and manage related service desk activity.

I have arranged a tour of the key Data Centre and comms room spaces.  I was thinking about making a short video tour/photo shoot of what we see.  I wasn’t sure how aware senior management were of the current state and capability.  It’s something that we covered for the first time in the capital plan discussion.

This week we have also talked about the concepts of "moles", "elephants", and "white space" and I think this could potentially be a useful way to characterise some of the issues we face.  The concept of service management as a University provides an opportunity - far more than just a database of record for individual organisational units.

I had further intro meetings this week with more people.  We signed off the week with some really positive meetings on capital planning and the appointment of a permanent Deputy Director.