Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #8

Happy New Year and here is the update from week eight

• NDNA contract successfully concluded for procurement of PCs, laptops etc via one-stop-shop approach.
• Updated capital plan one-pager on essential IT investments for 2017-18 with some more detail to backup the estimates.
• Worked on package of high priority staff recruitment so we have one overall submission covering IT and Digital Campus.
• Prepared a proposal for focused IT "improvement" dates during calendar years 2018 and 2019 and now with IT team leaders as first stage of consultation.
• Annual student account deletion progress has commenced - changes to the algorithm have identified 17k accounts which will be targetted over the next 3 months with first batch of emails going out on Jan 15th.
• Learned that IT account creation and deletion for all staff is currently manual and based on an internally developed system.
• Went through investment plan budget financials and by end of next week should have clear position - a lot changed over the last couple of weeks before Christmas as invoices were paid.
• Left field request about re-modelling Arena facility including potential cinema capability.  IT team are  providing some budget estimates into Estates.
• I am asking the team leaders to think about key (SMART) objectives for the next three months as part of performance management and to provide a focus up to Spring 2018.
• At our "scrum" meeting there was positive support for a team event (IT focused) to kick off 2018 and get people talking about the changes which will be happening.  We can also use this as an introduction meeting for some of our new faces and tell some good news stories from each of the IT teams.
• There is a global issue with Intel-based equipment which has emerged in the last few days . Patches are due for release next week. It's a vulnerability that has not so far been exploited according to UK National Cyber Security Centre, although its been there for years. More details here: The Infrastructure team are leading on our options to respond and communications.

Good News Stories

• Contingency arrangements put in place for Christmas and New Year break were not called on.  No service interruptions or issues (including power) throughout the extended period.
• Various staff office moves for Engineering at Telford went without a hitch over Christmas period.