Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #18

Update from Week Nineteen

• Visited Wolverhampton City Council to take a look around the contact centre and discuss potential opportunities relating to Clearing 2018.  Excellent facility for up to 150 stations and with 'burst' capacity available in excess of that. Professional expertise on our doorstep and they are keen to support.  Next step is for them to make a proposal for an initial review with us of our current arrangements and workflow - at the very least the analysis could tell us the number of stations that we need to maximise call volume pick ups.  Need to also follow up with the Admissions team to update them on these very preliminary conversations.
• Attended DAS Leadership Team meeting .
• Fed back MARS updates to relevant team members.
• Useful catch up relating to piece of work on implementing project process (as a project).  Confirmed new PM start date of April 29th.   
• We had a follow up meeting about mobile phone administration issues and agreed an action plan. Steps to deal with higher risks (such as dealing with lost phones) and handing over a new device which has been enabled with the new MobileIron managed software.
• Azorus are visiting for product demo on March 29th (External Relations and Registry). IT is involved.

Good News

• No P1 incidents.
• Logicalis completed scripting for telephony system to enable IT Service Desk calls to be automatically diverted to NorMAN out of hours.  Testing successful.

Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #17

Update from Week Eighteen

•  A busy week for IT committees with a meeting of the IT Task and Finish Group and Digital Strategy Committee.  We took away a number of new actions.  The "Shadow IT" workshop approach seemed to have gone OK and I have begun following up in background with Faculty of Arts and FHEW.  The presentation on the Systems Audit also appeared to be well received and some of the issues beginning to get understood.
• Arranged follow up calls with Gartner Group about its proposal.  The decision to not renew the IT intelligence contract with Mercato for procurement of IT commodities in the main may provide some partial budget funding but I have not yet been able to trace but who was paying and from which budget. At moment I have suggested this might be from next financial year subject to budget and new IT Director's interest.  We said we would speak again w/e April 21st after we know who has been appointed.  I learned that Gartner's Research Director for HE is Paul Saunders whose name I came across at Dundee last week.
• Arranged call with NCC Group - we have used them for various information security related activity including SECTIS, PCI-DSS and Penetration testing.  PCI-DSS came up later in week at our scrum.  There are deadlines looming for PCIDSS and plans to renew cyber essentials accreditation which is up for annual review (we only did it for one small area for research in July 2017).
• We had a regular weekly IT scrum meeting. 
• I spent an afternoon at Walsall meeting with the local team, colleagues from FHEW and Research and Enterprise.  I shared my notes as there was mention of 400 Moodle users and academic expertise in L&T spaces (among other things).
• We have been dealing with a storm of phishing emails (million+ per week) most of which do not get into the system but a few that do.  A new email URL filter implemented quarantined 133 "clicks" on malicious links which might have led to issues and there were no reported account compromises so far this week.  
• Met with Estates to discuss NorMAN launch and Easter business contingency planning - we agreed to share documents.  Very useful discussion on Estates creating campus "hubs" and a business case going to CMT shortly.  Perhaps an opportunity for Estates and DAS/IT to work together in future when we progress with face-to-face services - for example Hub is being created at Science park.
• New legal case management system approved with agreed caveats and controls as it is cloud based subscription service.  We will be running in time to migrate data from local desktops in the legal offices (and iDrive) to new service during Easter break.
• Meeting on Replicon led by procurement and the various users.  All were agreed that Replicon would continue in short term until Agresso solution and if we have all data in one system then potentially easier to migrate it across.
• Final meeting of the week dialled in on Friday to FHEW meeting on data storage. Wide ranging set of requirements - another example of a need for collaborative working solutions - also touched on WOLF (non L&T uses) and reassurances.

Good News

• No P1 incidents.

Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #16

Update from Week Seventeen

• It was a "two-day week" due to annual leave so a little quieter but busy diary as always.
• We had a regular weekly IT scrum meeting - these are really useful way to catch up.
• Introduction meeting with the University's  internal auditors - they are keen to be more engaged and asked for formal handover in due course with new IT Director.
• Met with colleagues ref requirements for systems to support outreach and recruitment.
• Timetabling Project Board first meeting - signed off Project Initiation Document.  There are some known risks with technical support (alongside other digital projects) but these are relatively modest compared to the scale of change for the academic community which personal timetabling will bring.
• Met Aspire to HE team who have commissioned a supporting web system.  Follow up meeting being arranged.
• Met TNE team - priorities included a CRM system to manage relationships, access to facilities and services for TNE students so not disadvantaged and requirement for document management especially relating to legal contracts etc
• Organised ServiceNow Project Board - there are some notes being prepared. Wasn't a formal meeting - Need to thinks about sponsoring service management more generally (IT only a part of the equation).  Short-term actions agreed and going to now meet on monthly basis.
• GDPR session with DAS Leadership Team
• "Records Retention" dates (mentioned at GDPR) for IT are afternoons 28/3 and 4/4.  Trial to see what comes out the woodwork so to speak...

Good News

• No P1 incidents

• The team resolved Wi-Fi problems in George Building meeting rooms which have been going on unreported since September.

Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #15

Update from Week Sixteen

• Completed interim arrangements to manage departure of our IT Enquiries Manager.  Various staff announcements now ready to go for next week.
• Update on MARS applications received to date - closing date is March 12th
• Review of the Business Systems budget which is fully committed but we know what's in it and what's outstanding.
• Faculty of Arts desktop replacement increased with faculty investment (£35k) in very high spec workstations for three smaller student-facing areas not part of lab replacement (to replace legacy PC kit - also addresses complaints from students and risk of inconsistent experience)
• Further meeting with Print Unit and procurement ref deal on offer for BI reporting from the Ricoh print systems. They are now doing a nil-cost pilot with one Faculty.
• MX building UPS system discussed in meeting with Estates and Schneider this week ref the investment plan project and getting that under way urgently.
• Some mitigation for MI building regarding glazing and access control (an issue we have experienced during recent power cuts).
• Apple purchasing we are working on a direct award and contract for Apple equipment after the National Framework concludes.
• I attended level 2/3 team meeting and updated them on various changes and activities and took questions for an hour session.
• Weekly scrum meeting dedicated to Health and Safet - we have established governance - a single committee meeting quarterly.  We have an agenda for first meeting.  Signed off a personal evacuation plan for member of team this week.
• Held a meeting with a cast of folk dealing with Springfield.  We are going to need some dedicated IT support resource to manage a project as big as this (£45M+over 2 years) with many IT components.
• Attended another GDPR working group led by Emma Wedge - there is detailed plan in place.

Good News

• Investment in 24/7 out of hours service (NorMAN) approved for 17/18 pilot - kick-off meeting held and Easter targeted for launch
• Second Line Support Analyst post shortlisting in progress.
• Risks reduced by de-commision of WebServ3 (including some systems de-commissioned) and moving WOLF legacy to a single server.
• No P1 incidents.