Fourth Newsletter to IT Services

Staff Culture Survey

The results of the first survey are now available and have been stored on H Drive (Exchange/IT Services Consultation/Connect Survey/). The individual reports for each of the teams that comprise IT services can be found in this folder. Thank you to everyone that took part - over two thirds of us completed the survey which is a good return. There is feedback for every team except the Systems Team where there were not enough total responses to run the report and this is also a small team. Please take a look at this information and let me have your thoughts and reflections on the survey conclusions. The second survey will follow shortly.

Change Management Programme
This programme has been initiated as a result of recommendations in the MIS Department review conducted during the first half of 2008. The scope of the change management programme has (by agreement) been extended to include the new IT Services Division of Learner Support Services which incorporates the MIS Department. A project mandate has been developed and approved and will be overseen by a Change Management Board sponsored by Prof. Jeff Lucas. You can find the documents at H:/Exchange/ProjectManagement/Projects/IT Services Change Management/. This process will be transparent and all of the documents will be posted into this area. Rather than "push" this information out to everyone we will presume that you will "pull" the documents and information from this folder. The process has already started with all three consultants now working on the various aspects that they will assist with (they are Peter Bollands, Jermyn Consulting and Robina Chatham). The key objectives of this change management programme are as follows:

. Managing the implementation of recommendations established in the MIS Department Review during 2008
. Clarify University vision and objectives in terms of the new IT Service – how it should underpin the University, Academic School and Corporate Service Objectives.
. Interim budget and systems planning process for 2009/10
. Identification of potential ‘quick wins’ which will allow customers to experience positive changes from an early stage. This should encourage customers, and increase their support for the overall exercise.
. Early confirmation of a (potentially) revised structure for the IT Services department and appointments to the senior posts in that structure.
. A service catalogue which will enable the IT Services to be defined in terminology that its customers can understand. Ultimately this will lead to service ownership, service level definitions and related activity (a best practice approach to service management – framework ITIL)
. Specific resources to help with management development and individual coaching of the management team.

Office Space Consultation - a reminder

Estates and Facilities have been working on various potential plans for the JBP Building and Communal Building refurbishments. We agreed to provide an initial space requirement for this purpose which was sent out before the October reading week/half term as a draft for further consultation. The document can be found at H:/Exchange/IT Services Consultation/ We discussed this at IT Board and it was suggested that the easiest way for everyone to contribute to this consultation would be to use comments and the track changes features in word. So please take a look at the document add your comments, make any changes and please save it as a new version (by incrementing the version number by 1). After a month we haven't had any further input so the deadline for this opportunity is now Friday December 12th.

Review of student PC cluster provision

Within the document there is mention of a review of student cluster provision. We visited every cluster room supported by IT services during this month with representatives from the Student Union Sabattical team to do a condition survey. The detailed verbatim comments and scores provide an insight into what our student customers think about our current facilities in this building and in the other parts of the campus. There is also a document prepared earlier this year on PC cluster usage and observations that was presented to the e-strategy board. This can be found in the same location as the space consultation survey.

Regular Meetings with PVC Rae Earnshaw

These weekly meetings have continued. We have discussed the recent meetings and service priorities with corporate services directorates and this was presented and approved (with some further additions) at last week's meeting of the Corporate Services Exec. We are now a good way through meetings with academic schools to pull together a companion document which will also prioritise this activity. We have discussed an E-strategy "program management" role, and Russell Allen has agreed to take on this responsibility in the New Year adopting the new guidelines from Jo Hills who was appointed to the Project and Programmes role within the Strategic Planning Office. We have also reviewed the Educause student evaluation of IT on campus http://www.educause.edu/studentguide/873?time=1226909532 and believe that this would be a useful way to take forward the promotion of student facing IT services to prospective (and current) student. There remains a standing invitation for anyone who wishes to use this meeting as a way to communicate with the PVC and senior management to just let me know.

IT Services - Furniture condition survey

Some funds have been set aside to replace funriture (desks and chairs) in a number of offices where we have health and safety issues identified by a recent condition survey by Wendy Wrigglesworth who is the LSS health and safety rep. We are also going to replace broken and worn out chairs in student clusters and put some decent furnniture into the group study rooms that will be re-commissioned in the New Year. If you have any specific requests for furniture that have not already been identified then please inform your line manager - there is a weekly meeting of the IT Heads on Thursday's at 14:00 and we will review the requests this week to forward to the preferrred suppliers for pricing.

Some other bits of news in the last month

Tanks to Jamie Ansell and colleagues in Estates, the plasma screen at the School of Health reception has been ordered after a long delay (not a technical delay) and should be in place for the New Year.

Thanks to Mark Jones, new data storage capacity was added which has relieved problems in various Schools including Management and Health.

A small team has been working hard on the SAINT system hardware upgrades which is a very significant change to both the hardware and software configuration to improve performance and resilience. This will be happening during the at risk period in December.

Sun microsytems have approached us with a view to publicising the great work that has been taking place with Computer Aided Assessment and the new facility that will be opening shortly in F Floor Richmond building using Sunray thin client technology. Sara and team have done a great job with this project which has been recognised as a national exemplar and will bring great credit to the University as the first installation of its kind in the UK.

Winter cycling

An excellent few hours on the hills above home around Wainstalls, Ogden Water and Fly Flats. The weather meant that in the valley there was thick freezing fog but above that there was blue sky and sun even if it was bitter cold. Some rather intersting photos as this was a rare occasion when its worth taking the camera.

Consultation event

There were three repeated consultation events this week each lasting about half a day where a fairly wide range of people from across the University were invited (some were three line whipped but not me BTW) into attending. It began with a brief overview from the VC and DVC about the purpose of the event (corporate planning) and followed in a World Cafe style for the rest of the morning. The event was about exploring the values that the University wishes to adopt and/or retain into in the next period and any new ones that came from the groups. A move towards more active rather than passive values was a theme. We spent ten minutes at tables exploring a value and then circulating. The most interesting one for me was creativity - and the fact that two colleagues at the table were much more concerned about how they find the time for creativity rather than how the organisation might support this value - which one might expect of a Univeristy environment de facto?? Mmmmm Then we went into smaller groups and talked about the specific issue of internal communications - what could be done to improve it (individual input), what assumptions we had made in reaching those proposals, picked an assumption as a group and explored that in more detail looking for the opposiste and then the shades in between. Our group selected the assumption from one of our team that internal communications should involve them being sent nothing (this is quite subtle actually - they explained that they don't mind looking for things that they need to konw (Pull) but hate getting told stuff they don't need to know (Push) leading to information overload. We went onto explore the notion of personalised information push and pull and by the end I was begining to think that there might be problem looking for a solution. However, the main conclusion was actually we should all talk more - stop emailing, pick up the phone, provide some spaces where we can relax, meet and talk to one another because actually most of the "real" internal communication is based on the chinese whisper and gossip. Maybe a new coffee shop is in order? or a Roman Forum?

Hospices

There was an excellent conversation on radio 5 yesterday morning between Nicky Campbell (who is himself a patron of various charities) and the Chairman of Namoi House Winchester and the problems that they are having as a result of the Icelandic bank collapse. The Chairman Professor Khalid Aziz was supremely eloquent and convincing in his argument and in my view a great ambassador for this hospice and the movement.

Student PC clusters on main campus

I think there's an old saying that goes something like if you can't measure it you can't manage it or something like that. Last week I took myself and three students on a tour of the "centrally provided" IT facilities on the main city campus. It took us just over two hours to do them all bar one (the bar one was in use for teaching a class). We rated the facilities on a scale of 1 to 3 where 3 is good and we spent a bit of time agreeing the various dimensions which ranged from accessibility, safety, equipment, signage, personal security, quality etc. The results will be published in some form of report that I haven't written yet, but I expect an article to appear in the student magazine next month...here are the verbatim comments from the students. Other views and perspectives welcome. It is an attempt to be constructive about how we can make improvements especially with the plans to invest millions in a replacment Knowledge Eschange facility we need to learn from the present:

The small numbers of PCs provided in the JBP library extensions were felt by all to the the best environment - combining natural light, good equipment and quiet study
The signage was generally felt to be out of date, negative versus positive (should we do an IMPACT Analysis?)
One of our party noticed that the toilet signage had been vandalised
The general safety (for students and staff) was felt to be very low especially at the lower levels of the JBP Building (level 01 especially) and at night - these are open 24x7 Monday to Friday
There were a variety of chairs scattered around - many were broken, some were exam style plastic chairs, some were 1970s provenance - many were not fit for purpose
There was nowhere to revive or take the recommended break from computers - colour, texture, coffee, papers - basically nothing offered
You cannot lock computer to take a break - not even limiting one computer per user - so when busy don't take breaks
The open plan group study areas were welcomed but they have no provision for laptop, PCs and some of them are sited in "silent" areas!
Why is there no space for vending machine, magazine, newspapers, sofas (waterstones, coffee bars etc)
Very few areas for group study - not necessarily rooms
What does silent study mean versus quiet study
There is a need for a good mixture of spaces
Why are the scanners all in one place - if you need a scanner you have to log out and leave room?
Richmond Building only has two rooms at top of building?
The working space for most users is very small e.g. for taking notes and nowhere to put belongings e.g. paper holders attached to PCs
No separation of benches/workspaces - people on top of each other ref privacy
Very aggressive signage - don't do this, don't do that
Basement feels very unsafe with no natural light
Documentation in cluster rooms - how to do thisis not in the right place - why not a pdf on the machines so you don't have to leave the desk to read the signs?
No access to a water fountain in JBP or Richmond building
One of the disabled access workstations on floor 0 is broken
And these workstations are separate from the others?
Lack of colours and creativity
Which room am I in - difficult to tell actually
Signage and advice about good posture and taking breaks?

Reflecting on a SMART action from a year ago

I had the good fortune to attend a personal development course last year and on one of these we all had to agree to some objectives for the coming year that were SMART....So one of these I went for was something like saving at least 10% of our energy use (electricity and gas) in the next year. Well the results have come through and we saved more than 10% and pocketed over £400 as a Christmas bonus (gross). I say gross because we had to invest - we bought two new kitchen appliances this year which are both AAA rated (they broke so were replaced because of that). We fitted a number of energy saving light bulbs and also measured where most of the electricity was going (all the IT equipment in the study was a major culprit). On that basis we fitted two sockets with power devices to turn off automatically 7 hours a day (0:00-07:00) and that has made quite a big difference. We also turned down various thermostats including the hot water boiler and the biggest thing we probably did was assess the loft insulation and have it upgraded. I think overall we're well out of pocket financially but we used less energy by more than ten percent so that was good. It's good to do something like that and see it through. It's probably what I'm programmed to do (ENTJ see post below!)

UCISA Conference Day Three and reflection

It was a rather late night the night before but a very good turnout for the first speaker of the day who managed to get everyone motivated with some pretty simple but effective techniques to ensure audience participation - must remember the use of yellow and red cards for some future event. We were doing a mini Myers-Briggs type self assessment - it was fascinating to do it in a group of about 150+ people because our speaker was able to get a pretty good profile of what the CISG audience versus the national population looked like: answer pretty close to the national for ESTJ. I'd had a go at the self-assessment in about 10 minutes before we got into the session and I had come out as an ENTJ. I'm going to look back and see what I thought I was about a year and a half ago last time I did a M-B and also I have one going back about ten years. As it is mostly about personal preferences you would normally expect a fairly consistent preference over time. Anyway, I just took a quick look at a more detailed portrait of an ENTJ on the web here and it said - Possible career path University Professor or Administrator.....oh my god....should that be a surprise. Maybe that's why I've stayed as long as I have and enjoy it so much (usually)?? There's also a lot of potential weaknesses which being aware of them allows you to potentially do something about them. The next session was on UKPASS and having heard this I cannot see why we are not a part of this and if we aren't need to find out when we will be. It cannot make much sense once this thing reaches a critical mass not to be applying through this route. As I left the conference there was time to hand in my badge, my questionnaire and say goodbye to Nick and Sue who have once again made everything run so smoothly. It has been an excellent event and well worth the time - not least to meet from breakfast till early in the morning with a bunch of people who are prepared to share both personal and business wisdom - as they say the best free consultancy you can probably get.