Skateboarding Stan and other 1970's photos

These are re-discovered gems from the archives:

Newspaper Stories strange but true

BRITISH NEWSPAPERS

Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas
bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, 'We agree it was rather high
for the time of year. It's possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the
gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.'
(The Daily Telegraph)


Police reveal that a woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole salami
in her underwear. When asked why, she said it was because she was
missing her Italian boyfriend.
(The Manchester Evening News)


Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van,
because they cannot issue a description. It's a Special Branch vehicle
and they don't want the public to know what it looks like.
(The Guardian)


A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was
rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard spokesman
commented, 'This sort of thing is all too common'.
(The Times)


At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coast guard and
asked him to estimate the wind speed.. He replied he was sorry, but he
didn't have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just
blown his Land Rover off the cliff..
( Aberdeen Evening Express)


Mrs. Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue , Boscombe, delighted the audience
with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each
week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she
recalled - 'He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the
crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt
out 'Heil Hitler.''
( Bournemouth Evening Echo)

IT Services Newsletter #12

To: All staff in IT Services

Welcome to the first newsletter of this new academic session after the Summer break. Here is the latest update as we prepare for the onslaught of another year. I hope that all readers have been able to take a well-deserved break over the Summer. As usual there have been lots of things happening and this update will only cover a few selected items.

Graham

==========

Re-structure of IT Services
During last week’s LSS staff meetings, Sara announced the changes to both the Learner Support Services structure (as a result of the creation of a new Academic Development Unit), and also the recruitment process for two new posts (Head of LSS Customer Services and Head of Library Services). Sara had already circulated the interim line management arrangements for staff who previously reported to Sara Eyre. As a high priority we are now working on a new structure for IT Services. I understand that we need a speedy resolution to end a period of uncertainty, and also wish to confirm a consultative approach via managers and seeking input from individuals. I have made myself available for one-to-one or team discussions on this subject, and that remains an open invitation. Several discussions have already taken place and more are scheduled in the next few weeks. I will keep you informed through this newsletter.

Shared Services and Collaborative Working Project
Sara Marsh has already circulated briefing materials on this initiative. It has also been circulated in the weekly staff briefing this week. As is the usual way with corporate communications, the best laid plans for a structured cascade of information on this topic were swiftly overtaken by the rumour mill across the University campus. Our involvement so far has just begun, with the collection of some basic data about the functions of the IT Service (as at July 31st census date). KPMG are involved in co-ordinating this stage with support from colleagues in Finance. It is interesting to reflect that we sometimes struggle to share services within the campus and within the University, never mind with a wide range of other external partners.

Clearing, Confirmation and Enrolment 2009
This is just a brief update as I have tried to take every available opportunity to put on record my personal thanks to all of those who contributed to the Clearing and Confirmation process. It has been a tremendous success in terms of the new student Undergraduate recruitment. We can all be proud of our association with supporting the Academic Schools and Academic Administration in delivering a record-breaking student intake. We have also begun the process of pre-enrolment via the student portal and in the last ten days or so, over 2,500 students have engaged with this web-based process. It seems to be going very smoothly so far and this is in contrast to the student experience in 2008.

IT Strategy one-to-one meetings with members of Information Strategy Committee
We are in the process of consulting widely on the development of a new IT strategy for the period 2009-2014. This has involved presentations to various forums, and at the moment I am meeting one-to-one with all the members of the Information Strategy Committee, who in turn are mostly consulting with the areas that they represent. I hope that this group will feel able to sign off the strategy in early October. In the meantime, we welcome your ideas and suggestions on the content of this important document. The draft that has been used as the basis for the consultation and can be found here: http://www.brad.ac.uk/admin/planning/cttees/isc/2008-09/72-08-09.pdf. There are a number of documents that you may be interested reading which went to the last ISC also here: http://www.brad.ac.uk/admin/planning/cttees/isc/docs0809.php

E-Strategy next steps
The PVC for Strategic Systems Development (Prof Rae Earnshaw) stepped down at the end of July after almost 5 years leading the e-strategy and related developments. We have established a process to continue the embedding of e-strategy developments within LSS and the IT Service and there are further meetings planned of the e-strategy board to review and approve further activity. I would like to record our thanks to Rae for the particular focus he has brought to delivering improvements to the student experience and the support he has given to vital investments in IT and business projects throughout his period of office.

Start of Term IT Services meeting
An invitation was extended to all staff in LSS to the first “IT Services meeting” since Sara Eyre’s retirement. We managed to conclude the meeting in under two hours (a record) but I don’t know if we had as much fun as previous meetings. There are lots of things going on ahead of the start of term including the launch of new student printing services, newly refurbished PC cluster facilities in Richmond and Chesham Building, as well as the launch of the new webmail service. The minutes are drafted and will circulate to all staff shortly.

Staff Updates
There are a few things to announce this month. Some of you will already know that Richard Davis is now a proud dad – William who was born on August 19th. We have also said goodbye this month to Susan Fellows after 35 years service making a wide range of contributions in DP, ACU through MIS via MAC. Susan’s post has been filled by Rick Graves (an indefinite post). We have also recruited two new staff for the Finance Business Systems Support project. Sian Norman and Javed Iqbal begin with us on September 14th on 18 month contracts in the first instance. I am sure that you will join me in welcoming them to IT Services.

Outline Priorities for the next few months
Just for information, each Division of LSS was asked what it thought the main priorities were at the recent LSS Board Away Day. Here are some things that I think will be a particular priority in the coming months.

Sorting out the new IT services structure as a result of wider re-organisation in LSS
Signing off the new IT strategy for 2009-14
Putting together a prioritised customer-led IT plan for the current year
Responding to the feedback we received in the inaugural student survey
Support for the new Finance Business System project
Planning and launching Microsoft Live@edu service beginning with our students who graduated in July 2009

Celebrating Susan Fellows Retirement

The subtitle for this brief speech is from DP to ACU to MIS via MAC – which some of you will know all about.

I have asked friends and colleagues for stories and anecdotes from Susan’s career and nearly everyone has said to me that there really aren’t any stories to tell. I don’t really believe that, but I have to say that in the fifteen short years that I have been at Bradford my main memories are of someone who has been exceptionally hard working, diligent and a very supportive colleague.

But let’s go back to the beginning and retrace one or two steps along the way – and find that there are parallels with today.

Susan first joined the University as a Systems Analyst Programmer in January 1974, what was then called the “Data Processing Division of the Bursar’s Department” – it was called DP for short. Susan was appointed as one of three (the others were?) reporting to a senior Systems Analyst (John Greenwood?) and it was a time when this team did the development work and there was an Operations section whose job was to get in the way....I mean to ensure that there was information, documentation, support in order to ensure error-free running of live systems. Happy Days!

In the last month or so some of us have been attending courses on something called ITIL or service management and wondering how useful it might be to still have an operations team

One of Susan’s early accomplishments was supporting and delivering Library systems which at the time were pioneering in the University sector. As on-line facilities came into place, Susan wrote software for circulation of books (issues, returns, renewals, reader registration etc), on-line ordering for library acquisitions. Those were really ground breaking days when response times were measured - target less than 4 seconds, and transactions were carefully counted - 2000 on-line library transactions a day at the start of term.

This month LSS has just invested £300k in a new library catalogue and management system called BRADfinder.

The early ‘80s were characterised by severe financial cuts imposed by the Government on some target Universities and this resulted in a loss of development staff – leaving Susan holding the fort on her own for a while. This included supporting the University’s payroll system which was an adapted package. The financial situation had a massive impact over a long period to IT developments at Bradford

In 1985, Susan took responsibility for the first of several payroll crises when the supplier told us they would withdraw their package within three months – working over 100 hours a week as the deadline approached. Despite all the odds, Susan ensured that all staff were paid correctly from the start of the new tax year and dealt with a number of technical issues to ensure that everyone was paid.

In 1991 Susan again was instrumental in implementing the Unipay payroll system when support for this package was withdrawn, not only again managing the project as project leader, but also ensuring that the overall system was reliable, well documented, self-maintaining as far as possible and Susan was highly commended by the University senior management for all of her efforts in ensuring the success of that project

In 1992, DP became the Administrative Computer Unit or ACU under the leadership of John Town. It seems that this was a slight bumpy time for all concerned as John had many new ideas and new ways that he wanted things to be done. In some respects it was John’s tenacity that led to the new investments in IT alongside the MAC initiative – the holy grail of administrative systems in the sector.

Susan became involved in the first of those MAC systems – the undergraduate admissions system written in INGRES and leading to our first automated results day linking with UCAS replacing a manual system and motorbike and sidecar to Cheltenham.
In 1994, ACU became Management Information Services and Susan has been involved in a wide variety of new and innovative systems – there are too many to list in detail but they include:

• Beyond UG Admissions to include non UCAS Admissions and Postgraduate Admissions.
• HESA returns (electronic for the first time)
• The project to investigate the new student system – which eventually became SAINT
• Implementing the accommodation package Room Service and interfaces to the Finance system – when we had over 2000 students in our own Halls of Residence.
• Examinations management systems

In among all of this Susan also managed to complete a Part Time Degree with the Open University through Saturday lectures and correspondence courses. The Honours award was in Maths and Computing – I think it took a little more than a decade – a true lifelong learner.

Something that struck me particularly in collecting all these achievements was a brief note from Susan which said: “the best work is often done in the background and is no less creditable for that – it is management’s job to raise the profile of such hidden but vital and often challenging work”. I don’t know whether Susan feels that management has done it’s job over the years, but in my experience Susan has always set and achieved exceptionally high standards and will be missed by all of us. Congratulations on your retirement and our very best wishes for the future.

The World is Flat - first reflection

Over the holidays I got around to reading the Thomas L Friedman book. What were the key nuggets of information after 600 pages of well researched information and analysis? The first thing I want to reflect on is the call centre environment - having spent a couple of days involved with our own mini-call centre for clearing as a hands on operator and observer. "This is a high stress environment" said the CEO of Infosys which runs a big call centre. "It is 24x7. You work in the day, then the night, then the morning. But the working environment is not the tension of alienation. It is the tension of success. It is not the challenge of worrying about whether they would have a challenge". These are highly educated folk and relatively wel paid who work these big centres in India. While on holiday I had cause to phone Moneycorp who had supplied me with a pre-paid Euro credit card. I made about half a dozen calls to sort out a security problem. They were dealt with efficiently and accurately and within the timescales they set out and this was an overseas call centre for sure - they had excellent records of every call different person every time. The most mind blowing thing for me was standing by an ATM in a remote part of Northern Spain talking on a mobile phone (UK which had switched automatically to an alternate Spanish carrier) to a call centre operator for a US bank (who was most likely in India), as he reset a security parameter to enable me to withdraw cash at a Telebank operated by a Spanish bank in real time. Our own call centre was staffed by highly educated folk - we didn't manage 24x7 but it was definitely a challenge for many of us. I doubt we did as efficient a job but then it is only a few days every year.

Confirmation and Clearing 2009

So the dust is now begining to settle on another set of A level results and confirmation of new admissions to the University. The call centre approached seems to have worked very well in its new location as a result of all the planning and preparation works and in particular the co-location of all Academic School support staff in close proximity. I worked the clearing helpline on Thursday from 08:00 till about 15:00 and it was non-stop with calls coming in as early as two minutes past midnight. This year many more students seem to have used UCASTrack to seek confirmations online before going to collect their results. We took a record number of calls on the first day. The helpline continued over the weekend and for the two Open Days on Saturday and Sunday and although a little quieter by then was still taking new business. All the indications are that we will be managing the cap on numbers rather than pushing to meet intake targets for Home UG students. Some anecdotal things from my personal experience: nearly all students in clearing seem to have hotmail accounts (would like to check this), the information that students are supplying could be self-service (we could be smarter in processing the clearing enquiries), enquirers in general had excellent grades (is this the famous grade creep), some of us came across a web site call Unistats for the first time (this is well worth a look), it says some good things about our learning resources in the national student survey section (must investigate more). Oh, and Megan got her place confirmed at Sheffield using UCASTrack at about 07:30 and we are very proud of her results collected later in the day.

Annual Leave looking forward to A Level Results

There have been no posts for a fortnight as I have just found it too difficult to find time - the main reason was the time invested in reaching contract closure for a new Finance Business System which was signed off by the Vice Chancellor on behalf of the University at 3pm on Friday July 31st - a mementous day for many reasons. Now on annual leave for the next 20 days so will be back for 07:30 on Thursday August 20th - A Level Results Day, to be a volunteer on the Clearing Helplins. Also an important family day - Megan finds out if she has done well enough to start studying English Literature at Sheffield University.