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2010/11 candidate concernsThe second phase of the Top Concerns Survey invites Directors and their staff to rank their ten top concerns from four different perspectives. The list of the 36 candidate concerns is below; a PDF of the concerns is available here: Candidate concerns Resources 1. Ongoing funding and sustainable resourcing of IT The challenges for IT/IS departments to secure an appropriate level of funding to deliver the services required by their institution have been exacerbated by the current economic environment. IT/IS directors are faced with increasing demands on and expectations of the services and infrastructure for which they are responsible. A number of institutions have already made cuts to service department budgets and further cuts are expected. Any capital funding that is available will have to demonstrate a return on the investment made and will not be supported by an increase in recurrent funding. IT will have to be more accountable for its cost, focus on process efficiencies, seek economies through standardisation, look for collaboration/outsourcing opportunities, ensure return on investment and improve its communication and influencing skills across the institution. IT Management needs to ensure that it has the necessary skills and experience to respond to this changing environment to ensure ongoing investment to renew and refresh the institution’s IT infrastructure and to maintain and grow services. 2. Benchmarking, costing and value for money The pressure on budgets brings a greater demand for IT/IS directors to demonstrate that they are providing value for money. In order to do this they need to establish the costs associated with services, to be able to benchmark them against externally provided services, and to justify investment in new infrastructure against the potential for shared services or hosted provision of services, systems and infrastructure etc. IT Directors need to be sure that they are confident in the financial figures and know how to use them. Are there good bodies of data to allow benchmarking between institutions and/or comparison with other sectors? Are there sound methods of costing available? How do you demonstrate value for money? 3. Delivering services under severe financial constraint The demand for IT services continues to increase as the use of core systems matures and develops and new opportunities arise (for example mobile computing). At the same time supplier maintenance and licensing costs continue to rise and are difficult to control, the infrastructure is aging, and the task of upgrading (for example to Windows 7) is becoming unmanageable using existing methods. As students increasingly act as customers their expectations of service delivery will rise, which IT will be challenged to achieve against a backdrop of reduced funding. So far many of us have been asked to do more with less, this has in turn led to some ICT departments undertaking restructuring. Some restructuring has been implemented at an institutional level with some members reporting a move towards corporate services being managed centrally and delivered locally. At what point does doing more with less become unsustainable and services have to be cut? Which services or which staff should go? Are we entering into an era of mergers? How do we respond effectively to the impact of the national funding situation at a local level whilst supporting an institution which is seeking to improve quality? Governance and regulation How should institutions achieve a workable decision making structure around investment in developing enterprise wide IT systems? Should IT departments be providing leadership and if so, what options for structures for IT governance can we agree with our colleagues for this purpose? How do we resolve competition for IT support between core academic areas and revenue generating activities such as summer schools, executive degrees, etc? How do we make sure that the business cases for new university franchises overseas take cognisance of the IT support and development costs required? IT/IS governance encompasses giving the strategic direction, developing and owning the organisation’s IT/IS Strategy, negotiating an investment plan for IT/IS, appropriate monitoring of and support for the IT/IS department, definition of governance standards and reviewing organisational structures and reporting lines to ensure that IT/IS has the correct level of direction and empowerment to be able to perform effectively. Proper governance ensures that IT/IS is accountable to the organisation for the services and levels of service it provides. IT/IS Governance is a key factor in providing accountability; it allows the organisation to assess its IT/IS department’s performance and helps the IT/IS management team to deliver focussed service improvement programmes. 5. Impact of Government and agency policy on IT/IS service delivery and policy Although there is continued emphasis on the autonomy of the higher education sector, Government policy has always had and will continue to have an impact on institutions and hence on IT/IS service departments. Most recently this has included the Comprehensive Spending Review and the Browne Review. The CSR may provide an opportunity for IT/IS departments to position themselves as key enablers of change to help the institution reduce the impact of the cost reductions. Browne moves universities into a more competitive market place and the IT/IS strategy will need to be responsive to the needs of the institution as it seeks to be more responsive and agile in the new environment. Although the outcomes of the Browne report are not applicable to the whole of the UK, the Scottish and Welsh administrations will derive their own strategies in order to mitigate its impact on the institutions in their respective countries. The affects of devolution are being felt in Scotland and Wales with the respective administrations implementing policies across the public sector. The individual funding councils will have their own interpretations of these policies and their own strategies too. For example, in Wales the Funding Council’s For our Future strategy requires more collaborative working amongst HEIs. Does the involvement of Government and its agencies put the effective running of an institution’s IT/IS department at risk? 6. Impact of legislation on IT/IS service delivery and policy development The last decade has seen a significant expansion in the volume of legislation on the statute book. Our institutions need to comply with a growing body of legislation and are being asked to consider compliance with government guidelines and published codes of good practice many of which have an IT dimension. The list includes:
New legislation impacts widely on the sector but there is rarely any provision for resources for institutions to meet the requirements of new legislation. The introduction of the points based immigration system is a case in point; institutions have recruited additional members of staff in order to manage the process and have had to purchase or develop software in order to be able to transfer data to and from the immigration system. The Digital Economy Act could potentially have a similar impact on the sector if its scope of its implementation is broadened to include universities and colleges. Similarly implementation of initiatives such as the Learner Records Service (formerly MIAP) or Higher Education Achievement Record (HEAR) may result in the requirement to make unplanned changes to systems and, in some cases, require employment of specialist staff. Is the burden of new legislation preventing IS/IT departments from developing their services, as resources are diverted to meet the new legal compliance requirements? How does the growing body of good practice and legislation affect the development of our policies? Strategy and planning The IT/IS strategy needs to be aligned to the institution’s strategic aims and its plans for achieving those objectives. However this continues to be a major challenge within institutions. Institutional strategies still tend to be developed in isolation or, during periods of major turnover of senior institutional staff, are unclear or absent. Strategic opportunities such as CRM and data integration are agreed in principle but lack senior sponsorship. Active projects lack senior management drive with the risk that significant opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness will be lost. Senior IT/IS staff should be included in the development of the institution’s strategic objectives and plans. The importance of a well-articulated and practiced planning process is critical. This planning process should ensure that the vision of how IT/IS might help transform an institution is considered and, where accepted, embedded in the institution’s strategic plan. The plan should be formally adopted and approved and inform the senior decision makers in the institution about the medium and long-term value of IT/IS (see Governance). IT/IS departments need to work to support their institution in the achievement of its strategic objectives by the appropriate and timely delivery of supporting technology, systems and services. Where IT/IS provision is highly devolved it may be more difficult to bring together a coherent institutional IT strategy and plan. It is important to include some strategic consideration of sourcing within the IT/IS strategy. Should services be provided though in-house effort, might they be provided by a contracted external supplier or might they be provided in cooperation with like-minded organisations through a shared services model? Strategic plans need to be flexible and responsive to the sometimes sudden changes in institutional strategy. Developing strategies and plans that support the institution and provide a flexible and agile framework in which to operate is going to be key over the next few years. Are the planning processes in institutions mature enough to deliver? How will the success be evaluated? Are there the mechanisms in place to review the service portfolio and get agreement on services that can be withdrawn? Infrastructure The use of JANET falls into two main classes: a commodity IP network and research network. The commodity IP network is of critical importance to all the activities of UK HEIs; it is of critical importance that this is available at all times so that institutional activities can be undertaken. With the advent of outsourced services (such as student email , procurement, HR functions) being undertaken by some institutions and business critical processes, HEIs need their commodity IP network to be resilient. The current proposal from JANET (UK) to only provide single connection points to HEIs fails to recognise the importance of the network to the business of each and every HEI. JANET (UK) should take steps to address this in both the local delivery (for which they are soon to be responsible) and in the architecture of the commodity IP network backbone. 9. Providing a quality, resilient service IT systems have now become so critical to the running of the university that service availability is of paramount importance. Downtime equates to loss of income with staff and students being unable to progress their work. Achieving robust, reliable and resilient applications and IT infrastructure is of crucial importance. Modern systems can incorporate many high availability features such as redundant hardware components, clustering etc. and basic machine availability is now very high. The need to apply regular critical patch sets can compromise the gains in up-time of such systems, particularly as applying the patches often requires systems to be removed from service. IT/IS departments need to design and configure their systems so that patching time does not become a significant cause of service unavailability. IT/IS departments should consider adopting appropriate technologies and architectures for their applications, IT infrastructure and operating processes to ensure that system availability meets their institution’s requirements. System resilience and availability must be considered at the outset of IT projects and project budgets should include the funding necessary to provide this. Given the criticality of IT infrastructure and services to our institutions, how do we manage and deliver the services while protecting service levels and quality? How do we ensure that the infrastructure in particular is capable of supporting our needs over the long term and under the pressures from the funding situation? Some institutions are experiencing difficulty in providing the environment (cooling, power, backup power, physical security, fire detection and suppression etc) needed to host their IT equipment. Many legacy facilities are often badly equipped for the modern equipment they now house with poor power utilisation efficiency due to inappropriate cooling and poor layout and design. With IT noted as being a major contributor to an institution’s carbon footprint there is pressure to improve the data centre environment and make it more efficient. Additionally new EU legislation means that most UK colleges and universities will be required to report on their energy use and improve their efficiency or face possible financial penalties. Adherence to the EU code of conduct for data centres could be seen as the minimum standard for institutional facilities. However it remains difficult to secure sufficient capital or recurrent funding for data centre maintenance and development. Predicting the future demands on a data centre is difficult and specialist equipment such as high performance computers place additional demand on facilities. Often more than one data centre is required in order to meet the business continuity requirements of the institution. Some institutions have outsourced the location of some of their equipment to commercial providers but it is necessary to ensure adequate (in terms of resilience and capacity) network connectivity to such facilities. There is some sharing at a regional level and there continues to be discussion around building a data centre which could form the basis of a shared facility. Inadequate data centres present a risk to the provision of IT/IS services. Security and information management policies 11. Access and identity management Identity and access management are of considerable importance to institutions. A key issue is to be able to know if an individual is a member of an institution, their relationships with the institution and their entitlement to resources and service, based on those relationships. Often the relationships an individual has with an institution are ill-defined and far from simple. There is often a lack of clarity within the institution about its relationships with individuals and sometimes an inability and or an unwillingness to clarify the relationship. It is highly probable that many new services will rely on federated access management and it is therefore important that institutions install and develop their identity and access management infrastructure so that they can take full advantage of such developments. The international adoption of federated access management is expected to lead to some similar federations linking up and enabling users to work across the joined-up federation: this offers considerable potential benefits for our sector. The lack of formal policies, multiple diverse distributed identity repositories, and reliance on legacy systems for automated account and service provision and managing people directories is causing issues and increasing risks to the institution. How mature is the adoption of identity and access management in institutions? Are there the business drivers either internally or externally to interest senior institutional management and to gain appropriate funding? Will collaboration or the development of shared ICT services be hampered by low levels of adoption of federated access? 12. Security of systems and the network There needs to be an appropriate balance between security and privacy and open access to institutional resources, with this being understood and supported by senior institutional management. Increased use of electronic information at higher education institutions has resulted in an expanding number of accounts, passwords, and other mechanisms to permit and limit access to these resources. Managing access to this expanding set of resources has itself created overheads and increases the likelihood that access to some of these resources may not be appropriate. Recent failures of information security systems by both public and private organisations has attracted considerable public interest and institutions are now much more aware of the potential damage to their reputation should their information security systems be found to be in adequate. Institutions are witnessing a growing number of ever more sophisticated methods of attack to gain access to such information; there is an increasing risk of unauthorised access. In response to these demands, institutions must establish and maintain comprehensive security policies and procedures and enforce these with technologies that support the efficient authentication, authorisation, and auditing of information access. Institutions must also ensure that their user communities are aware of these policies and encourage them to comply. Service delivery 13. Mobile computing, anytime, anywhere computing, home working The increase in the use of mobile devices, be they smart phones, laptops or iPads brings significant support issues. How do we deal with the variety of devices and permit connection to the institutional network? Wireless networks in institutions need to be pervasive and cope with huge increases in connections. Appropriate security policies need to be in place as mobile data is much less secure. The rise of the iPad and other appliance devices looks inevitable at this stage, and the very existence of general purpose computers (desktop or portable) is looking less secure. The dramatic drop in price means that more and more staff and students are willing to invest their own money in personal IT which they will wish to interface to our systems - and for it to work wherever they are. At the same time, the conventional model of client computing will wane and lose the economies of scale it has enjoyed as more people move towards appliances. New device formats bring the challenge of providing generic and useful services in a diverse environment. The challenges of occasionally working at home and home working (where the worker is based at home for the majority of their working day) need to be addressed. There are also particular health and safety matters that need to be considered for home workers. IT/IS departments need to develop policies to manage anytime, anywhere, using anything computing which address these issues. IT/IS departments need to support their institutions in developing their policies for occasional working at home, and home based workers. 14. Extended hours and 24/7 support Longer opening hours for university buildings and increased demand for resources from staff and students working remotely requires robust and resilient services that can be easily monitored and swiftly fixed in case of failure. But with many IT staff contracted to work normal hours can we support our users adequately? In straightened financial circumstances should the help desk provide a basic level of assistance or are those circumstances a driver for improving services to encompass out-of-hours support for smart ‘phones, PDAs and tablets, and for those using specialist software? How well do we support part-time students and those based on our international campuses? To what extent does extended hours and 24/7 support enhance the student experience? Many of the leading IT service providers base their service delivery on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and achieving certification for the corresponding international and national standards (such as ISO 20000). ITIL and ISO 20000 provide a professional framework for the delivery of IT services and are increasingly being used as vehicles to improve service delivery to the high standards expected. IT/IS departments within the HE sector need to consider how to develop their delivery services within the ITIL framework. There is a need to build a credible level of professionalism and consistent service levels. There need to be recognised qualifications and career pathways for all IT/IS-related staff within the organisation. Developing staff and services to achieve these standards presents a substantial challenge: it takes time and effort to bring about such changes; in some cases, the existing culture may be unsupportive. “Too many universities try to do too much in-house” – David Willetts from his speech to the Universities UK Conference, 2010 There is significant pressure on institutions to adopt shared services as part of the overall drive for efficiencies. But the cost of setting up shared services is high and successful shared services delivering cost savings have evolved over a long period. Shared services need to deliver savings in a much shorter time frame, perhaps as little as two years. There remains however little appetite for shared services in the sector. The opportunities for sharing are not restricted to sharing amongst the sector; sharing with other public sector organisations is also an option. Institutions under the auspices of the devolved administrations are already making use of government sponsored shared services across the public sector. Are shared services something that will evolve from within the sector or will they be foisted upon an unwilling sector? Are the processes across the sector standard enough to be moved to shared services? 17. Cloud, managed services and alternative service delivery models
Outsourcing and cloud computing can provide an opportunity to reduce operating costs and release staff to new tasks. However, these models also presents a range of issues (perhaps most noticeably when operating environments are provided as a service, but applications for business and infrastructure remain in house). 18. Vendor/supplier management
The growing trend towards outsourcing and managed services requires strong vendor management. But vendor/supplier management can deliver benefits for all services including those delivered in house. Strategic relationships with suppliers in the sector are hard to achieve, particularly where suppliers have close to monopoly positions in the sector. Some are intransient and individual institutions have little leverage on suppliers. This is unsustainable as the university needs to move to a more flexible model to remain competitive. IT/IS departments need to move into partnership model with their suppliers, working together to the benefit of the institution and many staff will need to have responsibility for working with suppliers. Are there the skills in IT/IS departments to develop effective business partnerships with suppliers? 19. The carbon agenda/Green IT Many IT departments have greened their service, perhaps by moving to thin clients or by implementing power down technology but how many have measured their carbon emissions? To meet HEFCE requirements for funding it is necessary to meet targets for reduced carbon emissions. What’s your contribution? How involved is your IT department in your institution’s initiatives to meet these targets? And are you collaborating with the Estates department (usually the largest user of power in your university or college) to see how technology can bring further efficiencies? 20. Disaster recovery and business continuity With an ever increasing number of ICT systems and services being business critical, it is paramount we have in place a highly resilient ICT infrastructures coupled with cost effective and robust IT Service Continuity and Disaster Recovery capabilities. Many services are quite complex with dependencies on a range of systems to ensure service availability and functionality. It is important that institutions put in place plans to address the whole spectrum of business continuity, remembering that the provision of disaster recovery for the IT/IS systems is but a part of what is required. (For example where would activities take place if the normal place of work were damaged or otherwise inaccessible?) More focus is needed to establish effective business continuity / disaster recovery facilities such that we can continue to deliver services in an acceptable fashion in the event of a major failure / incident. Some members have established a specific role with responsibility for IT/IS disaster recovery planning. The disaster recovery capabilities (and plan) should be properly and regularly tested, in particular these plans need to be tested whenever significant changes are made to the production environments. Some institutions report that their senior executives are not supportive of the proper live testing of disaster recovery capabilities. Senior IT/IS managers need to demonstrate the value of such testing even when it poses some risk to the continuity of production services. IT/IS departments need to ensure testing does take place to verify the disaster recovery capability does indeed work, but need to find appropriate ways which minimise the inconvenience to the day-to-day operation of their organisation. Addressing some of the issues for IT/IS disaster recovery may assist in addressing concerns our user communities have about the loss of service for essential system maintenance activities. The cost of providing disaster recovery capabilities, which supports the level of recovery agreed with the institution, is likely to be significant and may need to be specially identified in the fiscal planning for IT/IS. Business and academic support systems 21. Business systems to support the institution Whether an HEI is using an ERP system or an integrated set of applications from potentially different manufacturers, projects related to these business support systems demand large and sustainable investment and commitment by institutional and IT/IS leadership, both throughout and after implementation. Some of the questions that need to be addressed when considering or implementing the core systems include the following:
Organisations need to consider how to make use of facilities within these systems to address cross-functional issues such as information management reporting and KPI dashboards, CRM, workflow, self-service facilities and interfaces. As organisations increase their focus on systematic approaches to excellence in performance, effective deployment of core business support systems will continue to be a strategic priority. 22. Modularisation of applications Many institutions have implemented a best of breed strategy to selection of business systems. Although this approach has many advantages the cost is complex integration and complex upgrade processes. The lack of competition in the market means that institutions have little leverage over their suppliers to improve the situation. SOA and EA offer approaches to start to disentangle this but implementation seems to create expensive projects that show little immediate return on investment. Business systems and business information need to be modularized to allow institutions to pursue a best of breed approach at a lower level and be able to take advantage of shared or cloud services. This can be compared to the virtualization process that has been applied to storage and processing which has enabled us to get ready to take advantage of Cloud offerings. A similar abstraction is required with institutions’ approach to supporting business processes. The challenge for heads of service is to find a more pragmatic route through this to deliver the best value for their institution. 23. Integration of and interfacing between systems Institutions have developed or, more commonly, have purchased a range of systems to meet their business needs. These systems will hold common data, particularly about the student body, and so there is a need to develop and maintain interfaces between them in order to operate efficiently and ensure that data is only entered once. A range of approaches has been adopted. Some institutions employ a batch approach, transferring data by generating files from one system which are then uploaded into others. Some make use of the functionality of their underlying database software, deploying triggers to update related databases. Others have invested in Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) to deliver instantaneous updates of systems utilised within a business process (for example, updating of a VLE when a student's module choices are changed in the student records system). Creation and maintenance of these interfaces represents a considerable cost and is present even where an institution has invested in an ERP system since no system meets all business needs for an institution. Achieving service orientated architecture for student life cycle data would radically improve reporting, data quality, processes efficiency and enable greater agility in response to organisational changes such as restructures and module changes. Achieving the degree of process integration necessary to achieve SOA is very challenging. The cost of developing and supporting these business critical interfaces is significant and they represent a considerable risk to the operation of the organisation that must be carefully managed. Any efficient business needs to make use of the management information it has to measure performance and demonstrate efficiencies. There are a number of concerns under this topic:
The role of IT in the organisation 25. Organisational change and process improvement In some universities and colleges, organisational structure and lines of accountability are undergoing major change. It is important that this is done in an ordered way and that IT/IS is fully integrated into these changes. There are important questions such as what kind of organisational structure and culture is now appropriate in the HE /FE context, how different is this from current structures (if at all) and how do we address and deliver any change required? In addition, it is recognised that many processes within universities and colleges are not efficient. Adoption of Lean and similar approaches has led to significant improvements in efficiency in many institutions, cost savings and increased customer satisfaction. IT/IS departments continue to play a key role in process improvement in their institutions. Many universities have a federated feel with distributed domains of control, often with their own sources of income. This and the often siloed nature of a University support organisation makes gaining agreement on efficient joined up processes difficult. But this is necessary if we are to meet the challenges of the future and meet the expectations of our customers IT/IS departments have to provide and support continual process improvement to the University with IT fully aligned to the overall business strategy. In the same vein, IT strategy and planning has a key role in delivering that change, driving out process improvements and delivering efficiencies through technology, including the reuse of data and maximising the use of existing software in more creative ways 26. Business and community engagement Some universities and colleges already have a significant place in the economic and social fabric of their region. Other institutions are only beginning to diversify their income streams and strengthen their relationships with the commercial sector and the local community. Staffing A number of institutions have suffered a significant reduction in their staff head count. This has required and will continue to require changes in the organisational structure to ensure that the IT/IS department maintains the necessary skills in order to deliver the services required by the institution. Consolidation and rationalisation strategies are in place but may require challenging organisational change in particular to a more centralised model in a devolved institution, and further investment to implement technologies such as virtualisation. There is a risk that voluntary severance and salary saving schemes will make it impossible to support the current range of services. Directors will need to be at the top of their game to deal with the impact of these cuts and losses, adapting structures to cope with change and considering alternative methods for managing and delivering services. Keeping staff motivated and productivity high is a major task. The IT/IS director needs to establish an organisational structure that supports the services in place, including those in overseas campuses or other international provision, is agile and responsive, and continues to remain innovative, evaluating new and emerging technologies and identifying the benefits of implementation. 28. Training and development of IT staff With the Browne review will inevitably come pressure on budgets, staff training and development needs to be protected as far as possible and new modes of training should be considered. Work based and work place learning is a seemingly under used resource as is succession planning and work shadowing. It is also important to think about training budgets in slightly different ways, such as building in training into capital projects and sharing training on an institutional and pan-organisational basis. How can we ensure that we have the appropriate level of skills to identify, deliver and maintain the new IT/IS solutions we are adopting? How can we develop the business and service delivery skills in our existing staff, many of whom come from a traditional computing centre background and culture? With the continuing need for technical education increasing and the costs of that training rising, how can IT/IS departments address the challenges? 29. Professionalism of the IT service The growing adoption of standards is matched with a growth of associated professional qualifications. In many instances the practitioner level qualification is sought by staff implementing professional standards such as Prince 2 and ITIL. In addition suppliers of software and equipment have their own accreditation schemes for staff. There is a trend toward the validation of key skills into a professional award; the rise of the professional degree, the increasing use of masters degrees and for staff who under achieved at secondary level, foundation degrees that can convert to undergraduate level degrees are all evidence of this trend. IT/IS management need to be fully engaged in strategies that engender the implementation of a holistic approach to professionalism as a key aspect of delivering a quality service. The type 42 manager sought by Dearing has failed to emerge in the sector. IT/IS Directors need to step into this role, learn the language of the business and help lead their institutions through the troubled times ahead. They need to identify opportunities for IT/IS to help deliver efficiencies and improved customer experience and be capable of selling those opportunities to senior institutional management to secure the necessary investment. Do IT/IS staff have the necessary skills? Procurement 31. The need for effective procurement Much emphasis has been placed on the need for effective procurement in the sector. One of the challenges is that the procurement specialists within institutions have little knowledge or experience of purchasing software or hardware with the result that the IT/IS department are left to run the procurement process themselves but under the terms set by the institution’s procurement office. This can take a considerable amount of time. Further, there is a need, particularly with the carbon agenda assuming greater importance, to consider the whole life costs of equipment being procured. This will mean that IT/IS directors will need to argue the case for purchasing more expensive items which have a lower whole life cost over items that are cheaper to procure but cost more over their lifetime. This may require cross subsidy from the budgets of other departments such as Estates who may reap the benefit of the lower running costs. Research IT/IS departments need to develop a strategy to support IT-based tools to enhance the effectiveness of researchers and to encourage the adoption of these tools within the research communities. Such tools might include high performance computing systems, grid computing, real-time and asynchronous collaboration facilities, integrated video conferencing facilities, groupware tools (such as shared application execution and virtual whiteboard tools, shared data repositories etc.). The tools need to promote and enable secure working in virtual communities which are not limited by institutional boundaries. Many of these tools exist within the research communities, IT/IS departments need to work with leading users of these facilities to make them more robust and accessible to all those who would find them beneficial. It is likely that many of the elements needed to support research will also enable other groups of staff and students to cooperate and collaborate more effectively. A further challenge is to establish effective inter-working and data sharing protocols with NHS trusts. Medical research is an area of increasing activity and potential but progress is hindered by the difficulty gaining agreement for workable and effective protocols for the sharing of data and the inter-working of cross organisation research groups. 33. The network and international competitiveness The provision of the next iteration of Super JANET is coming at a time when public funding will be limited. We are concerned that the network being procured will not offer the same leading edge services that have been provided in previous editions of JANET and as a result may stifle the development and use of ICT within UK HE and may particularly have a serious impact on the research community in the UK and its ability to compete internationally. Teaching and learning 34. Use of technology in teaching Virtual learning environments are now embedded in higher and further education institutions to support learning. They are now being supplemented by a range of other services available at low or no cost to the user such as YouTube, iTunesU, etc. The growth in the use of mobile devices also offers opportunities for introducing new teaching methods, particularly in the field. There are a number of issues under this topic:
Adapting to change 35. Adapting to a changing environment It is clear that the next few years are going to see a significant amount of change in the higher and further education sectors. Browne, on the assumption that the recommendations become law, will have an impact across the country even though the recommendations are only applicable to England. The emphasis on greater competition may see IT beginning to be used as a differentiator between institutions. Are IT/IS departments agile enough to respond to the new world? Are they ready to play their role in delivering and supporting strategic change in the institution? Do staff have the skills required? 36. Emerging technologies/keeping up with new things Technology continues to change and develop at a rapid pace. How do we keep up with these changes and identify opportunities for utilising new technology in innovative ways to support key business objectives? What information resources should we be using to ‘short-cut’ the discovery process, and cut out the ‘non-starters’? How can we harness the power of our customer base (students and staff) to identify new opportunities? How much time should we be spending with our senior colleagues to promote the benefits of new technology, and persuade them to invest? How do we balance the need to keep delivering core services with spending time considering emerging technologies and methodologies?
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