Programme

Session chair: Heidi-Fraser Krauss, University of St. Andrews

Speaker Abstracts and Profiles

Neil Angelinetta

Oracle CRM at Clearing

The presentation will demonstrate how Oracle technology has supported the set up of a contact centre environment for Clearing at Liverpool John Moores University. It will highlight how technology has been utilised to improve data quality, customer service and achieve recruitment targets. The session will show how an operator handles an incoming call, how admission decisions are made and what the experience is like for a prospective student.

Neil Angelinetta is Customer Relationship Manager for Liverpool John Moores University. During his three years at LJMU, he has been instrumental in maximising the use of technology to manage relationships with prospective students and monitoring the University’s return on its investment in marketing. Neil has over 13 years’ experience in this field and prior to joining LJMU he worked for two direct marketing agencies where he was responsible for advising blue chip companies in the finance, travel and utilities sector on all aspects of customer relationship management.

Chris Blenkhorn

Why Web 2.0 is important to Cisco?

Web 2.0 defines how information sharing, collaboration and rich content can make the web an even more powerful tool for organisations to use internally and with their customers.

Web 2.0 is critical to Cisco in a number of ways: Cisco makes the products that provide users with always on network connectivity to the web; Cisco offers the unified communications, collaboration and rich media solutions that enable Web 2.0 environments to be built; and Cisco uses rich Web 2.0 applications internally and with partners and customers.

In this session we will explain Cisco's innovative use of Web 2.0 within our solution sets and internally to streamline our business. It will also take a look at how these experiences within Cisco might be applied to research, teaching and learning in the higher education environment.

Chris Blenkhorn is a Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the internet. He is a member of Cisco’s UK Public Sector Team, where he has specialised in public service networking for nearly ten years. His current role is to work with Cisco customers to establish the strategic link between business requirements and networking products and technologies. He is a Chartered Engineer and has worked in networking and communications for over 25 years.

Steve Butcher

Shared services – the HEFCE view

A key element of Government’s efficiency review is the development of shared services to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of public services. While this is not mandatory in higher education there is an expectation that universities and colleges will wish to take advantage of such opportunities, as this would generate benefits to them and release further resources to support teaching and research. There is already an extensive range of shared services in higher education, and HEFCE is now working with higher education institutions and stakeholders to build on existing good practice.

HEFCE's first step was to establish an advisory group of experienced senior managers from the sector to assist in taking forward shared services in the sector. Then, in March 2007, HEFCE invited expressions of interest from higher education institutions in leading shared service feasibility studies. A number of these studies have now reported and are looking to move onto a pilot phase. Additionally, professional bodies such as UCISA were invited to identify areas where nationally shared services could benefit the wider community. This presentation will look at the current situation with shared services in the sector and will look to future developments.

Steve Butcher is Head of Procurement and Shared Services for HEFCE. He joined HEFCE in 1996 and was an Assurance Consultant until taking up this appointment in the Finance Team. He has been involved in the procurement of research equipment since joining HEFCE and has been involved in getting value for money from funding initiatives such as JREI, JIF and SRIF by collaborative procurement projects throughout the sector. He has responsibility for the procurement targets of the Efficiency Review in the sector as well as the Shared Service targets.

Steve is a qualified accountant and his career has involved periods in private industry, public practice and the public sector, including British Gas, the NHS and a big six firm of management consultants where he was an information systems consultant. Prior to HEFCE Steve’s higher education experience includes the selection and implementation of finance and administration systems, internal audit and management of the external audit for the University of Exeter. In 1987, Steve produced the systems migration strategies for a number of institutions and as a result of that work became consultant to the Powerhouse family of institutions.

Steve was the project manager for the Risk Management Guidance produced by HEFCE and has lectured widely on the subject over the last two or three years as well as providing more detailed assistance to heads of institutions and senior management teams.

John Cater

Changing places: higher education futures in uncertain times

A Government review of higher education is scheduled to start next summer. The context is moving fast − with a probable change of political control and a worsening economic climate adding to debates around future tuition fees, the Leitch agenda and the impact of a declining age cohort.

What are the known knowns, and how might we respond to them? And, how do we plan for the unknowns? It is likely that the next ten years will herald fundamental changes in the nature and structure of higher education, and in the futures of many of the institutions that employ us. And what we do in the next three years will set the tone for the next ten.

Dr John Cater has been Vice-Chancellor of Edge Hill University, in its present and predecessor forms, since 1993. He was Chair of the Standing Conference of HE Principals from 2001-2003, having been Vice-Chair since 1997, and in this role was heavily involved in debates leading up to the 2003 Higher Education White Paper and the successor legislation. He served as a Director of the Training and Development Agency for Schools from 1999-2006, chairing its Audit and Accreditation Committees. He is a Director of the Higher Education Careers Service and of Liverpool: City of Learning, and serves on Universities UK's Teacher Education Advisory Group and its Health and Social Care Policy Committee, having previously been a member of the Department of Health's Expert Advisory Group on Nurse Education. He also served for four years on HEFCE's Good Management Practice Panel, and represented the sector on the Funding Council's HE Reach-Out to Business and Community and Higher Education Innovation Fund Panels. He is currently a member of the QAA's Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers.

Elly Dijk

NARCIS – Gateway to scientific information from the Netherlands

Worldwide access to Dutch scientific information is ensured by NARCIS (www.narcis.info), a portal run by the Research Information department of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Not only does NARCIS provide research information (about programmes, projects, institutes, researchers), it also offers access to full text publications and data sets.

Sources of NARCIS

NARCIS is fed from three types of sources:

1. The Dutch Research Database (NOD). The Dutch universities and the Academy have their own management information systems. On a national level the NOD contains all the information from these systems;
2. EASY, the national archiving system. This is an e-research repository run by the Academy’s Data Archiving and Networked Services institute; and
3. The repositories of the universities, the Academy, the National Research Council, and some smaller research institutes. These repositories were set up as part of the national DARE programme.

Digital Author Identifier

In order to realise the interlinking of these three worlds within NARCIS, a Digital Author Identifier (DAI) has been introduced in the Netherlands.

Elly Dijk graduated from the University of Amsterdam, where she studied Human Geography and Documentary Information Science. She is an editor at the Department of Research Information of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She has been involved in the development of the Dutch national research database CRIS (Current Research Information System). She is also the content coordinator and editor of NARCIS, a portal which integrates the scientific information from CRIS, institutional repositories, and archives with datasets. In addition, she is a member of the Repository Managers working group of the SURFshare programme (2007-2010). The aim of this programme is to improve the knowledge infrastructure of the Netherlands. She has been involved in the national Digital Author Identification (DAI) project, coordinated by SURFfoundation. The DAI is a unique national number assigned to every author who has been appointed to a position at a Dutch university or research institute or has some other relevant connection with one of these organisations.

www.narcis.info

Gill Ferrell

The shape of things to come: scenario planning in education

Future gazing and making accurate predictions is notoriously difficult. As recently as 1981, Bill Gates famously said “Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640k of RAM?". Many common methods for strategy development assume that the world in three to ten years' time will not differ significantly from that of today and that an organisation can mould its own future. Scenario planning, however, assumes that the future can differ greatly from what we know today.

By using trend analysis as its base and keeping a focus but an open mind, scenario planning helps build tests of plausibility into the planning process. It is a strategic planning tool used to make flexible long term plans and a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world.

The JISC Advisory Services and Innovation Team have been collaborating on a range of scenario planning tools and activities and JISC infoNet will be at CISG 2008 for the official launch of the already acclaimed Scenario Planning infoKit. Come along to an introduction to this useful tool to aid strategic thinking and planning and join us for some interactive sessions in bringing the theory to life!

Dr Gill Ferrell, formerly Director of the JISC infoNet service, is currently seconded as Director of Business Change with the JISC Services Management Company. She is the author of many resources in the infoKit series: Project Management, Risk Management, Process Review, System Selection, Contract Negotiation and Change Management ( www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokit)s. In previous roles she has managed projects selecting and implementing third party software and in house developments and has led on projects making major change to business processes. Gill has published many papers on issues relating to information systems and the use of technology to support learning and teaching and been an invited keynote speaker at both national and international events. Her current role is intended to ensure that by working effectively as a collective, the JISC Advisory Services can deliver added value to the communities they serve. In this context she is finding scenario planning a valuable tool in her own work.

Heidi Fraser-Krauss

What do users really want? An MMS perspective

No amount of investment in centralised information systems ever seems to result in an academic user base that will simply use those systems as intended. Academic departments insist on managing data locally, using an ad hoc mix of tools and methods. MMS is a significant move towards bridging this gap between central and local data management. It is unique in being an academic management system designed and implemented by academics, in line with institutional policy, which is also loosely coupled with key centralised services. As such it appears to address the needs of users in both administrative units and academic departments, contributing towards improved data quality for all users.

Heidi Fraser-Krauss is the Director of Business Improvements at the University of St Andrews, a unit that incorporates corporate information system’s support, business process reengineering and management of the University's web presence .

Heidi is passionate about bridging the divide between central and local administrative support and the appropriate use of technology to solve administrative problems.

Moria Hiatt and Mathew Evans

UKPASS – your postgraduate applications online

This presentation provides an overview of the UK Postgraduate Application and Statistical Service (UKPASS) launched by UCAS in 2007. UKPASS offers tailored online applications and the opportunity for market intelligence and statistical information. The service provides options to personalise applications with your logo and specific questions. Flexible sign up allows you to join the service any time during the academic year choosing to include all or some of your full time, part time and distance learning programmes.

The presentation will cover the advantages of using UKPASS both for applicants and institutions, technical and system information, the charging model and an update on the institutions currently subscribed. There will be opportunities to ask questions and make comments throughout the session.

Moira Hiatt joined UCAS after graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University. She became involved with postgraduate recruitment for teacher training by working for the Graduate Teacher Training Registry (GTTR) and also processing applications for the MA in Social Work through the Social Work Admissions Service, SWAS. When UCAS started to develop its electronic systems, she became involved in the promotion and support of these new products. She subsequently became Training and Development Manager providing advice and training programmes for schools and institutions. After a short period as an International Officer within the Company she was appointed as UKPASS Development Manager, a liaison role providing support and information for users of the service and to those institutions joining the scheme.

Mathew Evans joined UCAS from the Employment Service in 1996. He started with the Customer Service Unit dealing with calls about undergraduate applications. With the development of the Electronic Application Service (EAS) Mathew moved to a role providing help with technical queries, which lead to supporting Apply, the web based application product. Mathew has provided technical support to institutions using UCAS products such as Marvin, ODBC, xml-link and web-link. He joined the UKPASS team in July 2007 as Technical Support Officer to provide a dedicated point of contact for institutions with technical queries, to help facilitate the introduction of UKPASS.

Doug Haynes

Myers-Briggs: step aerobics with personality!

CIS is a good profession to be in – connectivity is here to stay! But, CIS departments in universities and colleges work with an (un)dazzling array of stakeholders and address huge complexity.

We appoint staff by insisting on essential and desirable personal characteristics and hope that they will deliver in a professional manner both individually and collectively. However, the kaleidoscope of personalities across the wider team both helps and hinders effective outcomes.

Most of us are familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Step I categories which provide a framework for understanding healthy personality. Personal characteristics are evaluated within the four preference dichotomies:

E <–> I Extraversion – Introversion ß Being energised

S <–> N Sensing – iNtuition ß Gathering information

T <–> F Thinking – Feeling ß Making decisions

J <–> P Judging – Perceiving ß Approaching life

In the last few years, a Myers-Briggs Step II Profile has been developed enabling further understanding of the full complexity and subtlety of Type. Doug will facilitate a rapid and coarse assessment of our MBTI Step I and Step II profiles and indicate how this can create personal and team awareness which can be beneficial for improving team effectiveness. The session will only be a quick taster.

Doug is currently operating as a freelance Management/Change Consultant and Executive Coach. He spent 34 years at LJMU teaching and practising in Applied Statistics, Operational Research, Quality Improvement, Business Information Systems, Business Analysis and Change Management. His last two roles at LJMU were Subject Leader for Information Management in Liverpool Business School for 8 years and Director of the School of Business Information for 4 years. He also headed up the Knowledge Transfer Partnership Centre in the Business School for 5 years.

He has recently trained to become a Myers-Briggs Practitioner (Steps I and II) and completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Business and Executive Coaching. His intention has been to develop his skills around individual and team development within change programmes. He is passionate about facilitating learning both for individuals and through facilitating business improvement and cultural change at all organisational levels.

Doug is a Founder Director of SCiO (Science & Cybernetics in Organisations − www.scio.org.uk), Director of Merit (Merseyside IT User Community − www.merit.org.uk) and a Trustee of three charities. His recent jaunts have included a visit to Israel and the disputed territories, and sailing across from Pembroke to Dublin, both pretty scary in their own way!

Andy Jordan

What gets V-Cs out of bed: the sector view of Shared Services for corporate systems

Duke & Jordan Ltd have carried out a study for the JISC this year into using shared services to deliver corporate information systems in FE and HE across the UK. The interest in shared services stems from Whitehall’s Gershon Report, which identified major savings from the sharing of back office system delivery.

We have looked at what people are doing at the moment and what they are planning to do. We spoke to managers from a representative sample of universities and colleges to find out what is driving them on to use shared services and what is stopping them. We talked to suppliers to understand their motivation: we spoke to Funding Councils to get their take on sharing services: we asked bodies such as UCISA about their perceptions. The web survey we undertook had a remarkably high participation rate from Vice-Chancellors.

We found a spectrum of views, both personal and institutional. Shared services are here and will stay – but to what extent and under what conditions? The conclusions we have drawn are of relevance to Funding Councils, JISC, institutions and to UCISA.

A graduate of Imperial College and Manchester, Andy was an academic at Aston, firstly in chemical engineering and then in computer science, before moving into service work. After 15 years at Aston, he moved to Huddersfield. There he was Director of Computing Services for 10 years until 2001, where he had responsibility for the full spectrum of IT services supporting learning, teaching, research and administration. In 1997, he became Chair of UCISA and, while at Huddersfield, he was also a member of a number of JISC committees, including those responsible for JANET and for Electronic Information, and was a member of the Funding Council panel looking at VFM in IT. For the past six years, Andy Jordan has worked with Jon Duke in consultancy, focusing on further and higher education.

Nikki Keggin

Integrated Research Information System (IRIS)

Research activity accounts for a significant percentage of a university’s business and this activity needs to be managed effectively across the organisation. The University of Liverpool has developed an Integrated Research Information System (IRIS) to enable research activity to be administered and reported on at all levels.

IRIS combines an Oracle Portal frontend with approval workflows, email notifications and management information reports. It allows research administrators, departmental staff and individual academics to manage their research activity on a daily basis, aids internal research collaboration and ensures timely and up to date management information and reporting.

Nikki has worked as a principal programmer/analyst in the University of Liverpool’s Computing Services Department for 7 years, before which she worked as a programmer within the retail sector. She has been responsible for developing and expanding the University’s staff information portal (TULIP) which she demonstrated at the UCISA CISG conference in 2002. She currently leads the development team for IRIS, the University’s new Integrated Research Information System.

Simon Marsden

Outsourcing models

Outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring, crowdsourcing, nearshoring, software as service, shared service, homeshoring − you know it makes sense, but what's it all about?

"Everything you can send down a wire is up for grabs." The mention of outsourcing at any industry forum or in the media automatically conjures visions of Indians or Chinese working for international clients on their computers 8,000 or 10,000 miles away and thoughts that the sky is falling in. On the other hand, we have all got used to using a range of outsourced services. We do not blink an eye at using JANET and even at Edinburgh we are no longer writing our own operating systems and compilers. Clearly, there is a trend to use more, higher level, externally provided services such as data centres and email. We all feel the need to balance costs and service quality whilst our colleagues and students want new innovations, but how does outsourcing help?

For every service that is outsourced there are many choices over what you do, how you do it, and who you do it with. So, how does outsourcing fit in?

Simon Marsden is Deputy Vice Principal for Information Services at the University of Edinburgh. He is responsible for IT strategy and is also Director of the Applications Division which covers the development and delivery of applications across the institution for research, learning and teaching and the administration. He is particularly interested in the use of information technology to improve processes and aims to bridge the gap between the senior management, their needs and the technologists who deliver the systems.

He is an active member of the HE community including a spell as Chair of UCISA and has recently completed a term as a director of Eduserv. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Simon, who is a chartered Civil Engineer, worked for the UK’s leading international engineering consultancy, Mott MacDonald. He was a company director with responsibility for internal IT and related consultancy. This involved considerable travel with periods of secondment to the World Bank and the Indonesian Government.

Hilary Sellars

Benefits of a Quality Assurance Manager

For the last 12 months the IT department at Royal Holloway has been undergoing a significant change in structure, job roles and processes. One of the key initiatives of this transformation has been the introduction of a more formal project management framework and with it a new role of Quality Assurance Manager. Hilary explains how creating this role and focussing on some simple reporting mechanisms has brought about significant improvements in the way IT has controlled not only their own internal projects but those where project managers sit outside the IT department.

Hilary is Head of IT Business Development for Royal Holloway, University of London. She joined Royal Holloway in 1993 after spending two years at the University of Stirling and was involved in replacing key corporate systems for the College. In 2002, she took over as Head of MIS and was responsible for the implementation of a new student system and College portal. Over the last 18 months she has moved into her current role where she is responsible for all IT related projects for the College.

David Sweeney

Update on the Research Excellence Framework

This presentation will provide a general update on the development of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and focus on the REF pilot exercise which is developing and testing methods for producing bibliometric indicators of research quality. Graeme will discuss:

• the data that was requested from the pilot institutions and how the institutions responded;
• the key issues that are being tested in the pilot exercise;
• what the process may mean for institutions' data systems to support the REF in future;
• the work we are doing to evaluate the available citation databases for use in the REF.

David Sweeney has been Director (Research, Innovation and Skills) since 2008. In this role, is he responsible for developing policy on Research (including the Research Assessment Exercise and Research Excellence Framework), Business & Community and Employer Engagement. He is also responsible for the London and East regional teams and for the Strategic Development Fund. A statistician, David worked at two BBSRC research institutes, developing mathematical models of plant growth then moving into senior management in the IT area, becoming Director of Information Services at Royal Holloway, University of London and serving in a national role as Chair of UCISA. He became Vice-Principal (Communications, Enterprise and Research) in 2004, responsible for marketing, communications, external relations, fund raising, research strategy and income, the 2008 RAE submission and for developing Royal Holloway's research led commercial, knowledge transfer and consultancy activities.

David was a football referee and is now a football journalist. He remains interested in IT and especially applications of IT in learning and research. He reads about crime but tries to avoid putting what he reads into practice

Lynne Thomas and Andy Osborne

MIAP: Enabling benefits in education

Lynne Thomas, MIAP and Andy Osborne, Logica

Managing Information Across Partners (MIAP) is a key initiative within the sector that has developed a set of shared infrastructural services that enable the sharing of data across education. These services are already supporting some key educational policy initiatives, such as the 14-19 Diploma, and will deliver tangible benefits to both learners and learning providers, including schools, colleges, work based learning organisations and higher education institutions.

This presentation will:

• Provide an introduction to the MIAP programme and what it is aiming to achieve within the education sector including HE;
• Describe the services currently provided by MIAP and those that are planned for imminent release;
• Explain how these services are being used today and how they might be used in the future to deliver benefits to the education sector;
• Explain the specific drivers for colleges and universities to engage with MIAP and how to go about doing that.

The MIAP website, www.miap.gov.uk, contains information on how colleges and universities can use, and benefit from, MIAP’s services. If you would like to find out more please contact lynne.thomas@miap.gov.uk

Lynne Thomas has provided consultancy to the MIAP Programme almost since its inception in 2002, and has also contributed to the successful delivery of a number of projects in the education sector for the Learning and Skills Council, HEFCE and JISC. Lynne joined the MIAP team in August 2007 as an Implementation Consultant and is currently working with institutions in the HE sector to promote the use of MIAP’s services by colleges and universities. She has established an influential Advisory Group to advise the MIAP Programme on how it might best deploy its services and address key issues in the HE sector and is recruiting a group of universities to become users of the Learner Registration Service during this academic year to allocate Unique Learner Numbers to students.

Andy Osborne has been involved with MIAP for over two years, as the Business Solution Architect from MIAP’s chosen delivery partner, Logica. He led the development of requirements and business solutions for the key MIAP services launched in 2007 and 2008, and is now supporting the LSC to look at the way MIAP’s services need to be developed to support future needs.

Alison Wildish and John Howell

Why can’t I use your data? Can web services and CIS work together in harmony when it comes to the web?

As the range of online services available grow so do the expectations of students and staff. Web Services teams are under constant pressure to ensure those expectations are met and users can carry out tasks with ease. As a result, CIS teams are expected to open up more data and provide users with more opportunities to interact with their own information.

Alison and John will look at the traditional roles of Web Services and CIS teams and some of the conflicts which arise from the perceived need to provide more services. Using the analogy that web services are focussed purely on the user and CIS guard information territorially (for Data Protection and security reasons) they will explore scenarios where the data has been put in the hands of the individuals to manage and others where a more a locked down approach is more beneficial.

Together they will seek to answer the question: can the two teams meet in the middle and work together to keep everyone happy?

John Howell currently heads the MIS section at the University of Bath. In his 12 years at the University, he has worked in a variety of roles on almost all areas of University information systems, from timetabling to finance. Prior to managing the MIS section he led the student and applicant project at Bath from its inception in 2000. This included moving almost all student interactions with systems to the web, in particular, developing some of the earliest and most extensive methods of registration and fee payment online, but also covering many other areas from enquiries to ceremony management. This has given him a very wide experience of the issues around integration with both internal and external systems, ranging from the good to the bad, and occasionally, the ugly.

He has recently completed an MBA which concentrated on knowledge management, and his interests include extending the use of information and knowledge in a university context, while maintaining the needs for security and quality. His current focus is on implementing the University’s new framework for assessment, involving automation from mark entry to degree classification, and managing communications for the recently introduced finance system.

Alison Wildish is an advocate of institutions embracing third party services to support their communications initiatives and has an active interest in the opportunities offered by personalisation and user owned technologies. Heading up the Web Services team at the University of Bath she manages the central Web team and is responsible for the strategic direction of University Web services. She formerly held the same position at Edge Hill University where she led projects which included; the University portal project (go.edgehill.ac.uk) and the development of the Applicant Community Website (winner of the CASE Circle of Excellence awards). At the University of Bath she is working on the development of a new external facing website to maximise the exposure of research and develop a more coherent user experience. Alison blogs at blogs.bath.ac.uk/webservices/.