Top concerns - 2008/9

The 2008/9 Top Concerns survey has now been completed and the preliminary results published below. An executive summary is in preparation. The aim of the survey is to identify the matters of concern to IT / Computing Service Directors and their institutions to enable us to develop our programme of events to better meet these and so offer better value from UCISA membership. The JISC, JANET (UK) and other agencies should look to the results of this survey to get a view of the concerns of the sector and consider these in developing their programmes. Individually each institution can benefit from understanding the broad consensus on these matters, and perhaps use this in developing their own IT/IS services. The process also offers UCISA a way of further promoting the Association.

Seventy nine institutions responded and 83 valid responses were received. 74% of respondents were IT/IS Directors or equivalent and the others senior IS/IT managers. The headline results are that the most serious concerns of UCISA members remain the provision of sufficient resources for IT, IT Strategy and planning and the “business systems” which are used to support the operation of their institution. Organisational change and process improvement is a new highly ranked concern.

• Executive summary
• Ranked list of results from the four perspectives and overall conclusions
• Comparison with 2006/7 results
• Comparison with Educause's Top ten issues survey
• List of Top ten UCISA concerns with concern descriptions
• PDF of all the results above
• Description of all the candidate concerns

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the members of the community who contributed to this survey, to members of the Executive who reviewed the candidate concerns, to UCISA HQ for their assistance and to The Oxford Research Agency (www.tora.co.uk) for their support during the survey. Thanks are also due to Iain Stinson, Director of IT Services at the University of Sussex and member of the UCISA Executive for his work in analysing the returns from the survey and compiling these results.