First thing we did this week was have a review meeting of how we had handled the major incident last week when we lost our network connection. We do this after all of our incidents, looking at what we did well, and where we can learn and improve things. Although this wasn't actually our issue, we did review how we communicated internally and externally, and whether there were any measures we could put in pace to mitigate against the effect of any similar incidents in the future. We identified several things which we'll be putting into effect over the coming weeks.
I went with an Assistant Director on a visit to Newcastle University on Tuesday to look at how they handle IT Support in their Faculties. They are a very similar University to us, and it was good to see how they do it, and what we can learn from them.
Yesterday I spent some time in a workshop looking at equality and diversity issues - if you're a long time reader of this blog you'll know I've been a member of the University Equality and Diversity Board for some time, and have been working for the last couple of years on objectives for the University. I firmly believe that diversity is extremely important, and its not just about box ticking and achieving targets - it's about embedding the culture in everything we do. We discussed so much yesterday - including what is the education rationale for diversity? Why should we do it? Will it make a difference to our students and staff? How can we recruit staff differently to ensure that we appoint from a diverse pool - something that I fear we don't do well at the moment for staff on grades one to five. there was lots of energy in the discussion, lots of ideas, and lots of things to take forward. For me, one of the key rationales for diversity, is that a diverse team is more creative, solves problems quicker, gets the right answers and is much more successful. You've only got to watch The Apprentice to see what happens when you put a group of similar people into a team....
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