The last time I posted, the 24 hour lecture was about to take place. Well, it did, supported by several staff from CiCS, and some of us made it for the full 24 hours! I took lots of pictures, and intend to write it up as a diary of the 24 hours, as soon as I find the time.
This week there's been a collection of meetings. Business Continuity Operations Group, where we looked at how we might set up and run a call centre in the case of a major incident. Technically not really a problem as we could get it set up fairly quickly provided we could get to the space and the kit, but staffing it might be a bigger problem. Staff would need training, we'd need access to different language speakers, and depending on the nature, severity of the incident, we might need several shifts of people. A number of options being looked at, including buying the service in if we needed it.
We had a meeting of heads of department with UEB and Professional Service directors, where we discussed the "Achieve More" challenges which we introduced this year for all first year students. Next year it will be rolled out to level two students as well, but in a different format. Lots of discussion on the format, the academic challenges, and the logistics. this year we had all first year Arts and Humanities and Social Science students doing it in the same week - that's about 3000 students, so to say it was a logistical challenge would be an understatement. But, we coped, and plans are already underway to improve it for next year.
The only other meeting I'll comment on was a presentation about benchmarking - a proposal to benchmark the costs of different services across the whole University, looking at all staff who are not academics and allocating time to different tasks. Other Universities are taking part, so we would have data to compare. Not sure yet if we're going to take part, will keep you all posted.
The rest of the week has been general catching up and preparing for some meetings coming up next week.
Showing posts with label benchmarking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benchmarking. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
Benchmarking
Had an interesting discussion today with colleagues about Benchmarking. What do we mean by it, what can it help us with? We've recently taken part in two very different exercises which have looked at our services in different ways. One was an external benchmarking exercise from ImprovIT which took a limited number of our services including email, servers and storage, desktop, data centres and student record system. This looked at many metrics which including expenditure in each area, but was not restricted to cost. It looked at the complexity and quality of the service we provide as well as metrics around service levels, incidents etc.
The second was the Janet Financial X-ray of IT costs. This looked at all of our services, mapped them to a predefined service list, looked purely at cost, taking into account all costs including depreciation and overheads. Importantly it didn't just look at our (CiCS) costs, but looked across the whole University.
Very different methodologies. Very different outputs. Both useful, but in different ways. Benchmarking is clearly not just about costs, but is about outputs, quality and service levels. However, costing information can be very useful, especially when used as a decision making tool We've now got a very good handle on how much our email service costs for example, (which is a tiny amount which I'm glad about given that we've outsourced it). But, because we didn't do this exercise before we outsourced, I don't know exactly how much we've saved. It also highlighted how little we spend in some areas, which might look like a good thing, but it isn't - it means we're running some services on a shoestring.
Both types of study are useful, and complementary to each other. We had some interesting discussions today about the complexity of the services we offer and support, and how that can be either for historical reasons or can actually be by design. Supporting multiple sorts of hardware and operating systems for example is a conscious decision that we've taken, deciding that where possible we'll standardise on platform, ie the web, for delivery. How important are these sort of decisions when benchmarking our services both within and outside of the sector?
All interesting stuff to consider.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The second was the Janet Financial X-ray of IT costs. This looked at all of our services, mapped them to a predefined service list, looked purely at cost, taking into account all costs including depreciation and overheads. Importantly it didn't just look at our (CiCS) costs, but looked across the whole University.
Very different methodologies. Very different outputs. Both useful, but in different ways. Benchmarking is clearly not just about costs, but is about outputs, quality and service levels. However, costing information can be very useful, especially when used as a decision making tool We've now got a very good handle on how much our email service costs for example, (which is a tiny amount which I'm glad about given that we've outsourced it). But, because we didn't do this exercise before we outsourced, I don't know exactly how much we've saved. It also highlighted how little we spend in some areas, which might look like a good thing, but it isn't - it means we're running some services on a shoestring.
Both types of study are useful, and complementary to each other. We had some interesting discussions today about the complexity of the services we offer and support, and how that can be either for historical reasons or can actually be by design. Supporting multiple sorts of hardware and operating systems for example is a conscious decision that we've taken, deciding that where possible we'll standardise on platform, ie the web, for delivery. How important are these sort of decisions when benchmarking our services both within and outside of the sector?
All interesting stuff to consider.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday, 25 February 2013
No time for lunch.....
Today was a mammoth day of meetings. This morning we got together with the Service Managers to look at how we will put together our plans for the coming year. Instead of a fairly detailed plan of aims, objectives and a list of tasks, we're going for a very high level list of aims for the year published on our web site, with a detailed operational level plan within each service area. This will be a constantly updated Google doc with timescales, priorities etc which the whole department can refer to. It should be simpler and more transparent both for our customers to understand, and CiCS staff.
Then I had a presentation from a company who had recently carried out a benchmarking survey for us. Two other Russell Group Universities had taken part, and the company was also able to compare us with other sectors. A whole range of things were looked at, and a lot of data had been collected and fed through to them. Importantly, the study was not just about cost - it also looked at people, processes, complexity, service delivery and volume.
In order to keep the scope manageable, we had chosen the following areas:
Desktop Services
- Email Services
- Printing Services
Server Management
- Storage Services
Data Centre Services
Student Records System
I haven't yet shared the results with the rest if the department so don't want to go into detail here, but I think it's safe to say that in general we are very cost effective. :-)
Issues were raised with us around complexity in some areas, and the lack of metrics for some of our service. The latter is something we are aware of and addressing. I'm glad to say that our email costs are very significantly lower than our peer group, but our printer costs are higher, hence our move to a more sustainable print service.
The company had also interviewed a selection of users, and their comments reflected very much what had come out of our recent staff survey.
This was the subject of my last meeting - going though all of the results of the staff survey with the service managers. Each had picked out themes in their areas and suggested actions to rectify issues which had been raised where possible. Some common themes included communication (it is either too much, or too little), poor interfaces into systems (some are packages, some of our own in-house written ones - both came in for as much criticism I think), browser compatibility of applications. There was also a general perception that we didn't consult enough, an we do wonder whether we have lost touch somewhat from our academic departments, focusing too much on consultation and discussion at faulty level? Whatever the cause, we will be getting out much more to talk to people.
Busy day - I think some of us were in meetings for just over 7 hours, but all very worthwhile and all achieved something.
Then I had a presentation from a company who had recently carried out a benchmarking survey for us. Two other Russell Group Universities had taken part, and the company was also able to compare us with other sectors. A whole range of things were looked at, and a lot of data had been collected and fed through to them. Importantly, the study was not just about cost - it also looked at people, processes, complexity, service delivery and volume.
In order to keep the scope manageable, we had chosen the following areas:
Desktop Services
- Email Services
- Printing Services
Server Management
- Storage Services
Data Centre Services
Student Records System
I haven't yet shared the results with the rest if the department so don't want to go into detail here, but I think it's safe to say that in general we are very cost effective. :-)
Issues were raised with us around complexity in some areas, and the lack of metrics for some of our service. The latter is something we are aware of and addressing. I'm glad to say that our email costs are very significantly lower than our peer group, but our printer costs are higher, hence our move to a more sustainable print service.
The company had also interviewed a selection of users, and their comments reflected very much what had come out of our recent staff survey.
This was the subject of my last meeting - going though all of the results of the staff survey with the service managers. Each had picked out themes in their areas and suggested actions to rectify issues which had been raised where possible. Some common themes included communication (it is either too much, or too little), poor interfaces into systems (some are packages, some of our own in-house written ones - both came in for as much criticism I think), browser compatibility of applications. There was also a general perception that we didn't consult enough, an we do wonder whether we have lost touch somewhat from our academic departments, focusing too much on consultation and discussion at faulty level? Whatever the cause, we will be getting out much more to talk to people.
Busy day - I think some of us were in meetings for just over 7 hours, but all very worthwhile and all achieved something.
Monday, 11 June 2012
Research data, printing and HPC at RUGIT
Today I've been at a RUGIT, (Russell Group IT Directors) meeting in
London. Slightly larger group than usual, as the Russell Group has
welcomed four new members - York, Queen Mary, Exeter and Durham. So we
began with a bit of an introduction about what we do, and concluded that
we're a bit of a self help group - sharing information, having open
discussions and collaborating. We have two sub groups looking at
security and service quality, and as well as all of the RUGIT members we
have representatives from JANET and the Russell Group itself.
Today we discussed several topics, the first being research data management. We all see this as an issue, and one that we've been talking about for a long time. The amount of data being produced and processed is rising rapidly, and with that comes the need to store it, and to curate it. The research councils now demand a research data management plan with all grant applications, and there is pressure to keep and manage data in a way that allows its reuse, which involves digital data curation skills including applying metadata. We have a draft Research Data Management Policy which is the result of a collaboration between us, the Library and Research and Innovation Services. Like many other universities we're looking at how we implement it once it has been finally approved. One of the areas we discussed was charging policies. If we charge, then staff will go off down to PC World and buy terabytes of disc because it's cheaper then what we charge, with no consideration of the extra services provided centrally including back up, mirroring, archiving, security, disaster recovery etc. If we don't charge, then it becomes a valueless service with no limits, which we can't afford. We need to get the balance right between value and cost. This is definitely an area where we're all in the same boat and there's opportunities for collaboration.
We also discussed printing. Most of us have a printing service for students, and have had for some time. Many Universities have already implemented a similar service for staff, and others, like us, are just in the process of implementing one. Despite the obvious benefits - access to an improved service with faster printing, colour, A3, duplex, it being more sustainable, more cost effective, and the devices managed centrally - there is always initial reluctance. Staff are very wedded to their own printers. So, we had an interesting discussion about the barriers to change, and some of the cultural issues we have to manage.
Towards the end of last year, funding was announced for Tier 2 HPC (high performance computing) centres of excellence, 5 were funded, and we had short presentations from three of them:
N8 - Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Durham, Lancaster, Liverpool, Newcastle, York.
South consortium - UCL, Southampton, Oxford, Bristol
Midplus - Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham, Queen Mary
All have been awarded several million pounds to establish regional HPC facilities, to improve research collaboration and to encourage business engagement. One of the things we discussed, given that the grants are for the initial capital and only one year of recurrent money, is how do we make this facilities sustainable? How are they to be funded when this money has run out? we will need to demonstrate the impact that they have had, not just in research and technological terms, but in collaboration and engagement with industry. It will be an interesting couple of years!
Our final discussion of the day was on benchmarking, Something we've been talking about on RUGIT for as long as I can remember, and it usually centres around how do we know we're comparing apples with apples, as we all have different structures and services. Well, a small group of us is going to have a go. We'll see what happens.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Today we discussed several topics, the first being research data management. We all see this as an issue, and one that we've been talking about for a long time. The amount of data being produced and processed is rising rapidly, and with that comes the need to store it, and to curate it. The research councils now demand a research data management plan with all grant applications, and there is pressure to keep and manage data in a way that allows its reuse, which involves digital data curation skills including applying metadata. We have a draft Research Data Management Policy which is the result of a collaboration between us, the Library and Research and Innovation Services. Like many other universities we're looking at how we implement it once it has been finally approved. One of the areas we discussed was charging policies. If we charge, then staff will go off down to PC World and buy terabytes of disc because it's cheaper then what we charge, with no consideration of the extra services provided centrally including back up, mirroring, archiving, security, disaster recovery etc. If we don't charge, then it becomes a valueless service with no limits, which we can't afford. We need to get the balance right between value and cost. This is definitely an area where we're all in the same boat and there's opportunities for collaboration.
We also discussed printing. Most of us have a printing service for students, and have had for some time. Many Universities have already implemented a similar service for staff, and others, like us, are just in the process of implementing one. Despite the obvious benefits - access to an improved service with faster printing, colour, A3, duplex, it being more sustainable, more cost effective, and the devices managed centrally - there is always initial reluctance. Staff are very wedded to their own printers. So, we had an interesting discussion about the barriers to change, and some of the cultural issues we have to manage.
Towards the end of last year, funding was announced for Tier 2 HPC (high performance computing) centres of excellence, 5 were funded, and we had short presentations from three of them:
N8 - Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Durham, Lancaster, Liverpool, Newcastle, York.
South consortium - UCL, Southampton, Oxford, Bristol
Midplus - Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham, Queen Mary
All have been awarded several million pounds to establish regional HPC facilities, to improve research collaboration and to encourage business engagement. One of the things we discussed, given that the grants are for the initial capital and only one year of recurrent money, is how do we make this facilities sustainable? How are they to be funded when this money has run out? we will need to demonstrate the impact that they have had, not just in research and technological terms, but in collaboration and engagement with industry. It will be an interesting couple of years!
Our final discussion of the day was on benchmarking, Something we've been talking about on RUGIT for as long as I can remember, and it usually centres around how do we know we're comparing apples with apples, as we all have different structures and services. Well, a small group of us is going to have a go. We'll see what happens.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday, 14 May 2012
Benchmarking
Benchmarking - why do we do it? It should help change the conversation from IT cost, to IT value. It should also help the organisation decide what service it wants and needs, and to have meaningful discussions between service levels and price. Low cost and high service levels tend not to match!
So, how best to do it? Starting point is usually, we're unique, can't compare us to others. But, have to start somewhere. Select a peer group. Choose a reference group close to your volume and complexity. Gartner has a model for doing this, taking into account various drivers and using statistical techniques to remove outliers etc.
Can use just key metrics, eg how much do I spend compared to others? But, get more value if you go deeper, and look at specific areas and analyse data more.
But, this is still concentrating on cost, and there is more to benchmarking than cost. I'm interested in things like satisfaction, innovation, quality etc.
Should we start with cost, and then look at quality? But how do we measure quality? Picking the right KPIs can be difficult. I remember talking to the CEO of JANET about this, and he made the point that he could measure up time of the JANET network and get it to 99.99%. Very good. It can fail for 1 hour, to 1 institution and be well within those figures. But, if that hour was at the beginning of Clearing, it could seriously affect that institution's satisfaction.
If you just look at spend, you have to take into account all of the differentiating factors. Eg spend per student would depend on what services you offer, whether you're a research University, what your mix of courses was.
So, benchmarking is a big challenge, the trick is to get meaningful data. And meaningful data to compare it to.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
So, how best to do it? Starting point is usually, we're unique, can't compare us to others. But, have to start somewhere. Select a peer group. Choose a reference group close to your volume and complexity. Gartner has a model for doing this, taking into account various drivers and using statistical techniques to remove outliers etc.
Can use just key metrics, eg how much do I spend compared to others? But, get more value if you go deeper, and look at specific areas and analyse data more.
But, this is still concentrating on cost, and there is more to benchmarking than cost. I'm interested in things like satisfaction, innovation, quality etc.
Should we start with cost, and then look at quality? But how do we measure quality? Picking the right KPIs can be difficult. I remember talking to the CEO of JANET about this, and he made the point that he could measure up time of the JANET network and get it to 99.99%. Very good. It can fail for 1 hour, to 1 institution and be well within those figures. But, if that hour was at the beginning of Clearing, it could seriously affect that institution's satisfaction.
If you just look at spend, you have to take into account all of the differentiating factors. Eg spend per student would depend on what services you offer, whether you're a research University, what your mix of courses was.
So, benchmarking is a big challenge, the trick is to get meaningful data. And meaningful data to compare it to.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday, 29 June 2009
RUGIT at King's
Spent the day in London today at a RUGIT meeting - boy was it hot! We were meeting at Kings College - one the few Russell Group Universities I've never been to. didn't get chance to see much of it, but it's in a very good location - on The Strand, overlooking the Thames. There's a lovely chapel which I managed to peak into.Main items of business today included Budgets, Benchmarking and Business Continuity. Everyone is planning for the effects of the economic downturn to be felt, and we discussed a number of ways in which we could cut costs whilst maintaining services. Reviewing all of our contracts with suppliers, including maintenance agreements and software licence arrangements was discussed, as well as streamlining business processes across different schools and faculties and using IT to help the Unviersity become more efficient. Also outsourcing - where there is minimum risk, low levels of complexity and high volumes, such as email and storage.
I've lost count of the number of times we've discussed benchmarking - it's a topic that won't go away, especially as our own institutions want to know if we're being cost effective and provding value for money. The problme we always come up against is our widely different portfolios services and structures - it's very difficult not to compare apples and pears. But, we're going to have another go!
Business continuity remains high on everyone's agenda with a number of HEIs reporting cases of swine flu. Pleased to note that all IT Directors getting the same reaction as me - people will work from home using our email/web/corporate systems, use our VLEs to teach, our research computing facilities and electronic resources. Because our systems will keep running won't they? Because we're not going to get ill! It was pointed out that systems often break when changes are applied and not often when they're running in steady state. So. don't make changes. Or, implement ITIL and make them in a carefully controlled way....
Monday, 22 September 2008
The new students are here
Well it's certainly busy on campus - I love it when the students come back - there's a real buzz about the place. Just bigger queues to get my lunchtime sandwich. More students needing help with connecting, more asking about connecting Xboxes - this morning when I suggested to our network guys that we needed to look at how to handle consoles, it took less than 10 seconds for one of them to suggest that they needed a couple to play with, I mean test!
On line registration system seems to be working well, so that's good, and at the moment everyone seems pleased with the way things are going.
Had a good Executive Meeting this afternoon - looking at how we're going to interact with the new planning round put in place following our University restructure. First task is to pull together all of our existing strategy documents and put them in a format which will be easy to understand and digest. A major task is to identify which KPIs (key performance indicators) we are going to use and report on. Lot of debate about what metrics to use, and how and who to benchmark with. For example, is a systems up time of 99.99%, or responding to phone queries in two hours a KPI? Or is that just us doing our job?
More later!
On line registration system seems to be working well, so that's good, and at the moment everyone seems pleased with the way things are going.
Had a good Executive Meeting this afternoon - looking at how we're going to interact with the new planning round put in place following our University restructure. First task is to pull together all of our existing strategy documents and put them in a format which will be easy to understand and digest. A major task is to identify which KPIs (key performance indicators) we are going to use and report on. Lot of debate about what metrics to use, and how and who to benchmark with. For example, is a systems up time of 99.99%, or responding to phone queries in two hours a KPI? Or is that just us doing our job?
More later!
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Trust me, I’m a CIO
Gartner HE day at Salford University today - a good day. Always nice to mix with other CIOs and IT Directors and share experiences, issues and best practice. Today's discussions all centred around governance, including demonstrating the value of IT and using benchmarking techniques. The day was in three parts, with a presentation on a topic which then led into a round table discussion.
One of the things we concentrated on was how to interact with the governance structure of your institution, whatever it might be - and there were as many different models as there were Universities represented.
We talked about the importance of happy users, and managing user expectations. Someone suggested that the perfect form of governance is the enlightened dictatorship (I certainly agree with that ). Although even the most enlightened dictator eventually becomes corrupted by profit and power over time....
Complexity is an issue we need to get across - HE is a number of businesses - research, teaching, management, all with different needs, and the different cultures of the different academic disciplines also has to be factored in.
One of the main messages to come out about communicating with the governance structure was the famous KISS model - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Suggestions included
Establish that IT matters - show how pervasive and critical it is, and how much funding it consumes
Do user satisfaction surveys
Benchmark yourself against other institutions
Use risk assessments – show what happens if services are not there
Need to balance project and service portfolios
Project portfolio needs to be managed strategically. New services have ongoing costs. Need therefore to manage that carefully – may not be costs in IT dept.
Talk about services not systems
Talk about performance.
Talk about business outcomes
Finally, be transparent, because transparency builds trust
One of the things we concentrated on was how to interact with the governance structure of your institution, whatever it might be - and there were as many different models as there were Universities represented.
We talked about the importance of happy users, and managing user expectations. Someone suggested that the perfect form of governance is the enlightened dictatorship (I certainly agree with that ). Although even the most enlightened dictator eventually becomes corrupted by profit and power over time....
Complexity is an issue we need to get across - HE is a number of businesses - research, teaching, management, all with different needs, and the different cultures of the different academic disciplines also has to be factored in.
One of the main messages to come out about communicating with the governance structure was the famous KISS model - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Suggestions included
Establish that IT matters - show how pervasive and critical it is, and how much funding it consumes
Do user satisfaction surveys
Benchmark yourself against other institutions
Use risk assessments – show what happens if services are not there
Need to balance project and service portfolios
Project portfolio needs to be managed strategically. New services have ongoing costs. Need therefore to manage that carefully – may not be costs in IT dept.
Talk about services not systems
Talk about performance.
Talk about business outcomes
Finally, be transparent, because transparency builds trust
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Hype and more hype..
I was in London today for a RUGIT meeting. Began with a presentation on the UK National Grid Service. The NGS has over 700 registered users and is funded by JISC and EPSRC. It provides integrated grid access to compute and data resources, and as part of the White Rose Grid, we are one of its core sites. Very interesting discussion on what the NGS can offer Universities, and how it can provide support, training, common interfaces, distributed virtualised data storage and monitoring and sysadmin support. The NGS is keen to improve its engagement with University computing services and this was a good start.
After an update on JANET activities from its Chief Executive, we had another presentation from Eduserve –another body keen to improve links with us. We are in demand at the moment! Eduserve, through CHEST, negotiate many of our site licences with software suppliers, and one of the things we discussed was the reluctance of many suppliers to allow us to provide software for use on students’ own machines. We felt that this was an area where Eduserve could help us, especially if they could provide a central distribution system for any such software – centralised download pages for students for example.
Finally we had a robust discussion about benchmarking – something we have been discussing for ages! Last year we all plotted where we were with certain services on a Gartner Hype Cycle and then compared them. This year we’re going to carry out a web based survey to collect qualitative rather than quantitative data, so that we can see where we are in developments in relation to other Russell Group Universities. The discussion was robust, because some of the group didn't want to spend any money on it, and some of us did!
I’ve kept in touch with base today using my laptop and a USB modem, the Eduroam wireless network, and my phone, and done lots of work on the train or in those boring bits that occur in all meetings! The most useful bit of software I’ve used all day is myChat – it’s great – but more people need to use it. At any one time there’s about 45 people in CiCS logged in – it will be even more useful if more people use it!
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