How to save money, save time, save the planet, improve your sex life, lose 10lbs, get whiter teeth, and get to the

.......in three easy steps.

The final session at CISG by Angela Lamont. A self confessed geek, she used to be a systems analyst and has worked for a number of companies before becoming a technology writer and broadcaster. Motivational speakers can be a bit hit and miss, but she was very good. Funny, and very relevant to a room full of IT people. She stared with a wordle of her spam emails over the last weeks, and based on what the spammers were suggesting she wanted, she came up with the title.

She gave us 3 easy steps to use in our personal lied and at work each illustrated with amusing anecdotes, many from her life. I'm not going to repeat them here because that wouldn't do the talk justice, but they include cancelling the Tuesday meeting, analyzing the Tamara Drewe effect to improve your sex life, and losing weight by doing your shopping on line.

A good end to an enjoyable conference.

No more work blogging for a few days as I'm away at the moment. Some pictures etc on the other blog if your interested.

Things that were, things that are, and things that might yet come to pass

First session this morning was from Heidi, the CISG chair with the above title, which the LOTR fans amongst you will recognise as a Galadriel quote.
In 30 mins she had a look back 10 years, looked to see what had changed since, and then used her crystal ball to look forward 10 years. As usual with most of my conference posts, these are the key points I noted down during the talk.

What was the world like in 2000?
Peak of the dot com bubble
Concorde crashed
Sydney olympics
Fuel protests

What was the HE business model
We wooed or selected students
Admitted them
Taught them
Examined them
Graduated them

We had just survived the y2k bug. Lots of in house systems replaced. Big investments. Move away from in house development
Lots of technology, but lots of business processes still very manual, on paper
Web technology there, but not interactive. Mainly static content. Difficult to get pages on the web, somebody to do it for you.
IT seen as essential, but not transformative.
IT governance, did it exist?
Budgets for IT c4% of turnover.
Staff numbers higher then, or lower? Mixed view from audience, probably about the same.
Good name check for Brian Kelly who was on the pulse. Lots of things he was looking at now come to pass.

Top UCISA concerns in 2005 (earliest data we have):
Network security
Strategic approach to infrastructure
Systems reliance and availability
Anytime anywhere
Learning support

All technology based.

What's changed politically?
Tuition fees for most of UK, students more demanding
Expansion of sector. 400000 more students than 10 years ago
League tables, big impact on how institutions behave and manage
Shared services agenda.

What's changed technically?
Pervasive wireless
Home broadband
Cloud based services
Smart mobile devices
Frameworks for ween developments
Self service via web
More systems to support ( and staff numbers haven't gone up)

What's not changed?
Business model
Core admin systems.
Appreciation of where IT can /cannot add value. Type 42 manager has still not materialized. Still focusing on technology, not business processes .

Current stat politically:
Huge pressure on HE funding. Outcome of Browne still not clear.
Pressure to share services or come up with different cheaper models very high. Should be focussing on different models of delivery.

Current state, technical:
Use of cloud/hosting commodity services growing
Full outsourcing of services under investigation to a limit extent
Apps for student related content delivery growing
Web based delivery now the norm
Business process review now a standard feature
Top concerns 2009 now have business systems and process improvement in top 5.

What will the world of CIS look like in 2020?
There'll have been evolution not revolution
All CIS applications will be delivered from the cloud
More use of discreet services delivered from cloud eg for invoice processing, payroll
Development and support of applications will be from staff in clusters of like minded institutions
Students will all have iPad type devices.

A great talk, made all the more remarkable as it was delivered at 9am after a very late bar session after the conference dinner!

Questions on Clouds

This morning we had a cloud email review panel. Over the last couple of years many institutions have moved to either google or microsoft to provide their email service for students and in some places staff as well. The panel answered questions from the floor on what have the issues been, how successful has it been, and what does it mean for other services that could be moved to the cloud.

So, a series of questions and comments and input from the audience. some notes taken at the time below, universities anonimised to preserve some semblance of confidentiality!

What are main product selection criteria?
University1. Microsoft or google both ok. Could have worked with either. students chose google, very much driven by them
University2. Chose MS 2 yrs ago on conditions around at the time eg where data was held and date profiling etc. But, conditions have changed now. Market is more mature.
University3 had little MS infrastructure so google best fit. Also driven by what students wanted. They wanted google.

What about service levels? How do you cope with changes eg with new products being released. No-one has seen this as a problem. Students don't care, they're used to services changing. Learn to let go a bit. We mustn't be barriers to adoption of new technologies. Get roadmap updates, become trusted testers, engage with suppliers.

What about contracts? Need an exit strategy if company goes bust or pulls the service. All about risk. Need to do a risk assessment, know what they are and how to manage and mitigate them.

Why give students email when they have it already? Pressure from registry for example to be able to send messages. Can't rely on students keeping their personal email address up to date. Also, if don't offer email could restrict access to other services offered by google eg google docs because you need an email address to use them.

What about Cloud email for staff?
UniversityA not moving to cloud email, but giving them access to full range of google services and option of having mail delivered.
UniversityB tendered and are going with third party supplier.
UniversityC Going with MS cloud for staff. Saving 350k on power alone. Only issue has been migration of calendar data.

What about compliance, IP issues etc?
Staff do need to be aware of consequences of their actions, but we need pragmatic solutions. Provide advice, eg through a Web 2.0 policy. Can't control.

Collaboration has been hugely improved by move to cloud email for students through use of google docs. Both unis reported thousands of students using docs on a daily basis where previously they had no collaborative tools.

Other apps on the horizon?
Research data. Petabytes of data now being produced by things like Large Hadron Collider, gene sequencing. Not just a storage issue. Needs metadata, duration etc. Some grants have condition that data has to be made available globally. Is cloud the answer?

Hot topics for FDs

The second session of CISG was also given by a senior mnager from the University of Sussex, this time the Finance Director, and he talked about  Funding IT in Turbulent Times.

First he set the scene with the current funding climate. The credit crunch; public sector cuts, (anything from 20% to 40%); the Browne review, (which had been completed before the election, but not released until after it). Fees were a hot topic yesterday as the £9,000 cap had just been announced.

Reactions to the Browne review had been mixed, with some Universities welcoming it (mainly the Russell Group), others not.  Prospective students and parents don't like increase in fees.

There's a widespread expectation that Browne will lead to a competitive market opening up. HEIs have competed on quality in the past but not cost. Up until today's announcement there'd been some speculation about whether there would be a free market, or a continuation of the current situation with everyone charging the same, but a bigger fee. Today's announcement of £9k cap will mean there will be competition.

Other aspects of current climate:

• CSR affirms Browne will be implemented
• Science budget remains same ie cut. Research funding for all HEIs will go down.
• Innovation budget consolidated
• Capital budgets halved

Then he told us what the hot topics were among finance directors at the moment. Summarised as follows:

• Stability of sector as a whole. Lots of HEIs are in deficit.
• Reliance on T grant which varies. Median is 35%. Even if fees make up difference will be very different situation with only 10% of income from public purse.
• State of the nation.
• Market position for home UG. Difficult to work out till numbers are deregulated as well as fees.
• Continued uncertainty. How bad will it get. How long will it take. What will impact be on PGT and international students?O/S
• Sector is going to become more polarized.

So, is it time for a Paradigm shift? He thinks so.
Traditional approach has been to rely on natural wastage, to reduce investment, and provide most services internally.
What we need to be looking at are  focused reductions, preservation/expansion of investment, use of third parties for specialist provision.

What might Finance Directors be asking UCISA  members over the coming months and years? As he's a Director of the Brighton fringe festival he used some good slides aof fringe acts to illustrate the following:

• Balancing priorities
• Juggling projects and tasks
• Risk taking in a controlled environment
• Coorindation
• Agility
• Harmony
• Customer services with a smile
• Grace under pressure

As budgets are reduced we will have to look at how we reduce the cost of delivery of our services.
A lot is about processes - we need to rationalise them.
IT depts will be asked hard questions about service delivery models - in-house vs shared, outsourced, cloud.
 Future focus will need to be on value. Will need to invest in student services - they will be demanding more services as fees go up.

A couple of interesting  questions then from the floor:

•  If we don't know the cost of our services, how can we make decision on what to outsource etc? We need help from Finance depts to do this.
• Are shared services in conflict with competition? HEFCE are assuming shared services will save money but they may not.

The Four Ss

Opening session at the CISG conference in Brighton, and we're here for the four Ss apparently:
Sun, sand, sea and stimulating conversation.

The opening keynote was delivered by the VC of the University of Sussex and was entitled, Higher Education: Finding the future.
It was an excellent summary of the issues we are facing at the moment, so here are some of the key points.

Difficult times for all sectors in many countries of the world.
It is possible to grow through difficult economic times to your benefit by taking out cost, becoming more efficient, investing in growth, prioritising and planning.

Higher education is part of the solution, not the problem in the current difficult economic situation.

There have been major changes in HE in the last 50 yrs:

• Expansion: participation has gone up from 5% to 45%. Should we be moving to system like Europe where anyone who is qualified and wants university education should be able to get it? Not everyone will want it, and we have to workout how to fund it. We are a knowledge based economy.
• Wider participation, fairer access. Must keep this. Some recent changes such as the ability to deliver higher fees will limit our ability to deliver wider access.
• Loss of binary divide but there's still diversity in the sector.
• Fragile funding. Have been other funding crises in the past, in the early 80s and under Thatcher. What is certain is that the proportion of public funding will fall. At Sussex 40% of thie funding is from the public purse. Aim to reduce to 30%. LSE is already at 15%. Some post 1992 HEIs at 60%.
• Growth in international students.
• More competition. Will increase with proposed new funding approach. Real challenges for sector with increased polarity caused by students choosing where they can afford. There will be turbulence in system and an influence on student recruitment and therefore the size and shape of institutions

There has to be a recognition that HE contributes to the local, regional and national economy. Recent calculations show the Universities of Sussex and Brighton contribute £1bn per annum to local economy. We are contributors to enterprise and innovation and a feeder of the knowledge based economy.

Some challenges for HE:

• What is the university of the future? What is it going to look like? We will have to be more flexible. More part students, and students whom want to continue at work whilst studying. Currently we are too rigid.
• How will we adapt to new funding models including marketisation and privatisation. Will a private sector emerge? Globalization will continue and students will look at quality. Rankings are becoming increasingly important with decisions made on the basis of them.
• There will be changes in student demand. We will need to teach what students want to learn, not what our lecturers want to teach. We will have to continue to improve the student experience and improve our students employability.
• Producing high impact international competitive research will be a challenge. Funding is set to become more concentrated.
• How will we maintain and where appropriate grow our estate when BIS has just had a massive cut in capital? HEIs will still have aspirations to grow.
• Reducing energy consumption and hitting our carbon targets is expensive to achieve, even more so when there's no capital support to do it.
• We will have to find efficiency gains. Do what we're doing now on less.

Student concerns are important - without them there is no University. They should be at the centre of everything we do.
They hate most of what is going on at the moment. They dislike the market, the removal of the fees cap, and what they see as waste and inefficiencies in the system.

An NUS study on student perceptions of eLearning has recently been reported to HEFCE. They support choice, with a mixture of eLearning and face to face, multi modal, blended learning.
The competence of academic staff in using ICT was questioned commented on and reported as generally not good enough.
42.9% of students wanted their lecturers to use more ICT
Interestingly one of the recommendations was that institutions should review use and need for a VLE.

Universities are going to have to change, and change can be tough, but it can be also be exciting.