What is shadow IT? IT devices, software, IT advice and services outside the ownership or control of the IT department. Funded, procured, owned and management outside the IT department. Not listed in formal asset registers, and not maintained, backed up or secured according to central standards and policies. It frequently includes consumer IT and social technologies. Often only comes to light when it breaks, or causes a security issue, or when someone leaves. It is neither inherently bad or good, but it's a growing issue that needs action to ensure the integrity and efficiency of enterprise technology and to prevent fragmentation of information and processes.
We need to look at shadow IT in relation to how vulnerable are our core systems, how much does our organisation depend on this shadow IT, and the potential of external and reputational damage from failure or malfunction of shadow IT systems. To the outside world, it's the University's IT, even if it's a server under a desk. And the CIO will get the blame.
How can we find out what there is out there? Look at procurement records, talk to heads of department ( assumes a level of trust of CIO), look at support requests through helpdesk, looking around when visiting departments, a formal assessment.
We had a workshop format discussing the issues, positive and negative. Our group's main issues were:
Data centres under desks (or in labs etc)
Positive impact
Flexibility, proximity, control, provides specialist services
Negative impact
Security, Risk of reputational damage, green IT (power, space), waste of resources
Cloud based services eg Dropbox
Positive impact
Easy to use, convenient, reduced printing
Negative impact
Making sure users understand the risks especially around security
Consumerisation of IT, BYOD etc
Positive impact
Decreased central,costs, drives central systems to improve, to be delivers to standards, different devices etc
Negative impact
Support
Duplication of effort and inappropriate use of resources
Eg maintenance of servers, professors acting as web managers
So, what should we as CIOs do about it?
Minimum
Know about it. Be aware. Make visible the risks
Better
Acknowledge existence, but choose battles carefully. Create policies for minimising the risks. Provide support services.
Best
Regular, active monitoring. Provide advice and enable safe, effective, efficient connected deployment of IT irrespective of organisational boundaries. Careful scrutiny and control of how shadow IT can affect critical aspects of the University's performance.
More round table discussion.
What doesn't work in managing shadow IT?
Control, banning, big sticks.
What works?
Talking to people, selling the benefits, offering a service, making it easy for people to use our services, finding out what people want, flexibility.
IT will always exist in multiple places across the organisation, inside and outside of the IT department. It's not always negative. Good shadow IT can drive innovation. We as CIOs need to take a constructive role and ensure everyone is aligned to a common plan, encouraging flexibility and innovation.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Showing posts with label sharedservices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sharedservices. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Shared Services at the Conservatoire
So, what did I say about Shared Services? Well, that it's not anything new to us - we've been doing it for years with JANET, UCAS, etc, but we've just not called it shared services. Now there's a big drive to increase the amount we do - for reasons of economies of scale, efficiency, cost avoidance, improved service, resilience and shared or reduced risk.
The Diamond report highlighted the need for sharing and collaborating, but emphasised that simplification and standardisation was a real pre-requisite, and would in itself lead to real efficiencies. Something we're trying to achieve with our LEAN implementation.
A commonly identified barrier to shared services is competitiveness, but there are many good examples of shared services in other sectors where there is real competition. The Justgiving website in the charity sector, and the Amadeus airline booking system in the private sector being two good examples. You have to look for a common function which has no competitive edge to it.
It's also important to go down a level from the whole system. Don't look to share a finance system for example but a transaction such as invoice processing.
A couple of other important things - know your numbers. Know how much things cost, or how can you make decisions. And most important of all - don't outsource a problem - fix it first!
After I'd done my bit there was a presentation of a real live shared service - the YHMAN Shared Virtual Data Centre, which we're part of. I think that might be worth a separate post - will work on it!
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Cloud Services for Education and Research - partners announced
HEFCE and JISC have today issued a press release giving more details of the UMF funding which was announced last February. It lists the partners involved, including some of the University projects which will be funded under the programme. I'm on the Steering Group, and it's been interesting watching this develop, and I'm pleased that we've got this far. Full text of the release is as follows:
Since announcing a £12.5 million fund in February that aims to help universities and colleges deliver better value for money by working together more effectively, HEFCE and JISC are now able to confirm the projects and partners appointed to deliver the two parts of this work: a national cloud infrastructure and supporting services.
JANET (UK) will deliver the national brokerage to aid procurement of cloud services between higher education institutions and commercial suppliers and Eduserv will provide a pilot cloud infrastructure for higher education institutions. Other partners include De Montfort, Exeter, Edinburgh, Kent, Liverpool John Moores, Oxford, Leicester, Southampton and Sunderland universities (see below).
So that colleges and universities can gain the most benefit from this new cloud-based infrastructure, four new services will be developed to drive its adoption:
• A new specialist team set up by JISC Advance to provide support for procuring and implementing administrative systems and services.
• A shared service to help universities manage the administration of their research operations, from research proposal through to project completion.
• A service to support the secure distribution of graduation documents and transcripts for the benefit of students and prospective employers.
• A service to support libraries in the administration of their electronic resources, which will include the management of their licensing and subscription of electronic journals.
David Sweeney, HEFCE Director – Research, Innovation and Skills, explains the value this suite of work will have once complete, "In the current economic climate all education organisations are looking for further ways to work together, share resources and reduce costs. This programme of work will provide data management and storage services, plus a suite of tools to help universities and colleges, researchers and administrators work more effectively across the research management lifecycle. This will reduce duplication and increase the efficiency of administrative and research processes."
David Utting JISC Director Service Relationships commented, "Cloud-based services have the potential to bring enormous efficiencies and benefits to higher education institutions and we look forward to working with them to realise these. But we acknowledge that it is vital to demonstrate to users the security and robustness of working in an education and research cloud.
"There have been a number of high-profile issues with data being stored in public clouds, which is why we are working with JANET (UK) to deliver a private higher education cloud to ensure universities can trust that their information and data will be secure."
For further information visit here.
1. This £12.5 million is part of the University Modernisation Fund. For further information see ‘Shared services in cloud computing to be funded by HEFCE’
2. Who is involved?
The University of Exeter will lead the Research Management and Administration System (RMAS) work between the universities of Exeter, Kent, and Sunderland to procure, develop and implement a cloud-based research management and administration system based on a need identified by earlier feasibility studies funded by HEFCE.
De Montfort University is developing an enterprise service bus (ESB) solution to demonstrate interoperability between local and cloud systems for shared administrative applications, starting with RMAS.
JISC Collections will manage the electronic resource management support service which builds on work by JISC and the Society of College National and University Libraries (SCONUL).
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) at University of Edinburgh will develop data management tools and training capability. This will support the production and implementation of data management plans for universities and their researchers to preserve data for sharing, re-use and citation.
A consortium led by Liverpool John Moores University will develop the secure document service. (NB - we're part of this consortium)
Four projects will produce software applications which can be delivered as a service from the cloud. They will support researchers with their work and data management. These are:
• Leicester University is providing support for joint NHS and university research teams working with tissue samples and anonymised patient data.
• The University of Oxford is providing a database to a wide range of researchers in the arts, humanities and other disciplines. Oxford will also provide an integrated set of tools to manage data within Life Sciences and other similar research projects. This will make it easier to submit data for longer-term storage in an appropriate standards compliant data repository.
• The University of Southampton is providing electronic lab data management and collaborations tools.
Since announcing a £12.5 million fund in February that aims to help universities and colleges deliver better value for money by working together more effectively, HEFCE and JISC are now able to confirm the projects and partners appointed to deliver the two parts of this work: a national cloud infrastructure and supporting services.
JANET (UK) will deliver the national brokerage to aid procurement of cloud services between higher education institutions and commercial suppliers and Eduserv will provide a pilot cloud infrastructure for higher education institutions. Other partners include De Montfort, Exeter, Edinburgh, Kent, Liverpool John Moores, Oxford, Leicester, Southampton and Sunderland universities (see below).
So that colleges and universities can gain the most benefit from this new cloud-based infrastructure, four new services will be developed to drive its adoption:
• A new specialist team set up by JISC Advance to provide support for procuring and implementing administrative systems and services.
• A shared service to help universities manage the administration of their research operations, from research proposal through to project completion.
• A service to support the secure distribution of graduation documents and transcripts for the benefit of students and prospective employers.
• A service to support libraries in the administration of their electronic resources, which will include the management of their licensing and subscription of electronic journals.
David Sweeney, HEFCE Director – Research, Innovation and Skills, explains the value this suite of work will have once complete, "In the current economic climate all education organisations are looking for further ways to work together, share resources and reduce costs. This programme of work will provide data management and storage services, plus a suite of tools to help universities and colleges, researchers and administrators work more effectively across the research management lifecycle. This will reduce duplication and increase the efficiency of administrative and research processes."
David Utting JISC Director Service Relationships commented, "Cloud-based services have the potential to bring enormous efficiencies and benefits to higher education institutions and we look forward to working with them to realise these. But we acknowledge that it is vital to demonstrate to users the security and robustness of working in an education and research cloud.
"There have been a number of high-profile issues with data being stored in public clouds, which is why we are working with JANET (UK) to deliver a private higher education cloud to ensure universities can trust that their information and data will be secure."
For further information visit here.
1. This £12.5 million is part of the University Modernisation Fund. For further information see ‘Shared services in cloud computing to be funded by HEFCE’
2. Who is involved?
The University of Exeter will lead the Research Management and Administration System (RMAS) work between the universities of Exeter, Kent, and Sunderland to procure, develop and implement a cloud-based research management and administration system based on a need identified by earlier feasibility studies funded by HEFCE.
De Montfort University is developing an enterprise service bus (ESB) solution to demonstrate interoperability between local and cloud systems for shared administrative applications, starting with RMAS.
JISC Collections will manage the electronic resource management support service which builds on work by JISC and the Society of College National and University Libraries (SCONUL).
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) at University of Edinburgh will develop data management tools and training capability. This will support the production and implementation of data management plans for universities and their researchers to preserve data for sharing, re-use and citation.
A consortium led by Liverpool John Moores University will develop the secure document service. (NB - we're part of this consortium)
Four projects will produce software applications which can be delivered as a service from the cloud. They will support researchers with their work and data management. These are:
• Leicester University is providing support for joint NHS and university research teams working with tissue samples and anonymised patient data.
• The University of Oxford is providing a database to a wide range of researchers in the arts, humanities and other disciplines. Oxford will also provide an integrated set of tools to manage data within Life Sciences and other similar research projects. This will make it easier to submit data for longer-term storage in an appropriate standards compliant data repository.
• The University of Southampton is providing electronic lab data management and collaborations tools.
Thursday, 12 May 2011
Shared Services in IT Management
Next session was Chris Cobb talking about Shared Services in IT Management. Bit of deja vue here as the more observant of you will have noticed that he was speaking on a similar topic yesterday.
Some confusion of terms, shared services can mean many things. Sharing within the same university, ie centralising and standardising, sharing between institutions, or outsourcing completely to a different provider.
Economies of scale, or critical mass both drivers for shared services.
Economies of scale such as JANET, UCAS, USS, SLC.
Critical mass, where institution can't afford a large team, but a single person is a risk, things like out of hours IT support, internal audit, procurement.
Being pushed down the economy of scale route, so how do we create that within our institutions? Need to identify those elements which lend themselves to economies of scale, ie transactional based, and those that are decision support and strategic in nature. Then concentrate on transactional based processes. We're guilty of looking at things at too high a level, ie HR or finance function. Need to dig beneath the surface and drill down.
Need to get beyond the barriers. VAT often quoted. But we already pay VAT on many things eg non staff, and our staff costs are higher than private sector. Service sharing beaten ourselves will be VAT exempt eventually.
Don't outsource a problem. Need to get the process sorted out first, but we're all going through efficiency programmes at the moment and looking at business process review, so this might be a good time to outsource.
Devil is in the detail, things are often more complex than initially perceived to be. Need to break things down to a functional level, and enterprise architecture will help with this.
Drivers for shared services used to be resilience and quality, but moving more towards cost savings and efficiency now.
Let's not think about outsourcing or sharing a student record system, but look at what processes we could. Already doing some elements of it eg for payments.
Four step approach to sharing services:
Disaggregate what we have, distinguish strategic from transactional.
Start transferring systems and services into the cloud, possibly with another institution to get joint procurement
Than look at sharing the architecture, eg a finance system with multiple operating entities
Then share the services, eg finance transactional processes.
Then Chris talked about the University Modernisation Fund, he sits on the Steering Group as I do. I've blogged about it before, but to recap, funding is going into these areas:
JANET brokerage service for Cloud Infrastructure
National Research Data Curation Centre
Systems and services procurement service ( first project will be a research management system)
Electronic resource management service
Secure document management service
Some confusion of terms, shared services can mean many things. Sharing within the same university, ie centralising and standardising, sharing between institutions, or outsourcing completely to a different provider.
Economies of scale, or critical mass both drivers for shared services.
Economies of scale such as JANET, UCAS, USS, SLC.
Critical mass, where institution can't afford a large team, but a single person is a risk, things like out of hours IT support, internal audit, procurement.
Being pushed down the economy of scale route, so how do we create that within our institutions? Need to identify those elements which lend themselves to economies of scale, ie transactional based, and those that are decision support and strategic in nature. Then concentrate on transactional based processes. We're guilty of looking at things at too high a level, ie HR or finance function. Need to dig beneath the surface and drill down.
Need to get beyond the barriers. VAT often quoted. But we already pay VAT on many things eg non staff, and our staff costs are higher than private sector. Service sharing beaten ourselves will be VAT exempt eventually.
Don't outsource a problem. Need to get the process sorted out first, but we're all going through efficiency programmes at the moment and looking at business process review, so this might be a good time to outsource.
Devil is in the detail, things are often more complex than initially perceived to be. Need to break things down to a functional level, and enterprise architecture will help with this.
Drivers for shared services used to be resilience and quality, but moving more towards cost savings and efficiency now.
Let's not think about outsourcing or sharing a student record system, but look at what processes we could. Already doing some elements of it eg for payments.
Four step approach to sharing services:
Disaggregate what we have, distinguish strategic from transactional.
Start transferring systems and services into the cloud, possibly with another institution to get joint procurement
Than look at sharing the architecture, eg a finance system with multiple operating entities
Then share the services, eg finance transactional processes.
Then Chris talked about the University Modernisation Fund, he sits on the Steering Group as I do. I've blogged about it before, but to recap, funding is going into these areas:
JANET brokerage service for Cloud Infrastructure
National Research Data Curation Centre
Systems and services procurement service ( first project will be a research management system)
Electronic resource management service
Secure document management service
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Final Futures session, shared services.
Final session at the futures forum today was a panel sesion on shared services. Looking forward to this, as it's an area we're very interested in, and I'm on the HEFCE Steering Group for Shared Services and Cloud Computing with one of the panel members, Chris.
Malcolm Gillies, VC London Metropolitian University.
Talked about London Higher , an umbrella organisation for the 40 or so publicly funded bodies or Universities in London. In itself a success story for a shared service.
One of the issues they face is that the heads of institutions have more of an appetite for shared services than other senior managers such as Finance directors.
A recent survey of London Higher members showed that the interest in shared services was not about cost cutting, but about improving quality and share risks. At the moment, popular areas for sharing are audit,compliance and procurement.
HR, training, ICT, and Finance are all areas where shared services will be all developed over next few years.
Teaching and learning and research not high, because these are areas where we are differentiated.
Private sector being used to help in development of shared services.
HEIs must come together to discuss their objectives, and this may require a neutral space. Shared services will not happen overnight, quick wins vs long term gains, will require a long standing process.
Andy Westwood, Chief Executive, Guild HE
There is a willingness in HE to consider change. It's only the term shared services which is strange to us. We've been doing it for a long tine. Many organisations are delivering on behalf of the collective rather than individual HEIs, eg UCAS, JISC, JANET.
A Culture shift needs to take place. At the moment there's a fear of what others will think. If 2 or 3 VCs get together for a stragic discussion, they must be talking about a merger. if it's more than 3, then it's a new mission group!
As a sector we are normally very happy to collaborate and we need to capitalise on that.
Chris Cobb, PVC Roehampton University
Definition of terms is one of the main issues in the barriers to shared services. Is it outsourcing, sharing collaboratively between instititutions or centralising within an institution? Can be any.
Can be very important where a critical mass is needed, but one HEI can't justify having a large team but one person is a risk. Coming together builds capacity. (Roehampton and Kingston Universities share a procurement function.)
Also economy of scale. This is the one government beating us over head about, want us to come together to save cost. Have been initiatives in the past, but often gets stuck at high level.
Have to talk at a process level. Transactional in nature, not about decision support or quality.
Need to dispel myths. The VAT issue should be solved soon, but it will still only be about collaboration between institutions, it won't cover outsourcing. Have to look at our cost base. We already pay VAT on non staff items, it's only staff we don't pay it on and our staff costs are much higher than rest of public sector. So, VAT may not be solid argument against shared services.
Also mustn't outsource a problem. Processes need to be made more efficient first, then outsource or share.
A good Q and A about what models might work, and whether we should consider sharing VCs!
So, last blog post of day. It's been a bit of a marathon, and I might have broken my own record, but I hope it's been useful. It's been so much easier to blog - I've written everything straight into blogpress and hardly done any tidying or rewriting up at all.
I think its because all of the talks today were just that, talk. No powerpoint. No screens full of bullet points to distract. Just listening to what people were saying. I much preferred it.
All in all a very useful day, and great to be with a mixture of senior managers, VCs, Directors, PVCs, instead of my normal peer group of IT Directors.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Malcolm Gillies, VC London Metropolitian University.
Talked about London Higher , an umbrella organisation for the 40 or so publicly funded bodies or Universities in London. In itself a success story for a shared service.
One of the issues they face is that the heads of institutions have more of an appetite for shared services than other senior managers such as Finance directors.
A recent survey of London Higher members showed that the interest in shared services was not about cost cutting, but about improving quality and share risks. At the moment, popular areas for sharing are audit,compliance and procurement.
HR, training, ICT, and Finance are all areas where shared services will be all developed over next few years.
Teaching and learning and research not high, because these are areas where we are differentiated.
Private sector being used to help in development of shared services.
HEIs must come together to discuss their objectives, and this may require a neutral space. Shared services will not happen overnight, quick wins vs long term gains, will require a long standing process.
Andy Westwood, Chief Executive, Guild HE
There is a willingness in HE to consider change. It's only the term shared services which is strange to us. We've been doing it for a long tine. Many organisations are delivering on behalf of the collective rather than individual HEIs, eg UCAS, JISC, JANET.
A Culture shift needs to take place. At the moment there's a fear of what others will think. If 2 or 3 VCs get together for a stragic discussion, they must be talking about a merger. if it's more than 3, then it's a new mission group!
As a sector we are normally very happy to collaborate and we need to capitalise on that.
Chris Cobb, PVC Roehampton University
Definition of terms is one of the main issues in the barriers to shared services. Is it outsourcing, sharing collaboratively between instititutions or centralising within an institution? Can be any.
Can be very important where a critical mass is needed, but one HEI can't justify having a large team but one person is a risk. Coming together builds capacity. (Roehampton and Kingston Universities share a procurement function.)
Also economy of scale. This is the one government beating us over head about, want us to come together to save cost. Have been initiatives in the past, but often gets stuck at high level.
Have to talk at a process level. Transactional in nature, not about decision support or quality.
Need to dispel myths. The VAT issue should be solved soon, but it will still only be about collaboration between institutions, it won't cover outsourcing. Have to look at our cost base. We already pay VAT on non staff items, it's only staff we don't pay it on and our staff costs are much higher than rest of public sector. So, VAT may not be solid argument against shared services.
Also mustn't outsource a problem. Processes need to be made more efficient first, then outsource or share.
A good Q and A about what models might work, and whether we should consider sharing VCs!
So, last blog post of day. It's been a bit of a marathon, and I might have broken my own record, but I hope it's been useful. It's been so much easier to blog - I've written everything straight into blogpress and hardly done any tidying or rewriting up at all.
I think its because all of the talks today were just that, talk. No powerpoint. No screens full of bullet points to distract. Just listening to what people were saying. I much preferred it.
All in all a very useful day, and great to be with a mixture of senior managers, VCs, Directors, PVCs, instead of my normal peer group of IT Directors.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Efficiency and Modernisation
Last Friday I was in London for the Universities UK Task Group on Efficiency and Modernisation - made up of Vice-Chancellors, and a Director of Finance, HR, Procurement, Estates and IT (me!). It's a group set up in response to the funding cuts, and the challenge of managing efficiencies whilst charting a growth path out of the current financial position. Retaining the quality of teaching and research with fewer resources, without damaging future prospects will be a key objective. The group is looking at what drives efficiency in the sector, and then analysing whether there are specific areas in which the sector can achieve large scale savings by introducing more efficient operations, so that resources can be targeted towards supporting teaching and research.
Several areas are being looked at including Procurement, HR processes, Estates and Facilities Management (including utilities), and of course - administrative processes, back office systems and shared services. A report showing savings which had been achieved in other sectors including local authorities and the NHS was discussed - and there were some hefty savings. But, and I did make this point, these figures don't mean a lot unless you know how efficient they were to start with, and what their baseline costs were. But, these figures showing huge savings in, for example the NHS, do get bandied around government, with the implication that we can achieve similar ones.
Of course, I'm not saying there aren't efficiencies to be gained - there are. And we probably all know where they are in our own organisations! We have to start sharing services within our own institutions before we can begin to think about sharing them outside. Standardising and simplifying business processes and using the same systems are an absolute prerequisite to sharing services between institutions, or to looking at different models of service delivery. I know there are Universities still running multiple email systems for example (more than 20 in some cases) - fairly soon we won't run any, but that migration to Google was made so much easier by only having one system in place to start with.
The other thing we all have to do is understand our costs better - we need to know how much services costs, and in some cases drill down to the cost of a process - or how can we make sensible decisions about achievable savings, what services or processes might be suitable for sharing, or outsourcing.
So, an interesting meeting, and I look forward to seeing how this agenda progresses. The only thing that slightly amused me, was that the group is about modernisation, and I was the only person in the room using anything digital to read the papers - everyone else had printed copies, carefully placed in folders and labeled - by their PAs I imagine. Maybe I'll leave tackling that one till next time....
Several areas are being looked at including Procurement, HR processes, Estates and Facilities Management (including utilities), and of course - administrative processes, back office systems and shared services. A report showing savings which had been achieved in other sectors including local authorities and the NHS was discussed - and there were some hefty savings. But, and I did make this point, these figures don't mean a lot unless you know how efficient they were to start with, and what their baseline costs were. But, these figures showing huge savings in, for example the NHS, do get bandied around government, with the implication that we can achieve similar ones.
Of course, I'm not saying there aren't efficiencies to be gained - there are. And we probably all know where they are in our own organisations! We have to start sharing services within our own institutions before we can begin to think about sharing them outside. Standardising and simplifying business processes and using the same systems are an absolute prerequisite to sharing services between institutions, or to looking at different models of service delivery. I know there are Universities still running multiple email systems for example (more than 20 in some cases) - fairly soon we won't run any, but that migration to Google was made so much easier by only having one system in place to start with.
The other thing we all have to do is understand our costs better - we need to know how much services costs, and in some cases drill down to the cost of a process - or how can we make sensible decisions about achievable savings, what services or processes might be suitable for sharing, or outsourcing.
So, an interesting meeting, and I look forward to seeing how this agenda progresses. The only thing that slightly amused me, was that the group is about modernisation, and I was the only person in the room using anything digital to read the papers - everyone else had printed copies, carefully placed in folders and labeled - by their PAs I imagine. Maybe I'll leave tackling that one till next time....
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Shared, lean services
I posted yesterday about the investment by HEFCE in shared services and cloud computing. Today UCISA is running a managers forum on Shared Services which I'm sad to be missing, but following a lot of the proceedings on twitter (#ucshare). Various themes running through proceedings so far - can we afford not to, being one, and why are there so few really shared services in HE (with the exception of the national ones such as JANET, UCAS etc). I'm glad to hear that the VAT barrier to shared services, (although Universities are classed as VAT exempt, they have to pay VAT on services they buy - even shared ones - which is non recoverable), is recognised by the government, and there may be a solution on the way.
I was also pleased to see business process improvement mentioned as a key driver for shared services. Those of you who've heard me speak on the topic recently will know that I believe one of the barriers to sharing services across institutions its that sometimes we can't even share them within our own institution - we need to get that sorted first.
We've just established a project to review and improve key business processes by developing a framework based on LEAN. Originally developed by Toyota for the manufacturing industry, LEAN attempts to identify and eliminate “waste” in any process, and therefore reduce complexity and time. It concentrates on the value of the process to the end customer, has been used successfully by many Universities and organisations, and is a simple and common sense approach. It also promotes local ownership of processes and the culture of continuous improvement, as well as being relatively quick to identify areas to change, as it uses process mapping workshops which can identify “as is” and “to be” maps in two days.
Had a good discussion yesterday with one of our project managers who is going to help me take this forward. The intention is for a Steering Group to prioritise which processes need review and improvement, and to have a group of trained LEAN facilitators drawn from a number of different departments to take it forward. With the current financial climate it's essential that no resource is wasted, and that we deliver the most value to our customers.
Several processes have already been identified, including regulation/module and programme approval and change, computer account registration and uCard production, staff recruitment and postgraduate admissions and we'll be canvassing for more soon.
Finally, there's obviously been a lot of discussion at the forum on the potential for shared services to reduce our carbon emissions. A tweet from the fantastically informative @ajaybb says "ICT in HE: 1.47m computers and £116m electricity - surely we can find some scope for sharing resources amongst that lot?" One would hope so!
I was also pleased to see business process improvement mentioned as a key driver for shared services. Those of you who've heard me speak on the topic recently will know that I believe one of the barriers to sharing services across institutions its that sometimes we can't even share them within our own institution - we need to get that sorted first.
We've just established a project to review and improve key business processes by developing a framework based on LEAN. Originally developed by Toyota for the manufacturing industry, LEAN attempts to identify and eliminate “waste” in any process, and therefore reduce complexity and time. It concentrates on the value of the process to the end customer, has been used successfully by many Universities and organisations, and is a simple and common sense approach. It also promotes local ownership of processes and the culture of continuous improvement, as well as being relatively quick to identify areas to change, as it uses process mapping workshops which can identify “as is” and “to be” maps in two days.
Had a good discussion yesterday with one of our project managers who is going to help me take this forward. The intention is for a Steering Group to prioritise which processes need review and improvement, and to have a group of trained LEAN facilitators drawn from a number of different departments to take it forward. With the current financial climate it's essential that no resource is wasted, and that we deliver the most value to our customers.
Several processes have already been identified, including regulation/module and programme approval and change, computer account registration and uCard production, staff recruitment and postgraduate admissions and we'll be canvassing for more soon.
Finally, there's obviously been a lot of discussion at the forum on the potential for shared services to reduce our carbon emissions. A tweet from the fantastically informative @ajaybb says "ICT in HE: 1.47m computers and £116m electricity - surely we can find some scope for sharing resources amongst that lot?" One would hope so!
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Where did we go wrong?
I've blogged about shared services before - lots of discussion about how sharing some back-end systems might save money. I was interested to see today that the idea is catching on in the US as well. There's an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University co-operating on the implementation of an ERP system for Finance, HR and Payroll. Now that in itself might not be particularly newsworthy over here, but what particularly interested me in the article was the amount of money they are going to save. Apparently they are going to save (or avoid appointing) 40 staff between them, with Chapel Hill estimating that they would have had to employ an extra 60 to 70 staff to run the new ERP, and the new arrangement means that they can eliminate the need for 40 of them, saving $3m every year on staffing which will be split between the two institutions.
So, three years ago we put in a new ERP system for Finance, HR and Payroll. We appointed 5 new staff in IT, and as far as I'm aware, no permanent staff in any other department. The two Carolina Universities are slightly bigger than us with c30,000 students and 8,000 staff compared to our 25,000 and 6,000, but not much. So, what did we do right? (or wrong?). What on earth were these 70 staff going to do? And is it any wonder shared services can give savings when the numbers involved are that big and some of us are sceptical about making large savings when our numbers involved are so small?
So, three years ago we put in a new ERP system for Finance, HR and Payroll. We appointed 5 new staff in IT, and as far as I'm aware, no permanent staff in any other department. The two Carolina Universities are slightly bigger than us with c30,000 students and 8,000 staff compared to our 25,000 and 6,000, but not much. So, what did we do right? (or wrong?). What on earth were these 70 staff going to do? And is it any wonder shared services can give savings when the numbers involved are that big and some of us are sceptical about making large savings when our numbers involved are so small?
Thursday, 10 June 2010
JANET Debate
Last night I attended a debate on the future of JANET, our academic network, and in particular what funding model will be appropriate for the future. Currently the majority of the service is funded by JISC as a top slice, with a small proportion paid directly from universities based on their income. Will this model be sustainable in the future, or should we move to a more contribution based model, where we pay for what we need?
Of course, the discussion focused on the current financial climate - we know the government is going to make serious cuts to our budgets, and we also know that they don't like IT. Vince Cable said so in his letter to VCs, suggesting that IT projects should be prioritised for cuts. What we need to do is demonstrate the value of the services we provide, using evidence of our successes - we have plenty, and I think JANET is one of them. It demonstrates economies of scale, efficiency in procurement and the delivery of a consistent and reliable service, as well as the added value in services such as EDUROAM - the roaming wireless network.
Shared services always gets a mention, and we are going to have to work together much more. One of my colleagues currently in HE but who used to be in the not for profit sector gave a great example of a shared service which a number of charitable organisations got together to produce - Justgiving.com. Those of us in HE are going to use different mindsets to come up with similar innovative solutions to reducing costs and improving efficiencies.
JANET is a critical service to all of us - as a knowledge network (©ptinson) and as a business network which we rely on to run many of our services. As we outsource, put services into the Cloud or develop shared services, it becomes even more strategically important and we need to protect it. Personally I think the only way to do this is to maintain the central top slice.
A good debate and discussion, some good contacts made, and a very pleasant wa
lk back via Tower Bridge which is very atmospheric at night. Although the Tower of London looks very menacing.
Finally - is it my imagination, or has mobile coverage got worse? I'm writing this on the train coming back from London, and my Vodaphone modem on the laptop stays connected but has no signal for about 80% of the time, while the 3G coverage from O2 on my iPhone is virtually non-existent. I probably get about 15 mins signal in the two hour journey. Makes keeping in touch very difficult.
EDIT: Since I wrote this I've noticed tha Peter Tinson has written an excellent post about mobile networks (or the lack of them), and innovation
Of course, the discussion focused on the current financial climate - we know the government is going to make serious cuts to our budgets, and we also know that they don't like IT. Vince Cable said so in his letter to VCs, suggesting that IT projects should be prioritised for cuts. What we need to do is demonstrate the value of the services we provide, using evidence of our successes - we have plenty, and I think JANET is one of them. It demonstrates economies of scale, efficiency in procurement and the delivery of a consistent and reliable service, as well as the added value in services such as EDUROAM - the roaming wireless network.
Shared services always gets a mention, and we are going to have to work together much more. One of my colleagues currently in HE but who used to be in the not for profit sector gave a great example of a shared service which a number of charitable organisations got together to produce - Justgiving.com. Those of us in HE are going to use different mindsets to come up with similar innovative solutions to reducing costs and improving efficiencies.
JANET is a critical service to all of us - as a knowledge network (©ptinson) and as a business network which we rely on to run many of our services. As we outsource, put services into the Cloud or develop shared services, it becomes even more strategically important and we need to protect it. Personally I think the only way to do this is to maintain the central top slice.
A good debate and discussion, some good contacts made, and a very pleasant wa
lk back via Tower Bridge which is very atmospheric at night. Although the Tower of London looks very menacing.Finally - is it my imagination, or has mobile coverage got worse? I'm writing this on the train coming back from London, and my Vodaphone modem on the laptop stays connected but has no signal for about 80% of the time, while the 3G coverage from O2 on my iPhone is virtually non-existent. I probably get about 15 mins signal in the two hour journey. Makes keeping in touch very difficult.
EDIT: Since I wrote this I've noticed tha Peter Tinson has written an excellent post about mobile networks (or the lack of them), and innovation
Monday, 26 April 2010
Sharing things...
We had a lot of things to discuss at last week's UCISA meeting, but we kept coming back to one topic - Shared Services. It's a well known secret that there is a view in some quarters in government that Universities are inefficient (note the comments made after Mandy's Christmas letter on the cuts that we could absorb them and not affect learning and teaching or research). Discussions about sharing services have been going on for some time - in fact for so long I felt a distinct sense of deja-vu during the meeting.
So, could we make large efficiency savings by sharing services with other Universities? Do we need all to be running our own back office systems (by that I mean Payroll, Finance, HR, Student records). This wouldn't necessarily be a re-run of the mac initiative (for those old enough to remember), as that involved groups of Universities commissioning systems to be written - now we'd be looking at using software which already exists, and possibly being hosted outside of the University environment. Could a group of us get together and run the same version of SAP as our Finance system, or could one of us run it for the rest? How about putting the functions as well as the systems together - paying invoices for example?
There are some shared service projects which should soon be coming to fruition, but it's been a slow process - sharing data centres for example. There seems to be a real fear of loss of control though.
Outsourcing is another option for reducing costs - including commodity services such as email, where we can currently get suppliers to run systems for us for free.
We mustn't forget that we have some really good examples of shared services in the sector - JANET and UCAS being two of the most successful. Although by some definitions, these aren't shared services at all, because we have no choice but to use them.
The government is pointing to huge savings made in other areas of the public sector such as the NHS when shared services were introduced, but I think we are starting a different point - we are already quite lean and efficient in many of our back office areas. I remember sitting round a table with a number of other IT Directors working out how much we would save if we outsourced our payroll, and it was tiny in comparison to the savings made in the rest of the public sector.
But, and a big but - hard times are coming. Our back office systems will have to become more efficient and cheaper to run if we are to continue to put our efforts into supporting teaching and research. Hard decisions will have to be made, and some of our users will have to accept compromises in the level of service we can offer. For example, we are currently consiering outsourcing some more of our functions to Google, including our diary. The Google one is not as functional as the one we currently have, but it is much cheaper to run. As I said earlier, difficult decisions....
Watch out for a UCISA Shared Services Summit later in the year.
So, could we make large efficiency savings by sharing services with other Universities? Do we need all to be running our own back office systems (by that I mean Payroll, Finance, HR, Student records). This wouldn't necessarily be a re-run of the mac initiative (for those old enough to remember), as that involved groups of Universities commissioning systems to be written - now we'd be looking at using software which already exists, and possibly being hosted outside of the University environment. Could a group of us get together and run the same version of SAP as our Finance system, or could one of us run it for the rest? How about putting the functions as well as the systems together - paying invoices for example?
There are some shared service projects which should soon be coming to fruition, but it's been a slow process - sharing data centres for example. There seems to be a real fear of loss of control though.
Outsourcing is another option for reducing costs - including commodity services such as email, where we can currently get suppliers to run systems for us for free.
We mustn't forget that we have some really good examples of shared services in the sector - JANET and UCAS being two of the most successful. Although by some definitions, these aren't shared services at all, because we have no choice but to use them.
The government is pointing to huge savings made in other areas of the public sector such as the NHS when shared services were introduced, but I think we are starting a different point - we are already quite lean and efficient in many of our back office areas. I remember sitting round a table with a number of other IT Directors working out how much we would save if we outsourced our payroll, and it was tiny in comparison to the savings made in the rest of the public sector.
But, and a big but - hard times are coming. Our back office systems will have to become more efficient and cheaper to run if we are to continue to put our efforts into supporting teaching and research. Hard decisions will have to be made, and some of our users will have to accept compromises in the level of service we can offer. For example, we are currently consiering outsourcing some more of our functions to Google, including our diary. The Google one is not as functional as the one we currently have, but it is much cheaper to run. As I said earlier, difficult decisions....
Watch out for a UCISA Shared Services Summit later in the year.
Thursday, 6 December 2007
UCISA Executive Committee
At a UCISA Executive Meeting today in London. It was one of those meetings where the agenda looked a bit light, and we all thought we might get off early for a bit of seasonal retail therapy (we were meeting only 5 minutes walk from Covent Garden), but it was not to be. and I only managed to dash through the market on my way to the Tube to catch the 5pm train. It is beautifully decorated though – with lots of lights and icicles.
A few items discussed:
IPTV – There’s a growing number of companies getting involved in IPTV, some encouraging students to broadcast. Do we need policies and guidelines? Should we revisit our regulations and acceptable use policies, especially with broadcasts unlikely to be limited to on-campus? Transmission policies might also need to be looked at, especially in terms of bandwidth use - should institutions be using packet-shaping? JANETUK will be putting on an event in the New Year where these matters will be discussed. As our students are about to launch such broadcasts, it’s something we will need to monitor.
Shared Services crops up on almost all of our agendas, and today the discussion centred around the number of agencies involved – HEFCE, JISC, UCISA, the Cabinet Office, Software vendors – and how much, (or how little..) joined up thinking was going on. Many HEIs are also involved in projects – I’ve posted about the research data one – but there are others looking at shared data centres, back-end transaction processing and email spam scanning. It was agreed that UCISA would try and pull together some coherent look at existing projects and to facilitate the sharing of information and good practice.
UCISA will be going live with a new web site in the New Year, and the Communications Group which I belong to met after the in meeting to discuss how this might be developed, for example what Web 2.0 technologies we might want to see added to it.
Today was the first time I'd arrived at St Pancras International after its opening a couple of weeks ago - it looks fantastic, and thank goodness you can now walk through the
wonderful old station without having to risk your life walking around the outside of it on busy roads. Too many shops though - it's going to be difficult getting to meetings on time. I haven't got a picture of St Pancras - so this is a picture of Sheaf Square in front of our own station which has made such a difference to the appearance of Sheffield as you arrive.
A few items discussed:
IPTV – There’s a growing number of companies getting involved in IPTV, some encouraging students to broadcast. Do we need policies and guidelines? Should we revisit our regulations and acceptable use policies, especially with broadcasts unlikely to be limited to on-campus? Transmission policies might also need to be looked at, especially in terms of bandwidth use - should institutions be using packet-shaping? JANETUK will be putting on an event in the New Year where these matters will be discussed. As our students are about to launch such broadcasts, it’s something we will need to monitor.
Shared Services crops up on almost all of our agendas, and today the discussion centred around the number of agencies involved – HEFCE, JISC, UCISA, the Cabinet Office, Software vendors – and how much, (or how little..) joined up thinking was going on. Many HEIs are also involved in projects – I’ve posted about the research data one – but there are others looking at shared data centres, back-end transaction processing and email spam scanning. It was agreed that UCISA would try and pull together some coherent look at existing projects and to facilitate the sharing of information and good practice.
UCISA will be going live with a new web site in the New Year, and the Communications Group which I belong to met after the in meeting to discuss how this might be developed, for example what Web 2.0 technologies we might want to see added to it.
Today was the first time I'd arrived at St Pancras International after its opening a couple of weeks ago - it looks fantastic, and thank goodness you can now walk through the
wonderful old station without having to risk your life walking around the outside of it on busy roads. Too many shops though - it's going to be difficult getting to meetings on time. I haven't got a picture of St Pancras - so this is a picture of Sheaf Square in front of our own station which has made such a difference to the appearance of Sheffield as you arrive.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Shared research data
Recently, one of the organisations we're a member of - RUGIT (The Russell Group of IT Directors) has been involved in an Invitation to Tender for a study into the feasibility of establishing a shared digital research data service for UK Universities. This is a joint proposal from RUGIT and CURL (the Consortium of Research Libraries). It’s being funded by HEFCE as part of its Shared Services programme – “shared services” being used to describe a model of providing services in a combined or collaborative way to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
In this case, the outcome could be a business case for a service shared among all UK Universities, with input from the IT departments and Libraries, and bringing huge benefits to researchers.
The amount of data being produced by research is enormous, especially with the advent of grid computing and e-science. Areas such as meteorology, aeronautics and particle physics are obvious producers of large data sets, but all disciplines including the social sciences and the arts and humanities are already producing large volumes of data, of all kinds - complex data used in climate modelling, aerodynamics, molecular modelling, bioinformatics; video and image archives used in archaeology, anthropology and drama; massively large data sets used in particle physics.
The intention is not just to set up a large shared data storage facility - this would be valuable, but would add no real value to the research process. What is being proposed is a facility to manage the whole data life cycle - including creation, selection, retrieval and preservation. This will allow researchers to access previously generated data sets, to undertake new analyses and to annotate existing data.
It’s a very exciting project, and on one which I’ll keep you posted.
In this case, the outcome could be a business case for a service shared among all UK Universities, with input from the IT departments and Libraries, and bringing huge benefits to researchers.
The amount of data being produced by research is enormous, especially with the advent of grid computing and e-science. Areas such as meteorology, aeronautics and particle physics are obvious producers of large data sets, but all disciplines including the social sciences and the arts and humanities are already producing large volumes of data, of all kinds - complex data used in climate modelling, aerodynamics, molecular modelling, bioinformatics; video and image archives used in archaeology, anthropology and drama; massively large data sets used in particle physics.
The intention is not just to set up a large shared data storage facility - this would be valuable, but would add no real value to the research process. What is being proposed is a facility to manage the whole data life cycle - including creation, selection, retrieval and preservation. This will allow researchers to access previously generated data sets, to undertake new analyses and to annotate existing data.
It’s a very exciting project, and on one which I’ll keep you posted.
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