User Group

CiCS User Group today - a chance for us to tell people what we're up to, and get some feedback. I
kicked off with the results of our survey of staff, and what we're doing about what people told us. we've picked eight themes to concentrate on, and you can see them and our action plans here.

We also showed our users what our new mobile apps for accessing our HR and finance system (SAP) will look like.  The interface into the desktop versions of some parts of these systems are complex, but these apps which are especially designed for mobile devices will be much simpler to use. You'll be able to book and approve leave, view your payslip, approve expenses, and eventually many more things, from your smart phone or tablet. We've been piloting them for some time, and we're just waiting for some bugs to be fixed before releasing them.

A rather exciting pilot we're just about to start is the use of iBeacons, (little bluetooth devices) in conjunction with our iSheffield mobile app to do student attendance monitoring in teaching space. The way it works is that as a student enters a teaching space, the iBeacon triggers the app on the student's phone to check if the student has a class running in there. If they do, their attendance is registered.
Ombiel have released an information paper which you can read here.

Another new development is the linking of our lecture capture system to the timetabling system, so we'll be able to record many more lectures. Lots of information about our lecture capture system here.

Finally,  we introduced our user group to the concept of Agile project management which we're now using for all projects where it's appropriate. More information on our projects page.

User Group and Digital Trust

This morning was our User Group - representatives from across the University who we use to gather feedback about existing services, and act as a sounding board for new ones. We covered a number of things - our objectives for next year, the services we're planning to run in The Diamond, and the very imminent demise of Windows XP. Like a number of places, we've still got some machines running it, but as of 1 September we will be disconnecting them from our wired and wireless networks, so that should flush them out!

We had a presentation about our Staff Creative Media Suite, which we set up following the success of our student facilities, and is available for all staff to creative multimedia projects.  Very popular for creating audio and video for MOOCs, iTunesU, and other digital teaching material.

We also talked to them about security - a very hot topic at the moment. There's a lot of media coverage about various security issues, which is leading to an increased awareness. Other things covered was  the project to review our student system, and the work of our comms team, presented as an entertaining Pecha Kucha.

Later in the day I was at PSE (Professional Service Executive), where I was presenting. We had received a briefing note aimed at Audit Committes called "Building Digital Trust". This had been circulated to senior managers, and I'd been asked to comment on the issues and risks raised, and what measures we were taking. The note is easy to read, and outlines the changing environment for IT including the usual suspects - consumerisation, mobile, social media, analytics, connectivity, cloud and the pace of change. It then lists ten topics which have associated risks, and suggests how Universities should be managing those risks. I picked a number out, and outlined our response. These included:
Student expectations, Cybersecurity, Consumerisation, Cloud, New Educational Delivery Models,  and I added two of my own, Digital Literacy and Digital Identities. One of the points I was trying to get over, was that many of these risks nee to be seen not as IT risks, managed by technology, but as University level risks and concerned as much with people and processes as technology.  We will be starting up some University level governance around Information Security and Identity Management soon, so I hope it worked.

Curry for lunch

CiCS User Group yesterday - always a good turn out, and we did presentations on our new iTunesU site which has just gone live and the new University web site, both of which I've blogged about recently. We also brought everyone up to date with work we're doing on Unified Communications which will integrate many features of our voice system, including voice mail, with Google apps. All messages, whether email, voice or chat will be integrated and accessible from one place. We're also rolling out soft phones and mobile integration - all exciting stuff. The final talk was on Infrastructure Demystified. usually the most hidden (until it goes wrong) part of what we do, we thought it was important to make it more visible - it is certainly critical, and we spend a lot of money on it. It was an excellent presentation - interesting and simple enough for non technical people to understand.

Last week we got together with our colleagues in the library for a joint awayday - we try and do it once a year and have a set topic to work on. This year we were refreshing our Information Strategy. But first, we had to cook out own lunch as a team building exercise!  Led by an excellent chef at the Tideswell School of Food, we made onion bhajis, lamb curry, dhaal, rice and indian salad.

No serious injuries, lots of team work, and an excellent lunch. And we did a lot of work on the Information Strategy, which has served us well for about 10 years with minor amendments, but was in need of a major refresh. Hopefully we will be able to share the revised version soon, when it's been through the approval processes.

User Group

CiCS User Group this morning - always a good attendance. About 60 people from departments, a good mix of academics, technical support staff and professional service staff. We use it as a way of disseminating what we're doing to a wier group of staff than our own people. Sometimes if we feel a presentation is on a subject that might not be well know to the wider department we repeat it at a departmental meeting.

Today's meeting had 5 presentations.  First on the eLearning strategy which I mentioned yesterday and is being consulted on at the moment. One of the drivers for this is student demand for technology enhanced learning, they are looking for us to be leaders in the filed. We also have to be aware of the global market for students, and TEL could enhance our competitive edge. The strategy proposes an enhanced eLearning environment,an audit of digital resources, an online environment for public facing materials, a network of eLearning academic champions, more flexible teaching spaces and the provision of appropriate technology.  if you're interested in this area then I can strongly recommend our Learning Technologies blog which is excellent.

The second presentation was on our creative media facilities which I've blogged about before, and I think was new to many people in the room. We also gave them an update on where we are with the managed desktop, and this provoked an interesting discussion about what a staff managed desktop should look like, or even whether we should have one.

Switching to research, we then talked about the new N8 HPC facility which is obviously of interest to many researchers in the University.  Finally we told them about how our ICT support team had been making improvements to their services over the past year. Lots of very good stuff, and they got a well deserved compliment form a member of the group.

No blogging for a couple of weeks now - I'm off somewhere hot! 

Police, Google, IC and Toxic Data star at the User Group

CiCS User Group this morning. A very good attendance - we ran out of biscuits!  Did wonder what we'd put on the agenda that promised trouble when I saw 5 policemen outside, leaning on their cycles having a quick cup of coffee. Didn't know our move to Google was so controversial. Suspect they had something to do with a certain event happening in Sheffield at the moment.

After a report on stuff we're doing at the moment, our first presentation was a report on changes taking place in the Information Commons from our (relatively) new IC manager, Rene. Providing students with transferable skills, more flexibility in the use of the space,  loaning laptops ( possibly with assistive software preloaded), providing high end machines for media processing - all currently being evaluated following focus groups with students. Exciting to see how the building is evolving.

Next we heard how one of our faculties had coped with the move to Google mail. Great to see a Faculty IT and CiCS IT support person presenting together. This has definitely been a joint operation - we have worked with the faculty to plan the move, and have staff based in the departments the morning after the move floor walking and generally assisting people. Staff from other areas of the University have been involved as well - a real collaborative effort. I think what surprised people more than anything was how few problems there's been - for most people their mail has moved, there's a small reconfiguration to their client, and that's it. Now we're moving round the University adopting the same technique, and we go live with Google docs in May, then the calendar - which will be big bang rather than staggered.

A scary talk then on Information as a Toxic Resource.  Our Data Protection and Freedom of Information experts gave a very informative (and yes, scary in places), about how information can be requested under DP and FoI legislation, what we are obliged to release, how we should be storing it, how much we should be keeping etc. We should of course be deleting anything we don't need to keep, but that is definitely not the practice with emails where many people keep everything. We also touched on the dangers of downloading data onto mobile devices and the need to have suitable encryption in place.  Requests under FoI and DP are on the increase - we need be make sure everyone knows and understands their responsibilities - the Information Commissioner can now fine us up to £500,000, and there is personal liability, as well as corporate.  Be afraid....

Finally, an interim report on the mobile survey we're in the middle of conducting. It closes on Monday, so a bigger and better blog post when we've analysed all the results, but initial result show all students (except 2 apparently) have a mobile phone, over half of them are smart phones (with many of the rest expecting to upgrade to one soon),  and 95% ownership of laptops.  Lots of good info about how students use them, and what other mobile services they want to see.

The Internet and the Archbishop

Spent most of this morning in our User Group meeting - well attended with about 50 people there - a cross section of different roles and form different areas of the University.

We usually use the time to bring people up to date with what we're doing, give presentation on new services etc. This time we started off with an update of some big projects which are just coming to their conclusion - Google mail/calendar for students implementation which went really well, the review of our VLE which is almost complete and we'll be making a decision on which way to go very shortly, and the review of the portal software where we've decided to go with an open source product called Liferay.

Then we had a really interesting presentation on the network, focusing on the answer to the question - "how fast's our internet connection?" Of course the answer to that is - it depends! Bottlenecks on your local PC as systems running in the background such as updates or virus scanning can slow things down. Then there's congestion - very similar to that we experience on the roads, with local connections (roads) have a slower speed limit but not much traffic, and then as more and more people get onto the main network (motorways) the allowed speed is faster, but there's so much traffic you often go slower. There's also the type of service you're trying to access, as we give priority to academic traffic over things like peer to peer networking. And finally there the external service availability - the web site you're trying to access might just have reached its maximum number of connections. So "why is the network slow?" is a difficult question to answer and could be down to many factors, some of them outside of our control. Of course, ours never is, thanks to our network team who do a stirling job.

We also brought everyone up to date with some of the changes we're making in the area of telephony - a simplification of our charging system and of the way we are billed and pay for our services from the telephony companies should make considerable savings. Moving to VOIP (voice over IP - or running the telephone system over the data network) has meant we have much better resilience so when the bulldozer digs though one of our cables (apparently the driver is called the archbishop because he never misses a service...), our systems should stay up. Our telecomms team (or double act depending on how you look at it) then very bravely gave a demo of some of the features that we will be able to implement - brave because it was live and involved several bits of technology! Phone numbers that follow you around campus from deskphone to mobile, softphones on your computer, unified communication tools so that you can have emails, voicemails etc in one inbox, and a voice activated system which will put you through to the right extension even when the switchboard is not staffed. All very clever. And well timed as we had a case study published in Computing today:

User Group

Our User Group yesterday - about 50 people normally attend from all areas of the University, including students. We normally do a few presentations of things we're doing, new projects etc, and ask for questions from the floor. Yesterday we demonstrated Clearspace, our new social networking software which was very well received, gave an overview of the student satisfaction survey results and our action plan, and an overview of the Print Service. However, the item which caused the most discussion was our move to Office 2007 (2008 for our mac users).

There was a general acceptance that we had to do it, but a number of issues, particularly in relation to file formats and their incompatibility with previous office versions, and whether staff would have to upgrade their PCs to run the new versions. Lots of discussion about why we don't run Open Office as standard and avoid the "Microsoft treadmill" of upgrades. The student reps were very clear that they want to run the industry standard versions of Office, and as Microsoft make their software available cheaply to them, that 's what they have on their own laptops, and that's what they need on our PCs. I have to say we agree with them. We were asked whether their was any possibility of us moving away from our dependence on Microsoft in the future, and the answer is it's unlikely! However, we did remind our users that we have very little Microsoft infrastructure in place, prefering to run open standards and systems wherever possible.

Executive meeting

At yesterday's Executive Meeting we spent some time discussing how we might ensure that we deliver the benefits from projects - for example, we're very good at putting in systems, but not necessarily at following then up and making sure people use them so that all of the advantages are achieved. This usually takes place after the project has finished and needs a resource to make sure it's done. Of course, that doesn't just apply to things we call projects, but also our general day to day work as well. We've got some ideas, and will be following them up at a later meeting.

Other things discussed include a forthcoming CiCS User Group and what we should put on the agenda. These happen about 3 times a year, and are attended by about 40 staff from all departments, and students, and it's our opportunity to explain current and future projects, and get feedback from our services in general. These have been in the past very IT based, but we will be expanding them to cover all of CiCS services.

Last week we had a special Executive Meeting to look at how we might align our services to cope with the new Faculty structure. I am going to an awayday in a couple of weeks with all Heads of Professional Service departments where we will be sharing ideas, so it's important that we have a plan by then. I am currently pulling the ideas together and will be sharing it with the Executive at the end of this week so that it can be further discussed in teams.