Mobile campus

In London at the moment for two events. First is the Apple Leadership Event, where yesterday I gave a joint presentation with oMbiel about campusM - our mobile application. The talk was so popular we had to deliver it three times, so it was pretty tiring! But it was very well received and we had lots of questions - especially about future developments of the application - could we use it to deliver learning materials from the VLE for example? Some of the international delegates were concerned about the cost of running the app for students because of very high data costs from ISPs and telecommunications providers. I was amazed at some of the charges being levied - I think Belgium was probably the dearest - and am grateful for the fact that we can make good use of networks for relatively little cost over here.

When I put the slides for the talk together on Monday we had 500 downloads - by the time I gave the talk yesterday afternoon we'd had 900! The extra publicity given to it by featuring on the University home page for the last few days had obviously had an effect. The split between iPhone and iPod touch users is about 70% iPhone, 30% iPod touch. Surprising number of iPod touches - and that sort of device never features in our surveys of what students have and yet they're obviously using them to access our services via wireless.

In the next few week we'll be releasing the app for use on other phones - I saw it working on a relatively cheap simple Nokia yesterday and it was surprisingly good.

Now I'm off to BETT2010, so will blog about that later.

Common Timetabling

Very short Programme Board this week as no project reports due to Christmas break but we did approve two new projects - one s a continuation of an existing one. Currently we're reviewing our VLE, and once a decision is taken on how to proceed we will have quite a big implementation task, so that's been set up as a new project. The other has been under discussion for some time, but we're finally getting on with it, and this is to implement a common approach to timetabling.

Timetabling is currently based at a departmental level and there is consequently considerable duplication of effort as timetables are created locally. Requests are then made for room bookings centrally, and then often timetablers will transpose the allocated room information back into local systems.

The software we use has the capacity to capture relevant information such as staffing constraints and to automatically produce a scheduled, roomed timetable. We can then produce clash free personal student timetables which can be delivered to students though the portal and Google calendar, and though our mobile application, campusM. This should also save a considerable amount of staff time by reducing duplication of effort, and develop better timetabling expertise at Faculty level. The timetable will be produced earlier allowing for better planning, and we should also be able to utilise our existing rooms better. We intend to have draft timetables produced in this way for our pilot Faculties by this summer.

Another meeting on a similar topic - discussion about the Drama Studio and how we can accommodate everyone who wants to use it, including academic use for our Drama degree which is expanding, the Student Theatre society, other academic departments and external amateur dramatic groups. We have a user group coming up next week where a lot of these issues will be discussed.

Digital worlds

Had a really good meeting on Friday morning with one of our Research Directors - Fabio Ciravegna who is cross cutting Director for Research and Innovation for The Digital World. Very enjoyable and interesting meeting - I love meeting academics who are passionate about their area of research, and of course it's one of the reasons we're here. We were interested how we might work together, and whether there were any areas to which we could provide additional help and support to. We identified two areas where which we're going to investigate further.

The first is the Digital Region Project - the first major deployment of superfast broadband in the UK which will be in South Yorkshire. We'll be looking at whether there are opportunities to leverage this to improve our services to the community and to provide opportunities for research.

The second which I think has huge potential is the whole area of linked data. This is a way of exposing, connecting and sharing data from multiple datasets and databases. The UK government has pledged to open up public data in this way, and the Cabinet Office Digital Engagement Blog announced some interesting timescales for the release of public data (including postcode and ordinance survey mapping data). Well worth a read. The question which we should perhaps be asking is - if the government are doing it, should we be doing something similar with call the data we hold? Suitably anonymised and respecting privacy and security implications of course. We hold so much which I'm sure could yield all sorts of interesting applications. Think of the amount of data we hold on students - from their postcode at time of admission, all the way through progression through their course, to the careers they choose. Or procurement and spending data.

CES trending

The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) opened its doors in Las Vegas today, and caused a me a little confusion at first as my initials have been a trending topic on Twitter all day. Every year I say I'm going to make it to the next one, and then forget until it comes round again. Next year, I really will try and be there!

There's lots of news coverage, and it's great watching some of the the things we've been predicting making it to the market - pico projectors for example. Some are small enough to fit into a mobile phone already but the quality doesn't look brilliant. The laser ones are much better quality, but still as big as the phone :



Still amazing though, and they will get smaller.

Other things I've seen of interest so far are huge 3D home TVs, and wireless chargers for mobiles. Both the BBC and the Guardian have got good short videos of some of the top stuff.

For those of us involved in technology, it is the consumer market which is the one to watch, where many new developments make their first appearance. Looking back over some past CES it's interesting to see when some things we now take for granted first appeared. The VCR in 1970, the CD in 1981, the DVD in 1996, the XBox and Plasma TVs in 2001, IPTV in 2005. And 2010? Well, apart from the above - eReaders with flexible screens and slates or tablets are there in force. There might also be an interesting announcement at the end of this month from Apple in this area!

Snow

Happy New Year everyone - hope you had a good break and are all set to face whatever 2010 throws at us. It won't be lots more funding - that's for sure!

Last year we had an exciting return to work after the winter break with not one but two power cuts - one to our data centre and one the next day to our offices. This year I was hoping for a more gentle return to normal work, without any surprises. So what did we get - snow! Lots of it. Enough to have the buses off the road, and the trams disrupted (although they didn't stop running). Roads were very difficult to drive on, especially as Sheffield is not known for its flatness, and many people commute from small villages in the Peak District. But - we managed fantastically. Many people made it in - some walking many miles to get here, others worked from home. The University stayed open, although staff with a long way to travel were sent home early. All of our services including remote access via the portal held up well. The Information Commons stayed open 24*7 and had 500 students in at 5pm - many of them making good use of the free heating I suspect!

Today a small incident team had a review of how we'd managed, and reviewed our plans - particularly those for closing the University in the case of adverse weather. I spent some of today looking at the implications of closing and what might trigger it - personal safety of staff and students being the key driver. Of course, the University never really closes - security and portering staff work 24*7, as do staff looking after students in the residences. We have staff constantly monitoring and fixing systems, and the IC never closes. So maybe we shouldn't refer to it as closure, but switching to "out of hours" mode.

All change

What constitutes a change? That's a question we're wrestling with at the moment as we implement ITIL, and yesterday we had a meeting with our Process Managers to look at progress so far. As part of looking at change management , our Change Manager had carried out a data collection exercise in November where all staff had to log any change they made to an outward facing (ie live) system using a web form. They also had to assess the risk and the possible impact of the change.

Interesting results. A total of 2564 logged changes over 24 days ( so some were made at weekends). That's about 1 every 5 minutes on a working day. Lots of data collected, and some initial analysis has been done. Lots of discussion on what constitutes a system change, and what is a change to data - on the telephone system for example is moving an extension a change? maybe it's just a change to data, but it could have an effect on either a user or a group of users if it goes wrong.

The next step is to use the information we've collected to inform our thinking on what sort of change management and change approval process to put in place. I'm keen that we don't just implement the process as recommended by ITIL but that we do what works for us, and we'll have different processes for different sorts of changes - the 60 reported changes that had been assessed as high risk and with a high impact will be subject to a different process to the straightforward data changes. What's important is that everything follows an agreed process.

We also had a presentation from our Test Manager - test management being the process for reducing the risk of service failures when moving from development to production. There are many different ways of testing systems (even by releasing something and letting users test it which some software manufacturers have been know to use....). We know we have many different ways of doing things here - things like payroll we test almost to destruction before anything goes live, with other services we're much less stringent. Again, it's about getting an appropriate process in place.

Other presentations included progress on the service catalogue, and incident and problem management. Our incident management procedures are now well established for in-hours incidents, but we're currently reviewing out of hours ones.

Digital worlds

This morning's meeting between the University Executive Board and Heads of Department was mainly about research. As well as our PVC for Research and Innovation, we have Faculty Directors of Research and Innovation, and have newly appointed three cross cutting Directors of Research whose aim is to promote high quality research around particular themes. Each of the Directors gave a short presentation this morning on their particular theme which are:

The Digital World
Energy and the Environment
Health Care across the Disciplines

I was particularly looking forward to the Digital World theme as this is obviously an area where we can contribute. The Digital Britain report published earlier this year set the scene for the introduction of policies to maximise the social and economic benefits from digital technologies. and the Digital Region project is the first major regional deployment of 'Superfast Broadband' in the UK - in South Yorkshire. This theme is not just about the development and use of digital technologies, but about their impact on society. I'm looking forward to exploring how we can be involved.

The other two themes also have a high ICT component, particularly in terms of data handling, and we're meeting all 3 of the Directors soon to discuss how we can collaborate. Collaboration was a key message in all presentations - these are multisdisciplinary areas and the global challenges will only be met by teams working across tradiotnal boundaries. From our perspective, I hope that our new collaboration environment, uSpace will be useful in facilitating some of that.

Programmes and Projects

Lots of meetings yesterday - is there such a thing as a pre-Christmas meeting rush? First was with the Faculty of Arts and was one of our strategic liaison meetings. Discussion was around our main service areas - support for learning and teaching, research and communication and collaboration. We identified some priorities for further work and discussion, including the area of space utilisation and timetabling. They offer many degree programmes, with a high number of dual degrees, and finding enough space and with the right equipment is an issue for them. Currently we have a timetabler in each department, and the rather sophisticated software we have is used mainly as a room allocation system. At our Programme Board meeting yesterday we agreed to establish a new project to look at moving to a more central timetabling system, using more of the software's functionality to improve the utilisation of our estate. This links in with a number of University initiatives, including the carbon reduction one.

Also at the Programme Board we approved another new project, to review our portal. We've had a staff and student portal for some years as part of our strategy to make everything available over the web, and the time has come to review it. Lots of preparatory work already done, so now we need to make a decision on the way forward.

Following our Departmental Programme Board we had a meeting of the University Collaboration Improvement Programme Board where we had a very interesting discussion on whether Universities encouraged and rewarded collaboration, and how important it is to break down silo mentality. The latter is particularly important in times of financial difficulty - it's very easy to become very protectionist, but that won't get us anywhere - except into more difficulty.

Google Goggles

Those guys at Google are putting some interesting things out at the moment. Real time searching was released on Monday and finds real time updates from news feeds, blogs and twitter, displayed as part of your regular results page. If you leave the search page open, it continuously updates. Used it a couple of times and it's rather good.

Then they announced Google Goggles - a new way of searching using pictures. Currently only available on phones running Google's Android OS but soon to be released on other platforms (hopefully iPhone next....), you can take a picture on your phone and Google will return search information back to you about whatever it is you've snapped. Released at the moment in beta, it currently supports photo-based searching for books, DVDs, landmarks, logos, contact info, artwork, businesses, products, barcodes, and plain text. You can use it to take a picture of a label on a bottle of wine and get info back about the vineyard, or take a picture of a piece of art and find out what it is. I can't wait to try it - first reports are that it's impressive. There's Google's own video below, or you can go to YouTube where there's lots of examples of it being tested with some very good results and some not so good, mainly on those things that Google have admitted they're still working on.

Diversity

Today I went to a meeting of the University Equality and Diversity Board. I enjoy these meetings - the University has a very active diversity agenda, and reviews all departments and services on a regular basis - it was our turn earlier this year. Today, one of the main items of discussion was the introduction of Equality Impact Assessments which we will be doing on all new policies and services from the New Year. I think it will throw up some interesting issues. For example, one of the questions that will have to be asked is "does this policy/service exclude any group". Well, many of the services we in CiCS offer exclude a large proportion of University staff - those who are not routinely given a computer account. These are mainly staff who work in jobs such as cleaning, catering, and to some extent portering and other similar jobs. They often work part time, and don't routinely have access to a computer in their work environment. Consequently, different measures have to be put in place to make sure they are included, for example in corporate communications. Most of us are used to instant communication via email, but it can take days in these areas to make sure the message has got through to everyone.

But, even if there isn't access to a PC in their immediate vicinity during their working hours, some staff have access to a computer at home, or can access the internet via any of our student machines. We can also look at putting more web-kiosks out closer to where they work. So, one thing we have agreed to do is issue all of these staff with a computer account and email address, and provide focused induction and training. It won't solve the problem completely, but will provide a partial solution.

It will be interesting to see what else these EIAs turn up.

Plus ça change....

We had a Service Quality Team meeting today - the group that oversees our Service Level Agreements - always a useful meeting and today we spent some time looking a the results of our staff and student surveys which we've carried out this year. Always easy to focus on where we've not done well and need to make improvements, but we also need to celebrate those areas where we perform well and get positive comments.

A hot topic at the moment is how we are going to deal with increasing financial constraints - how can we not just maintain service levels but innovate as well. The only way is by a controlled reduction in service in some areas to protect others, and today we discussed the effects of recent budget reductions and possible consequences at length.

I have been around long enough to remember many periods of financial pressure, and was reminded the other day that nothing is new. Does this sound familiar?

Meanwhile the financial question is a very serious one for all Universities at the present time, and all possible means of retrenchment are being considered. The Vice Chancellor of Leeds went so far as to say in July that he would not lay heavy odds on the survival of Sheffield or Leeds University.

That was taken from Floreamus, the Sheffield University magazine, in 1921, and sent from the VC's Office to the Director of Finance in 1988 with a note saying "things have always been desperate".

I'm pleased to say however that there was a note of optimism even then as the article finished with:

Our own Vice Chancellor refuses to be so despondent. He told an interviewer: "I am more hopeful; I believe as long as these Universities are fulfilling their purpose, they will get plenty of support". We have little doubt that this optimism will be justified.

Thanks to Matt, our records manager for unearthing this.

HESA, JANET, UCISA and other acronyms

Yesterday I spent the day chairing the UCISA Executive meeting in London. Two interesting discussions, the first on the proposed changes to the way JANET delivers our network services at the regional level. I've blogged about this before, and it is still rumbling on. There is still a lot of concern in the community about the proposals, especially around how some of the additional services provided by the current MANs will continue. I took part in a meeting some weeks ago with the Chief Executive of JANET where we outlined some of the communities concerns - I felt it was a positive and productive meeting, and we did get a response - both the concerns and the reply are here. Since then JANET has produced a white paper which provides a lot more information on the rationale behind the proposed changes and the intial outcomes of the consultation. We agreed at the UCISA meeting yesterday that we need to look forward, and make sure that we get the best possible service for our members, whilst protecting our costs.

The other major discussion was with the recently appointed Chief Executive of HESA. Alison Allden. As a former IT Director and a Director of Information Services, Alison is one of us, and it's great to have her in this post. She outlined her vision and some of the issues facing the sector in the area of information collection and management, and we had some questions for her. Many of the issues which Alison had identified were the same as we had, so there's a lot of common thinking. We covered HESA's relationship with our institutions as well as its relationship with its statutory customers - the funding councils. Interestingly when I asked people here what issues they wanted raising, most were around amount of data being collected, the detail of the data and some of the data definitions - all of which are actually set by the funding councils, not HESA. There was a concern on both sides of the amount of returns we have to do, and why HESA can't collect it all, to a common set of standards and then reuse it. A very useful discussion and I'm optimistic that UCISA and HESA will be able to work together to iron out some of the issues to benefit us both.

The other major topic was our Annual Conference - the place to be next March. Bookings have just opened, the programme is looking good, and it's in Harrogate. What more could you want?

Sheffield Made Us

The Sheffield Made Us competition asked students to shoot a short film asking students to demonstrate how their time at Sheffield - the University and the City - had helped to define the person they are today.

The winner has just been announced - Pól Gallagher from the School of Architecture and you can watch his winning entry below - I like it, and the IC has a cameo role!