Dancing in the Park

So, the end of my first week back after the holiday. It's been a long week :-)  Most of it spent catching up, and looking forward to the new academic year. Perhaps the most important job I've been doing is looking at our budget for next year and how that compares with our financial forecasts. Its fair to say it's not an exact match, and we are looking at how we might manage it in terms of current vacancies. We're identifying areas where we believe the staffing resources needs to be protected, where it could reduce (albeit with a drop in service levels), and where we need to invest. There may be tough decisions to be taken....

Also this week I've caught up with some of the new student sabbatical officers. Always a pleasure to meet them at the beginning of the new academic year, and I'm afraid it only seems like a few weeks since I was was welcoming the previous holders. I don't envy them having such a short period to learn how the University works, and make their own impact on it. It's vitally important that we work together to achieve as much as we can in their period of office. This week we've talked about the design and operation of The Diamond,  how we might encourage students to vote and how we might better analyse our student data to look at the attainment of different diversity groups.

It was really good this week to meet colleagues from another university and exchange information about our strategies, service management implementation etc. It's always time well spent finding out what anther institution is dong, even if they came here to find out what we're doing.

And finally, I did some scheduling for an event I'm helping with - The Sheffield Fayre. To celebrate 20 years of The National Fairground Archive, the University is sponsoring this event.  Given my connections, I'd been asked to get some local traditional dance teams to appear. Yesterday I had to work out the timings for 6 teams, across two stages, making sure everyone had enough time to move between spots, and didn't dance with the same team. A post-it note nightmare :-) Looks like a good event - and it's free. So, if you're not doing anything get to Norfolk Park on Sunday 24th or Monday 25th August.

The Price is Right

Last Friday I was speaking at a UCISA event on What Price Your Service, which covered a number of aspects of pricing and costing services.

First up was Andrew McConnell who is chair of the British University Finance Directors Group, and has also sat with me on the UUK Group looking at Modernisation and Efficiency.  Andrew gave a good overview of the financial environment and the challenges facing HE. Continuous change and uncertainty, cuts in resource, competition for student numbers, inflationary pressures on pay and non pay costs, the impact of spending on the REF and cash flow changes all contribute to a difficult picture. Although the viability of institutions does not seem to be an issue at the moment,  we are operating on very fine margins, and many institutions are not generating enough surplus. So, we need to have entrepreneurial leadership and generate income from  diverse sources, have robust financial, institutional and growth strategies and take the efficiency agenda seriously. I've written before about the UUK report (commonly being referred to as the Diamond report), and of the 17 recommendations, 11 touch on IT. Andrew called for better collaboration between UCISA and BUFDG, and between Finance and IT generally, working together and overcoming the language barrier that sometimes exists between us. He reminded us what Ian Watmore had said at  the launch of the Diamond report - we used to say we had to spend to save, now we have to save to spend.

Next up was the University of Oxford, who have been looking at how their services are costed. Originally they worked on a simple basis, allocating expenditure to different cost centres, but more recently have been adopting the TRAC approach, and looking in detail at all aspects of expenditure including power, space, overheads, dependencies on other services etc. They received funding from the JISC, and have produced a toolkit for costing IT services, available here.  They've found this model to be extremely useful in looking at how much services actually cost, especially in departments. For example they found a small department running their own exchange server instead of making use of the central one, who insisted it didn't cost anything. However, it actually cost twice as much as the central one.

Then I spoke about the work we've been doing at looking at where our expenditure actually goes, rather than how much things actually cost. We've changed our accounting structure to match our seven service areas, but this year manually allocated all expenditure - staff, non staff and capital, as well as expenditure in those areas which generate income - to those areas. So, using expenditure as a proxy for activity, we get the following results:

Then each of the service areas can be broken down, and we can see where the expenditure is coming from  - is it mainly staff, capital etc. There's loads of information, and it's thrown up some interesting questions, as well as highlighting some issues. If you're really interested in seeing the results, and how and why we did it, you can see the talk here. All of the talks given on the day are here, and you will need Silverlight to view them.

Value for Money?

Back from a great week in Whitby, and luckily to a fairly quiet week, as far as meetings are concerned anyway. Lots of work going on - installing 700 new PCs in our student computing areas including the IC, and getting our new Enquirer and Applicant portal ready to go live in - about 48 hours! I love it when people ask us whether we have a quiet time over the summer when there's no students here - it's usually our most frantic time!

One of the main things I've been doing this week is drawing up a value for money report  - all professional departments and major committees are doing it for the Audit Committee. In these financial times its a subject everyone's interested in, and one where we in particular have a very good story to tell. In terms of what we've done over the past 18 months the highlights are:

• Introduced a new service strategy with  particular focus on customer service & business value, putting in place structures and processes that underpin the requirement to provide both high quality and value for money IT services.  Specifically we are now presenting our services to customers via a "service catalogue". Service Advisory groups have been set up to oversee our seven main service areas. We have introduced change management, incident management and problem management processes which have improved reliability, resilience and effectiveness of our services.

• Comprehensive strategies and operational plans have been developed for all of the service areas. These have been widely disseminated and discussed in the department, are aligned with the University's mission and are used to allocate resources and set priorities.

• As well as the above service strategies,  there are overarching themes for all areas of the department which are: sustainability, reducing complexity, doing more with less, improving the student experience and resilience.

• Individual computer servers have been replaced with a handful of more powerful computers capable of running many services at once. This has four benefits: a small number of staff can continue to manage the increasing numbers of services; direct costs of computer purchase and maintenance have been significantly reduced; indirect costs of energy and cooling have been reduced, and CiCS are able to offer hosting services for other departments with a very rapid turnaround and at a low cost.

• Work to upgrade our main Data Centre's cooling system is taking place in conjunction with the Estates department. Meanwhile, computer servers and the racks they occupy have been resited in order to improve cooling air flows. Computing equipment is being monitored for energy usage in order to understand better energy usage patterns.

• The increased use of the University records store  has assisted large departmental moves  reducing the demand on more valuable space.

• A managed staff print project has started to manage university wide printing strategically, to provide best value by driving the volume to shared multi function products  reduce purchasing and operating costs and   electricity costs.

• Design and Print Services are developing web-to-print  job submission for staff and students to support 24/7 ordering and an EU tender has been completed for the University's outsourced print ensuring VFM.

• A specialist consulting company has been engaged to review contracts for hardware, software and services and renegotiate on our behalf where feasible, with payment only by results.

• CICS core accounts have been restructured to allow more efficient reporting and to reflect the new service-based approach to CICS activities. Together with careful allocation of staff cost, this will enable each of 32 major services to be costed and its VFM assessed.

• A Business Process Improvement toolkit has been produced and a pilot LEAN programme has been established

• Over the past two years student and staff email has been outsourced to a free service provided by Google. This allows us to decommission and not replace a large amount of computer hardware, including mail storage.  The associated backup of mail data is no longer necessary.  The introduction of Google Calendar has enabled us to decommission the previous software  and its associated hardware and further improvements in efficiency are anticipated as we make increasing use of Google Apps and associated cloud storage.

• Over the past 6 years all computer data storage has been centralised on to two large data servers, and individual computer disks decommissioned.

• Increased automation of University processes such as student registration will reduce lead times for many student activities and remove unnecessary hold-ups in the flow of data and information. 'Mobilisation' of student facing services is reducing the need for students to use a desktop computer for many tasks, improving their overall experience while not substantially increasing support load on CiCS.

That's quite a list - and only a selection from the report, there's quite a lot more. Of course, there's some areas where we need to improve VFM. Areas we've highlighted include the increasing burden of complying with FoI legislation and responding to requests (although I'm not sure what we can do about that without some change to the legislation), some of the duplication of effort between the central services and departments, and timetabling.

Lots of work planned for this year to address these and many other issues.

Costs and Calendars

Back at work for a  whole week now, and first blog post. Not being lazy (although getting back into the swing of things after a couple of weeks lazing by a pool is hard), just not a lot to write about.  Spent the usual few hours deleting emails - I've tried to be quite rigorous recently in clicking the "unsubscibe" button on many of them, and it has paid off, but still indundated with suppliers thinking I'm actually going to read their cold emails.

One of the first things I had to grapple with on my return was a new calendar - we went live with Google calendar for all staff whilst I was off, and now everything is different!  A new interface - web only, no client - and different ways of doing things. I have so say, so far I'm impressed with the functionality, especially the integration with email, the overlaying of different calendars and the amazing colour scheme I seem to have ended up with! The synchronisation with mobile devices is also good.  The biggest headache we had as a department was migrating all of the data from our existing Oracle calendar to Google. Some places haven't even attempted it, just gone live with the new calendar and given staff instructions on how to move meetings. We decided to be more helpful than that, and exported the data out of Oracle and imported it into Google. Not as simple as it sounds! Calendar data is quite complex, and because of the way data around resources connected to meetings, repeating meetings and different attendance statuses are held, we had several test runs, testing the data, picking up anomalies, correcting it, running it again etc. Eventually we were confident that the data was pretty good quality - at least 95% accurate and better in some cases. A lot of work was done by the people involved, and some very long hours worked - a great job by team.

Other meetings this week included one on activity based costing - or trying to understand the cost of what we do. We've already done quite a lot of work on this, and this year have completely restructured our account codes to make it easier to report. No longer are budgets held and orders coded by organisational structure, but by service. Staff costs are also being allocated to services and activities, so we should be able to get some good data on how much individual activities cost. This will then feed into decision making about services, and whether we're using our resources in the right way.

Futures forum, two panels

Panel on Student experience and expectations

Aaron Porter, President NUS

One of the most pertinent questions institutions should be asking. How might expectations shift going into this new landscape where contributions have shifted. Student satisfaction currently high. Students do value the experience and the quality of what they're getting. Two areas will come under increased focus. Employability. They want a route into employment. Second is a cruder analysis of what are we providing in terms of value for money. Different to are they satisfied. There's been a large concentration on things like contact time. Needs to be taken further, into different areas. Induction is critical. Talk to new students about what they expect to get, and how they should direct their learning. Issue of PG profession also needs examining. We need to make the case about why PG is important. Browne ignored it. Also need to tackle head on the notion that students are consumers. They're not. They have consumer traits.

Phil Jones, VC, Sheffield Hallam University
At SHU, experienced Browne report and subsequent discussions as a trauma. Can make it work, but was a traumatic period for all, for staff, students, prospective students, parents. Then start planning for future. Both Sheffield unis set up 2012 projects. Looked at costs, WP, defining the offer. Defining the offer was a core part of that period, and the offer is much more than the access agreement. Looked at a lot of data, including NSS data. Has an impact on student behaviour, and in departments. Employment data also important. Talking to students, working with focus groups.
Difficult to know what impact will be.
When Phil appointed to UoS in 90s ran Legal Practice course where fee was £5k. Students didn't really act as consumers.
What happens in curriculum, in city, in sport, in clubs etc. all vitally important in student experience. All contribute, and may be more important than finance.

Lori Manders, Director of Development , UCL.
Converting students to alumni. Alumni very important to institution. Can be ambassadors, employers, mentors. Relationship starts right at beginning, even from first enquiry or contact, and if managed properly it can be a successful lifetime relationship. Alumni can help with employability, and enrich students' experience. With increase in fees, will stop giving? Not the evidence in US. Also students possibly will value education more if paid for it. Need to get alumni involved with current students from beginning.

Questions on employabilty. Need to find opportunities for students to pick up skills using placements, internships etc. What about assessment methods, why do we still sit students in a room and make them write for 3 hours, why don't we make assessment methods more relevant to the work experience? Accessibility and visibility of careers services needs improving. Make them available to alumni so can provide career progression advice for life.

Panel on Linking financial strategy with sustainability


Andrew Wathey VC Northumbria University

Challenges are meeting student expectations, decisions on less popular courses, ensuring demand is stimulated. Under the new finance system we mustn't get rid of life chances for prospective students. Research will be more important for reputation, but there's less money in it. Increased selectivity will make us rethink model for sustainability. There are reputational challenges. We need to rethink split of T and R, which currently doesn't reflect the symbiosis of T and R funding. Need to generate cash to generate capital or meeting expectations on campus quality will be difficult.

Shared services, LEAN processes will all be important. Delivery of courses may need looking at, including ultra low contact hours and delivery in same way it's always been done. Should we record lectures and concentrate staff time on small groups teaching?

Competition and collaboration will have to go hand in hand. Will be increased global competition for students.
Institutions are unlikely to go under, but will have to change their business model.

Paul Greatrix, Registrar Nottingham University

Facing time of significant cuts. Path not clear. Moving from supplier led to demand led model. Old models may still be able to deliver and survive, but challenge is sustainability. Have to find enough money and people to do what we want to do. Will be new market opportunities. Have to build relationships and access different resources. Institutional culture has to be tuned to saving money and making money. Will require good leadership. Have to remain optimistic and focus on the key goals, have to seize the day and make sure it happens for us.
Cultural shift. At some Unis making money is something somebody else does. Everyone has to understand money, understand the cost and value of things.


Good Question on whether management teams are up to the challenge. Are they too academic? Should we have more people with non academic backgrounds.?
Need right blend of academic leadership and professional support. Tactful answer!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Never say no, but put a price on yes

After any incident - whether within the department or University wide - we have an incident review. Today we had the review of how we'd handled the bad weather at the beginning of December. An incident management team (IMT) had been put together, and although we'd suspended teaching for a day and a half, the University had remained open. The purpose of any incident review is to learn - what went well, what could we have done better, and what actions do we need to take. We covered all aspects of what happened - how we'd handled putting together the IMT, decision making, effect on teaching, staffing and resource issues. And underlying everything - communication. Communication within the team, and to staff and students. We took the decision very early on to do everything via a web page, updated at specific times, and with links to other useful pages. It was a good decision - the page had 10s of thousands of hits, and although we used other methods including social media such as twitter, everything pointed here. Lots of improvements and actions though arising out of this morning's meeting.

This afternoon we had an interesting discussion with some colleagues from Gartner, looking at some of the challenges currently facing IT in the HE sector. We covered a number of topics especially the need to look at different models of service delivery including outsourcing, and how to prioritise at a time when our budgets are decreasing, but some parts of the University are intending to expand. Knowing the costs of services is key. We should know the cost of everything in our service catalogue, and use this to draw up a portfolio of services for different roles. Knowing what we provide for a member of academic staff for example, or a student. If we have the cost information, we can have informed discussions about the effects of changes. We should "never say no, but put a price on yes" was a quote that I liked, and it's something we  rarely do.  Of course, that's not appropriate in many areas, especially for core services, but the idea of "core plus" services is something we've toyed with in the past.

Realising benefits and costing services

One of the external projects I'm involved in is the production of a best practice guide funded by HeFCE, which began as a guide to project and programme management, but is now concentrating much more on  outcomes rather than management. So, it will be concentrating on how you can realise strategic change and benefits. It arose out of a perceived need for such a toolkit by estates directors and capital projects, but has now been expanded to cover other areas of Universities including IT.   On Wednesday I spent the day at the Steering Group meeting where we looked a the different stages of realising change and benefits -the vision and strategic business case; the operational business case; implementation; benefits delivery - and what tools you might need. A very interesting group, and I think the guide will be extremely useful when finished. In toolkit form it will contain information and templates which people can adapt and use to suit their own requirements. As funding becomes more restricted, we'll have to be more rigorous in what big projects we do, and make sure we get the maximum benefits from them.

Yesterday we had our first meeting to kick off a change in the way we look at budgets and expenditure. We want to get much better information on how much our services cost. I could easily find out how much we spend on hardware, software, paper, etc etc, but do we know how much the web service costs? or filestore? or the wireless network? or the payroll system? And do we know how much of our expenditure goes on supporting teaching and learning? Or research? The answer is no - with some qualifications of course. We have done some preliminary work on this, but are now moving into much more detailed work. This should help inform some of our decision making and resource allocation. How do we know what we might have to stop doing if resources are limited if we don't know how much things cost? We've just outsourced email, but we don't know how much we've saved, because we don't know what it was costing us to start with. Hopefully we'll get some useful information out of it.

Miscellaneous meetings

Had a great holiday - but then came back to non stop meetings. Monday I spent all day either traveling to or in Bristol at HEFCE at a Steering Group look at possible developments in shared services. More later when I have something I can say.

Then on Tuesday I met our University Executive Board to talk to them about some developments in service delivery, particularly extending the roll out of Google apps to staff. We've had students on Google mail and calendar since last summer, and now we're progressing with moving staff as soon as possible after Christmas.

Today we had a detailed look at our finances, and a look forward to spending plans for the next few years. I also caught up for an hour with one of the student officers, always a pleasure, and an interesting discussion on the effects of the Browne Report on student expectations.

Lots of HR work coming up as the Exceptional Contribution Awards for staff are in and need scoring - I'm on panels for 3 faculties. And I'm away from the office for a couple of days. Back next week!

Funding cuts and our Vice-Chancellor speaks

Yesterday I was at a RUGIT meeting - the IT Directors of the Russell Group of Universities. One of the major topics of conversation was of course the Browne report on University financing and student fees in particular, and the forthcoming spending review. We talked about many things - what the effect of rising student fees might have on their expectations and what services they might expect to see - at a time when our budgets could be falling. We talked about the effect of falling budgets might have on us as IT Directors, what services we might be able to provide, and what we might have to stop. We also discussed how we might source services differently in order to put our resources onto supporting key Unsiverity objectives. I made the point that some are nervous at sourcing services from outside of the institution, as the control and the ability to deliver excellent is lost. I made the point that in my opinion not every service has to be excellent - sometimes good enough will have to be just that. Take email for example. I'm not saying that Google don't provide an excellent service because they do, but if their calendar for example doesn't quite have the same functionality as our existing one, does it really matter? Isn't it better to make decisions about what services the University needs to deliver its mission and focus on them?

So, we wait with trepidation this morning until we find out what the Chancellor has done to Higher Education. The only good thing seems to be that science funding might have been protected, but we shall see. Science is of course vital to us all, and to our economic recovery, but it is not the only subject that Universities excel in. On the train on the way home yesterday I read a post by my own Vice-Chancellor, a moving and passionate article supporting all University subjects and education, not just the "priority"ones. Well worth a read, and I wholeheartedly support his sentiments.

Reducing costs and repealing acts

UCISA Executive meeting in London last Thursday. I'm getting used to the early morning trains to London now, but I still find the lack of connectivity frustrating - even the phone signal isn't enough to have a reasonable conversation for any length of time. Not that I usually want to in public of course, but getting and sending the odd email would be nice!

As a membership organisation, UCISA has a responsibility to help its members, and one of the main things we discussed was how we could help in these times of financial constraint. All of our organisations are reporting it as their main concern, but it isn't up to us to tell IT departments how to save money or manage themselves. What we can do however is give advice and share good ideas and best practice. A recent UCISA seminar on How to reduce Your Infrastructure Costs for example had presentations from a number of organisations, including how Westminster University estimate they have saved £1m by outsourcing their email, personal storage and productivity apps to Google, savings to be gained on printing, and a keynote from a Gartner analyst. All of the presentations are on the web site.

We discussed what other things we could do, other events we might organise for example, including tips on renegotiating contracts, showing the value of IT, outsourcing and outhosting options. As I've said before, the government is very keen on shared services at the moment and one of the areas we touched on is IT as a shared service within the institution. Many of us who run relatively centralised IT departments are still aware of the many IT support staff out there in departments, file servers lurking in corners, IT staff re-inventing the wheel as they write their own systems for doing things instead of using centrally provided ones. Surely, we need to look at IT spend across the institution, and look for efficiencies in how we provide it, which will mean bringing distributed staff into bigger teams, physically located still in departments but with a much closer relationship with the central IT department.

We touched on a number of other topics, including a forthcoming meeting with the Chair of AUDE (Association of University Directors of Estates), where we're going to discuss a number of areas of overlap between IT departments and estates departments - more next week after the meeting.

We also were brought up to date on the Digital Economy Act and the effect on us. The more I look at this, the more of a mess it is, and the more I think we should be using the Government's web site to vote to repeal it! Peter Tinson wrote a good blog post back in May about the next steps for the Act. basically, the consultation on the cost of implementing the measures in the Act has now finished - both JANET and UCISA responded, and now the consultation is on Ofcom's code of practice. This initially focuses on ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers. There is still no clarity on what an ISP is, and whether University's (or even JANET), are ISPs. So, watch this space - I'll post on news on this Act as I get it.

UCISA management conference - opening session

I'm at the UCISA Management Conference in Harrogate at the moment - my first full one as Chair. Conference started well with some interesting sessions. Th first one today was an introduction from the VC of Bradford University. He talked abut the outlook and pressures facing Universities, and what the shape of HEIs might be in a few years time.

In his opinion the HE system not in meltdown - we are facing challenges but are are in a strong position to meet them. The unit of resource is higher than ever before, and we've had an unprecedented decade of growth in capital funding and investment in infrastructure. We are heavily reliant on public funding -and that's why we will all be will be dramatically affected by the cuts announced in what he called Mandelson's Christmas Card. The financial environment will be challenging for several years.

Other issues we face are changing include student numbers - a few years ago we were worried about decreasing applications and the impact of demographic downtown. Now we have a cap on student numbers - different institutions will be effected differently. So, international, part time and postgrauate students are only areas where we can grow ourselves out of funding issues.

Another key driver over the next five years will be student demand and particularly a demand for quality, especially if the cap on fees is removed. There will be greater pressure from students with more more emphasis on surveys like NSS and customer experience.

One result of the pressure on public finances will be fewer higher education institutions - his advice was to appoint someone with mergers and acquisitions experience! This won't just be for financial reasons but will be strategic. These need not necessarily be between two publicly funded insititutions, as there will be a greater inroad from private sector.

HEIs will develop more distinctive identities - some focusing on more research, some focusing on more learning and teaching. There'll be a shift from a publically funded, centrally regulated campus-based HE system to a more distributed system with more input from private investment.

His conclusion was that there will be interesting times ahead but HE is still a fantastic place to work.

A good start to the conference. The exhibition is also excellent this year as always, and I'm trying to get round all of the suppliers to say hello. As usual there are some interesting freebies on offer, including a personalised caricature. Not very flattering is it?

UCISA Planning

Today was a planning meeting for the UCISA Executive where we look at our activities for the next year, and how we can best serve the interests of our members. As always, lots of events are planned - these take the form of conferences, workshops, training courses, seminars and management days. Topics to be covered this year include Business Intelligence,Research management systems, Business process engineering, VOIP, CCTV, Unified Communications, Mobile Computing, Effective procurement, and Customer relationship management. Although there is an office of full time staff to help with the organisation of these events, much effort comes from the membership of the various groups and is voluntary - it is much appreciated.

We also looked at the top current concerns of our members, and how we might address those over the coming year. Not surprisingly, the top one was funding. We are all going to be faced with spending less, doing more with less, and deciding what we can stop doing. We had a very lively discussion on areas we should be looking at, including more use of shared services, outsourcing and centralisation of services and support. We will be having an event in the next few months to look in more detail at a vision of what IT Services might be like in 5 years time.

The second top concern was the whole area of sustainability and carbon reduction. There are a number of drivers for this - cost savings, climate change, and perhaps not least, carbon reduction targets we've all been given by the funding council and and the subsequent fines if we don't meet them. Another event to cover this area is being planned, together with the collection and publication of a number of good practice case studies. So, lots to keep UCISA occupied over the next year.

Re-using labs, and getting rid of paper

Liaison Meeting with the Faculty of Science today- lots on the agenda, including big discussion on teaching space. We're trying to make the best use of our estate, and reduce space if we can - we need to reduce our carbon emissions, like all Universities, and reducing space is one way of contributing to it. In order to reduce space, we have to utilise what we have much better, and we were discussing today ways of doing that. Our common timetabling project should help, but we're also looking at other innovative ideas, such as using laboratories as computer rooms when they're not in use for practical classes. Obvous we can't have hard wired PCs in there, but we could have a stack of laptops using the wireless network that could be brought out when needed. Issues to address obviously such as what applications we can deliver to them, can we cope with 75 simultaneous connections to wifi, have we got the staff to maintain them - but nothing insurmountable. Of course students could also use their own laptops, if we could get the applications to them. Hopeful our new desktop project will solve that one...

Another area where we need to improve our carbon footprint is in printing - and we are currently going in to departments carrying out printing audits to see how we can help them print less, and where they do have to print, do it in a more efficient and carbon friendly way. I'm still amazed by how little people consider the cost (£ and C) of printing. The number of meetings I go to and see people clutching folders of single sided papers, carefully printed out by clerical staff I assume, often with colour banners, and presumeably filed when they get back - despite the fact that nearly all papers are held electronically centrally. Or thrown away, often having never even been referred to in the meeting. Hobby horse of mine I'm afraid!

Finally today we had a long look at our budget, and discussed costs, prioritisation and timing of our capital spending. Very difficult to do when you can't get good cost estimates for projects which are not complete, and will be making decisions about possible changes to technologies and infrastructure. Lots of flexibility needed!

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.

We're dooomed (part 2)

I'm in St Andrews at the moment for the UCISA CISG conference aptly named Tips to Avoid the Bunker as we're surrounded by golf courses - and the sea of course. The first session was entitled Hard Hats Time and was given by Derek Watson, Quaestor and Factor of the University of St. Andrews. Interesting title - thought it meant VC, but it's a sort of Finance/Estates Director role, and the only one in the country.

The talk focussed on the current economic climate, how we got here, what it means for Universities, and what we can do about it. Fascinating talk, and his explanation of how the world changed in 2008 and the economy came close to collapse was illustrated with some scary numbers. So far the world economy has lost $2.8 trillion (a huge number - 11 noughts!), begs the question of how the hell did that happen, and did we have it in the first place! It's equivalent to the market value of Oracle and Microsoft added together and multiplied by 8 - that's a lot of money to take out of the economy.

In talking about how this will affect Universities it is useful to reflect on what they are. Universities were established to promote teaching and learning and research, and although they are in receipt of significant public funds they are are not public bodies but independent charities. The financial pressures being felt by us in the summer of 2008 (or those heady days as as they were referred to) included inflation, a looming pay settlement, rising utility costs, the rising cost of technology and other initiatives, student demands, and public sector funding not keeping up with costs.

Now, we are facing pressures on earnings, no investment funding, endowment funds which have lost value and rising pension deficits. That's as well as all the pressures we were facing a year ago - they haven't gone away. So, to quote Private Frazier, "we're doooomed". Well, maybe not, but we have to achieve financial sustainability - and for the non accountants like me - put simply that means earning more then you spend and creating a surplus to pay for new buildings, equipment etc.

So - how do we get out of this. Well the message I picked up can be summarized in one word - change. If you do what you've always done, you get what you've always had. The world has changed, the rules have changed and we now have to change. We need imagination and the courage to make tough decisions about what we can stop doing and what we can do differently. IT can lead to business transformation, and we can use it to help the rest of the institution change.

Overall, the world has changed, but the old problems are still there. This is illustrated beautifully by a quote from 1663, where the Scottish Universities complained to the government that their staff were not being paid enough, the buildings were poorly maintained, and if it wasn't sorted out, society would suffer. Sound familiar?

And why part 2 in the title of this post? This is why. Sound familiar?

Savings and services

Back to work today with a vengeance. Long hot days in Mallorca, dips in the pool, and very good meals seem a long way away. Emails were looked at and mainly deleted last night, so today was a round of catch ups, meetings, and some difficult decisions to be looked at.

Like many Universities, we're looking for financial savings, and a number of staff are leaving - this department is losing 20 with many of them going in the next couple of weeks. Of course, the departures aren't evenly spread, with some teams being hit much harder than others. So, those discussions we started a few weeks ago of what we can stop doing, and where our priorities should be, are now going to be put into practice. There will be some hard choices, but we have to be clear that we cannot continue to offer the same services as we do now and certainly not manage them as we currently do. Unless a service affects the bottom line (ie bringing in more students, more research income or reducing costs) should we be doing it? Not in the current financial climate. So, an interesting few weeks in store.

As well as looking carefully at our services, we must not stop innovating - none of us want to work in a boring environment. So I am excited (yes really excited - how sad is that!), that I have two more brand new Gartner Hype Cycles to read. One on emerging technologies, and one on social software. Maggie Shiels on the BBC technology blog has already commented on the emerging technologies one, especially the suggestion that microblogging sites such as Twitter have peaked and are on their way to the trough of disillusionment. Haven't had chance to look at either in detail yet, so will reserve comments till later, although one thing that did strike me on a very quick glance at them both earlier this evening was the difference in timescales until technologies are adopted (and also with the Higher Education one I wrote about earlier).

Normally time to plateau is expressed as less than 2 years, 2-5 years, 5-10 years or more than 10 years, and there's usually a sprinkling of all of them. In the social software analysis, everything is so much quicker, with nothing taking longer than 10 years, and most things below 5 years. Much more rapid development and adoption.

I am of the opinion that we need to mirror this - rapid development and deployment is going to be key to staying ahead of the game.

As I said, the holiday seems a long time ago.....

Priorities

Short post today - off to an Awayday with rest of Professional Service heads looking at planning and strategy for next few years. Spent a lot of yesterday in meetings (when don't I?). Covered lots of topics - spent a couple of hours in the morning with the rest of the Exec team in the department looking at priorities for the next couple of years, expecially in the light of the economic situation and doing more with less. Looking at what we should be concentrating on, and what we will have to stop doing.

We will have to be much more selective about what we take on, especially in the development area, concentrating on those developments which benefit the whole University in teaching and learning and research, and avoiding the temptation to implement things which although important to the few people who use them, really do only benefit those few people. More integration and less development, more web services, more self service and automation of processes, an emphasis on speed and reliability - all areas which we agreed to prioritise. Of course, what is important is that we continue to be innovative.

OK, off to see what everyone else's priorities are.

Changing models of support

I'm in Aston at the moment for the UCISA Advisory and Support Staff Symposium, the theme of which is "It's not what you do but the way that you do it". The day started with me giving an introduction of what I think the 4 drivers are that are going to change "the way that we do it" over the next few years.

The first is funding. No point planning for financial uncertainty - there's nothing uncertain about it, we're going to have less. therefore we have to get tough and make decisions about how we do things differently, what we can stop doing and what we can offer a lower level of service on (very difficult to twll an audience of support staff that....). We have to do that in order to protect areas of excellent service and innovation. We also have to step up and help the University become more efficient and productive. Think the unthinkable and get rid of the white elephants. Change the support model.

24*7 support - been an issue for ages and there are ways of providing it - NORMAN is one good example of providing out of hours help to customers. But, it's no good having someone on the end of a phone reporting a service failure if there's no one available to fix it. The support model needs changing (or we could just build services which only break in working hours....)

Outsourcing - we should concentrate on where we can add value and look carefully at what services we are offering have become a commodity and can be offered cheaper and more efficiently by someone else. Obvious targets are student email – being done by some Universities, being considered by many more. Why do it yourself when Google or Microsoft will do it better, and for free. But that will change our support model. How do we support a service being run by someone else? Do we? Do we let the provider do it? If we can outsource email, and calendars, and media hosting to YouTube Google, and audio hosting to iTunes, (and what about storage - should we put it all in the cloud?). What effect will that have on how we support our users?

Finally, web 2.0 (or the social web or whatever label you want to give it). It's here and it's going to change things whether we like it or not. I've proably written about this so much that you'll be bored with it now! Our students are arriving with differnet expectations, and experience. their experience is with the intenet, not applications. Also there are other ways of doing things now – you don’t have to use what the IT department says any more. If you want to share a video- put it on youTube; collaborate on a document - use Google docs; survey your students - use survey monkey; talk to a colleague overseas - use Skype; keep your users informed of status updates – use twitter. We can't stop this, so we have to learn how to support it - change the support model. of su

Support services will need to engage with the whole University, especially staff. Not just in using the tools but how to using them properly. The library has a role in information literacy, our's is in new media literacy.

In summary - this is a challenging time for support staff, but exciting. We have the potential to do things in a very different way. To challenge some of the accepted ways of doing things, stop being gatekeepers and be facilitators, and embrace a diversity of solutions.

RUGIT at King's

Spent the day in London today at a RUGIT meeting - boy was it hot! We were meeting at Kings College - one the few Russell Group Universities I've never been to. didn't get chance to see much of it, but it's in a very good location - on The Strand, overlooking the Thames. There's a lovely chapel which I managed to peak into.

Main items of business today included Budgets, Benchmarking and Business Continuity. Everyone is planning for the effects of the economic downturn to be felt, and we discussed a number of ways in which we could cut costs whilst maintaining services. Reviewing all of our contracts with suppliers, including maintenance agreements and software licence arrangements was discussed, as well as streamlining business processes across different schools and faculties and using IT to help the Unviersity become more efficient. Also outsourcing - where there is minimum risk, low levels of complexity and high volumes, such as email and storage.

I've lost count of the number of times we've discussed benchmarking - it's a topic that won't go away, especially as our own institutions want to know if we're being cost effective and provding value for money. The problme we always come up against is our widely different portfolios services and structures - it's very difficult not to compare apples and pears. But, we're going to have another go!

Business continuity remains high on everyone's agenda with a number of HEIs reporting cases of swine flu. Pleased to note that all IT Directors getting the same reaction as me - people will work from home using our email/web/corporate systems, use our VLEs to teach, our research computing facilities and electronic resources. Because our systems will keep running won't they? Because we're not going to get ill! It was pointed out that systems often break when changes are applied and not often when they're running in steady state. So. don't make changes. Or, implement ITIL and make them in a carefully controlled way....

Planning.....

I'm spending a lot of time planning at the moment. Planning for a possible pandemic flu outbreak, either now or later in the year. Hopefully won't happen, but we need to be prepared if it does. How would we manage if 20% of our staff were off? What services would we prioritise, and would our systems cope with the increased load of more people remote working? I chair the University Business Continuity Operations group, so I'm looking not just at the IT side of things, but all operational areas of the University. Fortunately we're about to appoint a Business Continuity Manager, so I'll soon have someone to delegate to!

Also planning for financial uncertainty. Not that I think there's anything uncertain about Higher Education funding - we're going to get less. So, planning for what our priorities are, what are the core things we should concentrate on, what could we outsource or stop doing. And just as important - how can we keep doing exciting and innovative things, not just running existing core services. Also looking at how we can help the rest of the University do more with less and work more efficiently. So, some interesting decisions to take over the summer.