Report from Head of IS 14/05/2009

1. Library restructure: Andy Land starts on 6^th July, he will be coming in to visit in early June so LB will introduce as many of you as possible, on the 4^th June am. Interviews for the software developer are taking place this week. That leaves the grade 4 posts and LB is talking to the displaced staff who have expressed interest in these roles.

2. HERA: Negotiations continuing.

3. Learning Commons: The Steering group is looking at options for the building.

4. Talis Prism 3: SC to report

5. Talis/ Finance integration: That is progressing, we have had an initial meeting with Talis and have now got a project plan and solutions document. Mary McGovern is the Project Manager for the library aspect of the project.

6. JISC bids: We are submitting a bid with NacTEM for a project looking at the use of text mining tools with repositories.

7. GF refurbishment:

• Staff in admin B have now relocated, thank you for everyone’s cooperation for moving at such short notice.
• IT Services desk will be relocating to Blue 3, also with a presence in UP.
• Cluster will remain open as the escalator will be sealed off.

8. IT Services:
The IT Knowledgebase solution, KnowIT launches 18^th May, LB is on the project board for this. The interface will be released to staff and students in September. Initially this will just cover IT but will be extended to student services etc. We will be adding our content on our systems to replace what we currently have the Intranet etc. Andy is coordinating this for us.

9. Arcadia:
Jacky Hardcastle is interested in taking up this opportunity so I am working with her to produce a proposal in the area of personalised services.

10. Architectural Review

This had gone to L T and some amendments made. I have contacted a few consultants and some other Libraries. We have a commercial consultant very interested and some offers of help from other Universities and also MIMAS. A steering group will be set up shortly.

11. Digital Preservation Group and Digitisation Strategy Group

In the Library Strategy we will have strategies in the areas of Digitisation and digital preservation. Phil will be chairing a Digital Preservation group and I will be chairing a Digitisation Strategy group. The digitisation strategy had to be complete by the end of the year.

12. Escholar Launch

We had a very successful day, big thanks to Phil for his leadership of the project and also to the team who worked really hard to have a demonstration version of eScholar available.

13. Enquiries review

Katy is leading a review of all enquiries activity. This will consist of a steering group plus a number of subgroups, including relationship and location of physical desks (including IT desk), implementing a help desk solution and online enquiries.

14. Sickness and Leave reporting: Leave and sickness will be managed by line managers.  In the case of sickness, managers will notify Liz Ashton of any sickness for the central records.  Line managers need to also inform LB of any leave which is booked by their staff.

15. PDR: When everyone is trained we will be starting these in June so line managers should be thinking about scheduling these meetings in and preparing the paperwork.

Report from Head of IS 06/04/2009

3.1 Library restructure: We interviewed on the 1st April for the E-Library Infrastructure Manager. The software developer post has closed and we will be short listing after Easter, good response. Panel will be JMC, LB and Dave Cupit from ITS. We will then be looking at the Grade 4 posts; we will be looking at the displaced staff initially to fill new posts.

3.2 HERA: Negotiations continuing.

3.3 Learning Commons: The Learning Commons Away Day in March or the technical meeting did not take place. No further news to report.

3.4 Talis Prism 3: Project team has met with the Talis Consultant and it has been agreed that Kevin will be working up the design, based on the design concept that Talis came up with.

3.5 Talis/ Finance integration: We have now got approval from Margaret Laithwaite to go ahead with integrating purchase invoices. Project team has been set up with reps from Library, ITS and Finance. Timescale is to aim for end August but there are dependencies.

3.6 Talis Executive briefing:

• CEO from Talis, Dave Errington gave a presentation on future Talis developments.
• Talis now concentrating on public facing interface and not back office functions so they will not be developing an ERM.
• Met with Talis Aspire project manager, it is not realistic for us to migrate all of our reading lists to Aspire but we will be taking a phased approach.

3.7 Teaching and Learning bid: We got a total of 40K for the T and L bid, some on IT equipment, some for experimental furniture for the refurbishment. We also got an additional 5K for IT equipment for disability support. Gavin has been putting a priority list together.

3.8 JISC bids: We are looking at a number of possible JISC bids at the moment, with NaCTEM, Terri Attwood’s Utopia software and also talking to MIMAS.

3.9 GF refurbishment: 

• At the staff meeting CCS announced noisiest work will be 12th June to 17th August.
• Staff in admin B will be relocated for the duration of the move. KW and CCS are identifying a suitable location.
• IT Services desk will be relocating probably to Blue 3. 
• Laptop rental service will operate remotely and will store laptops in the safe during this period.
• Still waiting for confirmation about the cluster

3. 10 IT LT: 

Paul Harness’s email options paper was approved and an external project manager Philip Goldsmith has been appointed to manage the migration. He has worked on other major projects and has just left Barclays. • Portfolio of IS projects, when complete I will circulate to the team

3.11 IT Services: A naming competition for Right Answers was held and it will be called KnowIT.

3.12 PDR: Staff need to sign up for the training sessions.

3.13 Arcadia: This is ongoing and we are still happy to take expressions of interest. Also Stef Hundsberger has been accepted to start in April doing a project on Second Life with language teaching.

3.14 Future Leaders programme:

• LB did first module of this last week.
• LB will be using the architectural review as the basis for the project for the Future Leaders programme.
• LB took a paper to LT last week to approve the TOR and outline project plan and objectives.
• Next stage is to assign a consultant and assemble project team.
• Will be budget constraints on the review

Report from Head of IS: 5th March 2009

1. Personnel changes: Good news is that Val will be staying with the IT Support Team until the end of June, seconded from IT Services. Olivia will be returning to work on the 16th April. She will be working 3.5 days a week for 6 months before returning to full time hours in October.

2. Library restructure: Good progress is being made and this week we will be announcing the Grade 9-6 roles that have been confirmed so far. In the IS team the E-Library Infrastructure Manager has been advertised and short listing will take place on 6th March with interviews on the 16th March. The panel will be Sandra Bracegirdle, Lorraine Beard (chair) and Allan Copley from IT Services. The Software Developer will also be going to advert shortly, that will be a 2 year fixed term post. The new structure will come into being at the end of March and I will be talking individually to staff whose roles are changing about the transition.

3. HERA: Negotiations continuing and there will be a further meeting with ACAS on 6th March.

4. Learning Commons: There will be a Learning Commons Planning Away Day in March will staff from Library and IT Services attending. Lorraine is also going to a technical meeting as well later this month

5. Talis Prism 3 – There has now been a project team set up, chaired by Janet Barratt to agree the design and the implementation of the new interface which will go live in September. Sandra and Lorraine have given Talis and the group a set of objectives of what we want the new interface to do which links to the Library strategy.

6. IT LT: 

• Paul Harness’s email options paper is going to PRC on the 10th March with the recommendation to implement a Microsoft exchange server for email. 
• VSD – The resource model was agreed i.e. the contribution that everyone makes to the service. For the Centre which includes The Library this was agreed as I and in practical terms that means that the JRUL contribution is unchanged at two half days a week. 
• Desktop 08 – IT LT agreed to change the name of this to Staff Desktop/ Student Desktop. Staff Desktop is going to be trialed by small groups of staff initially including the IT LT. 
• IT Security Implementation Project has now ended as the new policies have now been published; they were in staff update this week. Karen’s team will be starting to do the encryption of devices identified as holding sensitive data.

7. IS Budget submission

• That went to John on the 27th February and will now go forward to Finance. Thank you to everyone for there input into that. 
• Jan has asked Lorraine to put in a bid for equipment to support teaching and learning. This includes e-book readers, disability equipment, huddle boards etc. Thanks to Andy for his help in putting this information together. 
• At the next staff meeting there will be a session on the Financial Situation of the Library and the University.

8. Review of Information Desk provision: Katy will be leading a group to review physical information desks, online help and the e-resources help following on from the Enquiry review which made a number of recommendations to Leadership Team. With the move to the Learning Commons this group will also include the IT help desk so Sinead Renold who is the ITSD service desk manager will be involved in this.

9. IT Services have just purchased a knowledgebase solution called Right Answers which will be used to help improve the first time fix rate at the Service desk as it includes a large amount of pre-populated information about University systems and we can add information about local applications and systems. At the moment it doesn’t include Talis information but the supplier is already talking to Talis about this. Lorraine is on the Right Answers Project Board and it may be that we use Right Answers as a Library knowledge base as well

10. GF refurbishment: Details have been circulated regarding likely staff moves. Also the Information Desk and the IT Service desk will also be relocated. Karen is on the Project Team for this project to represent IS but Steve will also be consulted where necessary.

11. Management Development Programme: Starting in April there will be a series of workshops for Middle Managers who have line management responsibility. These will include performance management; sickness absence management etc and you should be receiving details of these shortly. Members of LT will attend these workshops where diaries commit.

Report from Head of IS

 3.1 Personnel changes: Welcome to Valerie Callow who is a new Support Analyst from the ITSD Shared Service Desk team who is working with us for a month to familiarize herself with our support requirements before going on the VSD.

3.2 Library restructure is progressing well. Most of the IS aspirational interviews have now taken place. The Leadership Team is intending to confirm posts on a grade by grade basis. New roles will be advertised when the aspirational interviews have been completed for that grade.

3.3 HERA: only news is that UCU and management will be meeting with ACAS on 6^th February to try and take negotiations forward.

3.4 Business case went to Finance Operations Group to integrate Talis and Oracle Financials. This was approved.

3.5Learning Commons: LB chaired a brainstorming session of the Learning and Technology sub group of the Learning Commons Project Committee, the output of which was a paper which went to the LC architects.

3.6 Staff portal – myself, Jan, Sandra and Barry met with Allan Copley and Dave Cupit to talk about which services we could make available through the portal. We discussed Talis services, repository submission, online course bookings, webfeat, document supply, recommending a book etc

3.7 e-payments – this service has now been launched and fully operational

3.8 We have an ebook reader on trial until the end of February. Stella’s team will be experimenting with this

3.9 Talis design team have sent us some new designs for the new version of Prism which L T will be discussing on Wednesday 28th January. After that we will have our data loaded and then we can start to customise it and integrate with our other services.

3.10 ITLT: 

• Looking at various options for a replacement email service.
• VSD – resourcing reviewed, decided to stick with same resource model for the Faculties and the central resource that we contribute to is still being reviewed. Sinead Renold has been appointed on a 6 month basis as Service Support Manager and 2 new support analysts have been recruited.
• Desktop 08 – commitment from IT, LT to move to Desktop 08 for staff as soon as we are all confident that it works and student version is stable.
• IT Security Implementation Group has been established which will be implementing a number of security policies.

3.11 L B is going to be doing the Future Leaders Programme which is run by the Leadership Foundation, starting in March. She will have to do a project which has to be significant and is going to be the full review of systems which will be starting in April. Are a few residential sessions so wanted to make you aware of that.

Report from the Head of IS 04/12/2008

IS Team meeting 4/12/08 – Chair’s report

 

1. Personnel Changes – Welcome to Tom and Andy to their first meetings. Purpose of the meetings was explained.

 

Thank you to Siobhán to agreeing to take over from Jan in organising the meetings and taking the minutes.

 

Also Alan’s last meeting, so would like the opportunity to thank Alan for all his support and his contributions to the team over the last 37 years. He will be missed and I hope you will all come along to his retirement do on the 19^th December so we can all wish Alan well.

 

2. Library restructure – we are now in the consultation phase for the restructure process. The LT had a feedback meeting with the Trade Unions this week where any issues raised by members were considered. On the 15^th December the new structure with amendments as a result of the feedback will be published. The Job descriptions will be put on the Intranet a few days later and the aspirational meetings will start in January. We are on course to complete the restructure by April 2009.

 

3. HERA – The moderation of outcomes is ongoing and the TU are in negotiation with the University on the initial outcomes. No timescale for completion at present.

 

4. Change Management workshops now taken place and yesterday the LT looked at a number of recommendations made by the trainers to take forward. Also middle managers with line management responsibilities have been on a management development course.

 

5. Talis

• Integration of Talis and Oracle Financials – LT see this as a priority and we have met with ITS to discuss the detail of the integration and this is going forward to the Finance operations group in January (chaired by Margaret Laithwaite) where our work will be prioritised.
• Talis Strategic meeting –Members of the L T meeting met with the CEO of Talis Dave Errington to discuss how they many help us with moving forward with the strategy and also issues relating to response times and development requests

 

6. Learning Commons – I have been asked to chair a group called the Learning and Technology sub group of the Learning Commons Project Committee which will be tasked with looking at technology requirements of the LC . Membership and remit still to be agreed.

 

7. Laptop Loan Scheme – we are looking at alternative supplier of the services (Dinosaur supplies).

 

8. e-payments – kiosks have arrived but still an outstanding issue with the credit card payments which ITS are awaiting a fix from Salford Softward. Launch fully on19^th January.

 

9. ITLT

• looking at various options for a replacement email service and these require further consideration. Sarah Garland’s team have also done a student survey of possible alternatives including gmail and zimbra.
• Looking at resourcing of the VSD and taking action to address some of the concerns – appointed a new Service Desk Manager Sinead Renold appointed starting on 03/12/08 and 2 additional support analysts are being appointed all on contract.
• Initiating a project to complete the definition and implementation of IT security policies including data handling and a publicity / education campaign. KV will be our representative on that group.

Report from Head of IS 24/10/08

• IS Review/restructure
Following consultation with the team the proposed IS structure has been agreed . We are now writing the job descriptions for new and changed roles. Following this there will be a period of consultation with the trade unions and staff before aspirational interviews where matchings, ring fencing and new roles will be discussed with each member of the team. We hope to complete the process by April 2009. LB is happy to answer any questions on the process and there is also information on the Intranet.

• HERA
The initial IS HERA outcomes have been received by the Library and we have some follow up meetings with the HERA role analyst to review the outcomes. Reviewing and consistency checking of outcomes across the University is leading to some delays to the completion of the project.

Change Management workshops

These are going ahead and the Leadership Team would be happy to receive any feedback from these workshops.

• Laptop loan scheme
Unfortunately the company providing the service has had to withdraw the service due to funding problems. The Library is exploring the possibility of a replacement in house solution with STARS.

• Wireless progress
The Wireless networking project is complete at the Main Library and Precinct Library Phase 2 of the project (Red and Purple) will take place next summer as part of a larger IT Services wireless project.

• E-payments
There is an outstanding issue as Finance are waiting for Oracle to provide a fix for an issue they experienced after the recent Barclays upgrade. We are still waiting for the delivery of the additional kiosks but we hope to have completed the project by the end of the year.

Report from Head of IS

Report from Head of IS

• IS Review/restructure
Thank you to those who sent comments and suggestions on structure. Two suggested structures are going forward to Jan for discussion. In common with other structures the proposed new Library structure will have to be approved by the Registrar. The restructure is expected to be complete by the end of January 2009. Please attend the staff meetings where each of the departmental reviews will be discussed.

• Change management sessions
Please book for one of these sessions, please check with your line manager.

• HERA
No further news except there has been a reported delay to the published timescale of at least 4 weeks.

• Laptop loan scheme
The company which has been appointed is Chase IT and we expect the new service to be launched on 29th September. The service will run from the Blue 1 desk and will be staffed 9-5 Monday to Friday. Loans will be per semester, monthly or daily, insurance is included in the pricing.

• Wireless progress
This has been going ahead as follows:
Blue 2 7 out of 7 Wireless Access Points installed & tested

Blue Ground 8 out of 8 Wireless Access Points installed & tested
(including 1 in the Lounge, 2 in Muriel Stott, & 1 in purple Ground)

Green 2 3 out of 3 Wireless Access Points installed

Blue 1 These 3 Wireless Access Points will be done tomorrow.

• E-payments
This project is nearing completion and will go live in a few weeks. Users will be able to make cash or credit card payments into their GPAS account and then will have to go to a web interface to pay their fines. Minimum credit card payment of £3. Public Services will be providing training for Library staff.

• Budget
Budget allocation is £298, 750 and £317 to the IR. I am discussing with John and Jan what the IS budget priorities will be for this year and will communicate these at the IS meetings .

Best wishes
Lorraine