JISC FSD Programme: Projects and Explorers
The following organisations are together exploring how the delivery of corporate administrative services, student records and information management services, and student and academic services can be improved through flexible means of service delivery, including the possibility of operating certain functions and activities through shared service solutions. A cluster of HE institutions are also using, adopting or interested in the Enterprise Architecture (EA) approach to support strategic change and improvement.
Blackpool and The Fylde College are reflecting on their recent successes in business systems integration implementations and reporting these as a case study, to build the capacity and upskilling necessary to put in plans for a more business-led and service-oriented approach to interoperability development across their corporate services. Alternatives to traditional software supply models, such as Shared Services, Open Source products, Cloud applications or SaaS, will also be considered. This will include the delivery of a workshop for FE colleges in North West England, entitled 'The Integrated Flexible Campus'. They hope to start phase two of the project in May 2010, which will see a business-led and service-oriented approach to the rollout and integration of finance and customer relationship management functionality.
Bloomsbury Consortium. This civic grouping of six non-competing institutions (Birkbeck College, The Institute of Education, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Royal Veterinary College, the School of Oriental and African Studies and The School of Pharmacy) are being funded to deliver an FSD consortium-pilot project which builds upon their portfolio of shared licenses, and using service-oriented approaches. It aims to establish a shared media platform across the consortium, including working with Apple iTunes U to create a consortium site which interfaces openly with consortium data architecture and systems. This offers the programme references to excellent examples of license sharing and joint governance across consortia.
Cardiff University are seeking to develop a common and shared understanding within their university, and within the wider sector, on how to build the capacity and maturity to advance towards achieving an environment of flexible and shared service delivery, through the development of an FSD Maturity Roadmap, and deliver a new EA team and approach for the University via Information Services.
Coventry University are baselining their current systems provision and identifying opportunities for the use of SOA. They are also considering leading a consortium from an already established group of Universities with in-house student record systems which would build the capacity to jointly investigate common emerging external change drivers (such as recent UKBA, ELQ initiatives and HESA returns), to produce common statements of requirements; identify issues; and architect potential solutions in order to reduce costs, travel and effort across institutions with in-house SRSs.
De Montfort University and Southampton Solent University are delivering a four-month FSD SOA/Middleware demonstrator project focused around the scenario of student tracking and engagement. This project has selected a solutions provider (Fulcrum Ltd) to develop a working prototype of a web-based application system which demonstrates how SOA and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technologies can be used to gather information from multiple application systems across the two universities, irrespective of the vendor and versions, store it in a secure and consistent form, and create an integrated report instance. This project will conclude in January 2010 and will inform the scope of the FSD 12 month pilots which will commence in April 2010.
Imperial College London are defining their FSD maturity roadmap and business case to help consider the relevance of EA as an approach for strategic change and improvement, so that the college's ICT department knows how best to deliver agile, flexible and cost-effective services to their customers within the college, and have a strategic approach to building an underlying Service Oriented Architecture.
King's College London is delivering a project that enables and positions the Centre of Research (CeRch) at KCL to learn of ways, and of the cost, risk and impact, of how research information systems and practice, and digital repositories, could all be made available as a flexible and shared service, achieved principally by identifying common services for sharing within the e-Research domain and demonstrating where flexibility can be exploited.
Leeds Metropolitan University are delivering a project that enables and positions the Academic Support and E-Services department to learn of ways, and of the cost, risk and impact, of improving their service delivery mechanisms for their current portfolio of student services, as well as for future service provisions.
North Hertfordshire College, in partnership with City College Norwich, The College of West Anglia and SHM, are investigating the practicalities of a Further Education College operating certain finance functions and activities through a shared service solution, and to pilot a shared service solution within a real consortium setting.
Nottingham University are currently participating in the programme to share their experiences and lessons learned in developing a long-term strategy and business case for the implementation of a new service-oriented student management system, with the aim that this new implementation will be capable of improving the service delivery mechanisms to both students and staff at Nottingham University and across their campuses in China and Malaysia.
RMAS HE Consortium: The six institutions, with the University of Exeter leading and partners University of Essex, London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Kent, Bournemouth University and the University of Brighton, will receive support in making technical decisions, specifying the statement of requirements, and engaging with suppliers of a potential shared-service Research Management and Administration System solution. This HEFCE-funded shared service feasibility project provides an excellent example of a community-driven shared service under development. They are also looking to expand their FSD activity by assessing the business benefits from implementing such a solution and demonstrating the benefits of moving from the current mix of research support systems to a 'cradle to grave' solution which uses open, interoperable and service-oriented (or modular) technologies.
Roehampton University are sharing the work they are doing in developing a 'shared services' roadmap, which addresses moving towards a process-led business environment which leads IT service development, and introducing the development of an EA approach using TOGAF.
SnUG Consortium. This consortium (Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Manchester, University of Cambridge, University of Derby, Queen's University Belfast and the University of Glasgow) is currently discussing shared service developments between the HEIs using/implementing the Oracle Peoplesoft Campus Solutions (CS) Student System. Development being investigated include areas of interfacing (e.g. to VLEs), or in the development of required UK extensions to CS functionality, as generic shared services, which could lead to future collaborations with Oracle. The group is currently considering ways to work together to identify and deliver flexible/ shared services and would like to explore possibilities before embarking on pilots or trials. The FSD programme therefore offers an important support service to help the group formulate ideas not only for the group itself but also for the sector.
Staffordshire University are currently engaged in piloting Enterprise Architecture (EA) through JISC's Curriculum Design Programme. They are using this forum to share experiences and discuss common issues and practice with other institutions who have also adopted EA as an approach to strategic and technological change.
Thames Valley University is delivering a consortium-led project that scopes the demand and requirements for, and possible solutions to, an Intelligent Decision Support in HE (IDS-HE) as a shared service to the sector.
University of Bristol's strategic goal is to better understand how FSD and EA can benefit the University of Bristol, and also to explore best practice techniques with other institutions around getting senior management support for a more strategic, architectural approach to systems development (the FSD business case).
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Flexible Service Delivery
Enterprise Architecture
University of Oxford is delivering a project to address the lack of provision in the area of assessment management. The project recognises that there has been little or no work done in terms of assessment management systems to support the process of marking and moderation by external examiners and review by examination boards, and that current student system providers do not address this requirement within their products. This means that these processes are managed (at significant cost) at departmental level in most universities - either through local systems, spreadsheets or very manual methods. The objective therefore is to address this and define the requirements for a service that could be plugged into any student system and provide the appropriate functionality. With this programme, the University are also delivering a project which identifies and pilots approaches to baseline costing of IT services so that it is possible to assess where cost savings and process improvements can be made. The FSD Programme Management Team considers this project to be the first part of a staged process for the programme to look at Total Cost of Ownership models.
