Security
Jed Woodhouse, IT Director at Northumbria University talks about his experiences of the Open ICT Tools Project
When working with external partners, security is frequently paramount. This was the case for the Northumbria University trial - security was paramount for the international business partners as the projects could be commercially sensitive. This meant that any collaborative tools used had to sit behind a firewall. The trial project wanted to explore open-source software but the University IT department's policy did not support their use. By working very closely with the IT Director (he was on the trial project steering board) and other IT Services staff, both sides came to an understanding of each other's requirements (and the reasoning behind them!) and a virtual server (partially separate to the University's main servers) was made available to the trial project together with IT Services support. This server is now available for all University collaborative projects.
The data held in Knowledge House's KHIS 2.0 system is also commercially sensitive and so security was high on their list of requirements.
One of the major barriers that had to be addressed by the Birmingham Metropolitan College project team was access to the NHS network. Moodle was allowed through the Firewall and online chat sessions did not present a problem. One Elluminate session was undertaken at Heart of Birmingham teaching Primary Care Trust (tPCT) but access to a webcam was not allowed although there was full access to audio and the materials presented. A request was sent to the Information and Governance Committee to allow a webcam to be fitted to a PC on Trust premises - however, after 6 months permission was still not granted. Birmingham Metropolitan College and Heart of Birmingham discussed the issues but the reason given by the NHS for not allowing access to some hardware/software was patient confidentiality.
