Some Questions On IT Provision
As IT facilities become widely available to all of us at the individual level, institutions need to examine where they should focus their efforts. In the pioneering days of IT in education, when students did not have personal access to technology, providing rooms of computers made sense. However taking this track has dragged institutional resource managers into a recurring nightmare of replacement that sucks vital resources into providing more of the same and reduces the opportunity for development in the core infrastructure that users cannot provide. What aspects of the technological fabric should we invest in and what should we expect students to bring with them?
The rapidly developing use of social software by our students is a key feature of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. At a broad-brush level within the institution this is a world that is less about systems and more about services. It inevitably causes us to think in terms of service provision and to start to question firstly whether we are providing really useful services that meet the needs of our users, secondly to wonder whether there are others that, in a service-oriented IT world, can more ably (and cost effectively) provide those services, and thirdly, as similarities between educational institutions are much greater than their differences, why can't these services be shared between groups of institutions, or even the whole sector.
The move to services then raises at least two key questions for institutional managers:
- Should we continue to do everything or can we outsource (or right source) some of our provision?
- Could we provide better IT services if we shared the task with other providers? (A sort of in-sector outsourcing).
These are strategic questions that go beyond the day-to-day provision of client devices and should form part of the consideration of the development of the estate and its associated infrastructure.
KPMG has produced a report for HEFCE on the potential of shared services in HE and the University of Liverpool has led a project under the HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management Programme (LGMF 028) to investigate this further.
The e-Framework for Education and Research is an initiative by the JISC and Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). The primary goal of the e-Framework is to facilitate technical interoperability within and across education and research through improved strategic planning and implementation processes. The initiative is based on a Service Oriented Approach (SOA). Further information on SOA can be found on the JISC e-Learning Focus website under the Framework and Tools Strand. JISC has also created an animation (available in QuickTime & Windows Media formats) that describes the benefits of the Service Oriented Approach. It provides a very clear explanation of the SOA model and is recommended viewing!
