Conclusions

The JISC Information Strategies work was innovative in HE in the mid 1990s. The approach was not prescriptive and was designed to be flexible enough to take account of the diversity in the sector, recognising that every institution had different requirements. The focus on information rather than technology; the emphasis on the information strategy being central to the corporate strategic planning process; the engagement of a wide cross section of the community; the process-based approach with an emphasis on changing attitudes; the process mapping and information audit to establish 'what should be' and what is' and an approach based on strategic information projects all contributed to a strategic development process which on the whole was successful and is still relevant today. A degree of that success was determined by the support of senior management, the 'culture' of the institution and the resources allocated to the process.

The networking, the practical 'how to' workshops, and learning from others were cited as particularly useful aspects of the initiative by the pilot and exemplar sites although it is often a little difficult to judge the impact of the initiative on strategic institutional change.

Overall, the most challenging aspects of the JISI work involved securing senior management support. This is still a problem today and national agencies need to find ways of engaging senior managers and developing more 'type 42' managers.

For proper management of information resources, information principles and policies, an institution's 'values' in relation to information are key and are still relevant to today's institutions but embedding these into institutional culture is not trivial. This is an element of the information strategies work which was not very prominent in the case studies, but is articulated in many information strategies documents and defines the 'set of attitudes' outlined in the Guidelines. This begs the question: is there a 'core set' of information 'values' that can be articulated for the sector?

In today's fast changing and complex environment it could be argued that a process for developing an information strategy as outlined in the Guidelines is too slow and that there are better more agile techniques to meet the needs of institutions. Industry and other parts of the public sector have been using 'adaptive organisation' methods' for some time now to facilitate this need for faster responsiveness (John Voloudakis, 2005).

Given the diverse nature of the sector there is no 'ideal process', however one such 'adaptive organisation methodology' known as Enterprise Architecture (JISC 2009) is being explored by a few pilot sites funded by JISC. All the pilot sites note that this type of approach is best applied at an institutional level with sponsorship from top level management.

The more successful aspects of the Information Strategies work were the engagement of a wide cross section of the community in 'strategic conversation' through the workshops and focus groups and the process mapping and information audit work. The development of Web 2.0 social software offers further possibilities for developing 'virtual' engagement across the institution.

Many of the approaches used in the JISI were new to HE at the time but had been used in industry and other public sector organizations for several years as part of change management methodologies such as business process re-engineering or total quality management. The key to the Information strategy work was that this was a process to change attitudes. Many of these techniques for project management, process mapping and change management are more readily available and familiar to the sector today and are supported through resources such as the JISC infoNet infokits.

Institutions need to be able to learn from good practice elsewhere in the sector, in the commercial sector and other parts of the public sector. Industry has tackled many of the challenges facing the sector today in the move towards developing e-business. There may be lessons to be learned here which could be transferred to the education sector. There may be scope for exploring modern change management and strategic planning techniques used in other sectors such as Enterprise Architecture already being piloted and making these available to the sector through new infokits, case studies of good practice or 'how to' events.

There is a recognition in many of the national strategies for ICT that institutions need to adopt a more strategic approach to planning ICT and that senior managers need to be engaged in this process. There has also been a call to encourage institutions to develop information strategies to support more innovation and strategic and transformational change, but it is not clear what the information strategy process would encompass.

The HE and FE sectors have made substantial investment in ICT over the past decade, however the real value of the investment can only be gained through effective integration of these technologies with the institutional systems and processes they support. Real change is only possible through organisational integration which needs a fundamental review and redesign of processes and practices. This needs strong leadership at the top level of the organisation. Despite the Information Strategies initiative IT integration is still often understood too narrowly as referring to technical or systems integration. This focus on technology often misses important aspects of managing information as a strategic resource such as the very complex legal and compliance issues.

As technology becomes ever more ubiquitous the issues related to the information they are used to store, create, use and maintain and the people who are responsible for the information become ever more challenging. It could be argued that institutions need information strategies which focus on the information rather than the technology more than ever. On the other hand it could be argued the institutions are suffering from 'strategy' overload and information should be seen as an underpinning resource and integral part of other corporate strategies such as the teaching and learning strategy and research strategies. Whichever way an institution approaches its strategy planning process in today's environment, information has to be managed as a strategic resource which underpins all the core functions and processes of the institution and contributes to the strategic vision and corporate plan of the institution.