JISC

July 1998

To: Heads of Institutions funded by the HEFCE or by the DENI

Copies: Directors of Information Services at those Institutions
Librarians at those Institutions

Introduction

1. The JISC has long recognised the importance of C&IT standards; the JISC's Five Year Strategy states (recommendation IX) that "the JISC will continue to identify and promote appropriate IS standards; support HE involvement in standards work; and keep the community fully informed of developments". The JISC already funds membership by representatives of the HE community of several key standards bodies. The JISC sees its role as primarily one of keeping track of developments in standards, and reporting on such developments to the community. There is also a role for supporting the development of standards.
2. The Technology Applications Sub-Committee (TASC) now has lead responsibility for the JISC's role in relation to standards, and has formed a new group (the Standards Sub-Committee (SSC) to oversee the JISC's work in this important area. The SSC has an annual budget of £60,000, and intends to concentrate this relatively limited resource on funding work on a small number of standards or groups of standards to review (and in some cases contribute to the development of) them and to disseminate findings as widely as possible to the higher education and research communities. Standards to be selected should, as far as possible be open, relevant and widely applicable to the higher education and research community, and defined through an appropriate body.
3. When grants are awarded, the SSC will provide clear guidance on what is expected in return for funding. Deliverables will include the production of a report on the implications of the relevant standard to the HE community supported by a web page with more detailed information. If a renewal of funding is sought, it will be necessary for recipients of funding to provide evidence to the SSC of work done to date and of the continuing relevance of the standard.

Submission of bids

4. The following criteria will be used in assessing bids:
   • Closeness of fit to JISC strategy
   • Programme of work
   • Dissemination Strategy
   • Value for Money
   • Project management experience
   • Technical competence of the bidders

   Bidding areas
   

   10. SSC is interested in funding work in the areas listed in paragraph 11 below. However, much work is already occurring in some of these areas and bidders should ensure that their bid does not duplicate this work. Groups already active include:
       • Elib 
       • UKOLN 
       • AGOCG 
       • TASI
       • IMS Centre
   11. Areas of greatest interest to the JISC include:
       • Search and retrieve and metadata standards
       • Standards for multimedia objects (such as graphics, images, video, sound, and VRML) and their integration
       • WWW standards where SSC is interested in:
         • Security
         • Rights (eg copyrights)
         • XML - especially education related DTDs
       • Network and communications standards (the work here would be expected to focus on dissemination). Areas of particular interest include:
         • Quality of Service
         • IPv6
         • Portable computing
         • Telephony
       • C&IT Standards for learning. There are two areas here (pedagogy being outwith JISC's remit):
         • Delivery; including virtual learning environments, interoperability, synchronous and asynchronous communications for education, videoconferencing.
         • Content; this is mostly covered by IMS
       • Security; including:
         • Authentication, Authorisation and Privacy
         • Access control
         • E-commerce
         • smartcards

         Electronic distribution

         13. This, like all JISC Circulars, is available electronically via the JISC website.
             

         Joseph Hutcheon
         Secretary, Technology Applications Sub-Committee
         

       • The committee will also consider bids to follow standards or emerging standards which are not on the above list. Bidders will need to establish the standard's relevance to Higher Education activities.
       • Individuals and groups are invited to submit bids for funding by the SSC. It is anticipated that grants to any standard or group of standards will not exceed £10,000.
       • Proposals should be no more than four sides of A4. The body of the bid should include the following topics:
         1. How the activity will meet the objectives of the Standards Sub Committee;
         2. Programme of work including a summary of intended outputs/deliverables from the activity with a timetable;
         3. Dissemination Strategy
         4. Project management
         5. Brief outline of the proposer's relevant experience, this should include reference to related work taking place elsewhere in the community.
         6. Budgetary cost to the JISC of the activity, including a rough estimate of the composition of this cost and any contribution from the host institution(s)
       • Bids should be submitted electronically using the form available at http://www.jtap.ac.uk/bid/ to arrive by 17:00 hrs on Monday 14 September 1998. The main body of the document (which must be a single file) should be submitted in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format (rtf) or HTML. Details of how to submit the bid can be found on the web page. Files which contain viruses may be deleted and the bid rejected.
       • Each bid will be considered by a panel of independent experts, who will recommend to the SSC which projects should be funded.
       • Further information is available from Tom Franklin, the JTAP Programme Manager, Manchester Computing, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL. Phone 0161 275 6106. Email t.franklin@manchester.ac.uk.