| Dates & Funding |
Activity |
Importance to your institution |
| Research |
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Released September 2009
Funding £400,000 (7-8 projects at up to £50,000 per project)
Start November 2009
Duration
6-7 months |
The VRE Rapid Innovation Forge will commission a group of smaller projects, which will address the need to include new people and institutions within the VRE community and is a mechanism to ensure dissemination of the funded VRE solutions between VRE practitioners and newcomers to the field.
This activity links to JISC’s strategic objective to promote the development, uptake and effective use of ICT to support research.
Eligibility to bid
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. (FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible provided it can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda).
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Virtual Research Environments (VREs) comprise a set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to facilitate or enhance the processes of research practitioners within and across institutional boundaries. The aim of this call is to encourage new participants to share expertise on VREs with established users.
Of interest to staff responsible for
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. (FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible provided it can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda).
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Released December 2009
Funding £1m (up to £150,000 per project)
Start Spring 2010
Duration
12 months |
JISC wishes to fund projects across three strands:
- Strand A: Citing, Integrating and Linking Research Data: To demonstrate the innovative potential for research and scholarly communications of improving methods for citing, integrating and linking research data.
- Strand B: Enhanced Research Data Publications: To explore innovative technical and organisational models for data publication by scoping and piloting enhanced publications for research data in the form of ‘data journals’, ‘overlay journals’, or similar.
- Strand C: Research Data Management Training: To promote research data management skills in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through designing and piloting training units for undergraduate or postgraduate courses, for librarians or research support staff, or in the form of summer schools or roadshows.
Eligibility to bid
Proposals may be submitted by Higher Education (HE) Institutions funded by HEFCE or HEFCW. HE and FE institutions in Northern Ireland and Scotland and FE institutions in England and Wales are not eligible to bid but may be involved as partners in proposals led by HE institutions funded by HEFCE or HEFCW.
Proposals may be from single institutions or consortia. Partnership arrangements may be developed outside the sector (for example with research council sites, publishers, commercial suppliers), but the lead partner must meet the criteria outlined above. Funds can only be allocated through the lead partner.
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Virtual Research Environments (VREs) comprise a set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to facilitate or enhance the processes of research practitioners within and across institutional boundaries. The aim of this call is to encourage new participants to share expertise on VREs with established users.
Of interest to staff responsible for
Heads of Higher Education Institutions funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales, Pro Vice Chancellors for (e)Research, Directors of Information Services and Systems
Learning Resource Managers, Librarians and Archivists, Principal Investigators in Research Teams.
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| Learning & Teaching |
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Released Open and ongoing call for three years with fixed assessment points. Next assessment point is April 2010
Funding Up to £50,000 per project
Start
Call to be released February 2010 |
It is essential for the sector to continue to innovate to support the future delivery of learning and teaching. Projects must support improved understanding at practitioner and senior management level of the potential of ICT to support learning and teaching; the stimulation of positive and informed change in the sector through the enhanced capacity; knowledge and skills around the use of ICT to support learning and teaching; support for personalisation, and pedagogic and institutional diversity, at departmental, institutional, regional or national levels; or support for delivery of national policy on lifelong, workplace and flexible learning and the provision of strategic leadership to the sector.
Eligibility to bid
Proposals may be submitted by HE institutions funded via HEFCE, SFC, HEFCW and DEL Northern Ireland, and by FE institutions funded via SFC, DCELLS Wales and DEL Northern Ireland. FE institutions in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provided proposals demonstrate how the work supports the HE in FE agenda.
Proposals may be from single institutions or consortia. Partnership arrangements may be developed outside the sector (for example with research council sites, publishers, commercial suppliers), but the lead partner must meet the criteria outlined above. Funds can only be allocated through the lead partner.
Only one proposal per lead institution will be considered at each assessment point.
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Of interest to staff responsible for
Pro Vice Chancellors for (e)Learning, Directors of Information Services & Systems,
Learning Resource Managers, Librarians and Archivists, Principal Investigators in Research Teams, Learning Technologists, Heads of e-Learning and ILT Managers. |
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Released March 2010
Funding
£450,000 (up to £30,000 for 5 projects under Strand A and up to £100,000 for 3 projects under Strand B)
Start
January 2010
Duration
Strand A 6 months
Strand B 18 months |
Distributed VLE 3/10 Programme
The Joint Information Systems Committee(JISC) invites institutions to submit funding proposals for projects to implement technical work to widen the range of functionality the virtual learning environment (VLE) can provide in an interoperable way so as to meet identified user needs.
- Strand A: Technical rapid innovation projects Technical rapid innovation projects will design and deliver light-weight solutions to one or more priority user needs by widening the range of functionality the VLE can provide in an interoperable way.
- Strand B: Institutional pilots Institutional pilots will review their virtual learning environment and related systems to establish to what extent they meet the current and projected needs of the wide range of users in the institution and beyond, and implement technical work to widen the range of functionality the VLE can provide in an interoperable way.
Eligibility to bid
Proposals may be submitted by HE institutions funded via HEFCE, SFC, HEFCW and DEL Northern Ireland, and by FE institutions funded via SFC, DCELLS Wales and DEL Northern Ireland. FE institutions in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provided proposals demonstrate how the work supports the HE in FE agenda.
Proposals may be from single institutions or consortia unless indicated otherwise in the relevant call. Partnership arrangements may be developed outside the sector (for example with research council sites, publishers, commercial suppliers), but the lead partner must meet the criteria outlined above. Funds can only be allocated through the lead partner. |
Of interest to staff responsible for
Pro Vice Chancellors for (e)Learning and (e)Research
Directors of Information Services and Systems
Learning Resource Managers, Librarians and Archivists
Principal Investigators in Research Teams
Learning Technologists
Heads of e-Learning and ILT Managers |
| Organisational Support |
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Released September 2009
Funding
£690,000 (from £25,000 -£75,000 per project)
Start
July 2010
Duration
4-18 months |
Greening ICT – Phase 1
Environmental sustainability will be a priority in the new JISC Strategy 2010-12. Activities to be funded in this first phase of JISC’s Greening ICT Programme include:
A number of Small Scale Exploratory Studies to investigate various aspects of the Green ICT agenda where there is currently limited understanding and knowledge. Areas could cover (but not be limited to) new ways of working; the environmental and social impacts of the move to e-Learning; ICT and new and refurbished building; new and emergent technologies; the impact of environmental regulations of the HE and FE sectors; networking and the environment. (Projects between 4 and 12 months duration. £30,000 - £70,000 per project. Total funding available £300,000).
A study to investigate the ownership and responsibility of energy costs – investigating issues associated with the often typical disconnection between the responsibility for paying for the costs of the energy consumed by ICT systems and the consumers of the energy. A number of case studies will also be funded showing how institutions are piloting innovative ways of developing robust energy cost accounting systems and processes. (Project 18 months duration. £90k in total (including case studies).
Demonstrators in Green ICT. A number of projects will be funded in institutions which will demonstrate good practice and innovative approaches to reducing the impact of ICT on the environment – including, for example, PC powerdown solutions, server visualisation, and re-engineering the data centre. (12 months duration. (£50,000 per project. Total funding available £300,000).
Eligibility to bid
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
(FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda)
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ICT has a large carbon footprint in UK higher education and in 2009 it was estimated to cost the sector £116m in ICT related electricity bills.
JISC’s new Greening ICT Programme can help institutions reduce their carbon footprint and associated energy costs, reduce waste generated by ICT use and increase the capacity and expertise across the sector in sustainable ICT.
Between 2010 and 2012 JISC intends to fund a range of projects and activities that will help to reduce the environmental impact of ICT use across HE and FE in the UK.
Of interest to staff responsible for
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
(FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda).
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Released April 2010
Funding £500,000 (up to £90,000 per pilot project)
Start: June 2010
Duration: 11 months |
Flexible Service Delivery - Pilot Projects
A principle aim of JISC's Flexible Service Delivery (FSD) Programme is to help institutions understand the practicalities of operating certain functions and activities through a flexible and shared service solution. Funding will be provided to pilot a shared service solution within a consortium setting. Functional areas will include, but not be limited to, HR, finance and student information management.
A number of pilots will be funded. Each pilot will comprise of two or more institutional partners and is likely to be delivered through two distinct phases. Phase one will focus on requirements gathering, developing the potential procurement specification for solution vendors, and providing the rationale and business case for proceeding, or not, with a shared service solution. If appropriate, the project will then deliver phase two which will implement a live operational pilot.
The pilots will build upon the pathfinder projects currently funded under the FSD programme which are identifying the stages that institutions need to go through to support organisational and process change to improve service delivery, increase flexibility and reduce costs. The pilots will also benefit from being members of the FSD Programme 'Strategic Technologies Group' which provide a community in with to discuss and exchange useful practices with the other pilot projects and likeminded institutions.
Eligibility to Bid
Proposals may be submitted from institutions funded via HEFCE and HEFCW. FE institutions in England are eligible to apply if they teach HE to more than 400 FTEs and the proposal demonstrates they support the HE in FE agenda. |
The programme responds to the following demands within institutions:
To deliver more for less: institutions are seeking greater efficiencies in a more constrained economic environment; students are seeking greater value for money and have greater expectations.
For sharing information internally and externally: the programme offers opportunities for saving money by running integrated systems and interoperable processes; improving the student experience by offering a seamless student service.
For flexible learning: institutions will benefit from systems and processes that can continuously keep pace with changing requirement.
For opportunities for shared services: to enable institutions operate more effectively and efficiently.
Of interest to staff responsible for:
Senior managers responsible for policy and funding decisions.
Senior IT staff who are responsible for Information Services and Systems. |
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Released February 2010
Funding £800,000(Up to £100,000 per project)
Start: June 2010
Duration
12 months |
JISC’s BCE Programme aims to enhance access to institutional resource for business and community engagement partners.
Following on from the JISC funded Business Information Resources Landscape Study recommendations, JISC is broadening its support for institutions in this area in order to generate good practice models which harness existing regional/sub-regional networks, of more joined-up provision of information and knowledge services to businesses (especially SMEs) and entrepreneurs.
Funds are available to support innovative demonstrator projects in which institutions take a leading role in facilitating an integrated information and knowledge service model, in partnership with other key agencies such as a local library, local development agencies and business support intermediaries. The demonstrators will test onsite and online service provision, as well as innovative approaches to identity management, and will enable enhanced, brokered access to information resources (such as published market research and company data), combined with institutional knowledge and expertise, for businesses and entrepreneurs. (Up to £100,000 per project). A synthesis and support project will also be funded to ensure effective delivery and benefits realisation and capture. Total funding available £450,000.
Open Innovation
Funding is available to support a number of pilot projects in online open innovation, which will test and co-develop institutional ideas and services with collaborating business and community external user groups. Pilots may be HE or FE led (or combined) and are expected to have a regional/sub-regional or sectoral focus (which can be international in reach) and derived from institutional innovation planning and road-mapping for internal intelligence and profiling of suitable collaborators. (Up to £100,000 per project). A synthesis and support project will also be funded to ensure effective delivery and benefits realisation and capture lessons learnt (£50,000). Total funding available £350,000.
Eligibility to bid
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. (FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda). |
JISC’s BCE Programme is intended to support institutions extend their sphere of influence in order to stay competitive, innovative and relevant in the current economic climate and fast moving global ‘knowledge economy’.
JISC’s work in the area of access to resources to support business will help institutions develop their role as innovation facilitators (providing incubation facilities, business sector workshops, innovation information and support) and so increase their impact on the knowledge economy for the benefit of UK plc, the wider community and the institutions themselves.
JISC's work in Open Innovation forms part of our promotion of the 'open' agenda - to derive wider societal and economic benefit from instituional knowledge and expertise, thus promoting the value of institutions themselves. The open innovation work aims to support and enhance institutional use of online co-development spaces and marketplaces, and is designed to address three objectives:
- The wider exposure, enrichment and application of institutional knowledge and ideas to business and community groups;
- Opportunities for business and community organisations such as SMEs to co-develop and benefit from institutional knowledge and expertise in challenging economic times;
- Creation of new innovation and market opportunities through online co-development.
Of interest to staff responsible for
Staff responsible for business and community engagement, knowledge transfer and exchange, research commercialisation and business development enterprise.
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| Infrastructure and Resources |
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Released August 2009
Funding £1m (10-20 projects between £50,000 - £100,000)
£600,000 (2-3 projects between £200,000 - £300,000)
Start January 2010
Duration 6-15 months and 12-15 months
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Innovation
JISC invites institutions to submit funding proposals for project to investigate a broad set of themes (user centricity, granularity, n-tier, delegation and accounting/auditing) in the area of access and identity management, within which a number of cross themes can be applied (technology and tools, interoperability, use cases, policy and licensing).
Level of Assurance
JISC invites institutions to submit funding proposals for projects to investigate the technologies, processes, usability and functionality of assurance levels particularly at registration of identity attributes and the authentication of these attributes. The JISC is particularly interest in the creation of a demonstrator covering a small number of differing use cases as the most effective way to widen understanding of Levels of Assurance and to show how the concepts might work in practice
Eligibility to bid
Proposals may be submitted by HE Institutions funded by HEFCE or HEFCW. FE institutions in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provided proposals demonstrates work that support the HE in FE agenda.
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Access and identity management is about ensuring that staff, students and researchers can access and personalise the online resources they are entitled to by giving appropriate information to the resource provider. These resources could be online journals, virtual environments to share data and exchange ideas, institutional repositories, grid resources for data storage or computation or even feeds of information, such as RSS.
The AIM programme looks at the technologies used to provide good access and identity management, as well as the issues around processes and policies. The outputs of this programme, be they best practice guidelines, toolkits or Open Source technological enhancements, allow institutions to reap immediate benefits by being more efficient, cutting costs and being ready for future developments.
The Access & Identity Management Programme looks to build upon the UK Access Management Federation and develop the technologies and strategies for these future developments. This work involves both the support and expansion of the UK Access Management Federation which provides a single log on to external resources.
Of interest to:
The funding available from the Access & Identity Management Programme will be of interest, for example, to 1) IT Support and Services teams looking at: more user centric approaches to access and identity management, group access to institutional resources such as wikis, provisioning and deprovisioning of user credentials; 2) Research groups looking at: secure access to resources, collaborative working where data and communications are shared and need to be protected, further development of tools and technologies, the policies and processes involved through the whole identity life cycle. |
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Release November 2009
Funding £360,000 - 12 projects up to £30,000
Start March 2010
Duration 6 months |
The JISC will invite institutions to submit proposals for projects in the area of research information management.
‘Research Information’ in this document refers to structured information about projects, researchers, research outputs and their value and impact, research impact more widely, funding streams, organisations such as funders and universities, and so on.
Eligibility to bid:
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
(FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda.)
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Higher Education institutions need to manage information about the research they host, in order to inform strategic decisions about that research, to ease reporting to external stakeholders such as funding councils and research funders, and to offer useful services to those within and beyond the institution’s boundaries. However, this information is often fragmented across the institution. This grant funding call is for projects that both improve the extent to which research information is managed across one or more higher education institutions, and contribute to growing UK knowledge and expertise in this area. |
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Release December 2009
Funding £450,000 Approx 10-15 projects valued between £10k - £40k
Start April 2010
Duration 6 months |
JISC intends to fund a number of short projects (of up to 6 months each) which explore development of library systems in line with the changing needs of libraries and their customers in a fast changing environment.
Eligibility to bid:
All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
(FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda.)
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University libraries in the UK and internationally are debating what IT systems they need for the future to create simplicity and convenience for their customers out of a complex information environment. This Call is intended to share and increase understanding of how the library systems environment can be enhanced in ways which help libraries and their customers. |
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Release December 2009
Funding
Strand 1 - £100,000 (3-5 projects up to £33,000 each)
Strand 2 - £300,000 (4-6 projects up to £75,000 each)
Start: March 2009
Duration:
Strand 1 - up to 6 months.
Strand 2 - up to 12 months. |
The Developing Community Content call will lead to two group of projects::
Strand 1 - Rapid Innovation - Based on curators of existing digital resources, allowing them to identify new communities interested in interacting with the resource and then developing the resource to allow for that interactions to happen.
Strand 2 - Content Development - Develop new, or expand upon existing, digital content, drawing on both expertise and knowledge inside and out with traditional educational boundaries to create and comment upon digital content relevant to a specific area of knowledge.
Eligibility to bid
Strand 1 - All UK HEIs and FE institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. FE Colleges in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provide proposals demonstrate how the work supports the HE in FE agenda.
Strand 2 - Proposals may be submitted by HE institutions funded by HEFCE or HEFCW. FE Colleges in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provide proposals demonstrate how the work supports the HE in FE agenda. |
The development of community collections is becomingly increasingly important with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and universities realising the advantages of developing meaningful relationships beyond their immediate audience of staff and students.
This initiative will cultivate the links with the specific community, support the consequent technical development and build new digital content collections, or significantly add to the existing projects.
Of interest to
Pro Vice Chancellors for eLearning and eResearch; Directors of Information Services and Systems; Learning Resource Managers, Librarians and Archivists; Principal Investigators in Research Teams. |
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Release March 2010
Funding Total £1.5M
Approx
£100k – 5 projects
£10k – 20 projects
Start June 2010
Duration 6 - 11 months |
This call will be looking for projects in the following areas:
1) Deposit: Ensuring take-up of solutions that enable author deposit by embedding in research practice.
2) Expose: Revealing resources via structured format and/or multiple file types to allow the discovery and use via other services.
Eligibility to bid:
HE institutions funded via HEFCE and HEFCW. FE institutions in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs are also eligible to bid provided proposals demonstrate how the work supports the HE in FE agenda. HE institutions in Northern Ireland and Scotland are NOT eligible to bid but may be involved as partners in proposals led by HE institutions funded by HEFCE or HEFCW or FE institutions which meet the criteria outlined above.
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Embedding solutions for deposit (tools & organisational processes) should facilitate increased access to institutional research, make compliance with research funding mandates easier and help institutions to collect a more complete record of the institutions research outputs.
Exposing data will further support the opening and use of data on the web for ubiquitous access by end users throughout UK HE/FE and beyond.
This call will be developing skills in the HE/FE sector, developing tools and providing guidance.
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