Networks, systems and data: THES e-supplement features Jisc programmes

e-Administration is the theme of one of the articles, written by Jisc’s Steve Bailey. With universities and colleges facing ever-increasing pressures to achieve more for less and with legal requirements such as the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act requiring compliance from educational organisations, e-administration is, writes Steve, ‘stepping out of the shadows and into the spotlight.’

While the IT revolution of the past twenty years has led to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) touching every aspect of the institution, one of the effects has been duplication of material, something that may mean non-compliance with legal requirements. ‘The more copies of a piece of information that exist,’ he writes, ‘the greater the risk of data being leaked and decisions made on obsolete facts.’

e-Administration therefore places a greater emphasis on achieving consistent management controls over information throughout its lifecycle, with, writes Steve, benefits including, ‘administrative efficiency, improvements to the accuracy, reliability and usefulness of an institution’s corporate data, and enhanced accountability and legal compliance.’

In another article Judy Redfearn, Communications Officer for Jisc and the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), writes about UKLight, the UK element of the international optical network for the research community.

‘The big attraction [of UKLight],’ writes Judy, ‘is [its] ability to continuously stream data down dedicated optical fibres between network nodes, making it particularly suitable for applications where enormous amounts of data need to be sent from one point to another, for example from a radio telescope or particle accelerator to a data-processing centre.’

So far, Judy reports, nine main nodes are available for regional networks to connect to, but by the end of the year UKLight will become an integral part of the SuperJANET5 upgrade with all 19 regional networks gaining access to the network.

Another article focuses on Jisc’s Digital Repositories programme and in particular those of its 23 projects which are dealing with issues around making digital data available in repositories. Programme manager Neil Jacobs is reported in the article as saying that these projects are exploring how the programme’s overarching aims to enable the free sharing of information can accommodate researchers’ rights, as well as making the available information user-friendly.

‘The benefits,' he says, ‘come once the data are interoperable, so if the data were genetic information, then this material could readily be compared to social data or whatever to arrive at interesting results and trends.’

An article on the e-Framework initiative, an increasingly international collaboration, looks at how the initiative is attempting to answer the need of institutions for IT systems suited to their specific needs by exploring more flexible ways in which those systems can be deployed and used. The article quotes Sarah Porter, Jisc’s Head of Development, who says:

‘Flexibility is a major driver for this programme, but so is value for money. Universities have been spending huge amounts of money running parallel systems, paying licenses for separate systems that they’ve already paid for in another package.’

Agreements with New Zealand’s Ministry of Education and Australia’s Department for Education, Science and Training (DEST) are supporting the initiative.

For further information please go to: e-Framework

To access the ICT supplement please go to: THES