Customer centric approach core to Jisc
Jisc is moving to put its customers at the very heart of its activities during the coming year. This focus comes as the organisation reacts to the recent Wilson review into the way it works with the UK’s education and research communities and meet the demands of universities and colleges.
“With financial pressures every investment must count, and that is why we are focussing our efforts and activities to put customer needs at the heart of everything we do. Not only that, our customers need certainty – so we must be open and transparent around the products and services we will be delivering today, and what innovative technology we are creating for tomorrow,” said Sarah Porter, head of Jisc innovation.
“We have been consulting with our customers and funders around their priorities. We know that every organisation faces pressures to ensure every penny spent is done in the most cost effective and efficient way to deliver results.
“With this in mind, we will be running a pilot scheme to develop our thinking and confirm our innovation product lifecycle. We will do this by working with professional associations and membership bodies across higher education, further education and skills,” Sarah said.
“We’ll be making it clearer how an idea moves from concept to reality and work to bring together the best in UK innovation and research talent to prototype and create products that enhance education and research.”
As a start on the road to meeting high priority needs, new opportunities and closer cooperation with the UK's education and research community, Jisc has been in discussions with SCONUL, RLUK and the Research Councils amongst others. This is to address a number of priorities for universities and colleges through the development of resources, tools and supported infrastructure.
2013 will see the launch of the following significant projects:
- A research and education space for students at UK colleges and universities to access post 1989 BBC broadcast materials online
- Software Hub - a platform for easy access to open source software for education and research
- Jisc Conext - the next generation space for collaboration and communication for research, learning and virtual organisations
- A library analytics suite to assist financial planning and strategic decision making for information management professionals, colleges and universities
- A research data registry to ensure research data can be discovered and re-used by others to improve research
- Research Information for Re-use - working with the Gateway to Research to develop interfaces for research information.
“We are confident that these services and resources, provided by the highly experienced and professional team in Jisc will make a real difference to our customers. We aim to be the ‘go to’ organisation for the sector, building on our already excellent reputation for technical know-how by adding a new and concerted focus on customer service,” added Sarah.