JISC strategy 2010–2012: A summary
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JISC helps UK universities and colleges in the innovative use of technology, equipping them with new ways of working faster and better, through a range of programmes and services. This overview sets out the aims for the three years 2010–2012, covering short, mid and long-term objectives, outlining the themes that underpin the strategy and detailing key areas of activity.
As digital technology changes the way that universities and colleges operate, JISC will facilitate new ways of working in research, in learning and teaching, and in corporate and management systems. This will help institutions to be more effective and to save money; to maintain and develop their excellence in research, teaching and learning. National programmes, such as those to develop infrastructure, to create shared services and resources, to support technical standards and to promote interoperability and openness, will continue and evolve. JISC’s impact on wider society, such as broadening access to resources and promoting green technology, will continue to develop.
A central part of JISC’s role is to listen to universities, colleges and its funders, and to balance the requirements of technology with the strategic concerns of practitioners, senior managers and policy-makers. JISC does this through a two-way exchange of information which will continue to be fostered and developed through this strategy, as well as make it easier to access the findings of JISC’s work.
Vision, mission, objectives
JISC’s vision is of easy and widespread access to information and resources, anytime, anywhere; a vision with technology and information management at the heart of research and education. Its mission is to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support education, research and institutional effectiveness.
Strategic objectives
Provide cost-effective and sustainable shared national services and resources
Examples of how JISC provides shared services may be found in the table on page 4. It outlines a strategy of investment for:
- Networks now and for the future
- Access to digital content
- Building a critical mass of such content
- Information about advisory services and infrastructure projects
Help institutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their corporate and business systems
Page 5 shows how JISC supports improved efficiencies, from helping to reduce energy usage to smarter building design. It:
- Explains present and future aims to improve corporate information systems
- Promotes the role of technology in strategic management
- Supports staff through technological and systems change
There are plans to enhance practice in information management too.
Help institutions to improve the quality of learning and teaching, and the student experience
The table on page 6 details how JISC: 
- Develops open educational resources
- Promotes the use of technology in education
- Supports curriculum design
It also outlines a strategic aim to:
- Deepen people’s understanding of new learning and teaching environments
- Support digital literacy
- Promote interoperability and standards
- Foster openness
- Support lifelong learning
Help institutions to improve the quality, impact and productivity of academic research
On page 7, the table gives examples of JISC’s work to:
- Provide high-speed connectivity to researchers
- Enable interaction between researchers internationally
- Foster collaborative and competitive use of research data
- Enable collaborative research
- Support researchers in the innovative use of ICT throughout their careers
Be a responsive, reflective and learning organisation that demonstrates value for money
A key objective for the new strategy is that of continuing to be a responsive, reflective and learning organisation that demonstrates value for money. Key activities for the future are to:
- Increase the amount of market research undertaken in order to gain a more complete understanding of the needs of higher and further education institutions , funders and partners
- Develop JISC’s communication activity with a view to facilitating more widespread understanding and take-up of recommendations and improve access to JISC outputs
- Review and measure the impact of JISC activities using a combination of quantitative and qualitative outputs
Priority investment areas
An overview of the current and future investments designed to help provide cost-effective and sustainable shared national services and resources.
The short, mid and long-term investment plans that support the objective to help institutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their corporate and business systems.
Information about the investments being made to help institutions to improve the quality of learning and teaching, and the student experience.
The investments JISC is making to improve the quality, impact and productivity of academic research.
Generic themes
An analysis of the education, research and technology environment trends as the context for defining the revised objectives can be found in the full JISC strategy. There are also a number of generic themes that are important to JISC and the work it does.
Open agenda
JISC has a strong commitment to the open environment, supporting open source software (commercial or otherwise) and working with publishers and others to open access to resources, and sharing pre-competitive ideas and innovation as part of a worldwide community. This is the most effective way to support knowledge transfer and to ensure that universities and colleges play a lead role in stimulating the knowledge economy.
Open source will continue to be supported through policy and technical advice from the Open Source Software Watch
Open standards are essential to enable institutions and other organisations in the sector, such as research funders and UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, to maintain flexibility in their IT systems. Through this they are able to build an IT infrastructure to suit their needs in a rapidly evolving technical environment.
Open educational resources these expand the availability of academic and scholarly resources to students, potential students and informal learners.
Open access makes the outputs of publicly funded research widely available and ensures that research makes as much impact as possible within higher education and beyond.
Open data strengthens the scholarly record, and facilitates data aggregation and re-use, collaboration, open science and innovation.
Open science describes a range of innovative new scientific practices. Researchers immediately share their methods and results, peer-reviewed outputs and data, with the research community and more widely. Networks provide for fast feedback and validation, and for enrolling a broad community into research work, and they help to create a complete, accessible and persistent record of research through its life cycle.
Open innovation Universities partner with business, government and others in a way that promotes ideas being shared across sectors, builds relationships of trust between the partners, and enables discoveries to be exploited. JISC will ensure that these new, open models provide opportunities for greater efficiency and address long-term sustainability in the networked environment.
Skills
Digital literacy skills among students, teachers, researchers and managers are a focus for the next three years. The Melville enquiry, the Google Generation report and Sir Ron Cooke’s submission to the Higher Education Framework consultation, Higher Ambitions, all identify the need to improve information literacy skills, by which is meant the ability to search and exploit internet resources more effectively. Google is a very fast and impressive search engine but it is also very unsophisticated: it does not identify the context of a search or know anything about a user’s requirements. More sophisticated search tools are available but are not used by the majority of students or staff. It is important to do more to improve search skills and the necessary critical skills to analyse the results of such searches. This is recognised in Becta’s Harnessing Technology strategy as a significant requirement in schools, and it’s also a challenge for further and higher education. The adoption of virtual learning environments along with the wealth of resources available on the internet has helped to improve ICT skills in the teaching profession. Nonetheless, there remains a requirement to provide comprehensive training to many teachers and lecturers who wish to use ICT and internet resources in more advanced ways. This is an area where JISC will work with the Higher Education Academy and other appropriate organisations and seek to integrate technology into teacher training courses. The use of ICT across all research disciplines is increasingly important, but in some disciplines, for example in some parts of the humanities and social sciences, there is not always ready access to suitable training. JISC has, over the years, done much to provide training, especially relating to e-science, through appropriate agencies and organisations. A dialogue with the research councils and learned societies is necessary to identify where there is still a need for training. For example, bringing new innovation into the graduate schools, including doctoral training on the need to tag research data in order to improve accessibility, and on what research data should be preserved and what can be discarded.
Leadership and shared services
Sir Ron Cooke in his Higher Education Framework submission suggested that many institutions were not using technology in imaginative and innovative ways to improve their management processes and that further development of leadership and management of ICT is required. New administrative applications are often installed and tailored around conventional processes that may date back many decades. Innovative ways of exploiting ICT usually require changes, often quite radical, to business processes. JISC will work with the Leadership Foundation and others to promote a debate among senior management to identify new, imaginative business processes to improve the efficiency of the institution, enhance the student experience and increase the quality and productivity of research. Another theme in the strategy is to encourage the use of flexible and shared services where this will improve effectiveness and agility and reduce costs. There are several models of provision applicable to the sector: sharing of services within an institution; between a small number of institutions; or at the national level. The service provider may be either an institution or a third party. JISC Services are clear examples of national shared services but there remains potential to do more. This includes areas such as procurement, help-desk services, shared applications, virtualisation and data management, in the sense of both research data and management information, and large-scale computing facilities. JISC will continue working with funding bodies and others to promote shared services where clear benefits can be identified.
Green computing
JISC aims to reduce the environmental impact and energy cost of ICT provision, and to exploit ICT as an enabler to make energy and cost savings through the intelligent use of technology. Whilst the potential of cloud computing to deliver meaningful efficiencies is still to be proved, other shared services and greater use of outsourcing may play a part in reducing the carbon footprint of ICT. Other measures include improving the energy efficiency of desktop computing through automated power-down, reducing the energy demands in data centres, developing more intelligent buildings, and enabling new ways of working for staff and students both in the workplace and at home.
Mobile computing
Laptops and handheld devices are increasingly used by researchers, students and staff who require access to the internet at remote sites and while on the move. Supporting and exploiting mobile computing will require sophisticated access and identity management tools, as well as applications designed to provide information on smaller, less powerful devices, using lower bandwidth than is normally the case in an office environment.
Areas of activity
Innovation
A large amount of activity is focused on supporting technological change and innovation, and investment here will continue. This ranges from smaller, short-term projects usually designed to enhance skills and capacity in the sector, to large projects usually to tackle infrastructure needs. JISC Advance, a new advice and guidance service to help institutions to implement findings from innovation programmes, will be developed further, including gathering feedback from universities and colleges.
People and skills
Supporting people at all levels within the sector to improve their technology skills is a key focus in the years ahead. This may range from helping students and teachers to adopt more sophisticated online search techniques, to working with managers at a local and national level to support large-scale changes to systems and processes. JISC Advance will continue to train project leaders in project management techniques, working with the Leadership Foundation.
Cloud computing
JISC will be actively investigating the potential of cloud computing, looking at how it can be used by individuals and institutions to gain access to a range of information, resources and software. Software as a Service, for example, offers the ability for institutions to use software on-demand, removing the high cost in time and money involved in buying and owning it. Cloud computing also has the potential to provide access to resources to those working remotely, or while on the move.
Shared services
JISC will continue to invest in creating and maintaining shared services, including JANET and related services. The option for using shared and managed services will also be explored where a need for improvement has been identified in university and college administrative systems, and there will be investigations into the potential of activities that could support national infrastructure.
e-Learning culture
More research will be done into the needs of learners, practitioners, researchers and future generations of researchers, in respect of online learning. Other activities will include guidance on how to provide new and innovative services, advice on designing a curriculum, a series of national programmes, use of mobile technology, and developing technical standards to support sharing between systems and institutions.
Research environment
JISC will continue to support UK research through its programmes and services. It will facilitate the development of new, technology-enabled research methods and improve the accessibility of research outputs. This includes developing technical standards for digitally storing research data, and promoting greater openness and sharing between universities.
Management information systems
Helping institutions to plan, implement and manage projects to upgrade or replace administrative and business systems is a key strategic aim. More flexible corporate systems that complement and support new ways of working will help institutions to adapt to changing market conditions, and to improve the range of services they are able to offer.
Read the full JISC strategy
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