Flexible service delivery programme
The JISC Flexible Service Delivery programme is currently supporting over 30 UK colleges and universities make efficiency savings and improve agility through business process improvement and cost effective integration and sharing of their information systems that support their central administrative services. A core component of this change programme is about streamlining service provision to staff and students and considering new modes of delivery, such as shared services, while avoiding unpopular cuts in essential services.
Alex Hawker programme manager at JISC says: “At a time when the further and higher education landscape is changing and when public sector expenditure is under increasing scrutiny there is a need to do more for less and to find cost effective ways of sharing information which is currently locked in their administrative and learning systems”
The programme is working with senior change agents in UK colleges and universities (Pro Vice-Chancellors, Registrars, Finance Directors, IT Directors) and relevant professional bodies, such as UCISA and BUFDG. Alex adds: “To deliver senior led, strategic and organisational-wide change, it is essential to engage and secure buy-in from those responsible for policy and funding decision”.
This change programme is also working effectively with suppliers (commercial and not-for-profit) to provide UK colleges and universities the best possible choice of systems that will meet and anticipate their current and future needs. Dr John Wallace, JISC Industry Liaison Manager, adds: “ Supplier engagement is especially important within this programme. Most systems used by universities and colleges, that could become either shared or disaggregated as flexible services, are provided by major suppliers and any such change must involve these suppliers to be successful”.
Enterprise Architecture provides an essential component to this programme. Enterprise Architecture provides a framework and methodology to support organisational change and improvement involving ICT, and the flexible service delivery projects provide the agents and drivers for change. Enterprise Architecture offers an enterprise-wide approach for integrating ICT strategy, and aligning its implementation with organisational strategy, so that ICT services work together properly and realise the organisation’s vision. Chris Cobb, vice-chancellor at Roehampton University, and chair of the Flexible Service Delivery Programme Steering Group adds: “Embedding the Enterprise Architecture approach at Roehampton has meant that we’ve encountered few cultural problems: the whole university has bought into the programme of change because we have looked at the university as a whole to bring its IT strategy together rather than in individual departments.”
Flexible Service Delivery: Shared Vision Statements
For the participating UK colleges and universities:
- Deliver operational efficiencies and enhanced agility and responsiveness to change through business process optimisation, and effective integration and sharing of information systems and services
- Better understanding of their ‘total-cost-of-ownership’ baseline data and return on investment in delivering change involving ICT: knowing the cost of running current corporate information systems, services and processes, and measuring where cost savings and process improvements can be made
- Enhanced Business Intelligence (BI) by improving access to and exploitation of data across corporate information systems, which:
- Improves institutional decision-making for senior managers to support organisational development
- Enables institutions to meet the changing requirements of government and funding bodies to report, document and monitor financial, demographic and educational information
- Support the increasing demand for flexible learning through the delivery of integrated system solutions that can continuously keep pace with changing requirements
- Capacity building: to increase skills, experience and establish common good practice in process modelling, cost baselining, SOA and EA.
For the sector more generally:
- Unlocking the market inertia and working towards a more granular and open market of products: where suppliers disaggregate their applications and making certain functionalities available as open and interoperable services or modules
- To further progress, with HEFCE, the higher and further education Shared Service Agenda.
- The development of open interface standards
Programme Aims
By supporting universities and colleges in navigating the step-by-step processes of implementing flexible service delivery, the programme aims to make progress in realising this set of vision statements.