JISC

Introduction  

The Joint information Systems Committee (JISC) has initiated a study of business and technical sustainability for portals under development within the JISC Information Environment.  The study team, combining consultants and experts from Education for Change Ltd (EfC, http://www.efc.co.uk) and the Learning and Teaching Support Unit at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (http://www.uwic.ac.uk/ltsu/), commenced its work in February 2004.  The study will last for five months.  

Overall Approach  

The work will make recommendations on the viability of portal solutions and how they should move into service.  Technical, organizational and financial aspects will be considered to underpin business models for the long-term development of portals generally. Outcomes from the project are expected to influence how JISC will take forward its portal services and development work.  

The project will present its findings in a report to JISC and place components of  the Portals programme in a wider context of portal-like services and developments. In particular it is expected to address two important issues:

• How the three broad areas of portal development work distinguished by JISC (Subject-based, Format-based and User community-based portals) can be embedded and sustained and what viability these developments have. 
• To what extent these distinctions carry over to a service environment, or whether perhaps an alternative combination of functionality and approach may be more appropriate.