Investing for the future
The continuing aim of Information Environment development work is to improve the ways in which technology can be used to create, manage, share, discover, use and curate 'content', so as to support the diversity of learning and research requirements in UK higher education.
The vision
The vision is of a world where learners, teachers, researchers, managers and administrators use technology to enhance their work in various ways, including but not limited to improving its efficiency, effectiveness, creativity, value and impact.
They will be better able to manage and share their own work, and discover, access and use others’ work. Managers and administrators will be better able to plan, develop, provide and use innovative and useful services to help them. Where appropriate, national and international services will be available for them to use. Staff across higher education will be more skilled in the use of technology to enhance their work in these areas.
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As part of the eLib programme 1998-2000, a series of "MODELS" workshops were held that defined the 'Distributed National Electronic Resource' (DNER) as "a managed information environment which provides secure and convenient access to a range of information services and resources" . Subsequently this evolved into the 'Information Environment'.
The main aim of the DNER and the subsequently named Information Environment was to provide access to heterogeneous resources in a way that took advantage of the network and to break down silos, thereby making use of resources easier for learners, researchers and other stakeholders. This still holds true today and the Information Environment programmes, along with other related work within the Information Environment context (for example that of JISC Collections, JISC Data Centres and the e-Content Team) have collectively worked to provide this environment.
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A changing environment
Over time there has been a great deal of change to the context in which we are working. The Information Environment programmes have primarily worked with the over-riding aim of improving access to and use of heterogeneous resources but have also taken account of changes and provided a way to test, develop and evolve appropriate means to manage and use resources.
The significant environmental changes have been:
- moves towards Open Access research and learning being undertaken on the Web as the Web is able to support flexible models of research and learning;
- dominance of search engines e.g. Google;
- the development of ‘Web 2.0’ applications and services which support collaborative working and the creation and sharing of digital resources;
- cloud computing;
- the huge and continuing growth in digital 'data';
- increased awareness of the utility of service and resource orientated approaches to designing services
The rise in importance of repositories as a means of managing and sharing digital resources created as part of learning and research has meant that since 2005 much of the JISC Information Environment programme investment has focused on that area. Whilst in the last tranche of repository funding there was some work in the area of preservation, discovery, and other shared infrastructure, there is now a need to move away from the emphasis on 'repository' and to see repositories and the wide variety of resources and delivery mechanisms as part of the wider Information Environment context.
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New directions
An important technical direction that should support user requirements and effective re-use of resources is better alignment between repositories, information management systems and content and the Web architecture. The emergence of Linked Data is one technical approach that supports this. There may well be a need to bring specialised preservation techniques and Web archiving approaches closer together and this should be explored.
As well as working with the Web, there is a need to develop a clearer view of how the Information Environment related elements of e-Infrastructure relate to high performance computing and the Grid; currently these different aspects of e-Infrastructure tend to be developed separately.
There also needs to be closer working between repository activity and preservation solutions; work on personalisation should also inform repositories not just 'portal' type services as has tended to be the case, and more formally published and managed resources should be brought together with those resources that digital repositories have primarily dealt with.
Looking more broadly, it is now widely accepted that by 2007-8 the idea of the Information Environment needed review as to its purpose and scope, in part due to the emerging technologies and practices such as 'Web 2.0', cloud computing, and further use of service and resource oriented approaches noted above .
In response to this change, a process of review of the Information Environment is ongoing, and includes a forthcoming UKOLN-led Technical Review of the Information Environment (2009/10).
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Current investment
The business case for investing in the UK infrastructure for education and research has been articulated in a range of policy and strategy documents including the OSI report on e-infrastructure (currently under review by the Research Councils), the Digital Britain report and the Innovation Nation white paper.
JISC takes a leading position in investing in infrastructure. As well as responding to international and national strategy initiatives, the business case for for investing in infrastructure to support the management, sharing and convenient access to digital resources has been developed directly, 'bottom up'. The building blocks for such a case include:
- the Houghton/Oppenheim report on the economics of alternative scholarly publishing models, which showed a clear sector benefit in the use of open access repositories. Current supplementary work will present this evidence at the HEI level;
- A study on the business case for sharing learning materials Good intentions collated the evidence in favour of measures to support that activity;
- Work by JISC infoNet on the benefits of records management will develop a method to identify the case for improved records management;
- emerging work on the costs and benefits of managing and sharing research data. There are challenges to collecting evidence on this, but a current JISC-RIN project, and planned further work in the allied 'data programme', should contribute significantly;
- A report on library management systems (LMS). This report was undertaken jointly by JISC and SCONUL and it assessed the current state of the LMS market and how fit for purpose the systems available were against business requirements. There is on-going work under the HEFCE shared services programme (led by SCONUL) that will further assess whether there is a requirement for shared services in this area.
This evidence is underpinning widespread university moves to improve their local infrastructure and to engage with national and international activities, for example in the areas of repositories and library management systems.
In this context, it is timely to plan investment in this area as a whole, to reflect and take forward the strategic approach being taken as described above.
After consultation with the sector, a balanced programme for 2009/2011 has been scoped that reflects both leading edge investment (for example in text-mining applications) and consolidation where appropriate. Through the Information Environment Programme (2009-2011), UK higher education can work collectively on these issues so risks are shared, lessons learnt and appropriate solutions found.
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