Innovation, Creativity & Agility – Matthew Taylor, CEO RSA. Great speaker.

Need to think about people & their roles in very different ways. Danger of a social aspiration gap – don’t think or work in the right way to create the desired future. How do we get people to be the people they need to be to create the future they say they want? Universities need to think radically to release their hidden wealth – social innovation. By definition Universities do innovation – would be strange if the average University was not more innovative than the average supermarket. But…Universities may be innovative in what they do, but not in what they are. Innovative in doing, structurally conservative. Comment on his blog: running a Victorian business in a digital world. Doesn’t really believe in the concept of leadership – vastly overstated! Yes! But if anything leaders can help organisation to realise that can’t go on like this anymore, have to change.

Four areas where Universities have opportunity for social innovation:

1. Core business model. Has to change. Costs, labour intensive, overheads – combine 3 functions, knowledge (research), service delivery (teaching), civic function (BCE) – too much for one organisation? Shared services…example of changed model, Refuse Collection. Used to be council’s responsibility – now moved to individual. Co-production. Couldn’t meet recycling targets with old model. So given threats/changes, how to reconceptualise processes that manage inputs/outputs. Need to include collaboration. Only connect.
2. Universities as organisations. Collaboration – including internally, shared initiatives are challenging. VC may commit to partnership with Local Authority – Authority can’t understand why then has no power to make the rest of the organisation commit. Innovation springs from bringing people together ref this brilliant video by Stephen Johnson I referenced on the JISC EA Foundation Programme. Only connect.
3. The student relationship/offer. 2 conflicting paradigms: the learner & the consumer, problem created by reverse hierarchy: learner defers, consumer demands. Need new partnership-type model. US – major cost is providing fripperies for students as consumers: sports etc. Another conflict: content vs. employability. Content is no longer exclusive, but ubiquitous: more mediation, facilitation. Employability: now high priority. Reasonably high quality job placement will increasingly be part of offer. Also, train students too much as individuals, whereas all about teams, relationships, collaboration. Ref Enterprise Architecture: the value is in the relationships. Comment: in the digital, connected, edgeless world, no participant is an island, everything is co-dependent – was probably always becoming true, now even more so. Only connect.
4. Connectivity. Be part of meeting the challenges of the city they are close to. Creative alliances between local government, business & community, & HE – based on common understanding of challenges & strategy of place. & Universities should lead. So – only connect x 4.

Raises thoughts about applying EA to all kinds of things: as well as relationships within institutions, relationships between institutions & external partners, employers, learners etc.

Some institutions need to make a change as profound as IBM: from computer manufacturer to consultancy. Need to subvert the HE hierarchy as expressed in league tables etc. Don’t reflect capacity for innovation.

Would be great person to address LJMU Senior Management within the strategy formulation process.

Transferable Learning: Durham, Cathedrals Group, Northumbria.

Pecha kucha approach. So, gutta percha again. Not quite…

Durham. Project to identify whether there are leadership, management & governance behaviours that impact on performance, & develop an associated diagnostic toolkit. 8 thematic areas that underpin excellence in high performing departments: approaches to change management, communications, research & teaching. Strategy, culture & leadership. Staffing & rewards. Take a look.

The Cathedrals Group. Distinctiveness & Identity. Led by Ewart Wooldridge, CEO LFHE. Seemed initially to be specific to this grouping of faith-based institutions. So what is more general?

Unmemorable mnemonic: NPVCC (obviously unmemorable as I’ve forgotten the N!)

• Place
• Values
• Community
• Clusters

5 ways to achieve distinctiveness.

Ewart: gone off visions & missions – hurrah! – more important to have a compelling narrative that ties the whole place together (ref the Big Lubowski). Place there again. Bottle of champagne from Ewart if can send LFHE a better mnemonic.

Northumbria. ROI tool ref staff development activities.

Creating Value: Exeter/Falmouth

To develop resources for managers in HE to create efficiencies. Research & analysis leading to online resource (to be released soon) & workshops. Discussion: how to adopt a bottom-up approach & get input/creativity from the staff involved/affected. Benefits realisation – but need a baseline. Communications!

Not a criticism of individual initiatives, but there seem to be an awful lot of toolkits out there – hard to get round them all! & probably duplication – a lot of similar stuff may already be available on eg the JISCinfoNet site, other JISC resources etc.

University College Falmouth – Enterprise Architecture. EA, PRINCE2 & ITIL to manage change. LEAN – rapid innovation events. Encouraging adoption of a holistic overview, breaking down silos. Output: PEAT, Project Enterprise Architecture Toolkit. Can be seen on Exeter site. Must take a look.

So…a lot of very good/interesting work going on.

Shared Services in HE/Canterbury Christ Church University

See www.sharedservicearchitects.co.uk

Dominic Macdonald-Wallace. Postgraduate certificate in shared services. 4 ways to act when up against the wall:

1. Tough it out – lower costs, reengineer
2. Sell to others – if achieve 1.
3. Outsource – if can’t manage 1.
4. Share services – when all else fails.

What makes shared services in HE so difficult? The usual suspects…fear of failure, inertia, competition, not invented here, not convinced of benefits. Private sector: 60% fail because of: failure of leadership, too optimistic & under-resourced, lack of skills in practitioners. Cynic in me says: well you would say that if you were flogging training. MSP & PRINCE2 – essential skills. What about EA? Essential tool for understanding services. 

Note: apparently TUPE is going soon, because government view (!) is that safeguarding the rights of workers is too expensive/adversely affects growth & job creation…

Another very interesting session, worth looking into further.

Launch of the Innovation & Transformation Fund – LFHE, HEFCE, UUK et al

Four strands: efficiency benchmarking; procurement (collaboration, efficiency); rethinking academic practice & the student relationship – how do we transform academic culture/practice for the benefit of learners; dissemination & learning – creation of an innovation & efficiency hub.

EOIs by 23rd February; outcomes 16th March; invited full proposals 20th April; results 18th May.

HEFCE: initiatives/proposals need ownership/leadership at VC level. 

UUK: much more emphasis on vfm. Sharing: the most effective way of leading change.

The end…

Spot the typo above – not deliberate, except for the decision to leave it in.

Overview of the JISC Shared Services & the Cloud programme.

JANET Brokerage Service. Discussing the fears & aspirations with institutions & suppliers; ref former, many different perspectives, views, degrees of readiness for cloud services, so no one model. So way forward: working with individual institutions & suppliers to identify appropriate services – sort of against spirit of the Cloud, tailored/customised rather than just out there & generic. Now up & running. Developing framework agreements. Paper to be published soon on email for research students & staff. Working with VLE providers. So JANET doing SaaS – then where does SSPS fit into this? Elephant in the room: sustainability. One stop shop, establish pipeline of brokered deals into FY12/13 – must have financial sustainability model.

Digital Curation Centre. Do your researchers trust IT Services to look after their data? Capacity planning? Post-grant data management? Researchers increasingly keeping stuff longer/externally.

Eduserv. Cloud hosting service. Key thing – pricing to be published on Monday 21st. Broadly pitched below Amazon etc.

Q&A. Eduserv – resilience when only single data centre; second centre tentatively within 18 months. Also looking at preservation centre in the cloud, would require working with other partners. Another comment – single data centre makes it a non-runner. Could be used as backup centre/second site for an institution – but not primary. Maybe bursting, overflow etc. So would you site an operational service there, like, say, DARE? In reality, needs practical approach to resilience in a cloud context – the way backups etc are provided by, say, Amazon will not necessarily conform to the usual expectations.

Session 2: JISC & the Beanstalk/JISC

Flexible service delivery etc presented through the medium of pantomime, coincident with the launch of the new JISC infoNet resource suite ‘Improving Organisational Efficiency‘. I was relieved to hear that guerilla EA doesn’t mean ‘John Townsend jumping on stage in a monkey suit’. Apart from that, you had to be there. & then I got me coat.

EA approach to mobile architecture – excellent. Mobile web or mobile app? Mobile campus assistant project. Design for the small screen should influence design generally – like how designing learning materials for the mobile device should influence etc etc etc. Demo: first function, PC availability! So is everybody doing the same? Bus times. m.bristol.ac.uk. Good but samo – not really transformational (but what is?) Tactical approach – now need to be strategic. Point solutions vs. business platform. Build for now or build for next. What do students like/hate? Lack of boredom! Ref. Angry Birds: brilliantly designed to fill the moments when you might be doing nothing – waiting for a train, the dentist, a meeting, Godot. ‘Remember the future’ concepts: email top? Counterintuitive experience: students want institutional email to be inside the institution’s mobile app, despite having a great email client on the device – compartmentalisation, which is one helluva word. Mobile strategy: focus on data reuse. Focus on the student experience: again, aren’t we all? Might be a bit of duplication going on here. Ref ITANA. Using EA to reveal complexity. Archimate model of student experience linked to Information Strategy. Use EA approach to model the IT Strategy? Yes… Great to see practical application of EA in a tangible project environment.

Session 1: Student Centred Services/Andrew West, AMOSSHE

Fairly predictable run through of student expectations – but maybe intentional as trying to debunk the idea that we are in some ‘brave new world’ ruled by the student as paying customer. The idea of being student-centred is hardly new. Aaron Porter: ‘…market totalitarianism will utterly & irreversibly transform the relationship between institutions & students’. Well, market totalitarianism is hardly new either – maybe just less well-hidden these days. So who did you think was running the show?

Terminology: 18% of students see themselves as customers. Reference Glasgow University – concern of staff & students that terminology used in new student system – ie shopping basket, Amazon-type stuff – represents a gross commercialisation of HE. “...we regard the use of consumerist language in the programme as entirely unsuitable to an educational institution such as Glasgow University”. (Information Age September 2011). But then we are also told that our services should be more personalised, intuitive & customer-focused – like, say, Amazon!

Online value & impact toolkit.

Key message: know your students! (or know your customers?)

Session 2: Brave New World Reinvented/Paul Taylor, University of Warwick

Students should become ‘…choosier and more demanding consumers of the HE experience…‘ (Mandelson, 2009). Not sure I’ve ever consumed an experience – what do they taste like?

Student as producer: learners, teachers & researchers all seen as scholars in the common pursuit of knowledge. Scholars – now there’s a word.

Reinvention: collaboration between students, administrative & academic staff, partnership with Monash.

“…we have fragmented the world into bits & pieces called disciplines & sub-disciplines…students graduate without any broad integrated sense of the unity of things…failure occurs when minds are taught to think in boxes…” (David Orr, 2004)

Session 3: Change, Information, Systems – Shaping the Future/David Sowerby et al, Solstone Plus

Hmmm…hope this isn’t going to be too much marketing pitch, certainly starting out that way. Didn’t think we had supplier presentations as such at UCISA?

Actually, it’s not, so that’s OK…

HE more important than ever before? Surely it always was? Business systems critical during a period of business change – like what we are always in.

‘It is more important now than ever that we are able to effectively predict the future‘ – that’s me pointlessly quoting myself, by the way, or quoting myself being pointless.

‘We are in a period of major change: now more than ever before we don’t know what’s going to happen next‘ – me again. The future is unpredictable, goddammit – that’s always been the problem with that pesky future.

This is just me passsing the time…

& whoops…now turning back into marketing again…& watching paint dry, while my grandmother sucks eggs.

The ‘new normal’:

• Shrinking budgets/staff: more/better with less, leveraging technology
• Cloud: is it the end of infrastructure? Is IT Organisation needed?
• Consumerisation: smartphones etc, works without IT
• High expectations/instant gratification: integration expected, don’t want training, want stuff to just work (hardly unreasonable)

Profile of University: 5000ish students. Looks like 70+ in IT, 5 Directors & a CIO, reporting to CFO. Was traditional kind of arrangement.

Looked at core values of division of Business & Finance – why would a division have it’s own core values, why would they be any different to the core values of the whole organisation? Lot of work on customer service/communications – speaking the language of the customer.

New organisation structured around how stuff flows in & out of IT. Each VP has a ‘tech coach’ available 24/7 to help them use technology – interesting idea. Structure: Infrastructure; Support; PMO; Enterprise Apps; Office of the CIO.

PMO new – took 2 years to get up & running. Methodology for project submission & prioritisation.

Infrastructure & Enterprise Apps – behind the scenes, endangered species? Pete’s story (coincidence, obviously). Became systems engineer working on integration projects, particularly card system – covers most aspects of IT, works across all units. Difficult for supervisors – who supervises Pete? Interesting problem.

IT: one-stop-shop – just ASK – ask anything, may not be technology, may think it’s technology when it isn’t (!); NEVER the wrong place to turn. Goal: trust & inclusion. Dept structured around this. Comes back to revived mantra: common ownership of problems & solutions. Consultancy/coaching role. Solve the customer’s problem, not your own! Also sounding board – counselling! All good stuff, all not-so-strangely familiar…

Be where your customers are. Maintain an attitude of gratitude – ask to help; capitalise on opportunities. Loyola Technology Answers – crowd-sourced online help (?) Don’t forget about the good stuff: support metrics should not just be based on problems.

Faculty technology adoption. Goal: to help Faculty to interact effectively with technology. Moved from Dept of Instructional Services. Reorganisation brought new resources – one being a Moodle administrator, transitioned from Bb to Moodle. CIO partnership with Deans; staff partnership with faculty – listening/understanding. Top down/bottom up.

Essentially trying to create a culture of collaboration with the customer. Reorganisation helped people understand that things had changed: new roles, new job descriptions, new career paths. Culture of information sharing.

Overall, very good session, interesting stuff particularly around support/customer service.

Which IT Strategy & Why? Betting on Clouds, Collaboration, and Contracts (or Contrarians?): David Gift, Klara Jelinkova, Kevin Morooney, Brad Wheeler

Seeing a lot of shifts. So which to bet on? All say all – balance/context – depends where you’re starting from; workforce skills important factor. Indiana – bet on collaboration. Core & context. Didn’t put in Oracle Peoplesoft – saved $16m by going with Kuali Financials. Team working across departmental boundaries – difficult – running with hair on fire. Job of suppliers: to transfer money from institutions to their shareholders.

IT From Both Sides of the Executive Table: Michael McRobbie, President, Indiana University

Final session of the conference – so first, thank you time again! Stand up & be recognised! Actually, doesn’t seem to be as much of it as usual.

Note: have a look at Indiana’s IT strategy, meant to be exemplary.

1. The mission of HEIs. Creation, dissemination & preservation of knowledge. Yep, sounds about right. Universities – one of the oldest forms of human institution. Why is this relevant? Universities have always preserved data, best bet for digital preservation in the future – have demonstrated longevity.
2. Funding. Pressures are the new normal – pressure to be more productive. Move from agrarian model ref Obama to whole year round. IT affecting most areas: but so far not really HE & Healthcare – but will. Interesting that electronic health care record has made no impact in USA as well. Again, tens of millions of $ saved through adoption of Open Source. Sakai, Kuali etc.
3. Centralisation. Centralised IT = right way to go. Happening in business – why is HE different? Plus immense savings to be made.
4. Risks. Cyber security. One office responsible for all security, risk management etc.
5. Role of the CIO. Diminishing? Role more important than ever.
6. People. Partnership not servitude.

The end.

Impact of IT@Illinois workshops. Anyone on campus could write a paper giving their concepts of what IT@Illinois should look like – interesting approach. Nice slides. What if you ignored the politics? Nice idea if you can manage it. Like discussion of ‘Bright Spots’ with Andy McGinn from Blackboard – ‘signal-to-noise’ idea, can’t get rid of the noise, focus on amplifying the signal. Question: is politics noise? Leading up and down. Question: is leadership noise?

Most people think IT is a strategic resource. Most think campus leaders don’t have time or expertise to ‘get’ IT. I don’t think they need to get IT. I don’t think I need to be in this session (exits).

A Conversation with Campus Counsel on Current Developments in IT Outsourcing: Legal Challenges & Practical Suggestions: Steven J. McDonald & Joshua Dermott

Lawyers don’t make decisions for you – they help you make better decisions. It appears that a contract really isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Doesn’t matter if it’s fair & reasonable. Doesn’t matter if you’ve read it. Doesn’t matter if you understand it.

Contracts say: who; what: the rights & duties of the who; the rights & duties of the parties; where; when; why: any relevant background, what you’re trying to achieve; how: the method of performance; how much; what if.

‘You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there‘ Yogi Berra. If you don’t know & specify what you want to achieve, you will get what the vendor wants to give you. Ignore ‘It’s organic, we can’t specify details now’ – compost (bullshit) is organic, it deteriorates. Common warranty often basically means ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here. We don’t know if this thing works & we’re not even sure if we own it’.

As Learning Goes Mobile: Lee Rainie, Pew Internet

How they navigate the world – flaneur again maybe? Mobile connectivity is changing public/private space/time continuum. Consequences for Learning: volume, velocity, valence/relevance. Can regulate our own information flows – Nicholas Negroponte: the Daily Me.

50% of adults & 80% of teenagers use social networking. Consequences for learning: become more important in learning strategies.

• Social networks act as media ‘sentries’.
• Social networks act as information evaluators. Is this true? Does it matter?
• Social networks as audience – new media are the new age neighbourhood.

The mobile revolution. 327.6 million mobile phone subscriptions in the USA; population 315.5 million. 35% own smartphones. 63% connect wirelessly. 25% of smartphone owners use it as primary access device. High in young people, ethnic minorities, low income, lower levels of education. 17% of American adult smartphone users have bumped into someone or something while using their phone. 35% have apps; 24% use apps. SMS is tool of choice for young people to communicate.

The Cloud – people don’t know/care where it is, just want access to stuff. People who use mobile devices are just into more stuff – conversation starter. Surely partly function of alerts? Stuff just comes to you. Also: opportunism & pain avoidance.

Mobile connectivity creating instant ‘smarts’ (search functions); new cognition? – critical thinking is more privileged when everyone can get to the same stuff; impetus to share; deeper connection & consultation; perpetual/pervasive awareness. Augmented reality: merger of real world & data.

Small screens are changing attention & media zones. Continuous partial attention in streams. It’s stressful – is it? Or is it just different. Or is difference stressful. Whatever.

The rise of amateur experts.

Info-snacking – Angry Birds specifically designed as a short-span boredom buster.

People can be alone together. People can be together alone.

Shana Ratner (1997) old: learning as transaction, knowledge is objective & certain; new: learning as a process, knowledge is subjective & provisional.

Like the prosthetic mind – was always so, but even more so what people can know/do is an amalgamation of what everyone else can know/do.

The Unbundled University: Challenges for the Future – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Don’t know about the unbundled University – definitely feeling unbundled myself, so out of here.

Institutions should adopt a general policy of openness – well yes, but may be counterintuitive in current/increasingly competitive environment. Seldom do institutions consider the broad strategic value of openness – agree, & they should, but would need to be in the context of a general discussion about the purpose of higher education. Need to be open & closed, collaborate & compete – competoration? Collabetition? Or is it cooperate & compete – I’m sure someone’s already coined coopetition.

Benefits: reuse; innovation & agility; cost-effectiveness; quality; reputation. Then gave numerous examples illustrating how these benefits can be achieved. Open source online reading lists. Open Educational Resources. Open Research Data. Research-led learning.

Great way of dealing with a mobile tune heckle going off, have to mention: Malcolm – That’s very tuneful, you must tell me what it is so I can make sure I don’t get it.

Someone else who could make a second career in stand-up. Lovely style.

Essentially, I agree with Malcolm – but think the bigger discussion is about the general principle of openness – if adopted, the rest flows from it. As far as he’s aware, there is no institution that has adopted a general overarching principle of openness – has been adopted in certain areas, but not across the board.

There’s Never Been a Better Time to be an Innovator – Remarks to EDUCAUSE: Aneesh Chopra, Assistant to the President & US CTO, & Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation & Improvement, Dept of Education.

Winning the future through open innovation. Unfortunately, imho, first example is the the design & build of a ‘crowd-derived’ combat support vehicle. 159 entries from network of 20,000 designers, designed & built in 4 months. Crowd-sourcing approach to procurement, no research project, no RFPs, no invitations to tender – tapping into people who wouldn’t have had a chance of entry. Need to tap into the creativity of our people. Great process, shame about the subject.

Mobility & cloud computing unlock potential – digital infrastructure poised to accelerate productivity in key sectors. The role of student-led innovation in the development of killer apps.

Need digital rules of the road for enabling openness in technology adoption.

Open government data as the rocket fuel for innovation – liberating it by the truckload. Example – weather data from NOAA feeds all competitors in the weather forecasting marketplace. Also using approaches like Smart Disclosure to get private sector to release data.

So: releasing educational data. Ref KIS? Transparency about institutional performance. Open PESC XML standard – 10 high schools transmitting transcripts directly into Admissions Office in University of Louisville.

Simplified access to quality learning materials on the web. OER. Metadata tagging.

Digital infrastructure to facilitate 24/7 learning. ‘We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day’ - Obama.

Need a culture of high expectations. Not enough R&D to get breakthrough items, only incremental improvement – which isn’t good enough. Digitalpromise – NFP to support R&D.

Key message: we must use new technologies to unlock the creativity of our people. Key attribute: very shouty…but very good.

Privacy in an Era of Social Media: Danah Boyd, Senior Researcher, Microsoft.

There appears to be a transfer of Disney’s Snow White on the Macbook on the podium. & the picture slides are very good, from an aesthetic point of view. Share first, remove later. Improved tools for exhibitionism. Facebook password sharing. Woah! Psychogeography & situationism – Baudelaire’s flaneur: “According to Baudelaire, the flâneur moves through the labyrinthine streets and hidden spaces of the city, partaking of its attractions and fearful pleasures, but remaining somehow detached and apart from it”. Concept of the digital flaneur – interesting. Wandering through cyberspace, partaking whilst remaining detached & apart. Steganography: ref Spook Country, William Gibson seems to get in everywhere.

Starts off by saying audience consists of most important but lowest paid people on the planet – unlikely…

Says he’s a Futurist – bit full of himself – maybe I’ve misinterpreted & he’s actually a stand-up comedian. Non-Ptolemaic futurist which means ‘not all about me’ – well, me, could have fooled. Key skill for IT leaders (there you go, leaders again) – pattern recognition. Hello again William Gibson.

What technologies are you planning to remove from the portfolio in the 3 to 5 year planning horizon? Wrong question – services, not technologies; & will only know which services to remove by asking the customers. Also, 3 to 5 year planning horizon is impossible, particularly with technology.

I was right, he is a stand-up. Idea of the CEO whisperer – amusing.

Core & context – ref ‘keeping the lights on’, only need to be good enough. Good point, but not new point.

Clients Get IT! So Must We – Marilyn McMillan/NYU

NYU global strategy:

• connect the community through a hybrid network;
• connect the community to its content – teaching & learning, research, University life, administration;
• connect the community to ‘sun never sets’ services.

Big feature: IT Service Management. Following the ITIL process – also applying to functional services.

Beloit College Mindset List: worth a look.

Computers ‘keep us busy. It’s as if we have become their killer app’ (Sherry Turkle).

Not surprisingly, propensity to engagement with 24 hour online services is dependent on motivation. For IT professionals, tasks that require the right level of skills/experience at the right level of complexity are motivational – again, hardly surprising.

Usual list of things they’re doing: PP3; Governance; Communication; Performance; Service Management; Service Design; Integration; Security.

& then – back to Leadership again. How do we lead? (by following). Mustn’t forget that leadership has got us where we are – is it necessarily the way to get us somewhere else? Not saying it isn’t but worth considering…

But OK, so leadership bullets:

• Results with others, for others
• Alignment of purpose & vision
• Interdependence
• Sway & be swayable
• Enthusiasm

Opening Wednesday 19th with Diana Oblinger. Early start on thank you time – introduction to every member of the Program Committee – all fine people I’m sure! Then recognition; then exemplary leadership; & the rest. Still, probably closest thing to the Oscars I’ll get to go to…

Seth Godin – Invisible or Remarkable. Used to have a company called Yoyodyne – bit Pynchon then eh, expect a bit of post-modernism & stuff.

Infected by marketing; capitalism infected by the concept of more. The definition of mass is average – is it really? does it have to be? – so mass marketing markets to the average. Branding ourselves to death. Revolutions destroy the perfect & enable the impossible – good soundbites. Cheap connection is the revolution of our time – only connect eh, so E M Forster was right. Idea that have to just do things a bit faster & a bit cheaper – definition of management. Public education designed to provide cogs for machine, a compliant labour force – so who didn’t know that? Back to 1968 then. The revolution of everyday life; capitalism created the job, of course. But – under the pavement, the beach.

So, so far – all very 1968 critique of capitalism. Change: now everybody owns the means of production through owning the means of connection (not quite everybody…) But what about the media? The media used to exist in the world, now it comprises the world – approximation of William Gibson.

Connectedness enables the weird to become normal. No need to pay someone just for info, can look it up – need to teach people how to solve problems that haven’t been solved before, or may not even exist yet. Yeah, of course – part of building the capacity for change.

Check Blackberry to check everything is OK – checking that everything is staying the same. But also, what about new phenomenon of reporting on the world rather than living in the world? (like I’m doing now). Like Philadelphia Museum of Art – full of people taking pictures of pictures. In case of fire, exit building before tweeting about it.

& sorry, but doing something creative/innovative/useful, might be great, like guy doing no-kill dog & cat shelters (which is fantastic) – but it’s not art.

We need you to lead us – don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters. The end.

To the University of Nottingham for the final meeting for the project team – JISC/LFHE/JISCInfonet – & institutions who have participated in the SICT field test projects. Taxi ride from Nottingham station taking in a firebombed police station – not something you see everyday. Possibly a more than usually garbled commentary, but it was a very worthwhile initiative so I feel the need to get something down.

First session of the day was for each institution to do a Pecha Kucha presentation on their project. The following are a few interesting bits & pieces I picked up…

Bruce Levitan/Manchester Metropolitan University raised the interesting issue of the impenetrability of Enterprise Architecture for those from a non-technical background. Good point, although my experience suggests that as usually presented those from a technical background don’t necessarily find it any easier. Also see my closing comments. Anyroad, he suggested that some more engaging way of presenting EA was needed, & showed part of what looked like a very good Gartner EA animation. Which took me back to illustrating SOA/EA to LJMU management using the JISC SOA animation, & discussions in the EA Practice Group & beyond about how great it would be to have something for EA. Well, it still would.

Ian Hall/York had approached the project through the interesting mechanism of 1:1 interviews with senior managers using the toolkit. Comments: again, EA could be off putting, & not necessarily necessary/essential? Outcome – look into it. Equally, Shared services seen as a means to an end rather than necessarily a dimension on their own. Highlighted need to work on communications! & Information Governance. Started thought process. Will run again.

City of Glasgow College. Difficult to get off the ground but got conversations going. Separate toolkit for FE? EA awareness only with technical staff.

Middlesex. Academic view. Challenged dimensions ie not the ones they thought were relevant eg discarded shared services. Communications! Toolkit – jargon; limitations in spreadsheet; duplication, poor flow of questions. First real attempt at measuring ICT provision. Need to collect data over time – longitudinal.

& then things become rather more garbled than usual as it was my go & I suffered Powerpoint meltdown. My attempt at setting up a timed presentation for my Pecha Kucha (I can’t help thinking of gutta percha…) had resulted in an 0.06 second transition time between slides, which even my fast talking couldn’t keep up with. Attempts to fix it while continuing the presentation failed miserably, so I had to take time out – hence my recollection of other Pecha Kuchas is limited as I was labouring over a hot laptop, thanks for the loan, Lesley Huxley.

Clearly my new ‘zero or one’ strategy for slides is right for me – should never have gone for gutta percha.

So all I can say of the rest is: Coventry – Academic leaning, challenged the premises. Loughborough – scored Strategic! & devised their own simplified version. Bolton used it to support bringing in a Governance structure. & if I’ve missed you out completely whilst I was floundering around, apologies…

Next session: breakout to brainstorm around our projects. Lot of interesting stuff – particularly discussion around whether or not Shared Services should be a dimension, & the tension between generic/persistent dimensions – leadership, communications – & dimensions that may be time-limited eg if you did the exercise 5 years ago, or 5 years in the future, would EA & Shared Services appear? Emphasised the importance of focusing on the objective not the means ie an institution wants effective/efficient services; Shared Services may present a way of achieving these; an institution needs to understand the relationships between it’s people, processes & systems; EA is a way of articulating this. If you don’t go with Shared Services or EA it doesn’t mean you don’t need efficient/effective services or to understand relationships.

Also interesting discussion about how projects get prioritised/get senior managemnt backing, & where innovation fits into this. General rule:

Followed by a video conference session with Alex Hawker talking about the new Strategic Information Practice Group initiative, which will take on & progress the work of the EAPG and SICT, & the JISC call 11/11 for Transformation projects which will engage with these & other JISC-supported tools to deliver organisational change – very useful.

& lastly that I’m going to comment on, Lesley Huxley from the LFHE gave a rundown of how they might incorporate the SICT in their work, & led a very useful discussion around how it could be used in management development. One very straightforward idea: Senior management teams should be knowledgeable about the capability of ICT & what it can do for their business. They really should. Seriously. They should all be type 42s. They bang on all the time about the need to work smarter not harder, to be online, to engage with the digital natives – so plainly at the capability level they need to know about this stuff. So use the ICT Toolkit to find out if they do…

Also interesting discussion about how projects get prioritised/get senior managemnt backing, & where innovation fits into this. General rule: cheaper & better; can also go with better & the same; cheaper & the same; & sometimes even cheaper & worse, if a service is necessary but only needs to work rather than add value. Then raises the question: what about innovation? New things that by definition can’t be cheaper or better because they don’t exist. Suggested that innovation could be another SICT dimension.

Final comments:

- there was a lot of discussion around whether EA & Shared Services were really important strategic dimensions. I think the problem’s with the language. Using these terms can ghettoise them – they become magical technical things that can be put over there with the magical technical people – if you talk about services, which might be shared, or understanding relationships, which can be done with EA, you’re in a different ball game with a chance of winning.
- there still seems to be a lot of obfuscation around EA. EA is like Project Management – it’s just organised common sense. It’s not that complicated; it’s not as complicated as the experts make it seem; bring on the animation!
- Hell yes, JFDI