The new IT Strategy

The University has published its first IT Strategy:  the five year plan for improving IT across the whole of the University.  It summarises how information technology will be used across the whole institution to underpin its success in all areas - student experience, research competitiveness, and operational effectiveness. It is a strategy for the institution, not just for the central IT Service. It is a call for radical improvement in the range of IT services offered, how they are delivered and the way they are funded. 

All staff and students are encouraged to provide their thoughts on the strategy by emailing itdirector@le.ac.uk

This version was approved by ICT Committee on 2nd March 2012.     

Why do we need a new strategy?

• The underlying IT infrastructure has not always been adequately maintained and core services, on which the whole institution depends, cannot be sustained without investment. 
• Leicester has fragmented business processes and information systems. It has fallen significantly behind in terms of operational effectiveness and efficiency.   
• Student expectations have risen and will continue to rise as fee increases hit home in 2012.
• In the new funding climate, research councils are increasingly not prepared to fund the direct costs of generic IT provision. These will have to be ‘free at the point of use’ and covered by institutional overheads.  This direction of travel is reinforced by new guidance from Research Councils UK on capital funding through research grants which encourages greater utilisation of assets and use of shared facilities.  See www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/EfficiencyEnsuringExcellencewithImpact.pdf 
• The way we do research has changed. All disciplines now need access to computing power, data storage and analysis capability beyond the capacity of a personal computer. Research produces electronic data which has to be preserved, disseminated and cited after funding for the project has ended.  RCUK and the funding councils are obliging institutions to find ways to support this long term preservation.  See http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/DataPolicy.aspx
• We are exposed to significant risk that research data is lost or exposed.  Researchers (including PGR students) must be provided with high capacity, affordable data storage which is backed up, and laptops which automatically encrypt any sensitive data that they may need to carry with them.
• The University does not currently have robust mechanisms to ensure that all spending on IT is well managed and prioritised to support strategic goals. A large proportion of total annual institutional spending on IT is spent by departments which makes it difficult to draw together and maintain a single aggregate view of total spending. 
• We need to maximise cost recovery for research under fEC rules. This makes it essential to account fully for all those overhead costs that are incurred to provide an IT infrastructure for research, and to estimate the direct costs of undertaking projects accurately and expertly at the time of grant application.   Where a funder does not pay overheads it will be particularly important to itemise all direct costs

How has the strategy been developed?  

The development of the strategy was led by Professor Martin Barstow, who is the PVC with responsibility for IT, working closely with the ITS Senior Management Team and consultants from KPMG.  A series of consultation workshops were held in February 2011 and a range of representatives from across the University were invited to these.  A draft version was presented at the meeting of Information and Communications Strategy Committee (ICTC) on 9th March 2011.  A further round of meetings were then held with all those who had participated and a range of additional people were consulted at one to one meerings, including all Heads of Divsion within Corporate Services and all members of the University's Financial Forecast Group including the VC.   A revised version of the strategy was then presented back to ICTC at its meeting on 2 June.  A wider consultation through various committees, informal groups, an ITS Showcase event on 2 November and through written feedback completed on 16th December 2011.