university of cambridge information services committee agenda · 2016. 5. 19. · april 2016 in the...

University of Cambridge

Information Services Committee

There will be a meeting of the Information Services Committee at 2.15pm on Thursday 21 April 2016 in the Syndicate Room, The Old Schools.

Coffee will be available at 2.00pm. AGENDA

Starred items: agenda items starred as straightforward will not be discussed unless the item is unstarred by a member. Requests to unstar an item should be received by the Chairman or Secretary by 9.00am on the day of the meeting.

Declaration of Interests - Members are asked to declare any conflicts of interest relating to matters on the agenda.

. Papers 1. Minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on 3 March 2016 are attached. ISC 119

2. Matters arising

* M.145: Libraries Connect

On the basis of the further report, attached, and on ground of urgency the Chairman approved on behalf of the Committee the signing of the contract for the Libraries Connect Programme.

M 133: Review of IT Infrastructure and Support: Progress Review Group

The Committee agreed at the last meeting to the Director’s proposal for a review of progress in implementing the IT review.

Proposed membership and terms of reference for a Progress Review Group are circulated for the Committee’s approval.

M 138: ISC Operations Committee

The Committee also agreed at the last meeting to constitute an Operations Committee to relieve the ISC of operational and routine matters enabling the ISC to concentrate on strategy. [M 138].

The paper includes at the Committee’s request a review of past agenda items to see what items might have been on the ISC or the Operations Committee agenda, or forwarded by the Operations Committee as matters of significance.

The Committee is asked to approve the constitution and terms of reference; appoint members and consider the pattern of meetings.

ISC 120

ISC 121

ISC 122

3. Oral Reports

Members of the Committee are invited to update the ISC on any matters of interest not otherwise on the agenda.

4. UIS operational update

Members are asked to note the activity reported in the attached paper. ISC 123

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5. IT Community

The Committee is asked to endorse the planned activities set out in paper ISC 124 and the phased approach to the development of an IT community throughout the Collegiate University.

ISC 124

6. IS Strategy

The Committee is asked to endorse the proposed approach to refreshing the overall strategy for information services for the Collegiate University and to proactively support the request for input from the Schools, Colleges and other institutions.

ISC 125

7. Data Centre

The attached paper updates the ISC on the use of the Data Centre and asks the Committee to agree the principles of capacity planning and to endorse the objectives and acceptable equipment policy.

ISC 126

8. Information Services Governance - update

A note of progress on governance issues is circulated. The Committee is reminded that a nomination to the User Needs Committee remains outstanding.

ISC 127

9. UIS dashboard.

The updated UIS dashboard is attached. ISC 128

10. Forward look.

The Committee has agreed that each meeting should concentrate on a key strategic theme. Members are invited to suggest themes in addition to the following:

16 June ERP strategy (for approval) IS strategy (for approval) IT governance – review of effectiveness Post-CARET arrangements Digital Strategy for Education

11. Any other business.

Routine and reported (starred) business

12. * Sub-Committees

(1) The Committee asked to receive minutes of sub-committees under routine and reported business. Minutes of the following meetings have been received:

a) Joint Network Management Committee (28 January 2016) b) User Needs Committee (9 February) c) Business Systems Committee (29 March 2016) d) Student Information Systems Committee (11 March 2016)

(2) Members or officers who wish to bring to the attention of the ISC any matters arising from those meetings are invited to request the minutes be unstarred..

ISC 129 (a) to (d)

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13. * Technology Development Fund

Members are asked to note the projects for which funds have been allocated under the delegated authority of the Director of Information Services.

ISC 130

14. * Meetings

(1) The last meeting this year has been arranged on 16 June 2016 at 2.15pm (in the Syndicate Room.

Coffee will be available fifteen minutes before each meeting.

(2) Meetings for 2016-17 are proposed as follows:

At 2.15pm (in the Syndicate Room)

6 October 2016

1 December 2016

19 January 2017

9 March 2017

27 April 2017

15 June 2017

(3) The Committee is asked under item 2 to consider the pattern of meetings of the Operations Committee, if established.

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Information Services Committee contacts:

Martin Bellamy (Director, UIS and Executive Officer to the Committee) [email protected] 01223 332246

Nick Wilson (Secretary) [email protected] 01223 332250

Planning and Resource Allocation Office, The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1TS

April 2016



Minutes of the meeting held on Thursday 3 March 2016 in the Syndicate Room, The Old Schools.

Present: Professor Duncan Maskell (in the chair), Ms Allden, Mr Ball, Mr Jones, Professor Leslie, Dr Nicholls, Dr Padman, Professor Prager, Professor Virgo and Mr Watmore, with Dr Bellamy, Professor Fowden (attending in place of Professor Maxwell), Mr Cashman (attending in place of Ms Mensah) and Mr Wilson (Secretary).

Apologies for absence were received from: Professor Allmendinger, Dr Dörrzapf, Mrs Jarvis, Professor Maxwell and Ms Mensah.

There were no declarations of interest.

131. Membership

Professor Maxwell had been reappointed by the General Board and Dr Padman by the Council, each to 31 December 2019.

The Committee co-opted Mr Richard Jones for a further period, to 31 December 2017.

132. Minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on 26 November 2015 (ISC 107) were approved; the arranged on 14 January 2016 had been cancelled.

133. Director’s oral report

Dr Bellamy reported on two matters.

(a) Now the UIS was two years old, he proposed a check point review to assess progress in the implementation of the IT Review’s recommendations. If the Committee agreed, he would prepare terms of reference and propose membership.

(b) The UIS plan had been reviewed as part of the Resource Management Committee’s process for completing the University’s 2016-17 budget with a background of severe pressure on central funds. The review concluded that the proposed activity should be sustained but that reserves be used to reduce the need for new funding. There was support in principle for the HPCS request and for improving infrastructure resilience but robust business plans were needed; the ISC would receive a report in the Easter term on the use of the TDF reserves. The inherited financial arrangements for UIS were complicated and the scrutiny group had agreed with his suggestion that a management accountant be posted in the UIS with a reporting line to the Finance Division.

The Committee agreed with the proposal for a progress review provided it was confined to the IT Review recommendations and did not widen its scope into new areas. The Chair could be drawn from the original Review Group, and in order to make progress the Committee agreed to consider terms of reference and membership by correspondence.

The Committee also endorsed the suggestion for strengthening the management accounting capability in UIS. It was important that the next plan’s organisation and presentation conformed to central expectations and that the financial arrangements were simplified where possible. They noted that all Administered Funds were about to be reviewed because some provided recurrent funding for activity that should be contained within operational budgets.

Action: Director

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ISC 119

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134. UIS operational update

The Committee received paper ISC 108 and noted progress on a range of issues.

Dr Bellamy explained that some of the service incidents had been unavoidable but there was room for improvement in the UIS response. UIS re-structuring was complete, but the full potential had not yet been reached in service operations and fostering a service culture.

The Committee was particularly concerned at the problem in the Soulsby building and the possibility of recurrence before remedial action, which seemed protracted. The Director would see if the work could be brought forward but assured the Committee that contingencies had been prepared and two people provided cover outside working hours.

The incidents were broadly of three categories: accidental, external and problems that would not have occurred if some preventative action had been taken. The last category could be eliminated, and the ISC would be interested to receive a report on any outstanding issues at its next meeting.

2,300 students and 350 staff had taken advantage of the MS agreement; take-up should be encouraged by publicity, and for staff could be included in CamBens, the list of staff benefits. There was no personal cost.

On-line examinations and digital lecture capture were of great interest, but on-line lectures were an adjunct to attendance and not a substitute: attendance was part of the experience. The Committee noted that on-line timetables were now a necessity. There were many other aspects to consider: Mr Jones pointed out that it should no longer be necessary to submit work in both hard copy and soft, on disc. A single electronic copy should suffice.

The Committee supported a review of the training function of the UIS as proposed, and that additional volunteers should be sought to supplement the reducing in-house number. If IT training was considered a facet of PPD, perhaps the two listings could be combined.

Action: Director

135. Information Security Management

The Committee received paper ISC 109 describing progress in information security management1. The risk assessment was completed; internal audit had reported. External attacks continued to try to find vulnerabilities and had some success.

Paper ISC 109(a) had been circulated at the request of the Chairman proposing the establishment of a Cybersecurity Technical Review Group. All the members had agreed to join, and Mr Watmore to chair. The intention was a short, sharp review in about three meetings. A particular issue in the University was devolved, diverse practice and how to educate people about the risks.

The Committee endorsed the establishment of the Review Group.

Action: Mr Watmore; Secretary

136. Service Catalogue deployment plan

A report on the Service Catalogue was circulated as ISC 110.

It should be clear that it was the University, not UIS, catalogue; there was some reluctance to offer up services as a result of a misunderstanding on that point, but because the aim was to roll in all services to a single repository there should not be a sub-set of local catalogues. However, the single University list could not be completely exclusive: some services may be privately owned and appear only on personal lists.

Subject to that comment, the Committee endorsed the proposed model of a single catalogue for the Collegiate University, to be deployed by UIS by the start of the 2016/17 academic year for most institutions, with a target date of the end of 2016 for the remaining institutions.

1 Subject to the last phrase in the second paragraph of section 1 reading “no other University service problems were detected” (instead of “affected”).

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137. Commercial service provision

Paper ISC 111 was circulated to members only.

The Committee was asked to note the dialogue between UIS and a potential partner relating to the provision of UIS infrastructure services and the exploratory discussions regarding possible expansion of the University’s fibre optic network.

Members were concerned at the possible diversion of UIS attention at an important time, the obligations and risk, the legal environment, the use of the jointly owned network, and the customer/provider relationship - which they thought might with advantage be reversed. On the other hand, working closely with the biomedical cluster around Cambridge was of great strategic importance.

There was no fixed timetable but there were probably twelve months to agree Heads of Terms; implementation would be some years ahead.

The Committee agreed that the Chairman and Director should take this forward, having agreed the path to take, and report back to the June meeting.

Action: Director

138. Committee Business

ISC 112 proposed the establishment of a Business Committee to assist with managing ISC business.

The Committee agreed it should be titled the Operations Committee and by relieving the ISC of operational and routine matters would enable the ISC to concentrate on strategy.

To indicate how it would work, past agenda should be reviewed to see what items might have been on the ISC or the Operations Committee agenda, or forwarded by the Operations Committee as matters of significance.

It was agreed it be established as soon as possible.

139. Information Services Governance - update

A note of progress on governance issues was circulated as ISC 113. The Committee:

(a) Appointed the Academic Secr etary to the User Needs Committee and agreed to make and consider further nominations by correspondence. (b) Noted the revised terms of reference of the Digital Teaching and Learning Sub-Committee (of the General Board’s Education Committee) which continued to report to the ISC.

Redevelopment of the Cavendish Laboratory had implications for the Data Centre and Hall 4, but not imminently, and were a matter for the Data Centre

140. UIS dashboard.

The updated UIS dashboard was circulated as ISC 114. The amber status for the second GBN link to Addenbrookes was unfortunate, but could not be lifted until the confused position at the station about granting wayleaves had been sorted out by Network Rail and the developers.

141. Forward look.

Business at future meetings would be as follows: 21 April ERP strategy (priorities and progress)

IS strategy (initial consideration) 16 June ERP strategy (for approval)

IS strategy (for approval) IT governance – review of effectiveness Post-CARET arrangements

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Digital Strategy for Education 142. Sub-Committees

Minutes of the following meetings were received as ISC 115 (a) to (i):

a) IT Purchasing Group (5 October 2015) b) Business Systems Committee (9 December 2015) c) Business Systems Committee (11 February 2016) d) Finance Systems Committee (7 December 2015) e) HR Systems Committee (11 February 2016) f) Student Information Systems Committee (30 November 2015) g) HPCS Strategy Group (9 November 2015) h) Digital Teaching and Learning Sub-Committee (4 February 2016)

The Committee’s attention is drawn to M6: Digital examinations and assessment strategy and M7: Digital Strategy for Education (which the ISC should receive at its June meeting).

i) Information Security Management Committee (11 January 2016)

143. Technology Development Fund

A report on the projects for which funds had been allocated under the delegated authority of the Director of Information Services was received as ISC 116.

144. Research Computing

An amended copy of the report provided for the Planning Round Scrutiny meeting on 9 February 2016 setting out the case for a change in the way that the UIS High Performance Computing Service was funded was received as Paper ISC 117.

Members are asked to note the paper.

145. Libraries Connect

The Committee received an update on the Cambridge Libraries Connect Programme as ISC 118.

146. Meetings

(1) Meetings for the remainder of this year had been arranged as follows:

At 2.15pm (in the Syndicate Room)

21 April 2016 16 June 2016

Coffee would be available fifteen minutes before each meeting.

(2) Meetings for 2016-17 were being arranged.

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Information Services Committee contacts:

Martin Bellamy (Director, UIS and Executive Officer to the Committee) [email protected] 01223 332246

Nick Wilson (Secretary) [email protected] 01223 332250

Planning and Resource Allocation Office, The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1TS

March 2016



University Library – Library Replacement System Brief description:

The paper summarises the project and requested the Senior Pro-VC to approve on behalf of the ISC the completion of the contract negotiations and to authorise the University Library to sign contracts for the services.

Action(s) required:

Action has been taken. The paper is for report.

Other comments:

List of papers submitted with this coversheet:

Project Report

Author/originating body:

Libraries Connect Project Board

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ISC 120



Review of IT Infrastructure and Support: Progress Review Group Brief description:

The Committee agreed at their last meeting to the Director’s proposal for a progress review on implementation of the IT report and that he propose membership and terms of reference, which are attached.

Action(s) required:

To approve the membership and terms of reference

Other comments:


membership and terms of reference


Director, UIS

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ISC 121

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Confidential paper detached from web publication

Review of IT Infrastructure and Support: Progress Review Group Council and General Board accepted the principles and recommendations set out in the Review of IT Infrastructure and Su pport in 201 3. This led to the f ormation of University Information Services in March 2014 and the commencement of a programme of work to implement the proposals.

The Directo r of UIS has sou ght and obtained sup port from the Information Service s Committee (ISC) for an interim review of progress to be conducted in 2016.

At the invitation of th e ISC Chairman the follo wing have a greed to join the Progress Review Group:

A Dr Rachael Padman (Chair)

B Alison Allden

C Dr Jim Bellingham

D Professor Ian Leslie

Secretary: Nick Wilson.

The Group’s task is to assess the extent to which the aims and recommendations of the Review of IT Infrastructu re and Support have been realised and to report to the ISC on any chan ges in appro ach or addition al action s that are need ed to deliver fully th e intentions set out in the Review.



UIS Operational Update – April 2016

Brief description:

This paper provides an update on activity within UIS since the ISC met in March. It provides a summary of the remedial work undertaken at the Soulsby data centre and an intervention UIS took to address externally-influenced slow loading of University web pages. An update on the rollout of services facilitated by the Microsoft EES Agreement is provided, and includes a report on the financial value derived from the agreement and signup rates for Office 365 ProPlus and OneDrive for Business. An update on the delivery of UIS storage services and progress with the ERP Strategy Refresh Project are also provided.

Action(s) required:

ISC Members are asked to: • note the activity reported in the paper

Other comments:

Earlier versions of the annexes were discussed at the Schools/UIS Engagement Group on 6 April 2016


• UIS Operational Update – April 2016, which incorporates: o Service operations report o Rollout of services facilitated by the Microsoft EES Agreement o Update on the delivery of storage services o Progress on the business systems (ERP) strategy refresh project


Dr Ian Cooper, UIS (Individual papers are authored as indicated in each annex.)

ISC Paper

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123

UIS Operational Update – April 2016 Author(s): Ian Cooper Date: 14 April 2016 Version 2

Action requested The ISC is asked to note the activity reported in this report, which covers the following subjects:

• Service operations report • Rollout of services facilitated by the Microsoft EES Agreement • Update on the delivery of storage services • Progress on the ERP Strategy Refresh Project

1 Updates

1.1 Service operations report Remedial work to resolve a problem with the air handling units in the Soulsby data centre was completed over the weekend of 2-3 April. On two occasions UIS used its networking technology to implement an interim workaround to mitigate the effects of an external problem which caused University websites to load very slowly. A new version of the Managed Web Service, which provides self-service access to run a variety of websites, was launched.

A full report is available in Annex A.

1.2 UIS Organisational change As reported in our March update (ISC 108), Phase 2 of the organisational change concluded at the end of December 2015. Like any other organisation, the UIS will continue to change over time and this will be handled as business as usual.

1.3 Rollout of services facilitated by the Microsoft EES Agreement Qualifying staff and students have been provided with access to Windows 10 and Microsoft Office Professional via the Software Distribution Service since the agreement was signed. As of 12 April 2016 the value of software downloaded which is covered by the agreement is in excess of £155,000.

Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus was made available to students on 23 November 2015 and to qualifying staff on 5 February 2016. As of 5 April 2016 2,648 students and 570 staff had activated copies of the software on their devices.

OneDrive for Business was made available to qualifying users across the Collegiate University on 25 February 2016. As of 12 April 2016 1,813 accounts had been self-provisioned by users and over 3TB of data were stored.

Further information about the software and services available under the agreement, and a progress report on the delivery of services, is provided in Annex B.

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1.4 Update on the delivery of storage services An update on the delivery of storage services is provided in Annex C, including progress on the procurement of an underlying storage fabric upon which user-facing services will be developed.

1.5 Progress on ERP Strategy Refresh Project An update on the project is provided in Annex D.

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Annex A: Service operations report (23-Feb-2016 – 07-Apr-2016) Author(s): Sue Rogers, Steve Riley, Ian Cooper Date: 12 April 2016 Version 2

Purpose and action requested This annex provides an update on recent service operations activity. Members are asked to note the report.

1 Overview Between 23 February and 7 April 2016 the following notable events have occurred.

• 2-3 April 2016: Soulsby data centre remedial work • 11-14 March 2016 and 21-22 March 2016: Adobe font problems University webpages • 6 April 2016: Virtual Machines incident • 24 March 2016: launch of Managed Web Service 3

2 Soulsby machine room remedial work Following the severe problems experienced in the Soulsby data centre on 21 February 2016, remedial electrical work was originally scheduled for July. At its March meeting the ISC recommended that the risk was too high and the work should be carried out sooner. In consultation with customers with equipment hosted in the facility we were able to bring forward the remedial work to the weekend of 2-3 April 2016.

The remedial electrical work involved a complete shutdown of power to the Soulsby room from 08:00 Saturday 2 April 2016. This was to allow the electronics to the air conditioning system to be replaced and a full maintenance to be done of the electrical equipment that controls mains and backup power distribution in the room. The work completed the necessary activity on the air conditioning systems and they underwent testing. Some electrical components could not be sourced by the contractor in time and work to replace these will be scheduled for a further maintenance period, however this will not require a full mains shutdown.

The work was scheduled and carried out from 17:00 Friday 1 April (when IT systems started to be turned off by staff) to 18:00 Sunday 3 April 2016.

All non-UIS customers of the Soulsby data centre, including University Library, Plant Sciences and Astronomy were contacted beforehand in order that they could make alternative arrangements during the downtime. The University Library had a notable number of services that were unavailable during the maintenance, which prohibited electronic issue and return of resources (including self-issue), restricted access to some publisher resources, and took offline a number of repositories (including DSpace, Digital Library and Virtual Exhibitions).

Most UIS services continued to run from other UIS data centres but a few were unavailable and were advertised in advance: CamTools, Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), Talks.cam, non-UIS services using the UIS Hosted Server Service in the Soulsby data centre. The Employee Self Service (ESS) system did not automatically fail over to another site, as had been planned, and was unavailable over the weekend.

During the maintenance period we became aware that there were delays in processing some email. This was found to be due to the way that the anti-spam/anti-malware tool on the UAS email system

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works. The problem resolved itself and email backlogs cleared when systems in the room were turned on following conclusion of the maintenance.

Throughout the weekend UIS sent out live tweets1 and feedback from the community indicates this was seen as useful.

2.1 Follow-up activities UIS will be carrying out an internal review of the planning and implementation to identify the reasons behind the problems that occurred.

UIS will also be reviewing how it handles live communications during extended maintenance activities in the future, as part of its ongoing wider review of communications.

3 Adobe font problems University webpages Problems were experienced with corporate Adobe fonts on University websites on two separate incidents occurring Friday 11 March through the weekend to Monday 14 March and also overnight from Monday 21 March through to Tuesday 22 March.

On Friday 11 March many University websites were slow to load for approximately 2.5 hours due to problems loading the corporate Adobe font in the Project Light website template from the Adobe Typekit service. This was identified as a technical fault with Adobe’s content delivery network provider’s London site.

This problem was outside of the control of the University, and many other Adobe customers (and customers of other services hosted by their content delivery network provider) were similarly affected. UIS discussed the problem with the University’s Office of External Affairs and Communications (OEAC) and a technical intervention using a UIS-operated system was devised.

UIS used a piece of network technology to strip references to the corporate font on any page from the UIS-operated Drupal service. This caused webpages to immediately use the backup font, and enabled the UIS to ensure that the main University website loaded quickly (albeit with a slightly different look to normal). Other websites hosted on the central Drupal platform also benefitted from use of this intervention. The workaround was left in place over the weekend, with the agreement of the OEAC, and was removed following agreement of the UIS crisis team and OEAC at 09:30 on Monday 14 March 2016.

At approximately 21:20 on Monday 21 March a recurrence of the content delivery network fault was identified, again affecting the ability to load the corporate font. Coordinated by Senior Managers, UIS staff put in place the same workaround at 21:55, and returned systems to normal operation at 09:20 on Tuesday 22 March.

3.1 Follow-up activity UIS was already involved in conversations with the Office of External Affairs and Communications to review options for the use of web fonts for the corporate web style guides. This work has now been accelerated, though the prevalence of devolved managed web platforms at the University will require coordination with other institutions.

1 https://storify.com/IanHCooper/soulsby-maintenance-work

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https://storify.com/IanHCooper/soulsby-maintenance-work

4 Virtual machines incident On Wednesday 6 April, one of the UIS Virtual Machine (VM) hosts lost access to its storage system and became unavailable. The DNS master server was affected, which resulted in our inability to process DNS updates from IT support staff for a short period.

5 Launch of MWS 3 On 24 March 2016 UIS launched the Managed Web Service version 3 (MWS 3). This service provides University users with a versatile infrastructure on which they can run a variety of websites.

MWS3 is similar to commercial Unix-based web hosting and does not require significant Unix knowledge for common use. It provides modern, delegated, self-service access and can be used without having to interact directly with UIS staff. It runs on dedicated, resilient virtual machine hardware in UIS data centres and uses high-performance solid state disk (SSD) storage. A number of early adopters are already the service for production websites.

Users of the previous service will need to take action as the old platform will be decommissioned later in 2016.

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Annex B: Rollout of services from Microsoft EES Author(s): Ian Cooper, Mark Ferrar Date: 12 April 2016 Version 2

Purpose and action requested This report provides the ISC with an update on the continuing rollout of services from the Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) agreement, including take up of software and services. Members are asked to note the activity.

1 Context The University and 26 Colleges became party to an Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) agreement with Microsoft in September 2015. Since then the UIS has progressed a programme of work to make software and services available under that agreement available to all Students and all eligible Staff. This is an update on progress with that programme.

Desktop software and licenses supplied under the agreement, and details of take-up of Office 365 services are included in Appendix 1.

2 Progress report • We continue to develop the new University-wide Active Directory (“Blue”), which we are

using to control access to Microsoft On-line Services included in the Microsoft EES Agreement. The next major phase of activity will be to design the Organisational Unit (OU) structure to enable effective and secure delegated administration. This work will start in April 2016.

• Office 365 ProPlus and OneDrive for Business have been enabled for both staff and students. Windows, Apple and Android devices are well supported but there is limited support for Linux devices. Uptake is steady and is reported in Appendix 1.

• Work to enable the Home Use Programme (Office 2016 for home/personal use), Work At Home rights (Office 2016 for work use on a home computer) and DreamSpark (any and all Microsoft products for Teaching purposes) is nearing completion. Entitlement and provisioning will make use of the Shibboleth authentication service.

• Yammer has been enabled for a small group of early adopters, with further enablement of the service gated by the deployment of a major update to the service by Microsoft toward the end of April 2016. This update will enable tighter integration with the rest of Office 365 and allow more control of user account details through the synchronisation with the local Active Directory (“Blue”).

• The UIS is preparing to migrate its email and calendar accounts to Exchange On-line as part of its “UIS Groupware” programme. In addition, parts of the University Library are also planning to join this part of the programme as early-adopters of the service. The UIS expects the first accounts to move in July 2016.

• Other Microsoft On-line Services available under the agreement remain in the early stages of planning (e.g. SharePoint) or assessment (e.g. Skype for Business) phases.

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Appendix 1: Delivery of software and services under the Agreement

1 Software distributed The table below shows the total volume of Microsoft products delivered through the UIS Software Distribution Service under the term of the EES Agreement, as of 12 April 2016.

19 February 2016 12 April 2016

Product Volume Value Volume Value

Microsoft Windows 10 318 £22,377.60 588 £43,467.15

Microsoft Office Windows 1,391 £66,399.02 1,906 £91,160.22

Microsoft Office MacOS 534 £19,699.26 599 £22,097.11

Other Microsoft Licenses 105 £14.35 105 £14.35

Total 2,348 £108,490.23 3,198 £156,738.83

2 Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus activations Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus was made available to students on 23 November 2015 and to staff on 5 February 2016. The table below shows activations as of 5 April 2016.

10 February 2016 5 April 2016

User category Activations Activations

Students 2,074 2,648

Qualifying staff 22 570

Total 2,096 3,218

3 OneDrive for Business OneDrive for Business was made available to qualifying users across the Collegiate University on 25 February 2016. The table below shows the number of provisioned accounts and volume of data stored on 12 April 2016.

Previous period 12 April 2016

Category Accounts Size (TB) Accounts Size (TB)

OneDrive for Business (all users) - - 1,813 3.191

Total 0 0 1,813 3.191

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Annex C: Update on the delivery of storage services Author(s): Mark Ferrar Date: 5 April 2016 Version 6.0

Action requested ISC Members are asked to provide feedback should the services and delivery timescale described below not meet their expectations.

1 Context Storage Services have grown out of the Storage Strategy “New Initiative” established at the foundation of the UIS. Recall that an architecture for storage services has been developed and this is summarised below in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows the overall solution framework relating multiple use-cases to a range of potential solution types and Figure 2 shows the high-level technical architecture designed to enable and host a number of complimentary storage services shown mostly on the right of Figure 1.

Figure 1: Solution Framework

Figure 2: Technical Architecture

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The programme has already delivered the enablement of Microsoft OneDrive for Business and a framework agreement with Dropbox (finalised in early April 2016). These are Public Cloud services and feature largely on the left of the Solution Framework (Figure 1), satisfying a number of Use Cases.

Microsoft OneDrive for Business has been delivered as part of the roll-out of services enabled by the Microsoft EES agreement and can be accessed using the CRSid for all parts of the university subscribing to that agreement. Accounts are secured using federated authentication back to a new university-wide Active Directory running “on premise” here at Cambridge.

Dropbox is an extremely popular storage service, also accessed using the CRSid (and a separate password), but only for those who have signed up to use this service. The framework agreement reduces the cost for those who have chosen a paid-for version of this service.

The remaining deliverables are largely those on the right of the Solution Framework (Figure 1), shown in the high-level Technical Architecture in Figure 2. They are mostly “on premise” services to be deployed in a Private Cloud operated by the UIS.

These Private Cloud services require the purchase and deployment of both hardware and software, the creation of operating procedures, service descriptions and the development of a “self-service” provisioning portal for users. The programme will deliver a Minimum Viable Product for the portal, enabling request to fulfilment, but where some steps may be done manually by service operators. In time (after this programme phase has ended), the Service Owner shall oversee development of the portal to include more automation for improved robustness and speedier fulfilment at any time.

2 Benefits and value A business case is being developed to support the selection and procurement of products to deliver the services of the Private Cloud parts of the architecture. The business case will detail where and how benefits will accrue from these services. A pricing model shall be designed to attract users while enabling these services to become self-sustaining.

By choosing compatible and comparable technologies to the Research Computing Service, we can leverage additional economies of scale, reliability and performance unachievable in smaller, local or application-specific storage systems. We can leverage the capacity of the University’s network and data centre facilities to present scalable, reliable and cost effective data storage solutions, that meet a more specific set of information assurance needs than can be met by Public Cloud services (like OneDrive or Dropbox).

3 Options The programme still faces a number of choices. Amongst these are:

1. Choice of technology for the storage fabric, orchestration layer, service layer and administration tools.

2. The location of “second site” services to enable a robust and fault-tolerant Private Cloud. 3. The order of delivery of the different services, subject to demand. 4. The functionality delivered as a Minimum Viable Product in the provisioning portal.

Each of these shall be subject to an evaluation of options governed by the requirement to meet the fixed budget for the programme. This budget, set at £500,000 from the TDF, must accommodate the costs of the programme manager, any hardware and software, the first year of maintenance payments on the hardware and software, any professional services needed to deploy the hardware and software and any contingent costs related to the provisioning portal.

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4 Tasks & timetable A progress report was prepared for the (cancelled) January ISC. Here we present an update to the January progress report. It shows minor slippage on some key deliverables, but that the programme overall is still tracking to deliver a “Go Live” in August of this year.

Delivery Milestone January Target Latest Target

Storage Fabric Discovery Phase January 2016 Complete

Solution Design and Outline Business Case March 2016 Complete

Expression of Interest February 2016 Complete

Issue Tender Documents March 2016 8 April 2016

Award Contract May 2016 27 June 2016

Go Live and Announcement July 2016 3 August 2016

4.1 Costs The final cost breakdown will be dependent upon commercial negotiation and the selected procurement process for the hardware and software of the initial services. These costs depend on:

• accuracy of projected (initial) demand for services (scale) • estimates of growth from year 1 – year 3 (growth) • the choice of vendor & products (prices)

A draft breakdown of costs has been summarised below. A more detailed breakdown will be available in the Outline Business Case.

2016 2017

Staff costs £100,000 (2 FTE) £50,000 (1 FTE)

Data Centre Rental £35,000 £35,000

Cost of initial Fabric £250,000 -

Totals £385,000 £85,000

Indicative costs of £470,000 will be taken from TDF Reserves. The ISC previously endorsed this approach in M91 relating to paper ISC 67 in April 2015.

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5 Risks Principle Risks for the programme at this time are:

The Issue Log for the programme at this time is:

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Annex D: Progress Report on ERP Strategy Refresh Project Author(s): Richard Young Date: 14 April 2016 Version: 4

Purpose and action requested This report provides an update on the emerging options from the project. Members are asked to note the report

1 Context The ERP Strategy Refresh Project was established to produce a 2-10 year strategy for Enterprise Systems (ERP) architecture2, along with an Implementation Roadmap to transition the University to this future architecture.

The Project is primarily addressing Finance, Student Administration and HR functions (the core systems in those areas being CUFS, CamSIS and CHRIS respectively) but is also considering further opportunities to introduce ERP services to address other needs of the University in areas such as:

• Business Intelligence & Decision Support • Procurement • Asset Management • Estate Management • Research Grant Applications

The Project was initiated in 2015, making substantial progress before being impacted by the departure of a key staff member. To expedite the conclusion of the Project, a tender process was conducted during December 2015 to select a consultancy partner. PA Consulting was appointed, starting work in early February.

The work will complete by early April 2016, delivering:

• a Strategy which sets out the key architectural choices open to the University and provides recommendations regarding the architectural and delivery approaches

• an Implementation Roadmap which includes: o a high level two- to ten-year development roadmap for the University’s ERP systems o priority activities defined sufficiently well to ensure that they can be initiated quickly

The formal approval of the deliverables will follow, concluding at the ISC’s meeting in June 2016.

2 An “architecture” in this sense is analogous to the traditional use of the term for building design, being the high level design of a system or set of systems. It forms the basis for more detailed design, planning and construction work.

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2 Benefits and value The objectives of the ERP Strategy are to support the requirements of the core functions of the University and provide an architecture that will enable (in no specific order of precedence):

• improved and consistent user experiences • more efficient information flows between functional components • reduced ERP system operating and maintenance cost allied with greater derived value from

that cost • flexibility in responding to changing needs and changing understanding of user needs; • flexibility to take advantage of new technology developments • more effective knowledge sharing across the organization • greater resilience

3 Options & Recommendations This section indicates the emerging findings from the work to date, which will be finalised in the ERP Strategy to be submitted to the June 2016 of the ISC.

Engagement with a range of stakeholders across the collegiate University has highlighted that the current ERP systems are a poor fit to today’s needs in a number of areas. In some cases, this has resulted in business needs not being addressed, or having to be addressed manually or outside of the core ERP systems. There are also notable shortcomings in key enabling capabilities such as business intelligence, reporting and integration (of both systems and business processes).

Furthermore, work with ERP vendors and with other Higher Education Institutions both in the UK and the US has highlighted significant opportunities available to the University. Technology trends are driving rapid evolution of ERP products toward flexible, modular designs whilst sector changes in the UK are driving improvements in product capability as well as the user experience.

In considering possible responses to this situation, a number of design principles have been drawn up in conjunction with colleagues. The future ERP Strategy and Implementation will align with the following design principles:

1) Actively demonstrate the University of Cambridge values relevant to systems provision 2) Cater to the future needs of both the diverse and specialist functions; for current, future and

former students, academics, research and administrative staff 3) Ensure the users of systems are central to the design and implementation of changes 4) Deliver value for money investment in systems, with the emphasis on process efficiency and

effectiveness for central functions 5) Provide sufficient flexibility to allow for changes in; technology, processes, and differing user

demands 6) Ensure interoperability of systems, supported by the data needed to make that happen and a

systems architecture built from components which can be combined to deliver flexibility 7) Drive value through the provision of business intelligence, analytics and reporting

To address these challenges, four strategic options have been identified:

1) Upgrade existing systems – invest in version upgrades and development of existing systems

2) Single product monolith – replace existing systems with a single product, e.g. SAP or Oracle. Build new capabilities on this product by default

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3) Hybrid: central core supported with buy/build of capabilities – implement a central core system and select packages or bespoke build for other capability groups which cannot be met adequately by the selected system

4) Portfolio – select individual packages or bespoke build for all capability groups or individual capabilities

In assessing those four strategic options, the emerging recommendation is that the Hybrid option is the best fit as it most closely aligns with the design principles. Work is ongoing to confirm the extent of the central core, with current thinking being that in the medium- to long-term it should incorporate Core Finance, HR, Expense Management, Procurement and Estate Management. However, a principle being adopted is that the core should be narrowly-defined, to enable the focus of the University to be on genuinely innovative and differentiating capabilities that will help Cambridge stand-out.

Analysis of the ERP vendor market suggests Oracle and SAP are most likely to provide end-to-end core capabilities, with the potential to extend into research administration and student capabilities. Other smaller providers do provide a range of capabilities, but present a number of issues and risks in providing the core administrative functions of the University. The work to date further indicates that the cost of ownership and industry positioning are favourable to the use of Oracle eBusiness suite as the core solution.

The systems refresh is a substantial investment requiring delivery in a number of waves. They are still being shaped but currently have the following key technical components:

1) Wave 1 (2016-18) a. HR system selection and potential replacement b. Delivery of enhanced business intelligence and reporting tools c. Interim solutions for expenses and procurement d. Vendor selection for the core e. Detailed design of the future student lifecycle f. Evaluation of potential use of Customer Relationship Management tools

2) Wave 2 (2018-20) a. Deploy refreshed core following the vendor selection b. Deliver detailed integration across HR, Finance and Student pillars c. Deployment of customer relationship management

3) Wave 3 (2020+) a. Potential, subject to supplier product development and suitability, to deploy

alternative platform for student lifecycle management b. Full deployment of core system for procurement and expenses c. Full integration delivered by the core platform with an architecture that supports non-

core modules where required

Work is progressing to validate these initial proposals and to provide further detail.

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ISC Operations Committee Brief description:

The Committee agreed at the last meeting to constitute an Operations Committee to relieve the ISC of operational and routine matters enabling the ISC to concentrate on strategy. [M 138].

The Committee also asked that to indicate how it would work, past agenda should be reviewed to see what items might have been on the ISC or the Operations Committee agenda, or forwarded by the Operations Committee as matters of significance

Action(s) required:

To approve the constitution and terms of reference.

To appoint members.

To consider the pattern of meetings.

Other comments:

Subject to the establishment of this sub-committee, Professor Leslie has agreed to act as Chair.


Note of ISC items and how they might have been dealt with.

Draft constitution and terms of reference.


Secretary

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Information Services Committee Operations Committee The note below shows headings from the minutes of the last three ISC meetings indicating how they might have been dealt with had an Operations Committee (OC) existed then as now proposed. For those matters indicated as for the ISC it is assumed the OC would have advised on the terms of the report to the ISC. The proposed terms of reference would enable the OC to act on delegated matters and that might also relieve the ISC of, for example, releasing ear-marked project funding. Meeting Item OC ISC 3/16 Operational updates Action on service incidents Establishment of Cybersecurity Review Group Service Catalogue Deployment Plan Commercial Service provision Information Services Governance Appointment of members; approvals of terms of

reference

UIS Dashboard Minutes of sub-committees Forward look/workplan TDF Report Research Computing report Libraries Connect (report) Release of funding 11/15 Operational updates Research Computing Strategy - funding request Strategic Planning to 2019 Fundraising Systems Project –funding request Libraries Connect programme - report Information Security Management Update Update on arrangements following the suppression of

CARET

Information Services Governance UIS Dashboard Minutes of sub-committees TDF Report 10/15 Operational updates service incidents Progress on implementing the IT Review Strategic Planning to 2018-19 Libraries Connect programme - update IT career development Information Services Governance Approval of Card Committee Dashboard HEDIIP – new landscape TDF Report


Operations Committee

Proposed constitution, membership and terms of reference

The Operations Committee shall consist of up to four members appointed by the ISC, including two members of the ISC one of whom shall act as Chair.

Members shall be appointed for up to three years, renewable for further terms of up to three years to a maximum of six years in total.

Membership:

1. Ian Leslie (Chair)

2.

3.

4.

The Chairman of the ISC and the Director of UIS (or in the Director’s absence the Deputy Director) shall have the right to attend and others may attend by invitation of the Committee.

The Committee shall be quorate provided three members were present at the start of the meeting.

Terms of reference

The Operations Committee shall assist the business of the ISC by:

(1) Advising on the content of papers for consideration by the ISC and acting on matters referred to it by the ISC or its Chair.

(2) Commissioning reports on matters for consideration by the ISC.

(3) Receiving routine reports on the operation of the UIS and referring to the ISC any matters of significance.

(4) Considering first drafts of regular reports including the annual report and the annual submission to the Planning Round.

(5) Monitoring the application of ISC project funding and the use of the Technology Development Fund.

(6) Keeping ISC policies and guidelines under review.

(7) Receiving minutes of sub-committees and project boards and drawing the attention of the ISC to any matters of significance or requiring decision.

Providing always that urgent matters may be presented direct to the ISC by its Executive Officer and that in cases of doubt or indecision the Operations Committee shall refer the matter to the ISC.

The Operations Committee shall report after each meeting to the ISC.



The Development of a University-wide IT Community

Brief description:

This paper proposes next steps for the development of an IT community throughout the Collegiate University, as recommended by the IT Review and for which a proposal was endorsed by the ISC at the October 2015 meeting. Activity in 2015 is intended to develop capability of the community through skills and knowledge sharing.

Action(s) required:

ISC Members are asked to: • endorse the planned activities and the pursuit of the phased approach

Other comments:

An earlier draft of this document was discussed at the Schools/UIS Engagement Group meeting on 6 April 2016 and was broadly supported.


• IT Community Development Programme


Mr Ed Webster, UIS

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IT Community Development Programme Author(s): Ed Webster Date: 11 April 2016 Version 3.1

Purpose and action requested This paper provides the ISC with an update on emerging priorities. ISC Members are asked to endorse the planned activities and pursuit of the phased approach.

1 Background and objectives

1.1 Objectives as set out in the IT Review In the 2012 IT Review, the panel made the following recommendation:

Recommendation E1. The University should reform the career structures and employment arrangements of its computing support staff with urgency, with the aim of improving the mobility of individuals, and the flexibility of teams. – pg31

This was based on the analysis of the IT support available across the University, in Departments, Schools, and the centralised functions of MISD and UCS. It recognises the changing dynamics of IT support within the University and some of the implications for that support.

The IT support provided across the Collegiate University therefore needs to accommodate the diverse and dynamic development needs of institutions and of Researchers and Teaching Officers.

1.2 ISC endorsement of community development proposal in 2015 The October 2015 ISC paper (ISC 90) outlined the objectives of this project which are aligned to supporting the ongoing development of first rate capability amongst institutional IT staff. IT professionals need to be able to help influence overall University IT strategy, as well as meeting institutional needs. Their role is supported through central capability and tools, such as consistent Architecture and Information Management frameworks, and the ease with which IT services can be found via, for example, the Service Catalogue. However these initiatives alone would not be adequate by themselves to enable institutional IT staff to be successful for the University in an increasingly demanding environment.

1.3 Work done to date The period from January to March 2016 was designated as the ‘engage phase’ in the October ISC. In this period the team has:

• Run workshops aimed at IT coordinators and academic leads for IT in the schools • Engaged in online discussions on key topics • Held a number of 1:1 meetings with IT professionals • Sourced data on the target group from the University’s HR system, reviewing it for patterns

regarding staff movement and attrition comparing to the external IT labour market • Considered relative levels of IT support intensity by School

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This activity has enabled the team to identify the following patterns:

1. When compared to the external market for IT professionals, turnover is exceptionally low. 2. There is a much lower level of IT support (in FTE terms) in Arts Schools than in STEM

Schools, possibly driven by differing levels of requirement see Annex A. 3. The people who provide IT services in departments might not be IT staff. There are mosaics

of people who meet these needs in departments and research groups. One of the drivers for this may be that research grants will account for IT effort (i.e. FTE) rather than outcomes (i.e. services).

4. Despite #3 above, there does appear to be a pattern of IT Staff being more likely to be the ones providing core IT services (e.g. email, networking, etc.) and PhDs/Post Docs/RAs/UTOs often providing more domain specific IT services locally.

This in turn has led to the conclusion that low turnover and a lack of a consistent framework for delivery mean that there are weak significant extrinsic drivers for IT professionals to keep their skills up to date. As a result, the ability to deliver IT services will vary from institution to institution, and in some cases be suboptimal. We have no quantitative data to support this conclusion at this stage.

Additional insights have been that:

1. Whilst the importance of the 'local Computer Officer' being physically present to fix problems is reported to be high, there is also an expectation that core IT services should 'just work'. More senior IT professionals in the schools believe that as this expectation is met then whilst accessibility to the Computer Officer will remain important, actual presence on site, just in case something goes wrong, will be less valued.

2. With basic IT services 'just working' this will free capacity for IT professionals to engage in more meaningful ways with the strategic IS agenda of the University. In turn this will support the creation, sourcing and delivery of IT services that provide greater impact in the areas of administration, teaching, learning, and research. In order to do this effectively, IT professionals collectively will require a broader set of skills than many have the opportunity to exercise at this time. Equally it is anticipated that this will result in career paths that cross departmental and UIS boundaries.

There remains a requirement to test if these same patterns are present in the College IT community.

1.4 Approach Given the analysis and insights provided as outlined in the previous section, a number of interventions for the period through to December 2016 have been highlighted that fall into two main categories:

• Capability development through skills • Capability development through knowledge share

1.4.1 Capability through skills

1. Socialising and supporting the use of SFIA1 across the IT Community through a series of workshops, thereby providing a common language for development, job descriptions, and expectation setting.

2. Definition of a core skill set for an IT professional in Departments, NSIs, and Colleges that enables the delivery of basic IT services.

1 Skills Framework for the Information Age, © Copyright SFIA Foundation 2003–2015. For further information on this industry standard and comprehensive skills framework visit: http://www.sfia-online.org/en

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3. Definition of the skills sets that will be desirable in the near future. 4. Deployment of a skills audit to enable next step initiatives. 5. Design and deployment of a personal development tool. 6. Creation of a skills database. 7. Review and adaptation of pre-existing mentoring and job shadowing approaches/tools and

processes for the IT Community in preparation for deployment.

8. Analysis of skills gaps that may result in a case being made for a centrally driven programme of training.

1.4.2 Capability development through knowledge share

1. Creation of a virtual ‘landing place’ for IT Community Development resources, standard job descriptions, etc.

2. Aligned to the above, the creation of a virtual space where IT professionals can seek advice and guidance from colleagues, or offer support as an expert in a particular area.

3. Create and test a number of events to bring people together around points of shared interest in addition to those that currently exist, with a focus on accessibility and relevance.

4. Create appropriate linkages with the University IT Service Catalogue project to support the development of broad understanding of, and access to, IT services available from across the Collegiate University.

Additionally a roadmap for ongoing capability development should also be created, and should be delivered as part of the final handover period. This roadmap should cover such areas as the:

• ongoing evolution of the project deliverables; • development of standardised job descriptions; • development of a career pathways structure; • centralised training initiatives: commissioning, management, and evaluation; • centralised talent attraction initiatives such as recruitment support, the current SPS sandwich

student placement programme, etc.; • creation of mechanisms to support mobility; and

• ongoing evaluation of IT professional capability against the changing requirements of the Collegiate University.

The ISC signed-off the role of Career Development Manager (at that time referred to as Community Development Manager) as a permanent position in November 2014 (ISC 26) with a view to providing sustained delivery of benefit in this area. This position was filled in February 2016, and the roadmap and other deliverables will be passed over to the incumbent on conclusion of the project.

Given the scale and scope of the likely elements within the roadmap, consideration should be given to funding further project resource, in line with an appropriate business case.

A draft plan can be found in Annex B that outlines the project deliverables with associated timescales.

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2 Deployment Options In considering the deployment options a number of factors were considered:

1. the nature of the University, and specifically that local decision making at departmental and research group level was highly valued

2. the lack of a consistent delivery framework, making a structural approach hard to design 3. the expense, both financial and in time, of attempting to create and deploy a structural

solution.

As a consequence it was felt that an approach that further equipped a community of IT professionals through the provision of centrally developed tools, facilitation of knowledge/best practice exchange and access to strategically directed investment in training would be easiest to deploy and offer the greatest change of realising benefits.

However, there are a number of ways in which this might be deployed:

1. an optional programme providing opportunities for IT staff 2. a required programme that all are expected to participate in 3. a phased commitment, beginning with volunteers, then extending the footprint, and then

deciding what to do for others

This paper recommends the phased approach as it best enables management of risks resulting from combination of:

• large scale, complex and diverse institutional requirements • many different starting points of individuals and institutions around the Collegiate University • limited resource, tools and other materials currently available

3 Business Case and Costs In October 2015 the ISC signed of £150k from TDF Reserve to support this project through to December 2016. Of this, committed staff costs to the end of the period are £133k.

The full business case will be built up through the duration of the project. Additional costs of collateral and time costs of people to participate need to be quantified, as well as the anticipated benefits areas such as the increased effectiveness and efficiency of the support capability.

4 Risks and mitigation Project risks have been identified, scored and mitigating actions considered. They can be found in Annex C.

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Annex A: Levels of IT support by School Arts &

Humanities Humanities

& Social Sciences

Biological Sciences

Physical Sciences

Clinical Medicine

Technology

All Staff 632 1,021 1,907 1,681 2,342 1,371

Academic 377 495 382 453 722 496

Other 255 526 1,525 1,228 1,620 875

Students 3,299 4,854 2,609 3,594 1,022 3,026

IT FTE 14.24 22.2 25.29 42.19 65.96 57.86

Ratios

All staff 44.4 46.0 75.4 39.8 35.5 23.7

Academic 26.5 22.3 15.1 10.7 10.9 8.6

Other 17.9 23.7 60.3 29.1 24.6 15.1

Students 231.7 218.6 103.2 85.2 15.5 52.3

All roles 276.1 264.6 178.6 125.0 51.0 76.0

Comments FTE tbc Includes 5 FTE

from other

schools/UIS

Excludes 1 FTE

on loan to SBS

Includes extra 1

FTE agency

1 dept tbc

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Annex B: Project Plan Objective/Activity Who Weeks Start Finish

ID Capability development through skills Lead: MA

SK1 Socialising and supporting the use of SFIA across the IT Community through a series of workshops, thereby providing a common language for development, job descriptions, and expectation setting.

21 15-Apr 16-Sep

SK2 Definition of core skill set for an IT professional in Departments, NSIs, and Colleges that enable the delivery of basic IT services.

4 06-May 27-May

SK3 Definition of the skills sets that will be desirable in the near future. 11 20-May 29-Jul

SK4 Deployment of a skills audit to enable next step initiatives. 18 03-Jun 30-Sep

SK5 Design and deployment of a personal development tool. 5 03-Jun 01-Jul

SK6 Creation of a skills database 8 06-May 24-Jun

SK7 Review and adaptation of pre-existing mentoring and job shadowing approaches/tools and processes for the IT Community in preparation for deployment.

9 05-Aug 30-Sep

SK8 Analysis of skills gaps that may result in a case being made for a centrally driven programme of training. 8 07-Oct 25-Nov

Capability development through knowledge share Lead: DA

KN1 Creation of a virtual ‘landing place’ for IT Community Development resources, standard job descriptions, etc. 8 08-Apr 13-May

KN2 Aligned to the above, the creation of a virtual space where IT professionals can seek advice and guidance from colleagues, or offer support as an expert in a particular area.

1

24-Jun

KN3 Create and test a number of events to bring people together around points of shared interest in addition to those that currently exist, with a focus on accessibility and relevance.

18 13-May 23-Sep

KN4 Create appropriate linkages with the University IT Service Catalogue project to support the development of a broad understanding of, and access to, IT services available from across the Collegiate University.

1

24-Jun

Forward Plan Lead: MA FP1 Create a roadmap for ongoing capability development 4 04-Nov 25-Nov

Governance Lead: EJW GV1 Agree project board membership 1

01-Apr

GV2 Arrange monthly/bi-monthly meetings running until the end of 2016 1

01-Apr

GV3 Agree terms of reference 1

25-Apr

GV4 Project Review 3 01-Dec 16-Dec

MA – Marina Aldridge (Career Development Manager); DA – Danielle Attridge (Communications Manager); EJW – Ed Webster (Interim

Organisational Change Manager)

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Annex C: Project risks Risk Probability

(1-5) Impact (1-5)

Score (PxI) Mitigation

The poor design of early activity will undermine the ability of the University to access the benefits of later initiatives

2 4 8 • Create overall framework to ensure that alignment of outputs is clear

• Develop strong stakeholder plan to give broad understanding of interdependencies

• Engage community in the development of early interventions in context of longer range aspirations

Attempting to deliver too much at one time will subvert the adoption of some deliverables, and therefore slow overall progress

3 3 9 • Use governance framework to provide appropriate level of challenge and safeguard

Certain enablers (e.g. generic job descriptions) might be seen as threatening amongst some stakeholder groups thereby undermining the speed at which the University and individuals will be able to access the benefits aspired to

3 3 9 • Create strong organisational narrative around all enabling activity and engage stakeholder groups appropriately

• Position enablers as tools to be adopted voluntarily during the course of the project

Without establishing an adequate engagement momentum, or adequately deploying enough of the key enablers, that the exit of the project team will cause the overall initiative to slow/stall

3 4 12 • Create mechanisms to measure levels of engagement and flex plans accordingly

Line managers may not be adequately equipped, resourced, or inclined to support their IT staff, and so become a barrier to realising the intended benefits of the investment.

3 4 12 • Create initiatives that are easily accessible for line managers to assist in bridging the gaps

• Find champions amongst the line managers to strengthen the desirability of engaging with the initiatives to improve IT professional capability

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Developing the Information Services Strategy

Brief description:

This paper sets out the objectives and approach being taken to refresh the overall strategy for information services for the Collegiate University. An initial data-gathering phase is proposed to take place in May-July 2016 and it is intended that emerging themes will be reported to the ISC at its June 2016 meeting. The body of the strategy will be assembled between July and September 2016 to help inform the 2016 Planning Round.

Action(s) required:

ISC Members are asked to: • endorse the proposed approach • proactively support the request for input from the Schools, Colleges and other

institutions

Other comments:


• Developing the Information Services Strategy Author/originating body:

Dr Mark Ferrar, UIS

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Developing the Information Services Strategy Author(s): Mark Ferrar Date: 14 April 2016 Version 7.1

Purpose To set out the objectives and approach being taken to refresh the overall strategy for information services for the Collegiate University.

Action requested Members are asked to:

1. endorse the approach being proposed. 2. proactively support the request for input from Schools, Colleges and other institutions.

1 Context The Review of IT Infrastructure and Support established the principle that the quality of Information Services at Cambridge needs to be commensurate with the University’s world-class status and position. The Information Services Committee has subsequently determined that this should be achieved through establishing a position of leadership in information services that underpin research and education across the Collegiate University, while ensuring that the services that underpin administration are best-in-class.

Previous organisational structures resulted in barriers to creating an integrated information services (IS) strategy. Major delivery organisations operated in silos and there was no mechanism to secure systematic input from across the Collegiate University. The prior approach can be characterised as “bottom up”, with teams focused on technology silos operating in particular domains.

The new UIS organisation has been created to take an “outside-in” view, where creating compelling user experiences (UX) and benchmarking operational efficiency takes precedence over striving to maintain the purity of technical solutions.

The UIS is already leading the development of significant elements of this strategy, including, but not limited to the ERP Strategy Refresh programme, the Digital Strategy for Education (UIS Update in March 2016, Appendix E, ISC 108), several “New Initiatives” created during the foundation of the UIS, the Research Computing Strategy presented in November 2015 (ISC 97) and the Data Centre Strategy. These strategies, programmes and initiatives cover part, but not the entire scope of information services at the University and must now be integrated into a broader framework, complimented by new elements, to arrive at an overall IS strategy.

This paper outlines an approach to developing this broader framework and the overall IS strategy and, in particular, the mechanism by which the new elements will be consulted upon, considered and synthesised into an overall plan.

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2 Objectives Having an integrated IS strategy will enable future investments in information technology to be more readily considered in the context of the overall objectives of the university and its associated institutions, helping to ensure existing and new services remain aligned with the support and enablement of the University’s strategic objectives. New services can be developed and delivered timeously and outdated services refreshed, replaced or terminated efficiently and effectively in an appropriate context.

An effective IS strategy will act like a sign-post (which way to go), a roadmap (showing optional routes) and a yardstick (a way of measuring outcomes) for existing services and investments in new services alike.

The IS strategy will provide the foundation on which the existing service categories can build their 3 to 5 year roadmaps and new service categories can be established with greater cohesion. It will provide the overall implementation framework to improve UX, realise opportunities for reuse, identify or create open application programming interfaces (APIs) for better integration, move towards an integrated data model and consistent and effective security standards.

The strategy will become the lens through which future investments in technology and services are viewed in order to propose a prioritisation of activity, change and delivery for optimal effect.

3 Proposed approach 3.1 Overall approach

Our overall approach to developing the integrated IS strategy is illustrated in the diagram below.

Our business requirements (user needs) and our existing services present a view of our existing IS strategy from the “inside”.

On the “outside” we have the activities of competitors (other HE) and comparators (e.g. other research), which we can characterise through benchmarking and which we may see as “threats”. Then there are macro (global) trends in technology and education which we may see as “opportunities” (for information services).

A range of tools, techniques and methods will help us to synthesise these views into an integrated IS strategy and allow us to present it.

Finally, we’ll use the resultant strategy to inform and guide our implementation plans.

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There is a wealth of data, analysis, conclusions and plans from the existing strategy work mentioned above, which partly captures our business requirements (user needs) and the performance of existing services. We also have access to benchmark data and to sources of “horizon scanning” for trends in technology and HE.

However, there are gaps and we need to fill those gaps before we can synthesise an integrated strategy. There are some gaps in our benchmarking, but we have plans to address those through research.

Our principal remaining gaps are in our understanding of business requirements and user needs. These exist in between the data we have already gathered during the existing strategy work. We now need to act to address those gaps and to complete our internal and external views.

3.2 Building on existing strategy work

The ERP Strategy Refresh programme, the Digital Strategy for Education (UIS Update in March 2016, Appendix E), several “New Initiatives” created during the foundation of the UIS and the Research Computing Strategy presented in November 2015 (ISC 97) each contain data on business needs, information on the internal and external environments and an assessment of how we might seize the opportunities and neutralise the threats these bring.

These are valuable sources of information for the overall strategy, but they also present a challenge as we bring them together. We may find (and need to resolve) discontinuities between them or we may find reinforcements that more strongly signpost the way ahead. Whatever the outcome, these are part of the bigger picture and we’ll need to set them in context against it and each other as that picture unfolds.

3.3 Gathering remaining input from Users and Institutions

Useful though the existing strategy work is, even when added together there are gaps and we now need to address those gaps.

We seek the proactive support of the ISC to help us gather input from Departments, Colleges and other institutions throughout the Collegiate University. We won’t be able to gather everyone’s individual views, but we will need to secure good representation from the different communities across the university.

We expect to use our network of Relationship Managers to reach out with a structured set of questions. The answers we receive will contain new data on each community’s business imperatives. Analysis of the data should reveal patterns which we can then share back with the communities for validation. Once validated, these patterns will become the additional evidence we need in order to move onto the next stage of the strategy definition process.

We envisage this stage involving structured conversations with and questionnaires to a few hundred people, followed by analysis, feedback and adjustment. This phase of the work should start in May and conclude in June 2016. (NB: The UIS may need to secure 3rd party help to assemble the most appropriate list of question in the shortest time and to support the process of identifying the patterns.)

3.4 Develop priorities

Once the data gathering phase is largely complete, we can begin to use a range of techniques to help us to identify patterns and allow a number of distinct themes to emerge. Some of these techniques have already been used in the existing strategy work. In other areas we may again

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need to seek to secure 3rd party help to provide or coach us through the use of new or novel techniques to analyse the data and present the results.

Once themes begin to emerge, we can begin to prioritise areas of potential activity to match the priorities of the collegiate university. We should be able to elaborate on the emerging themes at the June 2016 ISC meeting.

3.5 Developing roadmaps

With the strategic themes and priorities emerging, we can turn to each existing service area and begin to consider the potential impact of relevant themes on a specific area and to develop for each a roadmap. Appendix 1 lists the current Service Areas covered by the UIS.

There is an important distinction to make here between a “roadmap” and a “route plan”. Further explanation is provided in Appendix 2. What’s important in the context of supporting a strategy is that a roadmap shows a range of valid routes, whereas a route plan is just one possible route. Since strategies guide choices and actions over a “strategic” period of time, understanding the roadmap allows a “tactical route” to be taken, responding to change in the environment while remaining broadly aligned to strategic goals.

For each service area we must develop a roadmap indicating what we believe are the steps and decision points we might take to reach an acceptable strategic goal. The further away in time our goals are, the more choice (or variability) we might face in the steps to get there.

3.6 Develop and present the strategic narrative1

With the priorities determined and roadmaps prepared, we can begin to develop the strategic narrative. This builds on the themes, priorities and roadmaps to draw out links and similarities and allow possible new opportunities to emerge.

The process to define the strategy adds value over and above the individual service roadmaps, firstly by influencing the service roadmaps themselves as the strategic themes emerge, but then also by providing the context and the coherence (alignment) with the university’s goals so that better choices can be made over time.

The details of each service documented during the strategy work begin to capture the architecture of the enterprise. While further (more detailed) architecture work will be necessary, an overall Enterprise Architecture will begin to appear from this strategy work. Part of this can already be seen in the ERP Strategy Refresh, which has captured the high-level architecture for the university’s ERP systems in order to provide a foundation for the options and proposals. The strategy will guide changes to the architecture, enabling, for example, deeper insight to be gained from our data and greater agility through service orientation and integration.

We can express the strategic narrative through storyboards and a set of principles we can then use to guide our progress along the route and the choices we’ll inevitably have to make.

These principles are strategic, largely invariant over time and independent of any particular technology, solution, product or vendor. They capture what’s important to support the outcomes we expect for a given area of research, teaching, learning or business and allow us to establish, from time to time, a set of standards, procedures and guidelines that help us implement and operate the choices of technology, solution, product or vendor we have to make in the short term.

1 A strategic narrative is a compelling story that explains the background, vision for the future and how Information Services can

contribute to this. It can be a powerful tool for improving the University’s performance

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3.7 Create and present an implementation plan

Once we have the strategic narrative, the principles and the service area roadmaps, we can begin to define the implementation plan, developing with these business cases for “common enablers” – change projects or new services which enable or deliver widespread utility and optimal re-use. An example of this is already happening in the strategy work done on Storage Services.

For each area of that plan, there will be a range of products which maintain (and improve) existing services, deprecate services that are no longer needed or add little value and establish new services to do things better or satisfy new needs or secure new opportunities.

This then becomes “business as usual” and the UIS will periodically review these plans – and the strategy – to ensure we remain aligned and on track to deliver our promises.

4 Timescales, Resources & Risks 4.1 Timescales

The Gantt chart below indicates the timeline of each major activity in the IS strategy programme. Additional business requirements (to fill the gaps) will be gathered through a structured programme

of engagement across the university between April and July. The team will add to existing benchmark data and perform a further “horizon scan” for trends in July and early August. We expect to complete the choice of tools and methods in June and to develop Service Roadmaps between June and August. The body of the IS strategy will be assembled between July and September and this can be expected to inform implementation planning from September onwards.

The shaded bars show that this becomes an on-going process. The external environment changes (hence the second “trends” bar in November, timed to coincide with the release of several major industry analyst reports) and the University’s own requirements (internal) also change. We expect to maintain and refresh or reconfirm the strategy and take practical actions to update our implementations plans on a regular basis – not too often, but regular enough to be able to respond to strategic threats and to seize any strategic opportunities.

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4.2 Resources

Resources for this work are mostly within the UIS. The work is a 30% time activity for most of the Architecture Division as it builds. We estimate this work will consume 5% of time for the SLT and up to a dozen or so other staff over the course of the next several months. We also expect to identify and secure some 3rd party assistance with tools and methods, with requirements capture and with the analysis of the data to structure the strategy papers themselves. We are working to provide a more detailed analysis of this requirement for inclusion in a tender document.

It is important to recognise that however high the pressure for change which might follow any strategy, there exist finite resources (people and funds) within the UIS and the rest of the University and, hence, there will be constraints on how much can be implemented in any one year. That said, as the strategy and implementation work unfold, the UIS would expect, each year to:

• Undertake a high-level update that will firstly consider new requests, secondly ask whether the appropriate "crosscutting" enablers are in hand, and thirdly consider which of the 20 (or so) service portfolios warrant detailed attention or renewal.

• Follow up with a "deep dive" review of the prioritised service portfolios to identify the appropriate "to be" offering, to do the "gap analysis" contrasting with the then current situation, and then creating a new implementation plan.

The UIS already has "deep dive" areas identified for this year; these comprise the Research Computing Strategy, the ERP Strategy Refresh programme, the Digital Strategy for Education, the Cyber Security programme and the Data Centre Strategy (including infrastructure rationalisation) amongst others.

4.3 Risks

The above clearly represents several years of work, and as the strategy identifies additional initiatives, the ISC will need to consider the relative priorities and resourcing for all of the work identified.

There are risks to meeting our self-imposed deadline to have the IS strategy sufficiently complete to be useful for the 2016 Planning Round (PR16).

It may take longer to gather and process all the data. It may be that the data isn’t available and our picture of the needs of the University is insufficiently complete, allowing only a partial completion of the IS strategy.

The causes of these risks are (1) not all of our relationship managers are yet in place, (2) that we have a concentration of Service Owners (who will produce service roadmaps) not all of whom are fully "up to speed", and (3) it may take longer to get meaningful input from institutions and users.

Possible mitigations include basing the strategy on input from the majority (but not all) of the parts of the Collegiate University, and focusing the reviews on priority service portfolios rather than all of them.

We might also help mitigate these risks by developing strong links to the teams preparing for PR16. If we can align the strategy work with the preparations for the Planning Round, we might focus on those areas which will support the Planning Round best in our strategy work.

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5 Recommendation We recommend the plan outlined in Section 3 of this paper to allow the UIS to deliver an integrated IS strategy and implementation plans which contain the inputs required for PR16 and the framework required for the University to have and maintain an IS Strategy according to the timescale indicated in Section 4.

We also recommend a process of engagement with communities across the collegiate university in order to secure input to the strategy and to fill in the gaps between the existing works on strategy already underway.

Finally, we recommend and request that the ISC endorse this approach and proactively support our outreach programme during May and June.

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Appendix 1 – Service Areas

The UIS Service Catalogue currently lists the following Service Areas:

User Accounts & Security

• Identity Management • Security

Email, Telephony & Collaboration

• Audio Visual and Media • Email, Calendar and Collaboration • Telephony

Help, Support, Policies & Training

• Consultancy • Help and Support • Information Policy • Support for Institutions • Training

Devices, Applications, Networks & Printing

• Desktops and Applications • Printing • Remote and Mobile Device Access • Wireless and Network Services

Teaching & Learning Resources

• Library Services • Teaching Facilities and Tools

University Systems & Management Reporting

• Finance Administration • Human Resources Administration • Common Administrative Services • Research Administration • Student Administration

Research Support, Data & Computing

• Research Computing • Research Support • Servers, Data Storage and Backup

Development & Website Services

• Development Services • Website Services

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Appendix 2 – Roadmaps versus route plans.

So often we see, particularly in the field of information technology, the presentation of a series of steps illustrating the progression from one version of a product or service to the next and the next.

Vendors (or service providers) invariably call this their “roadmap” when, in reality, it is their representation of a route plan they would like customers to follow.

In the strategic context, the importance of a roadmap is illustrated in the diagram below.

The red square represents the current position. The green circles represent acceptable strategic goals. The further away the strategic horizon, the broader the range of strategically acceptable outcomes an organisation may accept. A blue diamond then represents a valid step along the strategic journey. This may represent a strategic decision that has to be taken in a given (but as yet unrealised) set of circumstances. The blue lines (or paths) represent the possible routes between these decision points.

The green and the red paths then may equally result in achieving an acceptable strategic goal, but until the circumstances are known, we may not be in a position to make the choice between them. The red and green paths are a route plan. The collective set of options (blue diamonds) between the start (red square) and any acceptable strategic goal (green circles) are the roadmap.

The value of having a strategy and a roadmap is that you have done (some or all of) the thinking ahead of time about what an acceptable strategic outcome would look like and what the criteria, a world of uncertainty, might be that would lead to once choice of route over another.

This is particularly important for information services, which information technology now develops at such a pace that new choices and new opportunities may present themselves well within the strategic horizon of the organisation relying on those services and that technology.

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A Strategy for the Efficient Utilisation of UIS Data Centres

Brief description:

This paper provides the ISC with an update on the current utilisation of UIS data centres and sets out the principles of capacity planning for the short and medium terms, including the requirement for a revised acceptable equipment policy.

Action(s) required:

ISC Members are asked to: • agree the principles of capacity planning proposed • endorse the objectives and the acceptable equipment policy

Other comments:

An earlier version of this paper containing additional technical detail was discussed at the Schools/UIS Engagement Group meeting on 6 April 2016.


• Data Centre Strategy


Mr Steve Riley, UIS Dr Mark Ferrar, UIS Dr Paul Calleja, UIS

ISC Paper

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Data Centre Strategy Author(s): Steve Riley, Mark Ferrar, Paul Calleja Date: 13 April 2016 Version 6.2

Purpose and action requested This paper provides the ISC with an update on the current utilisation of UIS data centres. Members are asked to agree the principles of capacity planning for the short and medium terms; and to endorse the objectives and acceptable equipment policy.

1 Background The UIS operate and manage a number of data centre facilities to meet the hosting needs of their own and other institutions computing requirements. These facilities differ in the levels of resilience, security and capacity they provide. The West Cambridge Data Centre is staffed 24x7, while others are run “lights out” with no on-site presence.

All data centres are on the West Cambridge site, which means there is not the degree of geographical separation that would normally be expected. As a result there is the risk that certain events (for example power incidents, flooding, chemical spill etc.) could impact operations at all three facilities.

The diverse nature of the facilities enables UIS to offer a range of physical hosting services; these range from low density general computing services (typically up to ~6kW power per cabinet), as well as high density through to high performance Research Computing services (up to ~25kW power per cabinet).

For the three principal facilities; the West Cambridge Data Centre (WCDC), Soulsby (near the Veterinary School) and the MER (within the Roger Needham Building); there are challenges (power, cooling and space) that necessitate a review of current policy.

2 Hosting Objectives The objectives for hosting are:

• to ensure institutions’ hosting requirements are met, by providing a reliable and predictable service

• energy efficiency • sustainability • resilience (requires appropriate geographic separation) • cost efficiency

3 Constraints/issues

3.1 High Performance Computing Deployment of additional equipment in West Cambridge Data Centre (WCDC) for HPC will be completed over the coming weeks. This will provide additional capacity for the HPHI project, with an anticipated load increase of circa 120kW of power. The completion of this project should enable the

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migration of services for the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre to be completed, which will reduce the requirements on the general computing area within WCDC by two cabinets.

Consideration is also given to the deployment of additional equipment for the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) Gaia project. Once completed this would reduce the load currently housed for the IoA within the Soulsby equipment room. Though the timescales are a little unclear at present it is anticipated this migration to a new platform would be completed within twelve months.

Moving into the longer term forecast the remaining cabinet space is planned for occupation through natural growth and the replacement of the Darwin cluster. Whilst it is difficult to provide any accurate load estimates without equipment details the assumption is that an additional 80kW of IT load will be added to the WCDC.

There is also a proposal to deploy an amount of Disaster Recovery equipment into the Soulsby equipment room, which creates a short term restriction on any further deployments to this facility until older equipment is decommissioned.

3.2 Cambridge Assessment Minimal activity is anticipated over the coming six months as Cambridge Assessment continues a steady migration of services away from their current facilities. There is likely to be an acceleration of activity during the latter part of the calendar year and early part of 2017 as application performance and resilience testing is completed. This will generate the confidence to migrate more of the organisation’s critical services into the WCDC.

3.3 UIS and general computing for Institutions The migration of services for Chemistry into the WCDC continues and is likely to take a further four months to complete. Systems are being migrated one at a time to minimize disruption for users. Chemical Engineering have commenced some small deployments, however the move into their new premises on the West Cambridge campus continues to suffer delays and is now unlikely to be complete before the end of 2016. It is not expected that all services will migrate to the WCDC until the department relocation is confirmed.

University Security will move some of its systems to the WCDC due to the redevelopment of their existing location. This is planned to complete by the end of December.

The Computer Laboratory is deploying additional storage capabilities into the WCDC over the coming weeks.

Capacity has been identified and reserved for UIS infrastructure refresh activities over the coming twelve months, and provision made for the housing of the UIS shared storage platform.

Using the above information we can predict facility utilisation for the remainder of 2016. This is detailed in the following table (all percentages are predicted for December 2016; where 100% capacity the point at which this is planned to occur is indicated):

Category Location Power Cooling Space HPC/Research WCDC 60% 40% 100% (Dec-16)

Soulsby 100% (Jun-16) 60% 100% (Aug-16) Institution hosting WCDC 100% (May-16) 66% 100% (May-16)

Soulsby 100% (May-16) 30% 95% MER 35% 25% 95%

Cambridge Assessment WCDC 60% 45% 63%

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4 Options Detailed in Annex 1 are the seven options which we have considered, which will assist us to meet the objectives outlined in Section 2. For each option we have considered the impact on meeting the objectives and then scored each against impact on capacity provision, cost, timescale, and difficulty (1-5; low scores preferable). Based on the criteria we would recommend taking forward three of the options as priorities, which are highlighted in the following table:

Me

ets

Sec

tion

2

ob

ject

ive

s

Imp

act

on

cap

acity

p

rovi

sio

n

Co

st

Tim

esca

le

Ris

k / D

iffic

ulty

To

tal

Ran

k

1 Efficient use of the WCDC (Acceptable Equipment Policy)

2 2 1 1 1 7 1

2 Fit out row 6 in WCDC Hall 1 3 4 3 3 2 15 5

3 Virtualise equipment in all facilities 2 1 3 2 1 9 2

4 Fit out WCDC Hall 4 2 1 5 4 5 17 =6

5 External hosting provider 1 1 4 3 3 12 3

6 Improved airflow, Soulsby 4 5 2 1 1 13 4

7 More power, Soulsby 2 3 4 4 4 17 =6

5 Recommendations

5.1 A: Introduce an acceptable use policy To meet the aspiration and expectations set and approved in the original business case for the WCDC, we propose that anything that would lower the mean power/workload utilisation density shall not be re-located to the data centre (even if there is spare power, cooling and space). Our aim should be to become as efficient and effective as possible, with least environmental impact, meaning we use all the power for the most amount of work done.

Equipment so rejected should be re-cycled and the workloads it was expected to host should be moved onto more efficient (virtualised) services that increase the power/workload utilisation of the data centre.

As this process operates, we will also seek to narrow the range of utilisation ratios by eliminating equipment at the lower end of the range and moving their workloads onto more efficient platforms. This will create “spare” power capacity, allowing systems on the re-location waiting list to be moved in if (and only if) they themselves meet the criteria above (to move the average up, not down).

5.2 B: Develop costed proposals In order to ensure that we adhere to the objectives of meeting the University’s hosting requirements in the most cost effective, and energy efficient way, the next steps would be to prepare detailed costings and timescales for all of the options outlined in this paper. Our intention would then be to present this to the ISC in Michaelmas Term 2016 in order that we could agree sensible investment decisions for as regards to the University’s hosting requirements.

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Appendix: Overview of current data centre facilities and change options Where option numbers are given these relate to the numbers shown in the table in Section 4 of the main paper. None of these options are mutually exclusive: all are possible given sufficient funding and time.

1 West Cambridge Data Centre The original business case for the WCDC spoke of the need for the University to lower the environmental impact of its use of IT. The WCDC is designed to be power and water (cooling) efficient to industry-leading levels.

The centre currently utilises three of the four available data halls. Data Hall 4 is not yet equipped with cabinets, power and cooling and was purposely left ‘fallow’ for future development. With the increasing “density” of the latest technology, we are able to utilise all of the currently available power (and then cooling) in the WCDC by properly equipping and managing services just within Data Halls 1, 2 and 3.

With effective management of our overall hosting capacity we can locate back-up, fail-over or hot-standby systems in our other facilities (Soulsby and the MER), giving some protection against failure (for whatever reason) of services within or of the WCDC. However, the capacity of Soulsby and the MER fall far short of the capacity of the WCDC and even more so if we equip Hall 4.

The capacity of the data centre is measured across three dimensions: 1) physical space, 2) power consumed and 3) cooling consumed. The WCDC will run out of power first, then cooling, and finally space. The current utilisation plus the present plan for moving equipment into the WCDC predicts we’ll run out of power in 2016.

To make more effective use of the space in the WCDC, we will need to add more power and (in balance) more cooling. We’ll need to do this to increase the efficiency of the existing space and most definitely if we also wish to use Hall 4.

2 Geographic concentration of facilities In addition we also need to address a geographic concentration issue. The Soulsby facility is on the same power grid segment as the WCDC and this threatens the objective of separating “live” and “standby” services between these two facilities.

There is the potential to make use of other (3rd party) data centres, perhaps particularly those proved by Jisc; and for considering where, when and how we use cloud services, where they are appropriate, before we invest to increase the capacity of the WCDC.

Below we present options for maximising the efficiency & effectiveness of all our hosting facilities.

3 Options

3.1 More efficient use of the WCDC (Option 1) In order to deliver increased workload throughput (problems solved, programs run, services offered, users supported) from the facility within the existing (fixed) power envelope, we will need to increase the power/workload utilisation density.

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3.2 Acceptable Equipment in WCDC Today, per cabinet of equipment, we have a range of power/workload utilisation, in non-technical terms from high (for the newest equipment, used most), to low (for older equipment used less). This spread allows us to calculate a mean or average power/workload utilisation across all the equipment cabinets in the data centre.

It is proposed, for the new “Acceptable Equipment Policy”, that we establish this mean power/workload utilisation for the data centre and that, as we consume the last of the available power, we judge equipment proposed for re-location on the basis of whether it increases or lowers the mean power/workload utilisation.

To meet the aspiration and expectations set and approved in the original business case for the WCDC, we propose that anything that would lower the mean power/workload utilisation density shall not be re-located to the data centre (even if there is spare power, cooling and space). Our aim should be to become as efficient and effective as possible, with least environmental impact, meaning we use all the power for the most amount of work done (the highest workload throughput).

Equipment so rejected should be re-cycled and the workload it was expected to host moved onto more efficient (virtualised) services that increase the power/workload utilisation of the data centre.

As this process operates, we will also seek to narrow the range of utilisation ratios by eliminating equipment at the lower end of the range and moving their workload onto more efficient platforms. This will create “spare” power capacity, allowing systems on the re-location waiting list to be moved in if (and only if) they themselves meet the criteria above (to move the average up, not down).

As the range narrows and the average moves closer to the maximum, we optimise the utilisation of power, cooling and, finally, space in the WCDC.

This approach and policy should then be applied to all our facilities.

3.3 Maximise use of existing Halls in WCDC 3.3.1 Fit out Row 6 in Hall 1 (Option 2)

This option will provide up to 16 additional cabinets (14 of which can be equipped with “Back of Rack” coolers), taking the room to its design maximum of 96 cabinets (based on Arup’s design of the airflow circulation and thermal capability of the space). Row 6 will require no additional power capacity to be provided for Hall 1, which remains at 900kW of power load.

Costs for adding pipework and manifolds, electrical connections into floor mounted Power Distribution Units and 14 cabinets with “Back of Rack” coolers are circa £125,000 with a timescale of 6-9 months from agreed funding.

3.3.2 Rationalise (virtualise) equipment in all existing facilities (Option 3)

This option would consolidate and virtualise existing systems, both UIS’s and other Institutions, to generate additional space capacity through the use of less physical hardware to deliver the same or greater capacity of compute and storage.

The Acceptable Equipment Policy proposed in Option 1 would also apply (and be required) here.

3.4 Fit out WCDC Hall 4 (Option 4) The centre currently utilises three of the four available data halls. Data Hall 4 is not yet equipped with cabinets, power and cooling and was purposely left ‘fallow’ for future development. With the increasing “density” of the latest technology, we are able to utilise all of the currently available

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power (and then cooling) in the WCDC by properly equipping and managing services just within Data Halls 1, 2 and 3.

Thereafter we will need to add more power (and, in balance, more cooling) to optimise the remaining space in Halls 1, 2 and 3 and to properly equip Hall 4. There are two sub-options for fitting out Hall 4.

Option 4a: Fit out and utilise 160kW of power as identified in the initial Capacity Plan. Costs include additional Air Handlers, false ceiling, Floor mounted PDU's and electrical connections back to the main LV switch panel, plus cabinets and power strips, and amendments to fire suppression.

Costs are circa £750,000 to £975,000 with a timescale of 12 months from agreed funding.

Option 4b: includes everything in Option 4a plus additional power above the current building maximum of 1350kW for IT load. Hall 4 has a design capacity of 40 cabinets at 10kW per cabinet (400kW). Additional UPS modules plus batteries, a 4th diesel generator, additional switchgear to take extra generator connections, and possible building works to create plant room for batteries and switchgear may also be needed. These additions are estimated to cost between £800,000 - £1m, bringing the total cost for Hall 4 Option 4b to £1.55m - £1.97m, with a timescale of 18 months from agreed funding.

3.5 External hosting provider (Option 5) Before we equip Hall 4, we need to host some services in a second data centre of an equivalent or comparable standard to the WCDC. It may be possible to host some services in the Public Cloud (Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure). For other services we will need a physical location connected to the GBN or the Janet network. The UIS is evaluating two such locations – Jisc’s shared data centre in Slough and Infinity’s Here East data centre at the former Olympic Park. Both are connected to the Janet network, but we need to complete the assessment of network length, latency and bandwidth to understand which services could be located in either of these facilities.

We have already considered, but rejected, taking over a facility being vacated by Cambridge Assessment, at the Science Park, due to its limitations in terms of capacity and power.

3.6 More efficient use of the Soulsby facility 3.6.1 Improve airflow at the Soulsby facility (Option 6)

Tranche 1 includes fitting blanking panels to cabinets and the addition of end of aisle doors and installing sub floor baffles to direct airflow. Costs are circa £17,000 to £19,000 with a timescale of 3-4 months from agreed funding.

Tranche 2 includes everything in tranche 1, plus full cold aisle containment, amendments to fire suppression and relocation of the air handler into sub floor space. Costs are circa £40,000 to £42,000.

This would give a total cost for tranches 1 and 2 circa £57,000 to £61,000.

Tranche 1 will allow us to direct the cooling air more effectively and reduce potential hotspots in the room. Tranche 2 will enable us to drive 25-40% more efficiency out of the air handlers, reducing the cooling load and making the facility more energy efficient.

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3.6.2 Add more power capacity at the Soulsby facility (Option 7)

Adding more power will require a replacement UPS (currently only 250kVA), however the generator is 800kVA so has growth capacity. New switch gear and electrical distribution will be required and a building extension would be needed to house the switch gear, batteries and UPS. This would allow a power density increase to around 8kW per cabinet from the existing 4kW per cabinet.

Costs are circa £300,000 to £500,000 (depending on the UPS and switch gear chosen), with a timescale of 9-18 months from agreed funding.

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Information Services Governance Update


Established and Operational

Business Systems Subcommittee


HPC Strategy Group Established and Operational

Digital Teaching and Learning Subcommittee


User Needs Committee

Established and Operational The ISC is asked to recommend a candidate to appoint to the vacancy in Class (ii) – “Two members appointed by the ISC as representative of the constituency of IT users across the University and Colleges”

Student Systems Committee


HR Systems Committee


Finance Systems Committee


University Card Committee

Committee to be re-established under newly approved ToRs

Joint Network Management Committee


IT Purchasing Group Established and Operational

Information Security Management Sub-Committee


Dr S. Kearsey Page 1 of 1 April 2016

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UIS Performance Dashboard* – April 2016 Overall RAG rating Previous month

Service Delivery - top 12 Overall service RAG GREEN

Unplanned downtime Helpdesk calls

Service Month 12 Month Month 12 Month RAG

Hermes 0.5hr 8.3hr N/A N/A GREEN

Web Hosting 0 6hr N/A N/A GREEN

Managed Cluster 0 1.3hr N/A N/A GREEN

CUDN/GBN 0 9.5hr N/A N/A GREEN

Wireless 0.75hr 17hr N/A N/A GREEN

Telephone System 0 2.5hr N/A N/A GREEN

Research Systems 0 0 N/A N/A GREEN

Cambridge Website 0.67hr 0.67hr N/A N/A GREEN

Finance Systems 0 14.6hr N/A N/A GREEN

HR Systems 0 18hr N/A N/A GREEN

Student Systems 0.5hr 26.5hr N/A N/A GREEN

HPCS 9.72hr 19.68hr 213 2,215 GREEN

Project Delivery - top 12 Overall projects RAG GREEN

Deployment date Budget

Project Plan Forecast Plan Forecast RAG

Uni Moodle 01/07/15 01/07/16 £228k £240kGREEN

MWS 3.0 01/04/15 30/04/16 £0 £0GREENESS Redevelopment 31/12/15 30/05/16 £65k £65kGREEN

ERP Systems Strategy 01/03/16 21/04/16 £420k £420kGREEN

Room Booking System 01/07/15 01/12/16 £130k £130kGREEN

NWC Accom. System 30/06/15 30/06/16 £300k £340kAMBERTest Automation 31/12/15 31/12/16 £0 £0GREEN

2nd GBN Addenbrks 31/12/15 29/04/17 £150k £150kAMBER

GRAD Applic. Form 26/10/14 08/12/16 £130k £130kGREEN

Microsft EES OneDrive 29/04/16 04/07/16 £0k £0kGREEN

ICE Developments 30/04/16 09/09/16 £70k £70kGREEN

Srvc Ctlg – UAS Rollout 30/06/16 30/06/16 £64k £80kGREEN

HR and Finance Overall RAG GREEN

RS EA AR BD SO IM DO DT UIS Total RAG

Headcount 14 5 2 98 118 4 23 2 3 269 GREEN

New joiners 2 5 5 12 GREEN

Resignations 1 2 1 4 GREEN

Retirements 0 GREEN

Cash Flow to Feb (2015-16)

Budget Recharges Expenditure Working Funds

Research & Institutions £1,022k £638k £712k £947k GREEN

Edu., Admin. & Stud. Svs £317k £0 £365k (£48k) AMBER

Architecture £102k £0 £47k £55k GREEN

Build & Development £5,209k £133k £3,094k £2,247k GREEN

Service Ops. £6,910k £4,591k £9,528k £1,973k GREEN

Info. Management £185k £0 £158k £27k GREEN

Dept. Ops. £1,770k £183k £1,566k £387k GREEN

Digital Trans. £308k £0 £126k £182k GREEN

New initiatives Overall RAG GREEN

Project Status Delivery Budget RAG

A. End User Compute Review On Hold 05/15 TBDAMBER

B. Researcher Time Sheets Initiation GREEN

C. CamSIS Upgrade Initiation 09/17 TBDGREEN

F. Course Database Pilot Initiation 08/16 £75kGREEN

G. Timetable System Roll-out Initiation 09/16 £20kGREEN

H. Digital Education Pilots Initiation 09/16 TBDGREEN

I. Service Desk Merger Initiation 06/16 £100kGREEN

* Changes highlighted

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Annex: UIS Initiatives at AMBER or RED status

Project Delivery Overall projects RAG

Deployment date Budget

Project Plan Forecast Plan Forecast RAG

NWC Accom. System 30/06/15 30/06/16 £300k £340k AMBER

2nd GBN Addnbrookes 31/12/15 29/04/16 £150k £150k AMBER

End User Comp. Revw On Hold 05/15 TBD AMBER

Service Delivery

Project NotesNWC Accom. System Supplier development issues

2nd Addenbrookes Link Dependencies on 3rd parties

End User Comp. Revw No PID in place

Projects Exited

Status BudgetHR TES System R1 Complete £65k

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JOINT NETWORK MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE (JNMC)

Minutes for the meeting held on 28 January 2016 in The Thetford Room, Roger Needham Building. Present: Dr R Walker (RDHW) in the chair, Prof R Glen (RCG) & Dr R Padman (RP). In attendance: Dr M Bellamy (MB), Mr S Riley (SR), Mr R Carter (RPC), Mr E Koht (EHK), Dr M Johnson (MAJ), Mr R Franklin (RCF), Mr A Culver (AEC), Mr G Ross (GR), Mr J Holgate (JH) & Mrs J Wilson (JMW). Apologies: Mr C Lawrence (CL), Mrs L Thompson (LT) & Prof J Sinclair (JS). 1. Minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on 15 October 2015 were approved.

2. Matters Arising

Telecomms

The committee discussed whether we should persist with a printed version of the university telephone directory. GR pointed out that each institution could print from look-up and the chairman suggested that should they wish to have a pdf version then they could produce one themselves. MB also commented that he believed there wasn’t a clear enough demand to produce a pdf version at the moment and suggested that perhaps as the UIS relationship managers begin their dialog with institutions, this was something that could be explored.

Second Janet Connection

The second Janet connection has now been installed and is working satisfactorily.

GBN

JH confirmed that since October 2015 engagement with those involved in the NWC project had improved and RP also mentioned that Mark Ferrar had gone twice to the NorthWest Cambridge Syndicate (WNWCES) regarding IT strategy for the site.

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SR took the issue of the diminished GBN finances to the ISC and it was agreed that we do not touch the sink funds, but that there was a principle on how we used money from reserves to provide additional non-recurrent resource for UIS. It was also agreed that when trading surpluses had built up across a wide range, then some of these could be used.

3) Service Review

a) Network and Telecomms Operations Report

A paper was presented to the committee (no. ISC(JNMC)(2016)126) entitled Network and Telecomms Operations Report and the following points were raised:

Service outages JH reported that there had been two major disruptions to services since the last JNMC, one in October when Janet experienced a denial of service attack which affected JANET connectivity for 2 days. This was eventually resolved at the Janet level. AEC mentioned that there was going to be a Janet debrief session in February for people from the various universities and the Chairman requested that, due to security issues that might exist, the JNMC be informed of the outcome of that debrief. A second outage was caused by a faulty fibre optic circuit between the WCDC and the Roger Needham Building. Typically this would not affect the overall service as there are multiple active & redundant connections between these two buildings. However, this caused unexpected errors and a degradation in performance in the WCDC Cisco Nexus routers, which in turn disrupted access to some UIS services. The network team is working with Cisco to determine the cause of the issue with the aim to prevent the issue from reoccurring.

Network Systems Project

RCF confirmed that in November the second Janet system became live and that it now has two completely independent routers and two independent paths. The only bit of work not completed was the replacement of the NAT boxes, which they hope to replace tomorrow. The Chairman commented that this was good news and should be propagated. He believes there should be a global announcement that we now have a fully active active failover arrangement with Janet.

Action: JH

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RCF commented that everyone was very happy with the new VPN service which they introduced last year to replace the very old and ageing VPDN service. GBN RPC mentioned that there were concerns with the train station/guided busway/Cambridge Biomedical Campus project, due to problems getting Greater Anglia to approve the plans for the Station Square redevelopment. In case that approval is not forthcoming, he has been working with the County Council to incorporate our duct within the Hills Road cycle path design (from Cherry Hinton Road to Long Road), which will give us a diverse route to Addenbrooke’s. MB also mentioned that the Biomedical Campus would help us escalate this if required, as they also had concerns. JH reported that the proposal to relocate the CNH from the ARUP basement to the 2nd floor of the ARUP building will be going out to tender next week. He has seen the relevant plans and has been working with the contractors. It is hoped that they are looking at a start date of July. The Chairman expressed his view that the GBN was yet another success story for the university and it was established that the network was now 25 years old. Network Installations The major project at the moment is the North Range (NMS) where there has already been a lot of network enablement work carried out. Subsequent to the CCI work being completed, more post construction work will need to be done there and this will have a major impact on our work load. Telecomms The Chairman asked about the current status of the Jabber project and asked if it was now a released service and GR reported that it was in use and confirmed that it had an adequate presence on the UIS website, was included in training brochures and is mentioned at the Telecomms User Forums. b) Network Traffic Stats

The Network Traffic stats were presented as paper ISC(JNMC)(2015)127. The Chairman commented that in general the stats were looking much as expected.

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4) Discussion Topics

a) IPv6 Proposal

Paper No. ISC(JNMC)(2016)128 was presented to the committee requesting the JNMC agree with the IPv6 project/process and confirm they were happy with the timescale (the proposed timescale being 12 months). The Committee concluded that an internal discussion be had about the proposed managed firewall service and timeframe, then with that in mind, figure out what the implications are for IPv6. JH will then bring this back to the JNMC with a proposed timeline for delivering these services. Action: JH b) 2016/17 CUDN Service Charge A draft paper was presented to the committee, no. ISC(JNMC)(2016)129 proposing the new 2016/17 CUDN service charges, together with tables showing various expenditures. JH explained that the context of the paper was that we are looking at replacing the CUDN routers, as these were over 7 years old and almost out of warranty and at capacity. There is a mini-tender going out now to replace the distribution of the core routers with Cisco equipment. AEC briefly explained the CUDN service charge breakdown indicating new items that have been added. These include the servers (with a fairly low contribution) and Section 2.2.2 for staffing costs required to run the CUDN. JH referred to section 4 of the calculations table, explaining that in the last 3 years the Data Centre network and the RNB staff network had been paid for out of the CUDN sink fund. There are therefore two options for this, either we build these costs into the CUDN, or as a department, go away to look for other sources of funding for the Data Centre network and the RNB. The committee advised we went for the latter option. JH emphasised that his preference was alternative 1 (maintaining the price for 1G customers) and the Chairman was of the opinion that it would make sense to put the CUDN on the same financial basis as the GBN and Telecomms. The chairman pointed out that there was an issue on how we balance the college contributions with the university contributions. The committee agreed that this should be investigated and reported further on how to divide the costs of the CUDN infrastructure (preferably shown as an algorithmic solution) and also bring a few alternatives for the committee to consider. Due to the tight time constraints JH suggested that the best solution would be to email this information back to the committee. Action: JH

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5) Any Other Business

There was no other business to discuss.

Date of next meeting: 28 April 2016 at 10.30 am in the Huntingdon Room, Roger Needham Building.

Unconfirmed Minutes

Our Ref: UNC.160208.Minutes

Monday 8 February 2016, 2.30pm Thetford Room, Roger Needham Building Present: Dr Rachael Padman (Chair), Prof P John Clarkson, Prof Graham Virgo, Dr Alan Blackwell, Mr John Norman, Dr Martin Bellamy, Mr Chad Allen Apologies: Mr Chris Edwards, Ms Priscilla Mensah, Mr Andrew Aldridge In Attendance: Dr Mark Ferrar, Dr Ian Cooper (secretary) USER NEEDS COMMITTEE 1. Welcome and apologies Dr Padman welcomed Prof Clarkson, attending his first meeting, Mr Allen who was representing Ms Mensah and Dr Ferrar, Chief Architect UIA. Apologies had been received from Mr Edwards, Ms Mensah and Mr Aldridge; Dr Blackwell had sent his apologies and was unable to join the first part of the meeting but joined as User survey activity was being discussed 2. Minutes of previous meeting The minutes of the meeting held on 3 November 2015 (UNC-14) were accepted with a minor amendment: Mr Aldridge had been present at the meeting. 3. Actions and matters arising Action point 2.4 (ongoing) – Mr Norman reported that discussions were ongoing regarding staff roles within UIS following the withdrawal of the UIS’s bid for additional funds in the 2015 Planning Round. Action point 2.5 (update given) – Paul Heath from Modern Human had been appointed to conduct work with the UIS one day per week for a period of 3 months. Some of the materials developed through this work had been published on the stairwells in the Roger Needham Building and members were encouraged to take a look. Action point 4.1 (ongoing) – Dr Bellamy reported that Chris MacLeod had recently joined the UIS in the role of Head of Project and Programme Office and would be leading on the revision of documentation outlining project board constitution. Action point 4.2 (closed; on agenda) – The Committee’s membership was considered under item 4 on the agenda. Action point 4.3 (ongoing; on agenda) – A discussion on the schedule and scope for events took place under item 5 on the agenda. Action points 4.4 & 4.5 (closed; on agenda) – A discussion on user satisfaction metrics and user survey took place under item 6 on the agenda.

Unconfirmed Page 1 of 5

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Action point 4.6 (ongoing) – Dr Padman reported that preliminary discussions on the possible formation of a Digital Advisory Board had taken place with the Registrary. 4. Committee Membership Prof Prager had agreed to be nominated as a Class ii Member. Prof Virgo indicated that he would be standing down and that Ms Rampton would be nominated to replace him. Dr Cooper was asked to ensure that the ISC was asked to consider these nominations at its next meeting.

Action point 5.1 – IC Dr Padman thanked Prof Virgo for his work on the Committee. There was still an option to co-opt a further Member to the Committee under Class vi. 5. User Centric Design events (UNC-15) Mr Norman provided feedback on the event on 4 December 2015 when Tom Loosemore had presented a colloquium. Around half of the 80 attendees had been non-UIS staff and there had 22 views of the event recording. The main message was to think about users from the start. Dr Ferrar indicated that it would be helpful to extract the action points from the video. Members held a discussion comparing the GDS environment to that of the University. It was agreed that there were differences and applying the same principles would not result in the same end result at the University. One of the main focuses of the GDS was an understanding of who the user was. Within the University there was a tendency to speak with heavy users of systems as the key engagement community; reference was made to Dr Blackwell’s perspective of designing for occasional users. For future events a lecture series model appeared appropriate, helping internal work by exposing good and best practice from other areas. Members agreed that the activity should proceed with one event per term. Expenses of around £1,000 per speaker were considered appropriate, which would come from Mr Norman’s budget if required. Members agreed that it was important to gain the maximum benefit from any visits. 6. User satisfaction metrics & user survey (UNC-16) User Satisfaction metrics (UNC-16a) Mr Norman provided a brief overview of activity on user satisfaction metrics using the “Site Intercept” product from Qualtrics, which would maintain records to ensure that individual users were not continually prompted for feedback. A proof-of-concept had been demonstrated on one of the University’s business systems by inserting the appropriate code using the load balancer. The actual question to be used would need to be carefully chosen and Members agreed that they should jointly work on this. Prof Virgo indicated that the previous concerns he had raised about the potential for over-surveying students did not relate to such a simple feedback measure.

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Mr Norman was asked to provide a list of services on which the feedback question could be inserted.

Action point 5.2 – JN The existence of feedback data was understood to have consequences and clarity would be needed about what the data would be used for. The Committee agreed that Mr Norman should proceed with the activity. User survey (UNC-16b) There had been some progress but plans were behind schedule owing to staff turnover. There was a need for the survey activity to be conducted in the Easter Term in order for the findings to be incorporated into the 2016 Planning Round submission. Mr Norman reported that the intention was to complete exploratory work in Lent Term and that the design needed to have longevity to enable a longitudinal study to be possible. Dr Blackwell noted the comparable work being conducted by the Joint Schools Computing Service (JCSC) and recommended that Mr Norman speak with Mr Bartlett at the Clinical School Computing Service in the first instance.

Action point 5.3 – JN 7. Chief Architect Dr Ferrar spoke to his presentation which covered three broad themes: the development of the UIS Architecture team; identity and access management; and the rollout of services available from the Microsoft EES deal. The Architecture team would have five roles reporting to Dr Ferrar. There was some concern over the team looking like a business but Members were assured that external review had been received from analysts involved in education practice; the “Business Analyst” would ideally be recruited from an administrative role at a university. The use of the word “business” was a concern to some. The team would have a busy programme, including the sizeable work around the development of the Information Services Strategy; Dr Ferrar outlined his role as lead to coach UIS staff in the Service Owner role. The End User Computing strategy would include “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) and Dr Ferrar noted that the University is the richest BYOD environment in which he has worked. The team would also be reviewing and extending the identity and access management technology, which needed to be dealt with cautiously given the University’s culture of being an open organisation. Dr Ferrar provided an overview of the software and services that were available through the Microsoft EES agreement. Further work on the communications strategy was needed, including clarity about what was available for work/home use. Skype for Business would be reviewed, and was identified having lots of overlap with the Cisco Jabber system that was already available. Concerns about data storage on OneDrive for Business were addressed by the location of

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Microsoft’s data centres in Europe and their certification up to and including Government Official Sensitive (the same level as patient identifying data). 8. Any other business There was no further business. Dates of future meetings All meetings will be held in the Huntingdon Room at the Roger Needham Building unless otherwise indicated:

• Tuesday, 29 March 2016, 10.00-12.00 • Tuesday, 17 May 2016, 2.00-4.00

Summary of action points Ref. Action Who Status Actions from previous meetings 1.6 Determine appropriate next steps for the User

Experience Portal – assigned to Dr Ferrar, Chief Architect

MB On hold

2.2 Review benefit of engagement with users of the finance system in designing a system considering users’ needs

CE Ongoing

2.4 Draft PD33 for the user experience specialist to be provided to the Committee prior to being raised and advertised.

CE Ongoing

2.5 Provide a paper to the Committee to give an update on the library of resources, and data-driven design, being developed within the UIS

CE, JN

On hold

4.1 Include the Committee in consultation while UIS reviews and revises project board constitution documentation

CE Ongoing

4.2 Identify an appropriate individual to serve on the Committee under Class ii following Prof Leslie’s term

RP, GV

Closed

4.3 Identify a schedule and scope for user centric design events and the facilitation resource required to plan and book them.

MB JN

Ongoing

4.4 Table a paper with proposals on an initial user survey JN Closed 4.5 Circulate proposed initial survey questions to the

committee by correspondence and identify one college and one department to pilot the initial survey

JN Closed

4.6 Discuss the proposed formation of a Digital Advisory Board with the Registrary

RP Ongoing

New actions from 8 February 2016 meeting 5.1 Ask ISC to consider nominations of Prof Prager and

Ms Rampton under Class ii IC

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Ref. Action Who Status 5.2 Provide the list of services on which the feedback

question can be inserted JN

5.3 Share planned user survey work with the JSCS to identify any lessons learned or commonality

JN

Unconfirmed

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Business Systems Sub-Committee

The minutes of a meeting of the Business Systems Sub-Committee of the Information Services Committee at 14:00 on Tuesday 29 March 2016 in the Pro-Vice-Chancellor’s Meeting Room, The Old Schools.

Present: Jonathan Nicholls (in the Chair) [JWN] Andrew Reid [AR] Angus Stephen [AS] Martin Vinnell [MV]

Richard Young [RY] Emma Stone [ES]

Chris Edwards [CE], on behalf of Martin Bellamy

In attendance: Michelle Lucas (Minutes) [ML], Paul Dampier (for item 15.78) [PD]

BSSC.15.73. Apologies

Martin Bellamy [MB], Peter Hedges [PH], Emma Rampton [EMCR] and Ian Leslie [IL].

BSSC.15.74. Minutes

The minutes of the meeting of 11 February 2015 (BSSC-01) were approved.

BSSC.15.75. Matters Arising

Actions:

• CamSIS Upgrade - a final revised estimate has been established and discussed with the Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor.

• MICAD Emergency Action Plans System - Clara East is now involved with this project.

• Room Booking Project Board - CE has ensured that the Project Team have made contact with Sue Mehrer and a meeting has been arranged.

• NWC Accommodation System - the new Operations Director, Warren Forsyth, has now started and is up to date with the project.

• HR Electronic Document Management System - a successful meeting was held, business case approved and funds allocated, with implementation planned for July 2016.

• Research Office - a report on managing workflow and email management, as well as EDM, has been put on hold, pending the review of the Research Office during Easter term

BSSC.15.76. Review of Performance Report

RY reported.

a) UIS Dashboard (BSSC-02 v2)

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• 17 TES - phase 1 starts next week, having been delayed.

• 18 GRADSAF - high risk but now green and progressing well.

• 49 Moodle and Clinical VLE integration - delays with integration.

• 111 - 114 - High-risk projects, follow-on from incident review. June deadline for the improved procedures to be applied to CamSIS, before progressing to other Tier 1 systems.

• It was noted that the Dashboard now contains more information, and is improved.

b) Finance Systems (BSSC-06b)

• Focus on Disaster Recovery testing and Financial Information Delivery Project.

• Financial Information Delivery Project will meet with AR. ACTION: AR

c) Estate Management (BSSC-08)

• Nothing to report.

BSSC.15.77 Updates and Minutes from Systems Committees

RY reported.

a) Financial System Committee minutes (BSSC-09) - nothing to report.

b) HR Systems Committee minutes (BSSC-10) - the latest minutes had not been circulated. Nothing to report.

c) Student Information Services Committee minutes (BSSC-11) - nothing to report.

d) Update on ERP Strategy Report - covered in item 15.79.

e) Update on Library Project Board - covered in item 15.78.

f) Update on Fundraising Project Board - Nothing significant to report. Project going well, but there is concern that the Cambridge In America element is behind schedule. A new Project Manager is on board. The project will benefit from being under the UAS umbrella.

g) Update on Room Booking Project - a demo of the system being developed was well received. The Project board wants to run a pilot scheme in September 2016 at the Cavendish Laboratory and Sidgwick Site. A ‘design requirements gathering’ exercise is being undertaken to assist with scheduling/booking rooms for exams. .

h) Update on NWC Accommodation Allocation System - the ‘go live’ date has been moved back one month to the end of June 2016. There should be no cost implications.

BSSC.15.78 Library System Replacement Project

PD joined the meeting for this item. Paper BSSC-16 was discussed.

• The current RAG status of the project is red, but will be moved to amber following the next meeting of the Project Board and then to green once contracts have been exchanged.

• Ex Libris was unexpectedly acquired by ProQuest, which has significantly impacted on the programme and resulted in another review of options:

o Open Source - discounted due to cost and long-term high-risk.

o Voyager - our current system, with upgrades, either retaining 10 databases or consolidating to 1 database. There is no added benefit to consolidating. Sustaining our current system is not a good long-term option.

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o ProQuest/Ex Libris - an integrated solution is preferred (Primo/Alma or Summon/Alma). Alma scored higher than Summon. Primo/Alma will cause initial problems, but these can be managed easily and cheaply. This is the preferred option.

• Patrons of the Library will see the new user interface for discovery and search over summer 2016.

• The pricing model has been agreed with ProQuest. Stage payments agreed, based on delivery of functionality. Cost has dropped from £2m initial budget to £1.7m total project cost (with no contingency included). First year service costs will be £290k (vat inclusive), which will then increase by 2.5% pa. £375k implementation costs. £750k ‘our’ costs (including previous spend), which includes SaaS offset cost. Staff costs for the project have been sent to Duncan Maskell. PD will circulate these to the committee. ACTION: PD

• A 7-year contract is being put in place with the option to extend for 3 years. Contracts should be exchanged by the end of the week.

• The project is back on track, but the timescale for search and discovery is tight.

• Oxford and Manchester are also using configurations of Primo/Alma, but neither is prepared to divulge costs.

• JN noted that this was a satisfactory outcome after some difficult phases.

BSSC.15.79 ERP System Strategy Project Update

Paper BSSC-17 was discussed.

• IL met with PA Consulting last week. • JN feels that the project is taking too long to get a definition of core values and costs, and that PA needs to be

managed. However, it would be better to take longer to produce a high-quality report than to retain the current timetable if that means a report that will not meet expectations.

• RY and CE met with PA today and raised these concerns, particularly that we are not yet getting added value or factual evidence. Further meetings are scheduled to continue the focus on these issues.

• It was agreed that PA Consulting should meet with AR, EMCR and AS to confirm their requirements for the ERP core. ACTION: RY

• AS noted that the Estates Strategy software suite has not been properly scoped by PA, and he is concerned that PA do not fully understand EM’s needs/business.

BSSC.15.80 Rollout of Information Services Catalogue with UAS

Paper BSSC-18 was discussed. Service catalogue now deployed across a number of UAS Divisions. Complete rollout across UAS expected by the end of t June.

BSSC.15.81 UAS TDF and UAS Sinking Fund

It was agreed that this would become a standing agenda item.

a) UAS TDF Financial Statement (BSSC-19):

There is £170k of non-spent, non-committed funds remaining. JN agreed that this could be used for the following:

i) EDM Lifecycle Module (BSSC-19a) - proposal to purchase an additional module, which will be first deployed with HR Division. £25k initial cost, then £5k per year (the annual cost to be met by UIS).

ii) CamSIS Automated Testing (BSSC-19b) - to improve the breadth and depth of CamSIS testing, £18.5k.

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b) UAS Sinking Fund (BSSC-20):

• Funds for a Storage Area Network refresh have been committed from the sinking fund. • An ongoing PC audit has indicated that a PC refresh is needed. Once the audit is complete, the PC refresh

policy will be formally documented (including cascade of PCs from power users to less intensive users) and the funds needed to implement the policy will be confirmed. ACTION: RY

BSSC. 15.82 Any Other Business

There was no other business raised.

BSSC. 15.83 Future Meeting Dates

6 May 1 July

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STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM COMMITTEE Unconfirmed The Committee met on Friday 11 March 2016, in the Syndicate Room, Old Schools. Present: Chair: Professor Graham Virgo (Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education), Dr Martin Bellamy (Director, UIS), Dr Litsa Biggs (Secretary of the Faculty Board of Clinical Medicine), Ms Milly Bodfish (Secretary of the School of Arts and Humanities), Dr Sue Colwell (Tutor for Graduate Affairs, St John’s College), Mr John Harding (Head of the Disability Resource Centre), Dr Kate Maxwell (Head of Student Operations, Academic Division), Dr Geoff Parks (Senior Tutor, Jesus College), Ms Emma Rampton (Academic Secretary), Mrs Lesley Thompson (Bursar, Lucy Cavendish College), Mr Nick Wilson (Planning Officer, Planning & Resource Allocation) In attendance: Mr Richard Young (Deputy Director, Education, Administration and Student Services) Secretary: Miss Debbie Salmon (Administrative Officer, UIS) Apologies: Apologies for absence were received from Dr Max Beber (Senior Tutor, Sidney Sussex College), Ms Tamsin James (Deputy Director, Institute of Continuing Education), Miss Poppy Ellis Logan (Welfare & Rights Officer, Cambridge University Students’ Union), Mr James Matheson (Head of IT Services, Department of Engineering), Mr Robert Cashman (Education Officer, Cambridge University Students’ Union) No requests were received to ‘un-star’ a starred item. 1. Declaration of Interests None were declared. 2. Membership Mr John Harding was welcomed as a recently appointed member of the Committee, his nomination having been approved by the General Board. 3. Minutes The minutes of the meeting held on 30 November 2015 were approved. 4. Matters Arising (SISC/132/16) The low completion rate of supervision reports in the Cambridge Graduate Supervision Reporting System was recently identified as a significant risk by the Audit Committee; the Chair was scheduled to appear at the Audit Committee’s meeting in May 2016 to respond to its report. Since the release of the improved academic interface in CamSIS the overall number of reports completed by supervisors had actually decreased. There was some reluctance by the Student Registry to send email reminders to academics as the System was considered as not fit for purpose.

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A new supervision reporting system would be delivered with the v9.2 Upgrade. However, whilst awaiting the new technology, responsibility must be taken for ensuring supervision reports were completed, to demonstrate that students were being properly supported. In the interim period, a method for Degree Committees to prompt supervisors would be identified and initiated as soon as is practicably possible. Action: Dr Maxwell/Ms Bodfish/Dr Biggs A briefing paper would be prepared for the Chair’s attendance at the Audit Committee.

Action: Mr Young 5. Student System Incidents – Update on Review (SISC/133/16 and SISC/134/16) The final version of the CamSIS Incident Review Report had been reviewed externally to UIS, and work had commenced to implement the five urgent recommendations:

i. Apply a standard and robust Incident Management Procedure to all Tier One services (systems which were considered to be business critical). A draft framework had been produced to describe the process flow for a major incident and consequent unavailability of a Tier One system, including communication to users and liaison with the University’s “Silver Team”.

ii. Ensure robust Business Continuity Plans exist for mission critical business processes. It was noted that UIS engagement should include Colleges to obtain an inclusive understanding of the diversity of local business processes.

iii. Recognise and manage coherently all services (Tier One or otherwise) that underpin a discrete business process. It was noted that communications with key stakeholders during critical business processes required improvement, and UIS must have an understanding of other tools in use for those key activities, in addition to the Student System.

iv. Ensure the application testing regime is representative of “real-life user scenarios”. It was reported that additional resource was being recruited to the UIS test team, and there was an ambition to fully utilise the automated testing suite; this recommendation would not be complete by June 2016 but would be in place for the v9.2 Upgrade. As use of the System differed across all stakeholder groups it was requested that the creation of test scenarios included broad consultation across each group.

v. A clear and explicit Service Level Agreement framework, to ensure a basic understanding of all user expectations and needs of each service during critical periods, to include a gathering of requirements from Colleges and academics. It was agreed that ownership of the Service Level Agreement for the Student System should be between UIS and the Committee.

The initial focus for UIS would be to implement the recommendations for the Student System by June 2016 (with the exception of the fourth recommendation), to be followed by the other Tier One systems. It was suggested that it may be timely to pilot the recommendations with business processes relating to examinations. It was noted that the financial agreement between the University and Colleges was outdated, and would be reviewed towards the end of the v9.2 Upgrade Project. 6. Project Portfolio 6.1. Student System v9.2 Upgrade (SISC/135/16, SISC/136/16, SISC/137/16, SISC/138/16, and SISC/139/16) The refreshed pack of papers relating to project developments was introduced; it was acknowledged that some papers required refinement, with the intention to rationalise the reporting pack in a consistent format for the next meeting.

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Ms Rampton, as Chair of the Student System v9.2 Upgrade Project Board, would in future submit a condensed report from the Board in place of the meeting minutes, and the Committee’s attention was drawn to the following points of note:

i) The governance of the Project had been substantially revised by the Project Board, and included a refresh of the Terms of Reference and membership. An Upgrade Steering Committee had been formed, chaired by Dr Maxwell and Dr Smith.

ii) It was proposed that the Project Board took responsibility for the development and maintenance of the Student System during the Upgrade process, to revert back to the Committee on completion of the Upgrade Project; the proposal was endorsed by the Committee.

iii) An external delivery partner (CY2) had been engaged. iv) A late paper was tabled (SISC/139/16) to request additional funding of £566k over

a two and a half year period; the request followed an intensive review of the v9.2 Upgrade budget, and was considered as essential for the Project to be achievable. The additional funding request was supported by the Committee, and would be submitted to the Resource Management Committee for final approval.

v) A new programme manager, with commercial and Higher Education sector experience, had been appointed to manage the Upgrade Project.

6.2. Other Development Projects (SISC/140/16, SISC/141/16, SISC/142/16*, SISC/143/16*, SISC/144/16*, and SISC/145/16*) Four starred papers reflected the progress of other major development projects; a document listing all projects was requested, so that the Committee could decide on the appropriate reporting structure and frequency for future meetings. Action: Mr Young A draft Project Portfolio Risk Register provided an overview of risks across the development portfolio; clarity of status, a progress tracker, and a more detailed understanding of concerns was requested for the next meeting to assist the Committee in understanding where projects may be experiencing difficulty and required interrogation. The revised reporting pack was welcomed as helpful and clear, subject to minor corrections and refinement. 7. ERP Strategy Refresh Project (SISC/146/16) The Enterprise Systems (ERP) Strategy Project was established to produce an architecture strategy for the University over the next two to ten years; the paper described the Project’s background, objectives, priorities and scope, and an update on its current status. A consultancy partner was engaged to the Project on 1 February 2016, and the team were due to reach a conclusion on the recommended outcome of architecture and a roadmap by the end of March 2016, for sign-off by the Information Services Committee. The outcome of the recommendations would be reported to the next meeting of the Committee. 8. Digital Teaching and Learning Sub-Committee (SISC/147/16) The Teaching and Learning Services Steering Group had recently re-formed as the Digital Teaching and Learning Sub-Committee (DTLS) with new and existing member representatives of the Collegiate University and with additional responsibility for the Digital Strategy for Education. Three stakeholder workshops have been held, and it was expected that the final version of the Digital Education Strategy would be adopted at the next meeting of the DTLS on 26 May 2016. Pilot projects would commence; two of the most significant projects would focus on lecture capture and computer-based examinations. The Strategy document would be submitted to the next meeting of the Committee, for consideration.

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9. Any Other Business There was no other business. Date of Next Meeting The next meeting of the Committee will take place at 10am on Monday 6 June 2016, in the Syndicate Room, Old Schools.

Update on the approval of expenditure from the TDF Author(s): Ian Cooper Date: 14 April 2016 Version 1

Action requested Members are asked to note the activities for which funds have been allocated.

1 Background TDF funds are awarded for small to medium sized IT projects and feasibility studies, where funding is not otherwise available. It is not to be used as a source of funds for recurring costs, including licence purchase.

2 Approved expenditure The following tables outline expenditure approved between 26 February and 14 April 2016. TDF42 Cyber security programme manager

Description Programme and project management to oversee the programme of 15 projects to increase the University’s cyber security.

Funding profile 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 Total 27,000 80,000 53,000 £160,000

Participants UIS

Anticipated outcomes

Successful delivery of the 2014 cyber security audit actions; technical tools, analyses, information management and assurance frameworks.

TDF43 Online Information security awareness tool

Description Purchase of an online information security awareness tool to be loaded into the Moodle VLE, initially for 10,000 user licences.

Funding profile 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 Total 31,500 £31,500

Participants UIS


Increased information security awareness by staff and students at the University. A plan for ongoing online security awareness training to cover the full user base.

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ISC 130

TDFR51 IT Community Development

Description A 12-month project to develop a University-wide IT community, as outlined in paper ISC 90.

Funding profile 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 Total 150,000 £150,000

Participants UIS


Initial development of the University-wide IT community and a sustainable plan to continue the work; increasing capability through skills (including socialising and supporting the use of SFIA); increasing capability through knowledge sharing (including online information sharing and face-to-face events; linkages with the IT Service Catalogue)

1 This is an allocation against the TDF reserve funds

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