Digital Scotland Roadshow

At Edinburgh Conference Centre

Recently I presented at a Digital Scotland Roadshow on the delivery of IT transformation at the University of St Andrews. The audience was from across all areas of the public sector and related bodies.

 

We all face a huge challenge at present trying to deliver efficiencies whilst also trying to keep up with ever increasing consumer (citizen/student/employee. etc) expectations.

 

I'm very impressed by the various Digital Scotland documents and working hard to ensure there is general alignment with these within my own strategy documents and operational plans.

 

 

IT Apprentices... we're recruiting more

As you'll have seen from previous posts, my IT Apprentices are a very welcome addition to the department.  I was so impressed, I asked the University if I could recruit more - and they said yes - as they too recognise the real benefits these young people can bring to an organisation.  Not only do the Apprentices learn from us, the IT professionals - we learn from them. 

 

QA have recently published a case study about our success story at St Andrews. 

http://apprenticeships.qa.com/success-stories/employer-case-studies/university-of-st-andrews



Steven and Peter working in our PC Clinic

Green Enterprise IT Awards 2013

University of St Andrews receives Honorable Mention

Our Data Centre has again been recognised for it's Facility Design-Implementation.  The Green Enterprise IT Awards 2013 have given St Andrews an Honourable Mention in their annual awards.  Looking at the list of worldwide companies involved in these awards, I am, yet again, thrilled that the judges were impressed by what we've achieved in a small University in a small town in Fife!

The University of St Andrews, which is about to celebrate its 600th anniversary, expects to reduce its carbon footprint by some 6,800 tonnes over 10 years and has made a commitment to be carbon neutral for energy supply by 2016. Information Technology has a significant part to play in this.

The University has redeveloped an existing building on a brownfield site into a state of the art datacentre, using a modern twist on traditional design, to yield high energy efficiency, in a compact package, with detailed attention to noise abatement, thus gaining residential certification in a conservation area.

The datacentre has fully contained hot/cold airflow and indirect free cooling for the majority of the year. Exhaust air is used to heat the generator sets. Enhanced detailed telemetry has allowed a high degree of component optimization at part load and the efficiency improvements achieved, both in design and post-implementation, are relatively easily applied to legacy datacentres, and to optimize modern part-loaded facilities.

The datacentre is broadly designed to be resilient to single component failure, and has offered 100% uptime since construction.

A project group of involved stakeholders controlled the design and implementation and an operations board oversees ongoing continuous improvements. We are currently undertaking modifications which are expected to reduce our annualized PUE towards 1.2 despite being less than 40% loaded at this time.

The organization has received a BCS CEEDA Gold award for the facility and the design was used as part of the development of the BREEAM datacentre scheme.

More details: 
http://symposium.uptimeinstitute.com/geit-awards
http://symposium.uptimeinstitute.com/geit-awards/1950-600-year-old-university-builds-highly-energy-efficient-gold-ceeda-award-winning-data-center

Storage

In the news: 

http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2256598/st-andrews-university-holds-dell-in-high-esteem

SDI Accreditation

Some of our Service Desk team with Howard Kendall, SDI's Master Auditor

PRESS RELEASE:

St Andrews has become the first university in Britain to receive a prestigious award for its IT provision.

Two-Star Service Desk accreditation from the Service Desk Institute (SDI) is awarded to only those organisations which can demonstrate the best possible Information Technology Service.

The University’s IT service desk team, which logs between 2500 and 5000 incidents a month depending on the time of the year, can now evaluate its performance against an international framework of standards.

The accolade is a clear mark of success for the team which offers IT support to the University’s 2,000 staff and around 8,000 students through a single point of contact.

The University of St Andrews now shares the international quality mark with organisations including O2, Sodexo, Kent and Leicestershire County Councils and is only the second university in the world, after King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to boast the award.

Lorraine Brown, University Service Desk Manager, said: “Information Technology is a fundamental part of the day-to-day life of every member of staff and student at the University.

“We want everyone who uses our service to have a positive experience from the moment they arrive in St Andrews.

“We believe that our 2-Star-Certification proves our commitment to offering a great service and we aim to use the programme to further aid the continuous development of our IT services.”

The 2-Star-rating was awarded to the University of St Andrews following a six month rigorous auditing programme last year.

The  IT service was assessed in its leadership, policy and strategy, people management, partnerships and resources, processes, people satisfaction, customer satisfaction, performance results and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Howard Kendall, SDI’s Master Auditor, said: "It was brilliant to see a well-led team, strategically on a firm direction, and people that are clearly enthusiastic to improve.

“The project team approach to certification has borne fruit and communications, business alignment and peak demand resourcing have all improved as a result. The use of apprentices is particularly to be applauded.”



http://www.sdi-europe.com/service-desk-certification/certified-service-desks/university-of-st-andrews/

The Power of the Hashtag!

Yes, I'm a CIO and I know what's going on the technology world - big data, data centres, Janet 6, transformational IT, Cyber Security, BYOD, etc. etc.  But I have to confess, I'm not quite up with all the the social media lingo!

 

We work closely with our student community to understand their requirements and challenges from their perspective.   I meet with the Student President, Freddie, and his team monthly - it also gives us an opportunity to explain what we're working on - and why.   This week I found out the power of Social Media when Freddie started a #wheresdean frenzy on his twitter page.  On Tuesday a colleague said to me 'hashtag where's dean' and I had no idea what they were talking about! Dean is a member of my senior management team and responsible for the University's ICT infrastructure.  Over the course of a few hours, many photos of students looking for Dean were posted on the twitter pages.    The result... by Thursday - we have sorted out the student radio station server problems! Genius...    It's always great to work with such enthusiastic and supportive young people.



Dean Drew, Associate CIO & Kate from STAR
(St Andrews Radio)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Freddie fforde's (Student Union President) blog -:

"Stronger together. The university has a huge and excellent IT Services team, like the helpful Dean here. St Andrews Radio offer high quality student broadcasting throughout the week, led by Kate. Alas, the STAR server has been expensive, slow and unreliable. Good thing Dean and his team are so willing to help then. IT get their power behind students, STAR get cracking support. Good teamwork guys."

Wifi Provision in Schools

The provision of Wifi within Schools has again appeared in the headlines. If the decision as to whether wifi should be installed within a School is one made by the Headteacher it will always be balanced against other spending priorities. Enriching the learning process in our Schools to me is fundamental especially if we wish to continue to raise the aspirations of our children and stimulate curiosity and a deeper understanding. There is also a clear linkage with Further and Higher Education as there is an expectation now that Wifi will be everywhere. Its no longer a nice to have and maybe the point has been reached where it has become like power or water......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21476385