ICT STRATEGY

August 2010

Author:

Steve Williams, ICT Manager

Date:

August 2010

Contents

1

Context ............................................................................................................... 3

2

Executive Summary.......................................................................................... 4

3

Specific Elements of the ICT Strategy ............................................................. 6

4

Wider Access and Learning Strategy .............................................................. 8

5

Responsibilities ................................................................................................. 8

Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................ 9

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1

Context “We need to remove unnecessary overlaps between departments and avoid costly duplication of technology. We need to standardise, simplify and move to a more shared and open world, ensuring that we continue to deliver local solutions to local needs at a price we can all afford.” Angela Smith, Minister of State for the Cabinet Office, “Government ICT Strategy” 2009 “The next period for West Lothian College will be a challenging one.” West Lothian College Corporate Plan 2010-2013 “Modern service delivery requires an integrated approach across the organisation with a combination of solid technological foundations and support services, effective, efficient business processes and well trained members of staff committed to excellent customer service.” Waveney District Council Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Strategy 2009-2013 The above quotes set the context in which this ICT Strategy has been developed, prompted by their contained themes and taking into account other relevant sources of material; these include College HMIe reviews and UK and Scottish Government ICT Strategy and legislation, together with the opinions and strategies of other organisations in Further Education and in the wider Public sector. This body of material has a common theme – that to survive and thrive in troubled times, a service function needs to become excellent in all areas of activity. The ICT vision is therefore “ICT Services - Supporting Excellence at West Lothian College” This Strategy represents the first waypoint on a 5 year continuum which will be revisited annually or more often should technology or business imperatives dictate.

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2

Executive Summary The Corporate Plan 2010-13 contains 3 Corporate Aims:-

A College whose excellent performance delivers value to both the individual and the wider community. To deliver excellence in learning and skills development. To be an excellent and sustainable business.

To meet the Corporate Plan Aims, the ICT Strategy is divided into three Strategic Themes:-

To Support Excellence for Students To Support Excellence for Staff, and To Support Excellence in Business Information

2.1

Supporting Excellence for Students Aim: A key element in provision of ICT services to students is that they be able to collaborate with their peers and with tutors to produce work of the highest quality. Objectives 2.1.1 To support the formation of fluid study groups by enabling students to collaborate on pieces of work, using web-based resources, either inside or outside College. 2.1.2 To facilitate access to e-Learning materials and provide the ability to update documents simultaneously, supported by online tutors 2.1.3 To enable students to submit finished assignments through a College Student portal which their tutor would access for assessment and communication. The results would be posted into a College e-Portfolio system to stand as a lasting (and portable) record of the students’ attainment. 2.1.4

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All in-College student-facing systems and file stores would ultimately be accessible through a Single Sign On facility.

4

Sections 1.9, 1.14 and 2 of Appendix A include details of initiatives required to realise this element of the strategy.

2.2

Supporting Excellence for Staff Aim: All staff to have access to their personal and team information from within and outwith College. Objectives 2.2.1 Enable staff to communicate and discuss tasks in tactical groupings via a Staff portal which would include email, calendar, Intranet discussion area and possibly Student Records or Finance data 2.2.2 Give staff members the ability to work simultaneously on a live document which could then be posted for comment by the Senior Management Team or Board of Governors. 2.2.3 Provide staff access to induction and e-Learning materials and their own Professional Development records in a centrallyhosted e-Portfolio system. 2.2.4 Provide Single Sign On to all College back-end systems. Sections 1.9-11, 1.14 and 2-3 of Appendix A include details of initiatives required to realise this element of the strategy. Work contained in Appendix A section 4 (Staffing) is crucial to the success of all areas supporting delivery of the vision and will be given the weight of importance it deserves. It is imperative that sufficient attention is paid to training in new systems and technologies, from the aspects of end-user and support staff member, so that we can maximise the return on our investments and drive real value form the deployment of ICT systems. ICT training should be explicitly dealt within the CPD Strategy and the costs of training must be included as part of the cost of ownership of all potential ICT acquisitions.

2.3

Supporting Excellence in Business Information Aim: To reach a level of infrastructure based on which we can input a piece of information efficiently, to one system only, and have that information linked to other back-office systems.

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Objectives

2.3.1 Maintain the integrity of the information by eliminating keying errors and reduce the wasted effort associated with re-keying into other systems; 2.3.2

Automate the creation or update of records in associated backoffice systems to make business processes leaner and more responsive to change;

2.3.3 Provide a robust and high quality data set for Management Reporting, allowing Managers to make decisions with confidence; 2.3.4 Protect this data with a robust backup and Disaster Recovery mechanism.

Initiatives contributing to this element of the strategy are detailed in sections 1.11, 1.16 and 3 of Appendix A.

3

Specific Elements of the ICT Strategy These elements cut across all of the Strategic Themes. 3.1

Effectiveness and Efficiency West Lothian College ICT systems and services are at the heart of all College activities. In the coming climate of funding reduction we must therefore maximise the effectiveness of all College systems by driving value from existing solutions, replacing those systems which cannot be made more effective, and training all staff in getting the best out of our investments. Corporate Objective 3.6 states:“The ICT Strategy will drive systems improvements for business effectiveness” This target will be met by infrastructure rationalisation and costreducing technologies. These measures, together with a review of all back-office systems over the period of the Strategy, will make the delivery of ICT Services hugely more effective. Standardisation of software components and platforms will expand the potential for collaboration with partner organisations and a consequent reduction in total cost of ownership. Mid-period review will assess Open Source solutions and move the focus towards non-niche infrastructure components.

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One of the key enablers to effective and efficient operation in the coming years will be collaboration with our peer Colleges and with the wider Public sector to set up pooled resources (or private clouds). Sophistication in the seeding and exploitation of collaborative vehicles (for instance the existing Edinburgh and Lothian Colleges Group but also the various embryonic resource-sharing initiatives which will follow) will become an important skill for any organisation wishing to maximise their returns, and will form a key indicator of organisational excellence. 3.2

Learning and Teaching The College needs to enhance and develop its commitment to eLearning. We will approach fulfilment by means of collaboration and the creation of multi-use eLearning tiles (chunks of eLearning materials which, when combined in different ways can fulfil varying learning objectives). In addition, reduction in ICT infrastructure management effort from other initiatives will free up resource to be redirected to development of eLearning materials. We must identify, though market research and in discussion with peer Colleges, an e-Portfolio system which will be sufficiently robust, performant and scalable to cope with the large number of individual student (and ultimately, staff) portfolios if it is to gain widespread currency and enthusiastic adoption.

3.3

Business Agility We must also facilitate business transformation in order to allow the College to best position itself to take rapid advantage of opportunities which present themselves over the next 5 years encapsulated in Corporate Objective 2.10 “Knowledge transfer, employer engagement and external funding opportunities will be further developed to increase commercialisation”. This too will be assisted via collaboration, perhaps using a Sector equivalent of the Central Government G-Cloud to access resource as and when required. The alternative would be use of the wider “public” cloud which is currently unsuitable on security grounds; however the appropriateness of hosting services on this medium will be assessed periodically.

3.4

Information Management Efficient information management the need for rigorous analysis of the business processes associated with system operation, which in itself should yield valuable cost savings.

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This will be made possible by allocating capital funding to ICT projects in such a manner as to “pre-load” the tools with which we will tackle the difficult times ahead in an ”Invest to Save” approach. It is with this in mind that all ICT bids for Capital funding in 2010 were presented as “whole life” costs in order that the likely reductions in subsequent years’ operating costs could be quantified. In addition ICT hope to engage the assistance of the College Lean Green Belt champions in the business analysis area.

4

Wider Access and Learning Strategy This Strategy also supports the Wider Access and Learning Strategy.

5

Responsibilities The overall responsibility for the ICT Strategy rests with the college Board of Governors. The Assistant Principal, Finance & Resources has responsibility for the achievement of the strategy. The ICT manager is responsible for the implementation of the strategy

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Appendix 1 1

Infrastructure

1.1

Physical network – no fundamental change is planned until 2011-12 when existing equipment will be between 4 and 5 years old. ICT would hope that funding would be available for a core switch- and inter-building fibre upgrade to 10GBit/s since we would need the additional performance should there be a high take-up of streaming digital media. 2011-13

1.2

Servers – the College standardised on IBM servers in 2005, ICT see no reason, given the excellent performance and reliability over the past 5 years, to change this. The virtualisation host servers will be refreshed in 2015. The Thin Client server side will be controlled by an IBM Blade Server, with only necessary blades being procured in 2010 and incremental additions being made to the blade count annually as the number of Thin Clients increases. 2015 so out of scope of this Strategic review.

1.3

Virtualisation software – all existing servers will be virtualised during 2010. Server-side VMWare is licensed to 2012-13, whence a review should result in a decision to renew or to port virtualisation services to the competing technology, Microsoft Windows Hyper-V, which may by then be a mature and developed product with a potentially large cost saving. 2012-13

1.4

Storage – the existing EMC server storage will be in production service until 2014-15 at which point it will require refresh or Cloud deployment. The Thin Client storage will be in service from late 2010 until at least 2015. Out of scope of this Strategic review.

1.5

Database platform –all core system databases should be standardised on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (or 2008 R2 if existing applications will run on it) plus we should consider porting Unit-e to Microsoft SQLServer in 2012 – this will allow for sophisticated Management Information to be produced in addition to allowing for simplified integration between systems. 2012

1.6

Directory Service – following the migration to Windows 2008R2 Active Directory (AD) in 2010 we have no plans for upgrades in the Strategy period other than essential Windows Server version upgrades. No timescale.

1.7

Identity management – Integrating Unite, Finance, Library and Active Directory systems will allow for one-time creation of all accounts when a student is enrolled and thus cut down massively on administrative time required to duplicate the input. Creation of a Student record in Unit-e will trigger Finance, Active Directory, Exchange and Library systems to autogenerate accounts for that student without human intervention. The cost of these integrations must be offset against the reduction in manual effort across several back-office functions which would ensue. Phase1 Unit-e, AD and Exchange in time for start of session 2011-12.

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Phase2 Unit-e, Finance and Library in time for start of session 2012-13, Phase3 goal is Single Sign-On to all Microsoft-enabled apps including email via Student portal by 2014. 1.8

Desktop management We will procure Novell Zenworks Configuration Management (ZCM) for 3 years from 2010 since it will allow us to phase in Microsoft software deployment technologies and avoid a “big bang” migration during 2010. We will look to increase the desktop management capability of System Centre progressively by implementing additional modules and thus be able to phase out ZCM by 2013-14. Thin Client deployment starts 2010 -this will be a progressive deployment over a 4-year period targeting 75% of the College desktop devices. 125150 devices will be replaced per annum depending on the roles and brand mix of desktops to be replaced. From 2014 we will assess the practicality of a complete Thin Client rollout across the remainder of College Desktop devices. These Thin Client devices have an estimated useful life of 8-10 years, resulting in a desktop-refresh “holiday” of between 4 and 6 years per device. Laptop refresh will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis looking to replace as many as possible with Thin Client devices, and running VMWare View thin client software on older devices to extend their life. No laptop will be refreshed with another laptop unless expressly requested and justified by the end user.

1.9

Productivity tools – we will upgrade to Office 2010 in 2012, but will be looking for opportunities to deploy Open Source productivity tools such as Open Office and indeed Cloud-based solutions such as Google Apps or developments of this technology. Investigation must be ongoing to evaluate these technologies so that we can realise the cost benefits when the applications are sufficiently mature.

1.10

Collaboration tools Staff – the project timetable for 2010 includes migrating to Exchange 2010, however as with productivity tools we must evaluate cloud-based tools since the student-focussed Windows Live offering, for example, may eventually be suitable for staff as well as students. Windows Live includes email, calendaring, Office-like tools and file storage space in a Microsofthosted environment.2012-13 Students – we should make the investment in MS Outlook Live cloudbased emai since by doing so we remove the work associated with creation of student email accounts and free up significant ICT Technician resource (estimated at 0.2 FTE) devoted to account creation. This also provides a guaranteed receptacle for course materials, assessments, notices etc. 2010

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1.11

Back-office applications Core applications will only be considered for replacement if potential replacements can demonstrate tangible contribution to operating cost reduction, organisational rationalisation or Management Information quality. Finance are keen to move away from the existing Exchequer Finance system due to significant limitations to efficient operation and have made a 2010 Capital Bid for a new system. ICT expect the go-ahead for a new Finance system, but possibly not until 2012 when integrations between other systems have proved so successful that continued operation of Exchequer cannot be defended. HR have bid for a new HR/ Payroll system in the 2010 round of Capital Bids. A review of the HR World Service and CINTRA systems will be conducted in 2010 to investigate their potential for improve operation and reporting.

1.12 File storage – these services will be migrating to Windows 2008 Server in 2010. Future upgrades will follow the Windows Server version path, but will only be implemented to resolve serious operational issues (bug fix) or where significant additional functionality would be gained by upgrade. A more robust security model would allow us to consider file storage in the cloud 2013-14. 1.13 Printing – ICT, Estates and Finance are close to finalising a replacement Printer/ Copier contract for the non-classroom printing and copying devices. As part of this we will take robust control measures to mandate duplex printing across the organisation and to achieve a radical reduction in both colour printing and the amount of paper wasted by prints which are not collected. The chosen solution will also provide much-reduced power consumption and emissions over our current estate and will enable more efficient ways of working via such features as scanning and booklet-making. 1.14 Staff and Student Portal/ Intranet – ICT will develop some form of collaboration space where staff can associate and share ideas, files and other resources. This may take the form of an Intranet or it may utilise social networking vehicles such as blogs and wikis together with the Moodle VLE. 1.15 Document standards – WLC should implement only open standards for document types, i.e. ODF, PDF and OOXML (see collaboration) especially if we perceive a need for long-term centralised email archive. 1.16 Security services The Cisco PIX firewall is now end-of-life and will go out of support at the end of 2010. Migration from the PIX to a newer Cisco ASA firewall would

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have the benefit of providing a more robust and supported firewall. 201011. Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) – following negotiation it has been agreed that West Lothian College and Oatridge College will, on a reciprocal basis, allow the other organisation to site backup and DR capability on each other’s campus. This will be implemented first by West Lothian College and will involve procuring server and storage hardware, and software, which will enable us to cease the existing payper-gigabyte offsite storage contract, the cost of which is due to increase by 100% when the Windows migration project is complete. This initiative formed one of the ICT TCO Capital bids of 2010 and has been agreed. 2010 Remote access to College-based systems – ICT will deploy Microsoft Unified Access Gateway as a Remote Access solution for staff and students – this will allow as many inbound connections to College resources as we require and represents a small additional to the cost of our Microsoft Campus license, and some consultancy to deploy. 2011 1.17

Telecoms – following analysis and a tendering exercise ICT moved Landline Telephony call and line rental contracts to Alternative Networks, with a projected 65% annual cost saving, in 2010. We will continue to assess competing offerings and will switch contracts if there is tangible commercial gain involved. 2011

1.18

Audio Visual equipment – the summer 2010 programme of works includes procuring more Interactive Whiteboards to bring an enriched Learning and Teaching experience to more students. This will continue throughout the Strategy period. ICT will from 2010 procure LED-Laser projectors in preference to halogen bulb projectors – these former have 10 times the bulb life, coupled with a 60% reduction in power consumption.

2 2.1

Learning & Teaching e-Learning –The College Virtual Learning Environment should be appraised in terms of its effectiveness as the primary vehicle for eLearning delivery – it may be that we decide to devote more time and resource to development of the Portal and e-Portfolio elements of our offering. We must, though, be mindful of the role of VLE in existing ESF materials, so a residual presence in the VLE arena will be required. 2011-12 The current Moodle VLE should be assessed in comparison to the forthcoming Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 with Education extension, currently in a pre-release designation as ULURU.2010-11 e-Learning materials development is closely allied to VLE development – the former has already been migrated into the ICT functional area so there is no reason why ICT could not oversee VLE as well, which would allow us to ensure consistency between the two and to make learning materials reusable.

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Should this not be agreeable then e-Learning development in the wider sense should be managed by a Project Manager. 2011. 2.2

Defining/ designing – see above for a co-ordinated approach Creative thinking – how can we get the maximum value from our development effort and/ or enlist the services of external organisations to this end? Can we use our contacts within e.g. ELCG to pool information or programming assets we each? The cloud analogy should be used as a model to promote shared development resource within the sector. Chunking/ modularising of learning objects – for subsequent reuse to fit other requirements. Use ESF development resource to produce transportable learning chunks. 2011

2.3

e-Portfolio system – the existing e-Portfolio system as deployed in Workforce Development, ProofPositive, does not appear to offer the scalable performance which would mark it as a serious candidate for a College-wide ePortfolio system. Further discussion with peer Colleges needs to be had before a recommendation can be made in this area.

3

Enhancing Services We will make appropriate enhancements to ICT services by Assessing, though a combination of testing and expert-user feedback, the suitability & effectiveness of all corporate applications. One example would be the current Finance system, which cannot interface directly with the Unit-e Student Records system or cope with the 8-digit Student Matriculation number on which Unit-e is based. Gathering end-user feedback on the efficacy of the existing solution Exploring the possibility of refining associated business processes to better match existing system functionality– possibly with the help of the Lean Green Belt champions – as process improvement is often the cheapest solution. Reusing, where appropriate, existing resources – can we glean the required functionality from another system which the College already owns? Defining additional requirements – in the event that there is no alternative to procuring another solution, it is vital that a comprehensive requirements gathering exercise is undertaken, with all potential stakeholders feeding into the discussion. This makes the process of agreeing scope and deadlines more robust and avoids revisiting after the event. Investigating alternatives – pragmatism must be our watchword when assessing capability – we will not have the luxury of “bells and whistles” solutions given our funding constraints, appropriateness will be the fundamental test. Deploying the solution – can we enlist the help of peer organisations rather than use Professional Services for all enhancement work?

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4

Staffing An ICT Technical Skills Profile will be developed using the following process Skills outputs from this ICT Strategy will define the Skills Profile needed to deliver all aspects of the Strategy. An ICT Skills Audit, along the lines of the BECTA ICT Competencies Framework, http://www.becta.org.uk/techcomp/docs/ict_competences_framework.pdf, will be conducted with existing ICT staff. A Skills GAP analysis, with the assistance of HR, will identify shortfalls in current skills. The existing Training Passport will be renewed to address required technical training for new technologies forming part of the Strategy. Required soft skills will be discussed with CPD to establish the most effective method of delivery. Elements not deemed achievable through existing ICT staff skills or further technical training will form the basis of a requirements definition for a temporary secondment from a partner College or an external Managed Service. The potential to drive more value from existing investments though improved utilisation of existing software systems by the wider College staff should be evaluated by the CPD function. Microsoft application training will be conducted using a combination of purchased material, free Microsoft online resources and short, targeted learning episodes delivered by ICT staff to medium-sized staff groups, for example in the Hub area at lunch times. A culture of sharing tips and best practice in software usage will be encouraged through measuring and rewarding/ challenging performance.

5

Managing Monitoring system performance – data from Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) which reports on the health of Microsoft Servers, and NetCrunch which monitors communications equipment and services health, will be permanently displayed on a large screen in ICT to give at-a-glance status of servers, network equipment, core applications and services, and early warning of problems. 2010-11 Measuring system performance – SCOM will be used to measure and trend system performance with a view to informing Capacity Planning. 2011 Capacity Planning – predictions of future growth will be developed from SCOM data and will give early warning of non-linear growth of file storage or paucity of system resources to support core applications and services. 2011

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Driving value/ More-for-less – existing applications will be investigated in greater depth to identify currently-untapped functionality which might mitigate the cost of procuring additional solutions. Helpdesk – which approach? The existing Polar Helpdesk has reasonable functionality, however there is the potential to use the Helpdesk module of the TABS system which, being more asset-based, could form the basis of a Configuration Management Database. 6

Management Information One of the key definers of this Strategy is the need to facilitate production of much smarter Management Information to assist in decision making – the means to this end is, as previously stated, in integrating systems by defining requirements, aligning platforms, and creating visual dashboards to provide KPI information to the SMT in order to inform decision-making.

7

Procuring ICT will continue to operate best-practice in procurement by utilising bestvalue vehicles such as Procurement Scotland, APUC, OGC and CUPID and, ultimately, wider legislation such as the Open Journal of the European Union (OJEU). The basis for all tender comparison is Whole Life Costing – this must include power consumption, cost of disposal and carbon emissions. As previously discussed we will adopt an Invest to Save stance when evaluating potential solutions. We wish to extend the scope of collaborative procurement as recently demonstrated by the Scottish Colleges Consortium Microsoft Campus agreement for desktop software. We think it is not appropriate, for example, that Student Records system suppliers apply consultancy rates for work they perform on our behalf although the development effort has already been conducted for other Colleges – pressure to reverse this situation should be brought to bear in positions of influence such as the Principals’ Forum.

8

Sustainability The requirement to operate sustainable ICT services is explicit in the UK Government ICT Strategy of 2009. ICT have, in the recent past, implemented a number of improvements to sustainability across College systems including:Power-down of inactive PCs Server virtualisation Reducing the amount of air conditioning required in the Comms Room by introduction of a vented door and an increase in operating temperature

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Specifying power- and emission-reduction standards in Tendering exercises, such as the Printer/ Copier contract Refreshing equipment comes with certain responsibilities, not only to source products which exhibit reduced power consumption and emissions but also to ensure that disposal arrangements are in keeping with legislation and initiatives such as the Carbon Commitment for Colleges. 9

Complying Legislation The college Corporate Plan targets have been addressed fully within this Strategy. Government ICT strategy 2010 -13 is also mirrored in the major themes of our ICT Strategy – attention to and evaluation of Open Source solutions, the reuse of existing assets, the notion of the private cloud (in the Government context, the G-Cloud), and collaborating are all areas in which we will focus our attention over the period of the Strategy. HMIe recommendations on eLearning and ICT in the classroom assist with learner retention and engagement. Aligning with FE Sector standards for infrastructure paves the way for future collaborations and shared services.

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