Advanced lessons in teamwork

Much can be learned from the way services are being shared at colleges and universities

At a time when there is a great deal of comment about disappointing results from shared services initiatives in the public sector, it is interesting to watch the start of a new approach from universities.

The higher education sector is big ­ with almost 170 institutions, 2.3 million students, 335,000 staff and an annual expenditure of more than £21bn.

And there’s more ­ almost 40 per cent of students are new every September.

In total, the sector spends more than £1bn per year on IT ­ so it is only to be expected that the government would be looking for significant savings from the sharing of computing services.

But the government provides less than 50 per cent of the sector’s income as direct grants. And in areas such as research grants or international student recruitment, there is cut-throat competition between rival universities.

To make matters worse, the sector is regularly bypassed by the main consultancies, systems integrators, hardware suppliers and software vendors.

Large IT companies often shy away from higher education because of the high cost of sales and the requirement for bespoke packages.

But universities have unusual strengths. There is a rich culture of openness, trust and collaboration
between staff from different institutions, plus a spirit of curiosity for creating new initiatives.

Such strengths mean academia’s approach to shared services has been characterised by a call for voluntary and collaborative projects.

The basic concept involves each successful project being either replicated or expanded to maximise overall benefits, an approach that is very different to the top-down methods which characterise many central government initiatives.

Results during the first 12 months have been extraordinary. More than 20 of the largest universities have combined to work on a national solution to the massive data storage needs required for world-class research.

Several have also run feasibility studies to combine their datacentre and infrastructure services, with some of the largest institutions looking to house their biggest computers within a shared high-end datacentre.

At least eight universities, meanwhile, are using a common out-of-hours helpdesk for all students and staff queries.

But the jewel in the crown of university IT services must be Janet, the UK Joint Academic Network.

Janet concentrates the networking requirements of all higher and further education colleges ­ and then designs and acquires the necessary networking resources. The result is a cost-efficient and high-capacity
network.

By trusting staff to find new ways of making huge efficiency gains through cross-institutional collaborations, academia might be spearheading a new approach to the sharing of services between institutions.

Maybe more large IT vendors will start to collaborate with universities to develop the kinds of innovative
solutions which could be used in other parts of the public sector.

Paul Hopkins was formerly director of information systems and services at Newcastle University. He recently formed HE-Shared Services, a network of ex-IT directors.