News in Brief

Below you will find some important news items relating to the operation of Information Services:

Information Strategy

Our Information Strategy has passed through University Court. The plan includes broad directions related to service quality, governance, and information services, then it has a detailed action plan (closely linked to the overall University goals) and a set of performance measures. The documents are available on our new Information Services blog (pictured). Feedback is welcome and a commenting facility is present in this web log.

Discovering IT Security

IT security is a subject that is rarely understood. In order to counter this and help University members understand the importance of IT security and their responsibilities in implementing it, a set of short Flash media presentations are provided on the web for your use. These artefacts explain clearly what IT Security is, what can go wrong, IT Security in the context of your work as well as specialist information on password security, email security and web security issues.

Restructure and Matching

The restructure of IT is now complete with the necessary matching activities and outcomes finalised. Three operational sections now exist: Enterprise Information Services (Head: Kathleen Maurer); Support (Head: Raymonde Murphy) and Infrastructure, Contracts and Data Security (Head: Jim Dunsmore) for services delivery in relevant strategic areas. It is hoped that a new Director of Library Services will be appointed in the near future. A similar restructure and matching process is being undertaken in consultation with Library staff.

ITIL v3 training

We are almost complete in providing training and examination of our IT staff toward ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) v3 Foundation-level certification. Our staff members have been receiving an intensive introduction to this world-leading IT Service Management framework, including ITIL terminology, the structure and basic concepts and an understanding of the core principles of ITIL practices for Service Management. This follows on from the previous successful wide scale training and examination of our IT staff in achieving Foundation-level PRINCE2 project management certification. It is intended that all of our IT staff will be trained towards CobiT v4.1 Foundation-level certification (with examination) over the next year. CobiT offers an internationally accepted control framework for IT governance.

ISIS Programme blog

ISIS is a major strategic programme for the university. It is partly about replacing our student record system but it is much wider than an IT system change. It will affect many of our business processes linked to students and programmes so will involve most parts of the University. The programme began in March 2006 and will take several years to fully implement. Core information on the ISIS programme is included in the ISIS programme website. You can keep in touch with the latest developments and progress on this programme by looking regularly into the new ISIS programme web log. View article on ISIS.

Conditions of use of IT Labs

A shortened version of the main applicable requirements for using University Computing Laboratories is available on the web. The full policy can be found in the Information Services Policy.

Information Literacy blog features in Gazette

One of our Caledonian Web 2.0 blogs 'Information Literacy' was recently featured in an edition of Gazette, a fortnightly CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) publication. The article was titled 'How to get blogging along beautifully'.

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