With the reduction in sector funding, as well as the changing demands of government and funding bodies, there is an increasing requirement for universities and colleges to become more cost effective and agile. Flexible service delivery is gaining momentum as a way to help universities and colleges deliver and sustain transformational change and improvement, including real efficiency savings as well as other measurable strategic and educational value, through the streamlined and flexible provision of administrative and student services.
JISC funded the Flexible Service Delivery (FSD) programme to help a range of colleges and universities navigate through the steps needed to improve their IT service delivery for students and staff. Project outputs are listed below as originally defined by the FSD Programme strands, however if you've arrived at this page directly you might be interested in viewing the 'Improving Organisational Efficiency' resource which provides a narrative to the programme's findings. You can also access the case studies based upon the chapters they appear within i.e. Enterprise Architecture (EA), technology trends, cloud, getting more from existing investments, costing, shared services, and working with commercial suppliers.
Business process and ICT change
Project name
|
Lead institution
|
Description
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| Student Timetabling Online Project (STOP) |
University of Central Lancashire |
Using business process review and change management methodologies, to review, redesign, implement, upskill and evaluate a new admin system to manage room bookings and timetabling creation. |
| Assessing the adoption of EA as a change agent |
Coventry University |
To demonstrate how EA techniques, when applied to a large scale Smartcard/access control project, can help to overcome the cultural barriers and maximise the business benefits. |
| SOAP Opera 2 |
Leeds Metropolitan University |
To produce comprehensive 'As Is' and 'To Be' service-oriented models of current academic facing systems, understanding the interplay between people, processes and technology. |
| Enabling Integrated Learning Environments (EILE) |
University of Kent |
To integrate remote systems with their learning environment by creating a configurable Moodle web service block, based on the IMS Learning Tools Introp (LTI) framework, that allows Moodle to consume data from remote resources and display it alongside the learning context. |
| Assessment Management |
University of Oxford |
To define the requirements for a 'assessment management' service that could be plugged into any student system and provide the appropriate functionality. |
| Identity Management in FE |
Blackpool and the Flyde College |
To adopt a business-led and service-oriented approach to the integration of their finance and customer relationship management functionality. |
| Lightweight EA |
University of Bolton |
To assist the University to adapt to the new approaches that are needed in developing administrative processes and systems capable of dealing with the greater variety of partnerships and relationships by applying lightweight EA. |
| Archi |
University of Bolton |
To develop a proof-of-concept Archimate modelling tool; initiate and maintain a modelling support function/support update of the Archi Tool. |
Shared service and cloud computing
Modularisation proof-of-concept
Enterprise Architecture (EA)
Enterprise Architecture (EA) was seen as a fundamental tool across the programme in helping institutions become more effective, efficient and able to deliver core offerings. The following EA journeys were captured during the programme.
Technical rapid innovation
Technical rapid innovation projects reported informally to the programme manager and via their project websites (links below). They informed the 'Getting More from Existing Investments' section of the 'Improving Organisational Efficiency' infoKit.
Project name
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Lead institution
|
Description
|
System for Integrating Reading Lists within the Oxford University Information Environment (Sir Louie)
|
Oxford University |
To deliver rapid integration between Oxford’s VLE and Library systems to provide an enhanced Reading List, offering improved experiences for both students and lecturers.
|
Total Recal
|
University of Lincoln |
To develop API plugins for a number of existing university systems that expose ‘space-time data’ and time in an open standardised format, which can then be aggregated and integrated into a new single web-based 'student-centered calendaring service'.
|
| Graduate Recruitment Intelligence (GRI) |
University of Gloucestershire |
To improve the graduate employability of students and recent graduates by combining academic records and other achievements with other employability characteristics, preference and timing information, contributing to the HEAR XML specification.
|
| Integrated Programme and Module System (iPaMS) |
University of Exeter |
To develop an integrated management system for programme specifications and module descriptors to support the production of the HEAR.
|
| Exploiting Web Services (EWES) |
Roehampton University |
To put in place a web services approach to system integration, opening up the way to interoperability and services reuse in a loosely coupled software environment.
|
| STEP-C |
De Montfort University |
To demonstrate the concept of implementing two different ESB solutions, one at DMU and one at SSU, and rapidly connecting applications—via web services and APIs where the interfaces existed, and directly to the underlying database tables where they did not—to these middleware or 'service layer' platforms.
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