JISC Future of Research

If Centralising HEI ICT Support is the Answer, What is the Question?

Rob Procterrob.procter@manchester.ac.uk

Overview

Broader context and its impact on HEI ICT support strategy: rapid innovation, complex picture of service provision

Challenges faced by HEI ICT support: how organisations manage ICT-based innovation and

role of users

Need for balance between centralised and devolved HEI ICT support: but, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution

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Context I

Rapid research methods and ICT innovation: Researchers want to explore new services

Research challenges call for scalable ICT support: compute, data hosting, services in the ‘cloud’

Emergent ecology of ICT services: new providers offering e.g. compute, data

storage, publishing.., more cost-effectively?JISC Future of Research 3

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Resource discovery Analysis Scholarly communications

?

Context II

Researchers need to collaborate across HEI boundaries: ICT support must develop strategies for VO

management

In an collaborative world, ICT support is only as good as its weakest link:

“We use Access Grid only with those that we know there is a very good support, so it’s wonderful for our collaboration with […] and […], but all of those centres have very good support.”

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Evidence Base

eUptake: JISC-funded investigation of barriers and enablers for e-Infrastructure: 100 interviews with researchers and IT

support staff

Web 2.0: RIN-funded investigation of use of Web 2.0 in scholarly communication: 50+ interviews with researchers

MaDAM: JISC-funded pilot research data management service.

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Issues I

Researchers don’t trust HEI ICT support to deliver innovative services:

“HEIs put lot of effort into supporting innovations in teaching, but little effort into supporting innovations in research.” (Researcher)

“The blog system is being run by people who we see as not technically competent enough to do it reliably.” (Researcher)

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Issues II Researchers consider HEI ICT support too

remote:“Maybe now [IT support] need to get back and think about helping people with what it is they want to use computers for.” (Researcher)

“There is a need for more people to sit down with scientists and work with them on their specific applications […] people that understand both applications and also understand how to make them work”. (Researcher)

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Issues III

Researchers too often unaware of how HEI ICT support can help:

“The big problem we face is people write their proposals, run into problems, come to us, but in their proposal [nothing] was mentioned about computing or visualisation.” (IT Support)

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Issues IV Research practices reflect influence of local

environment:“Instead of producing a generic infrastructure and imposing it top-down, it makes sense to follow a bottom-up, phased roll-out, with researchers buying into an infrastructure that evolves over time.” (MaDAM project report, 2010)

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User Relations HEI ICT support does not enjoy positive

reputation among researchers: invisibility of infrastructure – only becomes noticed

when it stops working

HEI ICT support and researchers lack ‘common ground’: new ways to work together, e.g. embedding ICT staff

in research teams

Centralised HEI ICT support will stifle innovation: needs to become more local, not less

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Conclusions HEIs should collaborate with one another and with

national services to share expertise, define best practice: services must be fit for purpose and accessible

HEIs should devise practices, rewards and career structures to encourage development of ‘hybrids’: who understand what researchers want and what ICTs can do

HEIs should not follow an over-centralised model of ICT support: agility and responsiveness to user needs is more important

HEI ICT support’s advantage over other providers is that it is local: it would be a mistake to sacrifice that in the name of efficiency

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Thanks to

MeRC: Marzieh Asgari-Targhi, Peter Halfpenny, Alex Voss.

NeSC: Malcolm Atkinson, David Fergusson, Elizabeth van

der Meer. AHeSSC:

Sheila Anderson, Stuart Dunn, Elpiniki Fragkouli, Lorna Hughes.

ISSTI: James Stewart, Robin Williams,

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Useful Links

Community Engagement Projects Portal: http://www.engage.ac.uk/

e-Uptake: http://engage.ac.uk/e-uptake

RIN project: http://tinyurl.com/RINWeb20