Strategy dominates again though with a mix of Employee Opinion Survey, budgets and finance, and moving to a new system for incident management.

By the end of this week I would like to have the following:

• a draft matrix of potential aims and objectives for the new strategy mapped against university strategies
• a first draft stakeholder intelligence document that I can drawn on in identifying key themes for the strategy
• clarity on what we will feed back to IS&T staff about our initial thoughts on the Employee Opinion Survey and what we might do as a result
• a plan of what we have to spend and by when on what, and therefore what residual issues that might leave (good and less good)
• a decision on the go live date for the incident management system, so we can start to see some of the expected improvements

Tomorrow a change of pace though with a day conference on Internationalisation and the strategic role IT can play there.

More specifically, the drafting of the new 5 year strategy for IS&T. It only feels like yesterday (in fact 2008) since we wrote the last one.

Having agreed a process and timescale to get the work done, its now all about doing it.

There are some critical resources we need for that; a stakeholder intelligence report taken from discussions with key contacts across the University, input from the audit (almost complete) on alignment of our strategy to the strategy of the wider University, and the report from the review of our approach to systems development (also just about complete). Alongside that, there are things we know we need to continue (delivering the services people depend upon, for example) or build on, or in some cases do differently (thinking about our discussions on datacentre requirements for the medium to long term).

The challenge is to do all that against a backdrop that has a great deal of uncertainty. The impact of changes to fees, numbers of AAB entrants, tightening of public spending, our business relationships with key areas also under similar pressures such as in health, teacher education, and then the impact of Government policies and on visa restrictions.

It’s going to be an interesting couple of months whilst we prepare the draft, that is for certain.

The first of these, the general IT controls audit, is almost complete and an initial close-out meeting set out the findings informally. A report will be sent shortly.

The other two should also complete in the coming weeks. Time-wise this is important as they will be used to help shape the thinking around the next 5-year IS&T Strategy.

Outside work I’ve been following (with some concerns) discussions about Internet freedoms and proposals to limit them, mostly recently in the suggestion that the UK Government should increase powers to routinely track and hold email, Internet history and other information. A good starting point for some of the wider debate is here.

Having been in open plan (although with only a small number of colleagues) for exactly a year, it is odd – good and not so good – to be in my own office again.

Good in the sense of, like most people, enjoying having my own space and somewhere quiet to concentrate. Less good in that you do miss the camaraderie and social aspects of being with other people. Even though those same colleagues are only a matter of a door and 10 feet away or so it feels quite different to when we were sat in the same space day in day out.

It is however good to be in a busier area, with part of one of the City-based teams, even if we are just short-term visitors.

Several catch-ups about work in progress today, especially the systems review currently running. Lots to think about there.

This week looks likely to be dominated, as the weeks before Easter were, by budgets, audit, systems review and strategy discussions.

Before Easter it was pretty much all about audit, strategy, business and budget planning, as well as the regular cycle of KITs and routine meetings.

We’ve had two audits on the go, one looking at general IT controls and the other reviewing our approach to our IT Strategy. Whilst the first is a pretty general check (which isn’t to say there won’t be important actions that come from it) the second will help feed into planning the next 5 year strategy plan. Both should report in April.

Alongside this, I have commissioned a review of our systems development approach in terms of governance, process and delivery. This piece of work is also due in late April and it too will feed into both day to day planning and a more strategic plan for the systems challenges facing us. Those systems challenges aren’t particular to us and many are driven by external changes (for example Government policy decisions) over which there’s little choice but to prioritise the work needed. However, that means there is limited resource for other things we might wish to do that the University feels will be of real benefit. We can’t resource from a bottomless bucket (even if we could, the rest of the University couldn’t realistically do the same and we need the expert input from key areas) so we need to be sure we’re using resources as effectively as possible.

Business planning is close to complete and March has been about the detail of the budget required to deliver the different things asked of us. At the same time, there are opportunities currently to procure certain things now, ahead of the next financial year where that’s beneficial, so there’s some planning across the current and next year to see what if anything it makes sense to propose bringing forward. Whilst it’s a lot of work for people, it can be very helpful in giving us more time to implement things for next academic year (a new service to support teaching collaboration for example).

So April looks like being interesting especially around the audit and systems review outcomes. It will also be the real start of discussing and considering the new IT strategy and what we should be proposing to do to help the University achieve its objectives.

IT plays a central role here and there are high expectations of what we can offer for the future.

Is IT a career that attracts a broad set of people to it? My experience of it is that, by and large, it isn’t but I’m not sure why. Realistically I can only talk about how it seems as a woman in IT.

It is better than it was 10 or so years ago but it does still seem to be predominantly white and male although there are areas where the staff group is more diverse. By better, I simply mean that there is more diversity, a little more representative of wider society.

10 years or so ago I went to a conference in Turkey. I was seemingly the only female delegate in a very European gathering. At a UK conference about 8 years ago it was almost entirely white, male and, seemingly, over 60. That same conference now has a greater percentage of regular female attendees though it still feels like there’s a higher proportion of white attendees than you might expect given the UK population.

Today, sat in Board of Directors meeting, of 14 people I was one of only two women (the other being the Company Secretary and there taking the notes) and we were all, so far as I can tell, white.

So why isn’t it, apparently, a more diverse workforce? Again my own experience doesn’t suggest any particular difficulties or barriers that made me question wanting to work in IT. If anything, I experience more now than I used to but that seems to relate to being a senior woman rather than a woman in IT (largely from those outside the University I hasten to add!).

I’ve asked this question before and got a range of answers but none that seems to explain it, or suggest how we might set about changing it. I’d really be interested in any ideas you might have.

Getting them done gives something of a sense of achievement, even if I know the To Do list will be just as long by Friday.