research it at the university of bristol
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Research IT
Dr Simon PriceAcademic Research IT Manager, IT Services
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Research IT team in IT Services:
• RIT = 11.5 staff: 3.5 FTE core + 5.5 FTE consultancy-funded + 2.5 FTE BOS
• Work with ALL of IT Services + HPC, Research Data Service, Finance, HR, ...
• Governed by academic-led Research IT Executive (RITE)
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Overview of current services and challenges
1. IT staff skills requirements
2. Realistically costing specialist IT support
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1. Research IT needs
• Faculty requirements survey
• IT Services skills survey
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Faculty requirements survey
• Conducted by Research IT and RITE Faculty reps.
• Mostly via face-to-face interviews of:
• Faculty Research Directors
• leading researchers (individual or groups)
• RITE Faculty reps. responsible for validation
• some used an online survey to solicit comments
• others used discussion at Faculty meetings
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THIS TOOK A WHILE
TO BE CONTINUED...Image by Bristol's much
loved graffiti artist Banksy
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1. Research IT needs
• Faculty requirements survey
• IT Services skills survey
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IT Services skills survey
• Ran in August 2014
• 20 questions (mix of MCQ and free text)
• Aim: to better inform Research IT support
• Response rate: 124 / 193 (64%)
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• Launched in 2003
• Used by over 85% UK HEIs
• Major update 2014
www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk
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11
17 March 2017
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• Visualising the data to answer questions.
• e.g. In which research IT skills do we have the most people at Advanced level and how does that compare to numbers for Competent or Basic?
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• What are the rarest skills (at Competent or Advanced levels) and for each skill, what percentage have current experience (i.e. more recent than 18 months)?
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• What are the rarest skills at Advanced level and for each skill, how many people have current experience?
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Immediate outcomes of skills survey
• Research IT team – use data to find experts and help support research proposals and consultancy.
• RITE – communicate skills summary to faculties.
• IT senior management – guided by RITE priorities:
• Urgently address single points of failure (SPOF)• Tune skills profile by training and better utilisation• Recognise need to train and trust academics too
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MONTHS LATER...
ALL 6 FACULTY SURVEYS COMPLETED!
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1. Research IT needs
• Faculty requirements survey (part 1)
• IT Services skills survey
• Faculty requirements survey (part 2)
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General issues identified
• Need for greater flexibility in way IT Services policies are implemented
• e.g. admin rights; custom hardware/software; ...
• Preference for local support in group or School
• possibly by local 'secondment' of IT Staff
• Need for more academic input to formulating and communicating relevant IT policy
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Faculty IT needs synthesis and actions
• 6 x Faculty needs synthesisedinto a single report (4 pages) and actions list (20 pages).
• By Chair of RITE, Research IT, IT Senior Managers and CIO.
• Submitted to University Research Committee (URC) for approval.
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2. IT costs in grant applications
• Guidance to Principal Investigators
• Changes to process
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Specialist research IT support
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University press release:
"The Bristol team greatly benefited from its Advanced Computing Research Centre and Research ITat Bristol who co-ordinated and developed the analysis on BlueCrystal."
e.g. Unplanned work to Ebola outbreak analysis
Responsive support costs
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e.g. Bespoke software development included in bids
Planned support costs
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Guidance to Principal Investigators (PIs)
• Document scope:• Hardware
• Storage
• Software
• Services
• Document structure:• Standard IT resource PIs do not need to bid for
• Specialist IT resource PIs will normally need to bid for
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/it-services/research/bids/costs.html
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2. IT costs in grant applications
• Guidance to Principal Investigators
• Changes to process
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Process change #1: Proposal stage in FEC tool
• Project Checklist
• Staff and Student Costs
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FEC tool: Project Checklist
Enhanced IT Support
Does you project require specialist IT resource?
More information link:Research Proposal IT Costs webpage
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FEC tool: Staff and Student Costs
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Process change #2: Award stage
• School discuss use of resource with Research IT
• e.g. allocation of 20-80% of a Zonal team member
• e.g. range of skills provided by multiple IT staff
• Reviewed annually by:
• Finance
• Research IT
• School
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Closing comments
• Further considerations:• IT staff skills survey – useful but repeat regularly
• Academic needs survey – informs IT Strategic Plan
• Costing research IT – requires behaviour change
• RITE is a partnership between academics and IT
Joint ownership of process, all the way through initial idea, planning and deployment etc. is seen as crucial to the way that RITE operates.