Research IT

Dr Simon PriceAcademic Research IT Manager, IT Services

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)

Overview of current services and challenges

1. IT staff skills requirements

2. Realistically costing specialist IT support

1. Research IT needs

• Faculty requirements survey

• IT Services skills survey

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

THIS TOOK A WHILE

TO BE CONTINUED...Image by Bristol's much

loved graffiti artist Banksy

1. Research IT needs

• Faculty requirements survey

• IT Services skills survey

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%)

• Launched in 2003

• Used by over 85% UK HEIs

• Major update 2014

www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk

11

17 March 2017

• 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?

• 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)?

• What are the rarest skills at Advanced level and for each skill, how many people have current experience?

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

MONTHS LATER...

ALL 6 FACULTY SURVEYS COMPLETED!

1. Research IT needs

• Faculty requirements survey (part 1)

• IT Services skills survey

• Faculty requirements survey (part 2)

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

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.

2. IT costs in grant applications

• Guidance to Principal Investigators

• Changes to process

Specialist research IT support

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

e.g. Bespoke software development included in bids

Planned support costs

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

2. IT costs in grant applications

• Guidance to Principal Investigators

• Changes to process

Process change #1: Proposal stage in FEC tool

• Project Checklist

• Staff and Student Costs

FEC tool: Project Checklist

Enhanced IT Support

Does you project require specialist IT resource?

More information link:Research Proposal IT Costs webpage

FEC tool: Staff and Student Costs

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

Almost...

Banksy

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.

Any questions?

Otherwise please...

Banksy