Monday 19 October 2015

Chief Digital Officer and Digital Strategy

An interesting article in the Financial Times explains the role of the CDO... 


"It is a very different role from that of the chief information officer, whose job — though complex — is more about following procedures and keeping the company’s IT systems running."

"The digital role, by contrast, is to lead transformation. The job involves looking for business opportunities that have been enabled by the digital revolution. It also involves focusing on customers and how their needs might change because of technological developments."

Gartner recognises that Chief Data Officers (CDOs) are on the rise in regulated industries. Gartner predicts that 50% of all companies in regulated industries will have a CDO by 2017

So - a really interesting question is what does this mean for Higher Education? 

The HE and FE Show 2015 last week offered some interesting insights.  One talk in particular, titled, 'Digital Lancaster' showed how their digital vision is transforming the university, and, even refocussing Lancaster’s strategic objectives.

Saturday 3 October 2015



NewStatesman: The A-Z of cyber security


The NewStatesman has produced, ‘A plain English guide to online risk and resilience’, and actually it is quite a good overview.  Take a look!





Tuesday 22 September 2015

IT Leaders Event - Digital Business Transformation 'Step In and Drive IT'

The 'Executive Leaders Network' delivering the 'IT Leaders Event' met last week with over 100 CIO and CTO directors from key UK organisations.   There were keynote presentations mixed with roundtable discussions.

A common theme through the day was digital transformation and the CIO role, with a particular emphasis on CIOs needing to reinvent themselves to stay abreast of new delivery methods, to drive new digital opportunities and to see IT from the customer or user perspective.

Chris Day spoke of 'Addressing the Digital Challenge' at AstraZeneca. He defined six traits of digital ready IT leaders: (a) Delivering strategic vision of how technology will transform business, (b) Relentlessly focusing on innovation, (c) Focusing on driving growth, (d) Ensuring vision is understood, (e) Moving beyond infrastructure and operations, and (f) Embracing smart risk taking.

New IT skills need to be developed to deliver the transformational digital opportunities.

The meeting gave strong support to the view that today's CIO must play a dual role: builder of technology and builder of the business.  A very good article, 'The dual roles of the CIO in the digital age' examines this principle further.

Friday 18 September 2015

UK businesses ‘number one target for cybercriminals’

welivesecurity reports that new data collected by ThreatMatrix show that UK businesses are more likely to be the victim of cybercrime than their international counterparts.

Financial institutions were found to be the main target, with cybercriminals focusing their efforts on online lenders.

Dr. Stephen Moody, solutions director (EMEA) at ThreatMetrix said, “The more businesses and consumers turn to the digital space to store and manage their financial information, the more fraudsters will be on high alert—ensuring digital identities are effectively protected should be high priority for everyone.”
 

Tuesday 8 September 2015

Case for investment in universities - government Comprehensive Spending Review2015

On 21 July 2015 the Chancellor launched Spending Review 2015.  The Review will be published on 25 November and has the daunting challenge of setting out how the government will both invest in priority public services and deliver the £20 billion further savings required to eliminate Britain's deficit by 2019/20.

The Chief Secretary wrote to government departments asking them to draw up plans to deliver the remaining required consolidation (£20 billion). The letters asked departments to model two scenarios of 25% and 40% of savings within their resource budgets by 2019-20 in real terms.

So where does this leave Higher Education? The protected departments are: The NHS, International Development, Defence and Schools - but even here the the pledges do not refer to entire departmental budgets, but rather to some aspects of their spending. A briefing paper, entitled 'Background to the 2015 Spending Review' explains this further.

It is vital, therefore, that a case be made for investment in universities, and Universities UK has made an important submission.   UUK is calling for:
  • funding for high-cost subjects in England (such as engineering and medicine) to not fall below current levels per student in real terms;
  • sustained government investment in grants that help to widen participation and support students from disadvantaged backgrounds in England;
  • increased investment in teaching capital to support the expansion and competitiveness of the sector;
  • a long-term strategy to increase investment in R&D, to bring it closer to that of competitor countries;
  • renewal of the science ring-fence, which offered vital protection to UK R&D in the last parliament;
  • sustained support for funding streams like the Higher Education Innovation Fund (in England) that allow universities to drive innovation, invest in new and emerging areas and respond to changing needs.
The section that addresses 'Meeting the skills of the UK Labour Market' is particularly interesting.  The first major point in the Executive Summary states:  Through the teaching and training they provide, universities are essential to meeting current and future demand for higher level skills. This demand is projected to rise significantly in the next five years, with almost half of all jobs requiring some form of higher education by 2022. This has a direct connection with a House of Lords Select Committee of Digital Skills report, 'Make or Break: The UK's Digital Future'.

Monday 7 September 2015

RC UK's consultation on 'Concordat on Open Data'

RCUK is seeking feedback on their new draft ‘Concordat On Open Research Data’. The text and contextual information is available. Feedback and comments should be sent to OpenData@rcuk.ac.uk by 28 September 2015.

The draft concordat has been developed under the auspices of the UK Open Research Data Forum by a multi-stakeholder working group, which includes RCUK, JISC, the Wellcome Trust and Universities UK. The concordat aims to help to ensure that the research data gathered and generated by members of the UK research community is made openly available for use by others wherever possible in a manner consistent with relevant legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks and norms.

Most of the principles are uncontroversial.   For example:    Principle #1 Open access to research data is an enabler of high quality research, a facilitator of innovation and safeguards good research practice. 

Principle #9 is challenging - Support for the development of appropriate data skills is recognised as a responsibility for all stakeholders.  There are clear resource consequences.

EPSRC and ESRC policies specify data underpinning publications, but the Concordat appears to refer to all data produced by research. 

"The intention [of the Concordat] is to establish sound principles which respect the needs of all parties. It is not the intention to mandate, codify or require specific activities, but to establish a set of expectations of good practice with the intention of establishing open research data as the desired position for publicly-funded research over the long-term."   The question, therefore, is how will the Condorat be used to ensure open data are openly available - what will make it more than a generic statement of intent?
 


Friday 28 August 2015

A new dawn for learning analytics in UK HE

An excellent paper has been produced by Jisc: Learning analytics - The current state of play in UK higher and further education.

Twelve universities and colleges are reviewed, and there is little common ground among the participating institutions in the analytics systems they are using.

The 'outcomes' are:   

Most interviewees are reluctant to claim any significant outcomes from their learning analytics activities to date – again perhaps demonstrating that it is still early days for the technologies and processes.


Several of the participants mention the strong correlation they have found between attendance and achievement. At Manchester Metropolitan it was found that students who submit assignments at the last minute or who have a high proportion of off - campus night time activity are more likely to fail.


Oxford Brookes finds that their dashboards have helped to identify issues with BME achievement on particular courses.


Derby has used analytics to dissect attainment across its student population in order to throw a spotlight on areas where it can target interventions. It can evidence impact on BME as well as overall student attainment.


Both East London and Bedfordshire report that anecdotally student attendance seems to have increased, perhaps because students know that their presence is being monitored.


Encouragingly, at Nottingham Trent the interventions taken by tutors as a result of the analytics are almost always followed by an improvement in engagement. In addition some of the tutors there present the individual student dashboards to the whole tutorial group to prompt discussions about progress  –and this is reportedly motivational to the students.


Several interviewees have found that a significant outcome of the analytics work has been improved connections between disparate parts of their organisations. Some, such as Loughborough and Activate Learning, also mention the sense of ownership that staff feel over the tools or the positive reception they have received, and how important this has been in their adoption.


Monday 10 August 2015



Leak of personal data from 4000 people at Toyama University

Toyama University has revealed that one computer belonging to the Toyama Unit Center under the university’s Medical Department was infected by seven types of malware when the PC downloaded free software in early June.

The Toyama Unit Center participated in the national survey of children’s health and environment by the Japanese Ministry of Environment to elucidate what kind of impact chemicals in the living environment would have on children’s health.

About 5,300 parents and children who reside in the Toyama Prefecture, central part of the Japanese mainland, participated in the survey between February 2011 and March 2014.

The infected PC has personal information belonging to about 4,000 of 5,300 people such as the name, date of birth, area to live, and past birth and illness history of mothers in six cities or towns in the prefecture.

The Ministry of Environment requested each unit center to store personal information in PCs which are not connected to the Internet, but the university stored part of the personal information on a different PC, which professors use.

Academics lack understanding to make business-university links work


There is an interesting article in THES this week that reports academics lack the commercial understanding needed to make a business-university collaboration work.

The article references a report: Building Successful Collaborations: The SME’s Viewpoint on Partnering with a University compiled by data firm Beauhurst.  Cultural differences between businesses and academics are huge, communication and relationship management from an early stage is crucial, 32% of businesses feel their business potential is not understood.

I am surprised no mention is made of university-business centres such as Begbroke Science Part at Oxford and ThinkSpace at Imperial??

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Windows 10 and Privacy  

Microsoft has come under fire from privacy campaigners for collecting information from private files, e-mails and address books owned by its users.

Individuals’ speech, handwriting and typing habits are also being collected, as are call logs, the names of people listed in calendar appointments and information about what people buy online.

An article in the Register reports, '"Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties," the privacy warriors at European Digital Rights told the FT on Monday.'

The Register's article has a guide explaining how to configure Windows 10 to change privacy options to make the Operating System more secure. 

Monday 27 July 2015

NSA hosts summer camp to attract young talent

The NSA is hosting summer camps to teach school students hacking techniques.

“The goal of GenCyber, as the summer camp program is called, is to catch the attention of potential cybersecurity recruits and seed interest in an exploding field as more and more of the nation’s critical transactions, from warfare to banking, move into the realm of cyberspace.”

“It’s a fine balance for me as a teacher, because you have to teach them some of the hacking techniques, and layer that in with an ethical discussion,” said Diane Murphy, a professor of information at Marymount University, home to one of the NSA camps this summer.

Interesting development....

Monday 6 July 2015

Review of Quality Assessment

On the 29th June  HEFCE announced a Review of Quality Assessment. A Steering Group seeks views on future approaches to assessing the quality of education. The deadline for responding is 18 September 2015 (and 31 August 2015 for Wales).

An interesting THE article, 'Quality assurance to face overhaul' captures some of the proposals:

  • Instead of the “process-driven” review process, universities will instead be monitored via analysis of student academic outcomes, which may include data about student satisfaction, dropout rates and graduate employment rates.
  • Under the new plans outlined by Hefce in a consultation document, there will also be an enhanced role for universities’ and colleges’ own assurance systems, with governing bodies asked to confirm that their senates or academic boards were reviewing the quality of their students’ academic experience and academic standards.
  • External examining is also to be strengthened, with the creation of a national register of external examiners and the development of training schemes.

Tuesday 23 June 2015

Protecting Data in Education 2015

An iGov Survey titled 'Protecting data in Education 2015'  has just been published, in partnership with Acronis.


The participating organisations are mainly schools, but also with colleges and universities.

The biggest perceived threat to the organistion's data is 'data loss'.

44% are planning to considering moving to the cloud to store data.

82% placed a 'very high priority' on data security.

Monday 22 June 2015

MOOCs and pedagogy: where are we heading?

Yves Epelboin provided an excellent overview at Future EdTech.   Worth looking at this presentation.

 

Friday 19 June 2015

Developing digital literacies

What are digital literacies?    Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.

If you were asked to list seven elements of digital literacies would you be able to do so?

The following chart offers a good framework:



This is taken from an excellent Jisc guide.   A particularly interesting part of the guide discusses 'Students as change agents'.  There is also a section on Curriculum Change.    Well worth a look....

Thursday 11 June 2015

Surveillance powers: New law needed

A report has been published, commissioned by the Prime Minister, titled 'A Question of Trust'. The strong conclusion is that, "Clear new laws are needed to cover security services' powers to monitor online activity".

The 300 page report recommends (taken from BBC news item):
  • Security and intelligence agencies should be allowed to continue practising "bulk collection" of intercepted material but that "strict additional safeguards" should be introduced.
  • Judges should authorise requests to intercept communications, greatly limiting the home secretary's current role in deciding which suspect is closely monitored.
  • Proposed "snooper's charter" powers must be subjected to "rigorous assessment" of whether they would be legal or effective.
  • The definition of communications data should be "reviewed, clarified and brought up to date" and supervision of its use should be improved.

The Chief Privacy Officer in Higher Education?

An interesting EDUCAUSE Review article states that, "the CPO role is expanding beyond the realm of preventing data breaches to represent a fundamental institutional value and priority."

Mike Carr, CISO and director of Enterprise Architecture at the University of Kentucky, notes that "the biggest opportunities lie in the discussions about data collection, data ownership, the right to be forgotten, and the academy's belief that helping students succeed via big data analytics is not only permissible, it is desirable and the administration's responsibility."

Which UK university will be first to appoint a CPO?

Thursday 4 June 2015

Future Edtech 2015 Conference

The Future Edtech 2015 Conference  proved to be very interesting.

Key issues were discussed such as:
  • Deploying new technology to improve academic outcomes and sustain growth in the new education economy
  • Translating to the institution the value that new technology brings and clearly demonstrating return on value
  • Providing technology enabled best in class teaching and learning and a fluid, seamless student experience
  • Capitalising on the changing dynamics of the HE market place by aligning the IT agenda with the institution’s strategy to achieve a highly differentiated brand position
  • Reaping the efficiencies and benefits that new technologies offer to improve student outcomes and create a strong alignment of the student experience & brand promise
The highest profile speaker was Eric Stoller, the Student Affairs and Technology blogger for Inside Higher Ed, who spoke on 'What's your digital identity: Leading and engaging via social media'.

All the talks will be made available on the Edtech website.

Thursday 16 April 2015

World's Biggest Data Breaches - terrific graphic

There is a terrific new Information is Beautiful interactive that presents the World's Biggest Data Breaches. It is produced by the data visualiser David McCandless.   It taxonomises the biggest data breaches, by year, by 'number of records stolen' or 'data sensitivity', and also by 'method of leak' (giving very interesting results). It can also show results by 'Organisation' type - how do you think 'Education' fares?



Tuesday 31 March 2015

Universities need to plug into threat of cyber-attacks

An interesting article that states, "Desirable research plus students’ personal and financial details make universities a juicy target for cyber-criminals. But are they doing anything about it?"

In my opinion the following quote is the best part of the article, "Like so many challenges raised by the internet, cybersecurity is less a finite goal than a process – and one of risk management rather than risk removal."

Tuesday 17 March 2015

UCISA Information Security Management Toolkit

A UCISA Information Security Management Toolkit, that some of us developed, has just been published.

The Toolkit will:
  • assist those who have responsibility for implementing information security across the organisation by providing advice and guidance to them;
  • help them to provide senior university management with an understanding of why information security is an important, organisation-wide issue. 
It is intended as a practical resource, providing an overview of the key aspects of a successful ISMS and guidance on how to implement them. It also includes case studies, as well as templates and example resources which organisations can tailor to suit their needs.

Cyberweapons Have No Allegiance

An interesting article from Bruce Schneier.   Here is an extract:

"But here's the problem: technological capabilities cannot distinguish based on morality, nationality, or legality; if the US government is able to use a backdoor in a communications system to spy on its enemies, the Chinese government can use the same backdoor to spy on its dissidents.

Even worse, modern computer technology is inherently democratizing. Today's NSA secrets become tomorrow's PhD theses and the next day's hacker tools. As long as we're all using the same computers, phones, social networking platforms, and computer networks, a vulnerability that allows us to spy also allows us to be spied upon.

We can't choose a world where the US gets to spy but China doesn't, or even a world where governments get to spy and criminals don't. We need to choose, as a matter of policy, communications systems that are secure for all users, or ones that are vulnerable to all attackers. It's security or surveillance."

It relates to many press articles on surveillance over the last week.

Defining the Strategic Leader

EDUCAUSE and Jisc formed a Task Force to address the issue -  Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader

The Task Force found a number of recurring themes including: 'The CIO Position is Fragmenting" and "Transitioning from an Operational Focus to a Strategic One".   It goes on to articulate a Model for IT Leadership with three primary roles: 'Trusted Advisor', 'Visionary' and 'Relationship Builder'.

It states that there are three key aspects to the role: 'Understand the Organisation', 'Provide Information Systems and Technology Leadership', and 'Bringing Transformation to Life'.

Interestingly,  the conclusions reached were relevant to both the United States and the United Kingdon.

Wednesday 21 January 2015

Top Ten IT Issues for 2015

Each year EDUCAUSE / ECAR produces a set of Top 10 IT Issues. A preview was seen at the EDUCAUSE conference in October 2014 (see earlier blog entry).
The latest EDUCAUSE Review (the 50th) is devoted to the issue, and certainly worth reading.
The item titled, "Ten Reasons to Tackle the Top 10 IT Issues" is particular interesting. For example:
  • Administrative systems can improve not just operations but also institutional competitiveness
  • We are building tomorrow's infrastructure today
  • Information technology is about people
"An Administrative IT Perspective on the Top 10 IT Issues"  gives another angle on the results. It selects three of the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues for 2015 as a useful lens for viewing administrative IT programs at higher education institutions. Taken together, these three issues can serve as a roadmap for administrative IT strategy:
  • Issue #3: Developing IT Funding Models That Sustain Core Service, Support Innovation, and Facilitate Growth
  • Issue #9: Developing an Enterprise IT Architecture That Can Respond to Changing Conditions and New Opportunities
  • Issue #5: Demonstrating the Business Value of Information Technology and How the IT Organization Can Help the Institution Achieve Its Goals