Author: Shaun Williams, Executive Director of Engagement and Advancement
A dedicated 10-Year Plan UEB today, but with the first half hour taken up with brief “normal” UEB business. UEB formally approved three papers to be tabled at next week’s Council meeting: a progress update from University of Southampton Malaysia Campus (UoSM); the draft of a new Access and Participation strategy, in response to a significant change in expectations by the Office for Students; and a paper on the PASNAS pension triennial valuation.
Professor Mark Spearing also drew UEB’s attention to his Letter to the Editor published in The Times on Bank Holiday Monday, following a misleading story about the University last week.
Professor Mandy Fader then took the chair in her capacity as Pro Vice-Chancellor for the 10-Year Plan. As I explained in the blog of the last 10-YP UEB, these meetings are focused on monitoring and driving progress on our transformational 10-Year Plan projects, and considering concept papers and business cases for potential new projects.
First, a discussion about how we need to get better at identifying, tracking and realising the benefits of each project. We recognise that historically project benefits have been articulated within a business case, though sometimes not in a measurable way, but thereafter there has been little focus on monitoring and ensuring benefit realisation because all the emphasis is on project delivery. This will now change, and will become a key strand of project and programme board scrutiny ahead.
In a similar vein, we need to improve the assurance around our programmes and projects, to provide greater confidence that they will achieve their scope, time, cost, quality objectives and benefits. A new approach will be introduced, including where appropriate, use of external assurance.
Finally, a new approach to prioritisation was outlined, with a recognition this is not something we always do very well. A new methodology will be developed based on scoring projects against a range of quality and deliverability criteria. This will be essential over the next couple of months, as some tough prioritisation will be required as we plan for 2019/20. As I’ve said before, although we have no shortage of smart and transformational proposals around at the moment, the ability to fund and resource them all is very limited, and we know from experience that taking on too much simultaneous change can be hard for us to deliver successfully.
On to specific programmes and projects, and Mal Allerton, Executive Director of iSolutions, attended to outline the draft ICT Strategy for 2019/20. The delivery priorities will be getting the basics right, ensuring secure infrastructure and process improvements, and ensuring iSolutions is fully meeting its customer needs. In short, a transformed IT infrastructure with smarter, simpler systems and processes.
The key ICT projects for 2019/20 will include: continuing the Office 365 roll-out and improving the use of its tools, re-organising the iSolutions operating model, information management, cyber security, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) consolidation, reporting and Business Information tools, and supporting delivery of the OneWeb project. More details will be provided in our future monthly Strategy Pulse updates, with a focus on how these strands of activity will be directly experienced as improvements by staff and students.
Next, a review of a number of pre-concept, concept and business cases each seeking UEB support for moving forward to the next “gateway” for approval and prioritisation. These included:
- Professor Al-Hashimi, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (FEPS), outlined a concept for investment in Digital X facilities to support increased use of digital technology provision across all our disciplines. The concept was warmly supported and will now be progressed to full concept and business case, and will also need to be considered by the Estates Programme Board.
- Charlene Allen, Director of Student Recruitment and International Relations, spoke to a paper recommending a new overarching Post Brexit Working Group which will draw together the various existing strands of Brexit-related activity across the University, with a remit of preparing for and responding to the final Brexit deal, whenever that is agreed.
- Aimie Bellwood, Events and Enquires Manager, Enquiries Events and Conversion Team, and Kieron Broadhead, Executive Director of Student Experience, presented a concept paper United Visit Days, a project to review, consolidate and improve our approach to post-offer visit days. These visit days currently offer varying levels of information, hospitality and travel arrangements to prospective students, with no consistency in communication or offer holder experience. This will now move swiftly to a full business case.
- Lastly, two business cases under the Education and Student Experience workstream were approved – both had previously appeared as concept papers. Dr Helen Carmichael, Director of Programmes for CHEP (Centre for Higher Education Practice), outlined the Enhancing Academic Support. Time-limited in scope, this project will lead directly to improved NSS scores for the three questions which relate to academic support. Professor David Wheatley, Associate Dean (Education), Faculty of Arts and Humanities, outlined the Reducing Curriculum Complexity project, which will seek to address some complexities in the curriculum which can at times lead to a reduced quality of education and student satisfaction, requiring high levels of resource, with increased regulatory implications. Both business cases were approved, but will return for a wider discussion about funding resource requests for 10-Year Plan projects for the next financial year.
Finally, Winnie Eley Vice-President (International) updated UEB on progress with two projects under the International work stream – Pricing and Scholarships, and World Rankings. Both are on track and continue to be developed.