Providing mission-critical services? Development and innovation? How do we bridge these two worlds?

This workshop session will explore technological change in an institutional context from the perspective of the IS Manager or Director, and the role of JISC funded projects in this context. It will consider questions such as how we can provide and maintain mission critical services and enable and support innovation? - and in a context of shrinking budgets!

This session aims to address the core topic of this year's conference and explore 'the challenges facing educational institutions in a rapidly changing environment, and the implications for those with responsibility for implementing technology change, namely IT service departments.'

In the context of rapid technological and political change institutions need to be able to

and so on....
 * explore the new things that are becoming possible in order to find out what they could mean - or not - for them, and try to do this in a 'safe' way so we don't disrupt core things
 * build on the things that do have something to offer in order to migrate them to more mainstream provision
 * respond to learners' as well as employers' expectations

In this session we hope to look at some of these issues from the point of view of
 * those who are involved in technology development/innovation and its use in education,
 * those who have to provide reliable core services, and
 * those who provide funding, support, advice and direction - in particular JISC and JISC CETIS

This session has no pre-arranged presentations, and will be a workshop to enable delegates to explore and identify some of the issues arising from the above - we will reflect on what we have been doing recently, our plans, challenges, drivers etc, and ways forward, including considering how JISC and JISC can help.


 * If you are blogging about this session, or tag any other related resources, please use cetis-2008-services as a blog, flickr etc tag,

Some recent relevant reading includes the following - please add to these! -

UCISA TLIG, 2008 Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning for higher education in the UK http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/ssg/surveys.aspx

UCISA survey - Top concerns - 2008/9 https://www.ucisa.ac.uk/members/surveys/tc.aspx

Educause - Top ten IT issues, 2008 http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/TopTenITIssues2008/46605