Annual Report 2015 - 2016

Foreword

Foreword

Steve Watt in the Data Centre

During 2015-16, the University’s continued investment in ICT staff and equipment allowed us to enhance and expand our range of services, building upon the transformation work carried out in previous years.

I am delighted we have been able to improve the student and staff experience through the launch of “Apps Anywhere”, which delivers software to wherever it is required when previously it was restricted to a fixed location or device. We have also been working closely with academic colleagues to pilot a new lecture capture service and we continue to upgrade our learning and teaching facilities, standardising equipment across the University where possible to ensure it is of a high quality and easy to use.

The University’s research activities have been strengthened through the provision of a secure and stable environment for its High Performance Computing facility and expanded data storage. The start of term on-boarding process for students is now established and customer satisfaction surveys indicate we maintain an efficient support service in classrooms and across the campus.

In a rapidly evolving digital world, delivering an innovative yet cost-effective service supporting the varied and complex needs of diverse and demanding stakeholders is a major challenge. Increasing our agility is therefore a key focus. In the area of cyber security we see many threats targeted at us on a daily basis and ensuring a secure and compliant IT environment will remain an imperative. Work continues on developing a second data centre site to improve business resilience.

A highly successful IT apprenticeship scheme and ongoing staff development ensures we continue to develop the talent required for the future.

Steve WattChief Information Officer

Contents

1

1 Foreword

2 Supporting Learning & Teaching

4 Supporting Research

5 Service Delivery

8 Supporting University Business and Beyond

12 Infrastructure & Green IT

14 Information Assurance & Governance

15 People

19 Facts and Figures

As part of our rolling programme of upgrades, we replaced AV facilities in the following rooms:

Arts Lecture Theatre BMS Seminar Room 1.13 Buchanan – Multimedia Centre Rooms 1 and 2 Bute Lecture Theatres A and D Bute PC Classroom Castlecliffe D2 Econometrics Computer Classroom Gateway Meeting Rooms 1 and 2 Gateway Metcalf Room Gateway Pearce Room Irvine 310, 327 and Computer Classroom Maths Lecture Theatres A, C and D Physics Lecture Theatre C Psychology Seminar Room 1 Purdie Lecture Theatres A and C School II and School III St Mary’s Lecture Room 3 Younger Hall

In rooms with natural light, laser projectors were fitted, providing brighter, sharper images in high resolution. To further improve usability, we continued to standardise button and touch-panel controls on Extron technology, which has proved sturdy and reliable.

Interactive Projection systemsWe added interactive projection systems to Arts Building Seminar Rooms 1, 4 and 7, which means all nine rooms now offer interactive boards for teaching.

Gateway upgradesThe four small meeting rooms in the Gateway now have 55” TV monitors along with the necessary cabling to allow users to connect their own device. Some of the larger rooms are now fitted with interactive SMART podiums and pens. Apps Anywhere

After consultation with students and staff, the University has launched a pilot service to video record, live stream and web-cast lectures. The service, called Lecture Capture, is integrated with the Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle) to ensure students can access and review previous lecture materials.

Lecture Capture provides a personalised approach to learning and a simple and effective revision tool. It acts as a driver to promote and support modern methods of learning and teaching and provides a platform to grow and enhance the distance learning education. Moreover, to better support students with disabilities and comply with the recent changes to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) capital funding, we want to have a strong focus on the provision of assistive technology.

We are confident this addition will enhance the student experience through the provision of an enriched learning environment. The pilot will run for 12 months to allow the University to evaluate how this technology will fit into our environment.

The Media Services team provide live streaming and recording capabilities for University and external events. They cover events such as:

Opening ceremoniesGraduation ceremonies Lectura Dantis Lectures Gregory Lectures Gifford Lectures Roman Re-enactments

The films can be found on the University’s Vimeo video channel: https://vimeo.com/user20577780

In summer 2016, we launched a new service to allow students and staff to access specialist software applications from any University PC across the University. Historically, this software has only been available on PCs in the School where the applications are taught, which can be restrictive. Apps Anywhere is built on Cloudpaging (formerly Application Jukebox) technology and allows applications to stream to devices ‘on demand’. The new service is available to all student PC classrooms, residences and open access spaces with a view to making it available on personal devices in 2016-17.

The SCCM provides Microsoft Windows build management and software application deployment services. We designed, implemented and configured the SCCM to replace numerous disparate systems used previously, including PXENADS, IASC and Novell ZENworks. This change has offered a more flexible, sustainable service and facilitated the use of self service to deliver an improved customer experience.

Technology Enhanced Learning

Events and Film Production

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

Audio Visual Enhancements

Supporting Learning & Teaching

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Daryl, Erin & Mike from the Media Services team in the newly refurbished Butts Wynd computer classroom in September 2015

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 2 3

Our Data Centre was selected to house the new High Performance Computing (HPC) platform. The cluster was procured from Bull, the HPC division of Atos Technologies, and contains more than 1,500 Intel Xeon E5 Broadwell-EP CPU cores, supporting over 3,000 compute threads. The system also features a pair of NVidia K80 Graphical Processing Units, 300TB of storage and a 56Gbps InfiniBand interconnect. It is connected into our University network with multiple 10Gbps Ethernet links, and is a scalable architecture, enabling future expansion. Co-locating the HPC with the Data Centre provides a level of infrastructure redundancy not previously available at St Andrews, ensuring a highly available and robust service.

Providing new and returning students with a first class IT support experience is very important to us. We know that when students arrive in St Andrews they receive a lot of key information – and they need to get online as soon as possible. By working closely with colleagues in other Units, we co-ordinate a start of term support service to meet the needs of new and returning students. We also produced a short film for the start of term: https://vimeo.com/137955505

In advance of 2015-16 arrival weekend, 4,000 IT Welcome packs were placed across student residence bedrooms. Our ‘Quick Guide to IT’ gave instructions on connecting to the eduroam Wi-Fi network, provided details of our PC Clinic service and advised on how to access their free Microsoft Office suite. We

also produced 92% of student ID cards prior to students arriving, ready for collection at University halls of residence.

During arrival weekend, we offered IT support in all halls of residence and in the Main Library from 10:00 to 18:00 on both the Saturday and Sunday. We also encouraged all new students (and their parents) to give us feedback – offering them a chance to win one of four gift vouchers for a local store. We are always overwhelmed by the positive comments we receive.

An IT support team member was also based at the matriculation venue during Orientation Week, and we employed senior students to bolster the IT support provision during the first few weeks of term.

We provide a comprehensive range of services, including answering questions, fulfilling requests and restoring normal levels of service when problems arise. The first point of contact is via the IT Service Desk where calls are logged on our call management system, UniDesk. This enables us to monitor and analyse the volume and types of incidents and service requests we receive. We monitor our performance in terms of call resolution and identify trends (e.g. peak periods for a specific type of request), allowing us to schedule resources more effectively. UniDesk also customers to monitor and track the progress of their calls via an IT Self Service portal.

Since 2015, we have been more proactive in terms of call management – monitoring calls which are approaching their target date and reducing the number of breached calls to an extremely low level. We review and report our call resolution rates on a monthly basis and are proud to resolve the majority of calls well within our targets.

Anyone who logs a call with the IT Service Desk is asked to provide feedback on the service provided, through our One Minute Survey. The results can be found in the “Facts and Figures” section of this report.

In 2015, we expanded our use of UniDesk, by introducing the Change and Contract modules, which provides a more effective and transparent way of managing IT-related changes and contracts. A number of other Professional Service Units are looking at UniDesk, as a better way to manage calls in their area.

The Office 365 implementation was completed in the Autumn of 2015 which has delivered several collaboration tools. OneDrive provides a cloud storage and synchronisation application with up to 1TB of data storage with version history. When used with Microsoft Groups, this facilitates collaboration between researchers from across the world (See “Service Delivery” section).

We procured a Dell Compellent SC9000 system to provide data storage to research staff and students. The storage is mirrored between two sites across the University and consists of 722TB of raw storage in two tiers. Tier1 comprises 84TB of Solid State Disks with the rest of the storage provided on Hard Disk. The procedure of migrating existing research data onto the new storage is underway with over 120TB of data already moved. To ensure optimum performance we offer virtualised servers co-located with this storage. These are provided on a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) blade platform.

High Performance Computing (HPC) Hosting

Start of Term

Call Management

Collaboration Tools

Research Data Storage

Supporting Research

Service Delivery

Service Delivery

Gary presents Marcus (Library), our February 2016 One Minute Survey prize draw winner, with his £10 gift voucher.

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Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 4 5

Service Delivery

The PC Clinic service was extremely popular this year with 1,319 requests (up from 1,148 in the previous year). The service operates through the IT Service Desk, proving staff and students with technical support and repairs for personally owned equipment.

We have been working closely with colleagues across the University to simplify access to certain services, such as online payslips and library resources, by removing the need to use the Virtual Private Network (VPN). However, the VPN is still required for some services, including accessing shared drives, and in spring 2016 we upgraded to Cisco AnyConnect – a much more user-friendly interface.

PC Clinic

Virtual Private Network

During the summer months, the University is home to thousands of visitors who attend conferences, summer schools, events (including major golf tournaments), or enjoy a short break in one of our halls of residence. These guests also enjoy many of the facilities we have to offer, such as MUSA, the Sports Centre and the Byre Theatre. In the summer of 2016, through partnership with BT, we have been able to provide free BT Wi-Fi for all, across the University.

Previously, if any University account holders forgot their password, they had to contact the IT Service Desk, which is only available during set hours. To ensure staff and students could access their account at any time, even if they did forget their password, we introduced Self-Service Password Reset facility. All staff and students have been encouraged to register for this service.

Visitor Wi-Fi

Password Self Service

535 Computer repairs

(Mac and Windows)

119 Devices not

booting

75 Keyboard

issues

80 Replacement

hard drives

413 Mobile phone repairs

35 iPads / tablets

62 Liquid damage

We formalised the process for handling situations where a loss of service impacts a significant number of staff and / or students, putting in place protocols to ensure the right people are informed and kept updated. Post-event, a team of senior staff review the handling of the incident and take steps to ensure, as far as possible, future occurrences are prevented / mitigated.

During the summer of 2015, all University staff were moved from a hosted email service to Office 365. The new service provides an enhanced offering of email, Office applications and storage, supporting the University’s vision of enabling a more flexible approach to working. Students who joined the University during the 2015 - 2016 academic year were also provided with an Office 365 account.

Benefits include: 1TB of mailbox storage using Outlook or the Outlook

Web App; Advanced calendaring allowing staff and students to

schedule meetings and share their availability; 1TB cloud storage and file sharing capabilities using

OneDrive for Business; Office Apps in the cloud (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,

OneNote etc.) that are optimised for mobile devices; Five copies of latest Microsoft Office for personal use; Skype for Business (Staff only).

Major Incident Management

Office 365

VPN

Serv

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Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 6 7

Supporting University Business and Beyond

The Business Intelligence (BI) team, often referred to as the Qlikview team, continues to support several business critical reporting applications across HR, Finance, Estates, Admissions, Registry and ITS. New applications were released to support Workforce Planning activity and to monitor charitable donations to the University. A further six dashboards were upgraded to align with the University’s Digital Pattern Library.

Across the diverse suite of 19 live applications, we saw increases of 9% in users and 25% in usage. There are six new applications currently undergoing development.

A number of staff changes took place during 2015 with the team growing to a full complement of 5 FTE by January 2016. The newer staff members have quickly integrated with the team using iterative Agile working practices and a rota system for responding to IT Service Desk calls.

The Management Information Group continues to accept and prioritise work on behalf of the BI team to ensure we align with the University’s Management Information needs. We continue to play a significant role in reviewing the current infrastructure, tools and governance supporting Management Information and will take a lead role in the delivery of key institutional reports.

Since February 2016, we have provided a greater level of business support for Tribal’s Student’s Information Desk (SID) product suite, providing Service Units with analysis of business process requirements and site configuration. We want to enable the use of SID as part of those processes and continue to provide a dedicated technical support for the SER programme to widen the adoption of SID across Schools and Service Units. Through the facilitation of the University’s SID internal users group, we have a platform for staff to continually review the

efficacy of the product and promote enhancements through dialogue with the software vendor (Tribal Education). To strengthen St Andrews’ partnership with Tribal, the group has participated in beta testing of new software iterations and provided a presentation on SID at Tribal’s annual conference.

We have also provided a programme of user training and created an institutional reference guide for user group members, to augment their knowledge of the product.

In June 2016, we upgraded the Student Record System (SITS) to version 9.1.0. This upgrade included an overhauled eVision framework that is responsive to screen width and therefore now suitable for use on mobile devices.

It also enabled us to bring consistency to the brand and styling of eVision itself. Previously there was a disparity between task-based content that had been customised to use the Digital Pattern Library responsive framework and the system-generated portal content. It is now far easier to achieve a standard look and feel across eVision, significantly improving the product aesthetic and reducing the time and effort required to develop new web-based applications.

Additionally, the upgrade enabled the development of an Applicant Portal, which relies on functionality only available in this latest version.

Business Intelligence

Student Information Desk

Improving Student Admissions Systems

Supporting University Business and Beyond

The purpose of the Senate Efficiency Review (SER) is to deliver a programme of related projects to improve the digital student experience and related administration tools. The continuous improvement in student administration will seek efficiencies and enhancements to the student and staff experience within a culture of collegiate partnership and engagement.

During the academic year, the main projects developed and released were:

A new workflow for submitting curriculum amendments and supplementary additions;

Workflows aimed at amending student data when incidents change a student’s academic journey;

Docman, a new student document management system storing supplementary documents against the student record;

MySaint, a new student and staff portal, providing easy access to commonly used applications;

Modules to facilitate the collection of bursary data, the allocation of awards and the reconciliation of financial data.

Senate Efficiency Review

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Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 8 9

We worked with Finance colleagues to complete a major upgrade to the Financial Management System (APTOS) to version 10. In addition to providing new and enhanced functionality, this enabled us to upgrade our databases and server operating systems.

We also configured the SITS student finance module, SAM, to work with the new configuration of the Fund Manager Module. Finally, we implemented the Accounts Payable invoice file for import to APTOS from the careering management system (Saffron). This enabled files that are produced in Saffron to be easily imported into Aptos, removing any requirement for manual data re-keying.

Our Application Development team ensures we provide creative and intuitive software application design to support the ever growing need for information management throughout the University. We develop state of the art business applications using innovative development tools and manage their implementation to offer seamless integrations between various software platforms at an institutional level.

Developments during this year include: Establishment of the Postgraduate Research Progress

Reporting tool; Development of a ‘Talk and Tour’ application for

Admissions; Creation of a new credit card APEX application; Enhancement of the Risk Register reports, resulting in

a 90% performance improvement using VPN and 50% improvement on site;

Introduction of a Staffing Compliment additional data form, replacing the need for staff to maintain multiple sources of data;

Change to the appearance of eVision to a responsive layout compliant with the University’s Digital Pattern Library;

Production of a set of tools that work collaboratively with the Paperless Admission satellite tasks;

Improvements to the Student Record Card and the Student Messaging system;

Enhancements to the Online Matriculation application.

In 2015, the town of St Andrews officially became a Business Improvement District (BID). This involves businesses working together and investing collectively in local improvements, in addition to those delivered by the statutory authorities. These improvements should benefit the businesses involved whilst contributing to the wider aspirations of the local residential community and contribute to growing the local economy.

As a significant employer and part of the town community, the University has a key role and significant contribution to make. We have been working with the BID team to explore the delivery of a ‘wireless town’ and ran a successful pilot scheme during 2015-16. For the University, this would greatly benefit the thousands of prospective students (and their parents) who come to St Andrews on visiting days, as well as current staff and students, in areas where our own wireless service does not reach.

We worked with colleagues in HR to streamline the process for new members of staff. Historically, activating their account required a visit to three separate locations around the University. This was frustrating and time-consuming for both them and their line manager. We have now reduced this to just one location -HR at the Old Burgh School. Much of the work, including ID card production, is being done prior to the new start’s first day, creating a better experience for everyone.

Approximately 350 Professional Services Unit staff are expected to relocate to Eden Campus in 2018 - 2019. We will play a significant role in ensuring services are in place to support this and much of the infrastructure planning is well underway.

As part of our Professional Services Relocation (PSR) project we have developed an engagement plan. In March 2016, the first phase was to meet with Professional Service Unit management teams to:

Understand how colleagues currently work from an IT / AV perspective, e.g. are the majority of the team desk-based, do they have a lot of meetings or do they travel extensively;

Understand how staff think the move will impact them and their team and discuss their IT / AV requirements for Eden Campus;

Discuss the current use of Office 365 collaboration tools, such as OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business;

Discuss how teams may work in the future and explore how technology can assist this.

The next phase saw us run demonstrations for all staff moving to Eden Campus. During these interactive sessions, we discussed:

Proposed individual IT equipment on desks at the Eden Campus;

Technology to facilitate a more agile / flexible working environment;

Proposed AV technology in meeting rooms to support greater collaboration / communication.

Over the course of the last few years, there has been a focused effort to divert ICT purchasing away from IT staff, and have this carried out by our dedicated ICT purchasing team.

This has a number of benefits: Free up time of technical staff – allowing them to better

fulfil the requirements of their role; ICT purchasing staff can secure better deals through

purchasing from frameworks and approved suppliers; An experienced ICT purchasing team, who can provide

advice and guidance about the best products and services; A move towards site wide licensing, rather than

local / individual site licenses (where appropriate); Standardisation of ICT equipment, which makes providing

services and support much more straightforward; Much improved financial management and administration; Significantly reduces the number of ad hoc purchases with

University credit cards – and eliminates the need for some IT staff to have a University credit card;

Improved budgeting and forecasting.

The ICT purchasing team have also been involved with the following: A project to provide real-time reporting of UniPrint costs

to Schools and Units; A project to formalise the composition of the ICT Catalogue,

including a review of processes and service levels; In conjunction with Finance and Procurement, work began

on identifying ICT expenditure by Service Units where the budget would lie better with IT Services.

Purchase Order StatisticsPurchase orders – shift in responsibility

Finance System Support/Administration

Application Development Wireless Town & BID New Staff Start ProcessProfessional Services Relocation

ICT Purchasing

Support University Business and Beyond

IT PurchasingOther IT teams

2015 - 2016 2014 - 2015 2013 - 20141,266 145 159 2381,260 1,067

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The graphic shows that almost 90% of IT purchasing is now done by our dedicated team

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 10 11

To improve the connectivity of our Data Centre and respond to the increased demand of networking, we consolidated the services of both our SAN and Cisco system platforms, and continued the relocation of servers from University locations. The existing core switches were procured in 2010 as part of the initial fit out of the Data Centre. Building on the foundation of the University’s core network refresh to 40G, we also decided to upgrade the core switching devices to 40G. This underpins the provision of storage and compute services, and allows suitable bandwidth to be provided for services such as HPC. We also raised the links from 10G to 40G on the firewalls.

We have increased the storage on our original Dell Compellent storage server. Storage is arranged in ‘tiers’ with Tier1 offering the highest access speed. Our Tier1 had been at capacity for some time and the system as a whole was trending towards capacity within six months. Increasing the Tier1 storage from 1TB to 38TB has resulted in a noticeable improvement to database clusters and given us spare capacity to use in the lower tiers for other projects.

We have continued to build on the foundation of previous successful Green IT initiatives.

From an infrastructural perspective, the Data Centre continues to perform well, and has improved with the addition of the new HPC load. In this reporting period and in conjunction with Estates, we have replaced the old air handlers in our temporary disaster recovery site in the Mathematical institute, offering a considerable improvement in efficiency.

We have continued to consolidate compute from less efficient locations at the University into the Data Centre. We are also supporting the Eden Campus District Heating Scheme initiative with the extension of networking to the

Eden Campus site via fibres laid alongside the pipework from St Andrews to Guardbridge. This will allow the supply and demand of heat to be regulated from the source and destination, underpinning efficient operation.

To further support the PSR project, we procured lower-energy laptop devices to replace our desktop offerings and reduce the amount of power draw required. Laptop computers consume up to 80% less electricity than desktop computers and use on between one-fifth and one-third as much energy. As an added bonus, laptops are an additional 20% more power efficient when running on AC adapter power over battery power.

We worked with colleagues in Special Collections to develop a records management programme. The programme will set out the steps to be taken across the University to improve the management of information throughout its lifecycle.

We have been meeting with our suppliers and colleagues to discuss standardisation of access control approaches across the University. These discussions were positive, with proposals now in place to standardise approaches with new builds.

We have migrated from discrete rack servers to an integrated expansible blade platform known as the Unified Computing System (UCS). The system allows us to expand our infrastructure in a centrally managed fashion, and to expand as required without undertaking major infrastructural work each time.

Data Centre Core Network Migration

Storage Area Network Upgrade

Records Management

Access Control

Information Governance Institutional Complaints

Unified Computing System

Infrastructure & Green IT

The volume and complexity of requests which require a response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 continues to grow, with an 8% increase over the previous reporting period. The University’s response rate continues to be excellent, with 99% of the 316 information requests receiving a response, within the 20-working day period.

Seven internal reviews were completed – this is where a requestor expresses that they are unhappy with how the University has managed their information request. In each instance, the independent review found that all of the requests were managed correctly, and the original decisions stood.

If after an internal review a person remains unhappy with how their information request was managed, they can then apply to the Scottish Information Commissioner for a decision. In the last academic year, no decisions against the University were issued by the Scottish Information Commissioner.

Processing these requests involves a significant amount of work and without the good support from Schools and Units, it would be impossible for us to do so within the required timescales.

We have started planning for and working towards securing the changes required to prepare the University for revisions to data protection legislation due in May 2018, when the General Data Protection Regulation (“the GDPR”) comes into force.

The Information Assurance & Governance team manages and handles all the University complaints. In 2015 - 2016, there was a 50% drop in the number of complaints considered through the University’s Complaint Handling Procedure compared to the previous year.

Eighteen stage two complaints were received and processed:

7 did not proceed to full investigation as they were found to be invalid or vexatious;

9 were not upheld; 2 partially upheld.

The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO), who is the complaints Regulator, was asked to review 3 complaints, which the University had assessed. Of these:

1 was found that the University had taken the correct approach in the management of that area of concern;

2 could not be assessed by the SPSO.

One of the drivers any complaints function is to improve from experience. Some areas of improvement were identified and taken forward.

Information Assurance & Governance

Information G

overnance

Artist’s impression of the Eden Campus in Guardbridge

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Data Protection 19 responses to subject requests

Privacy Impact Assessments

5 were completed

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 12 13

In February 2016, a new IT Security Officer joined the University. This has given a bigger focus to IT Security and several enhancements have been made since then.

The first step was to create central points of contact, both internally and externally. This means that if members of the University receive an email they are worried might be phishing, they can send it to phishing@st-andrews.ac.uk to report it.

There is also the St Andrews Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) which acts as the first line of contact (and response) to security incidents at the University. It has contacted other CSIRT teams across the world and are well placed to identify new attacks and trends.

Due to the volatility of security threats, we decided to expand our IT Security Service into three strands:

Information Security: considering policies and guidance; Incident Response: managing response to incidents, lost accounts and investigations with an electronic element; Vulnerability Management: looks into scanning and testing for weaknesses as well as new issues which are coming out.

With the increasing number of cyber-attacks occurring each day, we have started to document compromised accounts in much more detail and have observed that most compromised accounts come from one or maybe two attacks each month. We have introduced the following measures to address this:

Faster identification of accounts which have been compromised; Training for staff members whose accounts have been compromised; Presentations to students and staff around phishing techniques and how to spot them; Applying more resources to identifying and blocking suspicious emails.

To support the University’s policy on the protection of personal data and critical information held on mobile devices, we provide a service that encrypts mobile devices and, where required, ensures encryption recovery keys are securely stored.

In 2015-16 we changed to using BitLocker to encrypt all new Microsoft Windows devices and we have been working with Schools and Service Units to ensure existing Windows laptops that are either unencrypted or encrypted using older software, are retrospectively configured to use BitLocker.

Feedback on the new software has been positive, with negligible performance degradation reported following encryption. There has been no change to the encryption of Apple Mac OSX devices.

Security Enhancements

Compromised Accounts

Encryption

IT SecurityStaff in IT Services continue to proactively engage with the University community to ensure we understand business needs. We work in collaboration with Schools, Units and students to identify areas for improvement to services.

For key events in the University calendar, such as arrival weekend and matriculation, we work closely with colleagues and students across the University to ensure that new and returning students have access to the best possible support and services.

We are committed to the development of our staff and provide a wide range of opportunities for them to develop new skills, understanding and qualifications, appropriate to their roles. Training and development objectives are set out in our annual ‘Review and Development’ process, which all IT Services staff participate in. Staff are encouraged to attend relevant training courses, attend specialism specific conferences and events and visit other organisations. All IT Services staff are given the opportunity to undertake the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation certificate in Service Management and all supervisory staff participate in the University’s Passport to Management scheme.

Engagement

Our Staff

People

People

Information messages we share via our Twitter @STAITServicesSome members of the IT Service Desk team got together for a golf competition after work on St Andrew’s famous ‘Himalayas’ course in June 2016.

IT S

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Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 14 15

People

IT Services benefits a great deal from collaboration and sharing with others.

During 2015 - 2016, we continued to proactively engage with other higher education institutions to share knowledge, expertise and best practice.

We have established relationships with many IT organisations, who work closely with us to identify technology solutions. Many of these organisations have provided opportunities for our IT Apprentices to visit, which is greatly appreciated.

Since achieving the Service Desk Institute’s four-star service desk certification in 2014 (the highest accreditation achieved by any university in the world), it has prompted interest from other organisations around the UK. We have enjoyed meeting a wide variety of Service Operations staff, and sharing our journey to Service Desk certification with them. We also represent the sector on a number of Scottish Government Boards (such as the Technical and Design Board) and have members of staff on various higher education groups (such as the Higher Education Information Directors Scotland (HEIDS), Universities and Colleges Shared Services (UCSS), and UniDesk).

Working in Partnership In 2012, the University of St Andrews was the first university in Scotland to take on IT apprentices. Since then, our scheme has received a number of accolades and the work we do to raise the profile of careers in IT for young people has grown from strength to strength. Below is a list of some activities and achievements during 2015 - 2016:

Erin Niven and Dhani McDiarmid make short films about their IT Apprenticeships for Digital World (November 2015);

Presentations at Bell Baxter and Madras College (January 2016);

Job Fair, Waid Academy (January 2016); Apprentice Awareness event (February 2016);

3 × IT Apprentices go on work placements with BT (February 2016);

Presented at Motivate Me! event at Dundee & Angus College (March 2016);

UCISA Award for excellence for Introducing IT apprentices into the workforce (March 2016);

Microsoft Apprentice Employer of the Year 2016 (August 2016);

Microsoft Apprentice of the Year 2016 Runner-up – Greg Jennings (August 2016);

BI Intern, Patrick Fischer (Patrick developed a QlikView Dashboard to report on the Main Library’s sentry gate usage – August 2016);

All IT Apprentices completed their 2 year contract and secured permanent roles in the IT industry (10 staff);

Provided four work experience placements for local secondary school pupils (2016);

Current IT Apprentices:Joined in 2015: Greg Jennings (IT Service Desk) and Erin Niven (Media Services).Joined in 2016: Mark Cathro (IT Service Desk); Morgan Rourke (Desktop Operations) and Calum Cahill (Media Services).

Short film about our IT Apprenticeship scheme: https://vimeo.com/156674190

Inspiring Young People Pe

ople

A group of students from Dundee and Angus Colleges computer networking course visited St Andrews for an event hosted by the CIO, Steve Watt

Former apprentices Sam Foster and Dhani McDiarmid with Pauline

Brown, Service Operations Manager, participating in a secondary school

event at Dundee & Angus College

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 16 17

The University of St Andrews has strong ties with Zambia and a long history of charity and development work in the country.

Each summer, as part of two Volunteer Zambia projects, staff and students from the University travel to Zambia to undertake sports coaching, teaching and development work in local communities. Working with our partner, Ross Cockburn of Reuseit.org., we have been able to provide much needed IT kit to the University’s two Zambia projects through the provision of laptops.

As part of the Zambian national curriculum, all pupils at Kazemba must learn computer studies and pass an exam in this subject in order to progress to high school. The school only had two old laptops for the entire cohort, including one donated by the University a few years ago. Over the past couple of years, laptops were taken out to Zambia to support schools in Lusaka and Kazemba School in the Chongwe region to enhance learning and teaching.

Project Zambia Facts and Figures

IT Service Desk Statistics

4,6492015 - 2016

55,7912014 - 2015

58,7662013 - 2014

59,405

Facts and Figures

Number of callsThe monthly call pattern for 2015 - 2016 is as we expected and a trend that we’ve seen for many years now. During September and February, our call volumes peak as the student community returns to St Andrews after the summer and winter breaks.

We plan, prepare and resource ourselves accordingly.

Average monthly calls

Annual callsDespite more people using Unidesk for call management than ever before, the number of incidents and service requests logged have reduced over the last few years. We believe this is due to a number of factors, including, a more stable IT environment and a more proactive approach to providing support and services. On average, we received 4,649 calls per month during 2015 - 2016.

Sept 2015

7,289Oct 2015

5,640Nov 2015

4,867Dec 2015

3,123Jan 2016

4,426Feb 2016

5,230Mar 2016

4,504Apr 2016

4,107May 2016

4,776June 2016

4,042July 2016

3,443Aug 2016

4,344

One Minute Survey results

Average satisfaction:

97.6%Target 95% or above

How people got in touch

Anyone who logs a call with us, is asked to complete our One Minute Survey when the call is closed. We’re delighted that 97.6% of survey respondents were happy with the service we provided in 2015 - 2016.

Generally, we find if someone is in a panic they will contact us by telephone or in person – and we’ve seen a significant drop in people getting in touch in this way, with the majority using email as the main way to get in touch with IT Services. This tells us that people are happy with the service and response rate via email and that there are less urgent or panic IT moments. Most people who visit us in person are students and the drop in ‘in person visits’ shows tells us that students are finding access to services online and are using the IT guides we have provided.

10%In person

9%Telephone

9%Web form

4% IT Self Service

68%Email

Peop

le

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 18 19

University Website Statistics

Other IT Statistics

1,100 7,210 411

National Student Survey IT Results 2016

The National Student Survey (NSS) is an annual survey of all final year undergraduate degree students at institutions in the UK. NSS is conducted by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the UK higher education funding bodies to gather opinions from students, asking 27 questions, relating to eight aspects of the learning experience at university. Question 17 relates to IT and asks students to rate the ability to access IT resources when required. We have managed to keep our score above the national median for three consecutive years.

NSS: Q7 2016 2015 2014

St Andrews 95% 91% 93%National median 91% 90% 89%

Ranking 3rd 29th 8th

117 institutions participated in 2016

A large percentage of our searches come from search bots indexing our web pages.

Top searches are:

Library, Geography, Estates, QlikView, Medicine, SaintMail, Psychology, Media, Course Catalogue

75% of users click through the top ranking result.

Student PCs Extension phones Staff mobile phones

Resolution rates

Searches per day vary widely from

1,400 - 10,000

1.16 per month(target = less than 2 per month)

7.16 per month

(target = less than 10 per month)

Complaints: Compromised accounts:

Fact

s an

d Fi

gure

s

days

Incidents:

2.58 (dta

aryg

set = 10 days)

Service requests:

2.16 (target = 20 days)

Services Annual Report (September 2015 - August 2016) 20 21

The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No: SC013532.

University of St AndrewsSt AndrewsKY16 9AL

T: +44 (0) 1334 463333E: itservicedesk@st-andrews.ac.ukW: www.st-andrews.ac.uk /itsupport @StAITServices

Designed by Print & Design, University of St Andrews, February 2017.Photography by Spencer Bentley (13), Pauline Brown (3,5,15,16,17), Guthrie Aerial Photography (11), Daryl Haynes (front cover), iStock.com/mishooo (4), iStock.com/Pinkypills (8), Eva Jermutus (18), Rhona Rutherford (6), Jim Moonie (2), Antony Stergiopoulos (1) and Laurence Winram (9, 10).