Report: UK colleges face testing times with ageing kit, iffy connectivity, and some IT staff supporting 1k+ users
- Reference: 1603721112
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/26/jisc_research/
- Source link:
The infrastructure reviews – published by Jisc (historically the Joint Information Systems Committee) today – took place between 2016 and 2020 and covered 118 institutions, including 59 Further Education (FE) colleges (or just under 28 per cent of the UK's total, according to the report).
The most worrying finding was, unsurprisingly, around funding challenges. A lack of capital investment meant that creaking infrastructure was being kept going past the point where it might be considered a little out of date.
A withdrawal of vendor support for obsolete gear created what Jisc delicately called "a difficult cyber-security posture". The research went on to note that most colleges found managing the upgrade cycle of both end user kit and infrastructure "very difficult".
Robin Ghurbhurun, Jisc's managing director of further education and skills, commented: "The government's announcement on 19 August that it had released £200m for 180 colleges to spend on physical and digital infrastructure is welcome, but is it not enough to solve the underlying digital challenges caused by years of under-investment."
Indeed, Jisc found that historic budget squeezes had seen IT support teams in FE reduced, with the average support-staff-to-user ratio standing at an unhealthy 814:1 (2,767:1 was the worst) thanks mainly to simple attrition and cost-saving over the years. It also noted that training was not always up to snuff.
More serious was the finding that, among problems with networking, "only a small minority of FE colleges have a resilient internet connection".
While this may have been annoying in the old, on-premises world, Jisc noted that most colleges had shifted services such as email and calendaring into the cloud, where decent connectivity is a must.
Microsoft 365 was the tool of choice for many, with a few going down the G Suite path or running an on-premises Exchange Server. Novell Groupwise had "been all but eliminated".
Funding woes continued into servers and storage provision, and the authors of the research remarked that for most colleges, "the growth in the use of SaaS has not been matched by the use of IaaS," before recommending a hybrid model.
Mobile Device Management (MDM) came in for criticism and while the majority of colleges were able to keep Microsoft's code patched and up to date, third-party software management was "often not as rigorously enforced".
There was a glimmer of light, however. Those institutions taking IT seriously enough to have a CIO, CTO, or similar senior role were better placed to make the right spending decisions at the right time over the entire organisation, according to the report.
Researchers noted that the best performing IT teams were led by bosses who both understood the business (the college) and had a decent experience base. "Staff turnover may be lower," it said, "where staff are supported and developed into their roles."
Not unlike the IT industry at large... ®
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[1] https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/it-infrastructure-reviews-key-findings
[2] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
IT support outnumbered 1000/1 :o(
not hard to believe really, have worked a few contracts where we seemed to be at a far WORSE ratio than that, bearing in mind, I am referencing the pointy end, 1st, 2nd line as the main purpose of 3rd line upwards was, it seemed, to avoid all contact with users no matter what cost ............
however, maybe there IS a silver lining ....................................
nope
can't think of a single thing ................
oh, hang on, I retire in a couple of years, so maybe I can get me a gig to top up my laughably small pension pot, and go support students, some of whom are BOUND to be rather good at this IT malarky, why not do the old High School trick, and pull in a couple of the more advanced students to help out, give them course credits for successful work completed, and I DON'T mean a 40 hour week, or maybe I do :o)
but surely there has to be some way to help out the support side whilst the hardware side gets a dose of looking at ?
my best bet, I will be dead n buried, and they will STILL be trying to run web based courses on OOD OS's on obsolete hardware, running against W2k3 servers
[sarcasm] only some of the above was written with tongue in cheek [/sarcasm]
Oh yeah if you're counting students I'd guess 1500/1 would be pretty common
We have one guy supporting Canvas and all courses and data within it, another 2 (underqualified) supporting all ERP products and databases (CRM, ODS, student records, etc.), while I support almost all virtual servers and automation (SCCM etc). Not sure how you'd count that in users per technician at a university of thousands :)
Oh yeah, almost forgot, we have some Server 2008 systems in production... Got rid of the last 2003 last year.
The problem is that it is often funded as capital instead of as revenue.
Ok, we've paid for a new roof, a classroom of typewriters and a fume extractor. Come back in 30 years when it's worn out and we'll spend to replace them.
Ok, we've paid for 100 new PCs, come back in 30 years when they're worn out and we'll spend to replace them.
All computer kit needs to be acknowledged that they are consumables, yes, even the damn computers themselves, and be paid for from revenue, just as though they were toilet paper.
Yes, I hate hate hate the thought of electronic kit being skipped just 'cos it's last year's stuff, but that is today's reality. In 1981/2 schools were given a chunk of money to kit out with BBC computers on the "that's ten years' capital infrastructure, come back in 1992" model, and people are still doing it.
Redundnat 'net connections
For a long time JISC didn't allow institutions to have multiple connections.