Closure Report
Project Summary
In response to student demand for a more personalised experience at the University, the project aimed to identify what improvements could be undertaken when handling user data associated with people and their usernames (known as Universal Username or UUN). In summary the project was initiated to look at the impact of having separate IT accounts (UUNs, e-mail, card) on users who are both students and members of staff.
A person may have more than one affiliation with the University meaning that they may have more than one UUN along with associated data e.g. a post-graduate working for the University will have a UUN as a post-graduate student and a UUN as a staff-member. To identify and quantify the issues that need handled, it had been identified that an analysis project would have two deliverables:
- An options appraisal
- A decision on how to take Integrated Identities forward.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate:130 days
Staff Usage Actual: 70.8 days
Staff Usage Variance: 54%
Outcome
The original idea behind this project was to investigate whether we should replace separate student-like and staff-like identities with a single core person-identity and separate roles. As things transpired, there wasn’t enough resource or appetite to investigate this in depth. Instead, the University instigated the IDAM review project, which is more appropriate for this core redesign.
As a result, the majority of the original objectives have not been delivered see below
|
No |
Description |
Priority |
Status |
|
O1 |
Identify systems impacted and determine options for improvements review. |
|
|
|
D1 |
Analyse and identify perceived issues from the point of view of the systems, set out in document. |
Must have |
Not Delivered |
|
D2 |
Analyse and identify issues from the user's point of view and including in document for review. |
Must have |
Delivered |
|
O2 |
Create communications strategy and implement communications plan |
|
|
|
D3 |
Agree the key stakeholders and channels of communication for identifying the issues in current systems and gathering requirements. |
Must have |
Partially delivered (identifying the people to invite to participate in the surveys) |
|
D4 |
Create a communications Strategy that utilises agreed communications channels to communicate intention to gather information, request contacts, collect requirements, communicate the requirements collated and ranked. |
Must have |
Partially delivered |
|
D5 |
Consult with and obtain agreement from EUSA for the recommendation where students are to be engaged. |
Must have |
Not delivered |
|
O3 |
Create an options paper to allow review under O4. Requirements will either be progressed in a follow-on project or will be documented for enabling use in developing future business cases. |
|
|
|
D6 |
Collate personnel based requirements identifying clearly any impacts on historical data. |
Must Have |
Not delivered |
|
D7 |
Collate systems based issues and process improvement options. |
Must Have |
Not delivered |
|
O4 |
Review and prioritise options providing agreement on activities for follow-on project. |
|
|
|
D8 |
Review the requirements within the project constraints and identify viable options for improvements along with costings associated. Ranking all options to allow review. |
Must Have |
Partially delivered (short & medium term recommendations) |
|
O5 |
Workshops and review of options for best solutions to progress and communicate agreed solutions for development project. |
|
|
|
D9 |
End to end review of solutions proposed |
Must Have |
Not delivered |
|
D10 |
Agreed solution for implementation in subsequent project |
Must Have |
Not delivered |
|
D11 |
Communicate and define agreed proposal |
Must have |
Not delivered |
Instead, the project scope was reduced to conducting 2 surveys of users affected by multiple identities, to identify problems and benefits from the current approach. = The survey reports have been passed to the external IDAM review team for them to take account of in their recommendations.
Additionally a recommendations paper has been compiled by the project sponsor, Dave Berry, based on analysis of the survey responses. See below.
dti039_closure_report_v1.0.docx
The focus of these recommendations are on short-term changes for immediate benefit. The paper advises that we can provide a noticeably better service by simply recognising these communities and providing them with better documentation and guidance for how to use our existing systems.
There are also some small system changes we could make which would also help, without taking on the task of completely rewriting or replacing our identity management systems. The system changes would be more effort than the documentation, and would require appropriate funding. These could be further investigated if they are considered to be high enough priority.
The recommendations paper has now been circulated to a group of stakeholders. These include,
- Neil Bruce, as Head of User Support
- Barry Croucher, as service owner for Card Services
- Alan Sloan, as service owner for Access Control Doors
- Alex Carter, as service owner for IDM and Office 365 (Email forwarding and calendar).Graeme Wood, as service owner for EASE
- Alistair Fenemore, as sponsor of the IDAM review
- Paul De’ath, as PM of the IDAM review
- Lisa Dawson, as service owner of MyEd (re the update of personal information)
- Karen Stirling, as UCP/MyEd programme manager
- Martyn Peggie, HR Deputy Director
- Mark Ritchie, Digital Transformation programme owner
- Jen Milne, Deputy CIO
Explanation for variance
A contract Business Analyst was only available for a limited period of time which was less than the original estimate of the BA work that would be required.
Key Learning Points
Resources
This project was funded by the Digital Transformation Programme and because it was a normal priority it meant it was difficult to prioritise resource allocation. This led to a delay in commencing the work and given that the funding was only available for that financial year meant the scope had to be tailored accordingly.
Some learning should be taken in relation to skill set of allocated business analysts. This piece of work required a BA with local knowledge around areas such as the academic timetable, in order to maximise survey participation.
Outstanding Issues
No outstanding issues
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| dti039_closure_report_v1.0.docx | 44.94 KB |