Report for July 2017

Report Date

July 2017

• Achievements this period:

  • Interim Service go-live.  

• Issues

  • Coding contractor has not worked out as hoped and has now left the Uni with little progress made.

• Next Steps
  • Complete tape infrastructure deployment in DCs.
  • Identify options for recovering delay caused by the contractor issue, and re-plan Full Service deployment following issue with contractor.  
• Risks - Full Service Solution:

  • The project has been asked to ensure that the solution can accommodate non-research data.   Non-research data is more tightly controlled than research data from a data protection perspective. The way forward for this is yet to be agreed.

  • A full decision on a cloud service provider has not yet been reached. Oracle is the preferred supplier within the project team but a formal procurement selection process needs to be carried out. ETAs  for provision of cloud service is now end of Sept. We have progressed with some coding work on the assumption that Oracle will be selected.   It is currently assumed this delay will not affect our overall time line.
  • New Interim Service Risk: The policy for the Interim Service is that no personal data should be stored on the system.  We are relying on depositors adhering to this policy, but there is a Risk that personal data may make it on to the system.
  • Issue with racks in DC may delay the provision of backup infrastructure. We do not yet know the impact this will have.  

  • The project has been asked to ensure that the solution can accommodate non-research data.   Non-research data is more tightly controlled than research data from a data protection perspective, and it is currently unknown what the impact will be on the time line from accommodating this.

  • We do not yet have a fully agreed approach for dealing with personal data or the use of encryption on the Full Service Solution.
  • A final decision on a cloud service provider has not yet been reached. Oracle is the preferred supplier within the project team but a formal selection process needs to be gone through.  We are progressing with coding work on the assumption that Oracle will be selected.   It is currently assumed this delay will not affect our overall time line.
  • The policy for the Interim Service is that no personal data should be stored on the system.  We are relying on depositors adhering to this policy, but there is a Risk that personal data may make it on to the system.

Note re budgets:   This project has a mix of capital and revenue budgets, and core funding on this project.  The revenue budget is a fixed cost for RSS effort and the other teams are core funded, so there is not effort tracking against budget on this project.