JISC

Many players are involved, but they don’t always communicate with each other effectively or know where each others’ responsibilities begin and end. This is one of the key messages to emerge from the ‘Leaping hurdles: planning IT provision for research’ events held in Edinburgh and London. The events were held to discuss the findings, outcomes and lessons from the JISC Community Engagement (CE) and Virtual Research Environment (VRE) projects.

The projects had identified factors inhibiting researchers from adopting advanced research techniques and had developed some enablers, including suites of online tools and resources to facilitate research collaborations. Delegates brainstormed around some of the inhibitors to suggest actions aimed at ensuring that researchers have access to the ICT provision they need.

Actions included:

• Raising awareness at all levels of the potential of IT to deliver faster and different research. Institutional managers and policy makers, IT directors and services, research managers and researchers themselves all require clear information in jargon-free language
• The appointment of research facilitators to bridge gaps in communication between researchers, research computing services (where they exist) and IT services. Usability experts would bridge gaps between users and software developers
• Training in advanced IT for research should become part of doctoral training
• The cost of IT provision for research should automatically be included in grant proposals and a better understanding of these costs is required
• Better guidance should be provided on the relative merits of cloud, cluster and grid computing for providing a shared computing resource

The meetings heard of some of the inherent difficulties in planning IT provision for research. Mike Fraser, University of Oxford Computing Services commented: “No one plans IT provision for researchers in the sense of a strategic approach, because as soon as you [do] across the board, you end up providing something too generic . . . or it becomes entirely fragmented and you . . . prioritise certain groups . . . those that shout louder, bring in more funding or do more interesting research.” 

Peter Clarke, director of the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, suggested determining IT requirements by asking researchers what they don’t rather than do want. “I always thought you should go to the end users and ask what . . . you do that you would rather not do,” he said.

JISC will be following up on the meetings’ conclusions to move this agenda forward.

• View presentations and videos from the Edinburgh and London events
• Read further information on future developments

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