Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

Collaboration and shared services in UK higher education

Collaboration and shared services in UK higher education: report launch

Today sees the launch of a report on collaboration and shared services in higher education, which was commissioned by Efficiency Exchange. The report’s co-author Andrew Rothwell explains that with shared services "the best is yet to come”.

Shared services in higher education: more than just about ‘plug-and-play’ cost savings

In the second of three posts, Ian Herbert and Andrew Rothwell of Loughborough University offer five more observations gleaned from 10 years of research into shared service centres in the UK and across the world. You can learn more about this area in a shared services forum they are running at the University of Northampton on 14 May.
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North’s first shared data centre for education and research secured by Jisc

A shared data centre for the north of England has been secured by Jisc to aid collaboration and the sharing of large data sets. Among the first tenants are Liverpool University, Sheffield Hallam University and the universities of Sheffield and Leeds.

If it looks like a shared service…

More and more universities and colleges are looking at the potential for shared services to deliver efficiencies, says Steve Butcher of Hefce.

Hefce funds HE Shared Legal VAT cost sharing group project

HE Shared Legal – until recently, a HEFCE-funded pilot project - has made a successful application for a portion of the grant funding offered by HEFCE last year in relation to VAT cost sharing group projects.
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Shared WiFi network reaches more than half a million devices in October

eduroam – the worldwide single sign-on secure network which provides WiFi connectivity access for education and research – reached more than 600,000 devices in the UK last month. The service, provided by Jisc, aims to save time for the individual and money for member organisations as users can connect to WiFi without needing to sort out guest credentials or change settings.

VAT cost sharing exemption – a spur to shared services

The Government’s VAT cost-sharing exemption presents a major opportunity for the higher education sector to explore the benefits of sharing services, says Steve Butcher, Head of Procurement and Shared Services at Hefce.

The future is global, collaborative and shared

New areas for collaboration across higher education have been identified in a report commissioned by Efficiency Exchange, which will be launched at an event at Loughborough University on 22 April.

Relationship management

Guidance and good practice in the management of relationships with stakeholders, groups and partnerships. A Jisc InfoKit.
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ESISS: sharing information security expertise

Universities reap the benefits when information security expertise is shared ‘by the sector for the sector’, reports Dr Andrew Rothwell of Loughborough University’s Centre for Global Sourcing and Services. He talks to Matthew Cook, Ian Griffiths and Peter Darby about the Education Shared Information Security Service (ESISS) as a shared service.