4. Meeting our goals

This section of the Annual Review describes what EDINA has done in 2009-2010 to meet the strategic goals, themes and objectives that were given in its rolling three-year Strategy for 2009-2012.

1: Provide added value, high quality services, leveraged by research, enhancement activity and engagement with others

1a: Provide a managed portfolio of added value, high quality services

Objective: Support research, education and knowledge exchange by providing added value, high quality online services and infrastructure.

EDINA’s primary purpose is to provide added value, high quality services to UK HE and FE institutionss that are critical to enable them to meet their goals for cost-effective research and education. This directly supports JISC’s first strategic objective, to ‘provide cost-effective and sustainable shared national services and resources’, and EDINA is a key partner enabling it to meet that objective.

• For example, EDINA Digimap and the JISC agreement with OS has been one of the success stories of the past ten years. The estimated benefit to the academic community is of the order of £30 million pounds per annum. In our most recent survey, 90% of respondents claimed that they can now conduct research which was previously impossible as a direct result of the delivery of the Digimap Collections. This illustrates the economies of scale made possible by shared services – without innovative project development, transition into service and the negotiated agreement, institutions would have been unable to afford access to these data, with the consequent detrimental impact on both research and teaching.

EDINA has Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place with JISC and the ESRC. Under these SLAs, services are to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a target uptime of 99% over a twelve-month rolling period.

• In 2009-2010, all but one of EDINA services (the Gazetteer component within Digimap) met this target: the exception, the Gazetteer component within Digimap, recorded uptime of over 99% in the last quarter.

The EDINA Helpdesk was staffed during normal office hours throughout the year and exceeded performance targets for query resolution.

• Digimap Collection services sessions accounted for 67% of all EDINA service sessions in 2009-2010 and correspondingly the majority of helpdesk queries (73%). Helpdesk staff were able to answer over 70% of the Digimap Collection service helpdesk queries and nearly 90% of the multimedia services helpdesk queries; the remainder were forwarded to the expert user support staff for resolution.  The high percentage of queries resolved directly emphasises the range and depth of knowledge of the skilled helpdesk staff and consequently the excellent service they provide to our users.

Please see Section 3 for details about all of the services provided by EDINA in 2009-2010.

Objective: Support the development of the academic infrastructure in the UK and internationally

Part of JISC’s first strategic objective is to support the development of an academic infrastructure in the UK.

• The IE aims to support the discovery, access and use of resources for research and education, irrespective of their location, and EDINA’s services have always formed part of this infrastructure.
• Federated Access management (referred to as cross-institutional access management) was a key component of JISC’s 2009 strategy and is referred to as ‘Essential’ in JISC’s 2010-2012 strategy. EDINA was fundamental in the development of federated access management in the UK through JISC funded projects and continues to provide technical and operational support to the Federation operator, JANET UK.
• JISC set up the RDTF with Research Libraries UK, which published its vision and implementation plan in 2009-2010 for the creation of open metadata and aggregations for library, archive and museum collections. EDINA contributed to the work, undertaking a scoping study examining aggregations of metadata about images and time-based media. A framework to manage the issues posed by open metadata and related aggregations has been proposed by the RDTF, in which EDINA will participate along with Mimas in forthcoming years.

The geo data services delivered by EDINA represent critical provision to UK academia. The efforts to capitalise on resources have led to the development of an academic SDI that encompasses provision for authentication and access control.

• Within the UK, the SDI is being organised by UK Location to implement the requirements of the EU INSPIRE Directive. Whilst universities generally do not hold the authoritative source of major national datasets, they are included in the definition of a public body used in the legislation. Compliance with the Directive will affect both shared national services and institutional repositories and it is appropriate that JISC, acting in part through its data centres, take a clear lead in related developments and the promotion of best practice.
• EDINA is providing facilities to embed geospatial discovery methodologies into the JISC IE resource discovery services via services such as GoGeo! and Unlock, which in turn provide critical components of the UK academic SDI.

Acting on behalf of JISC and the academic community EDINA is active in standards work, e.g. currently co-chairing the OGC’s University Working Group, representing academia on the UKLP and chairing the UKLP Metadata Working Group.

Objective: Develop additional collections in line with user requirements

The following collections were added in 2009-2010:

• EDINA is playing a key role in building the JISC Collections Digital Images in Education archive, containing over 500 hours of film and 56,000 photos documenting modern history, all copyright-cleared for use in education. Through 2009-2010, batches of content have been delivered by the suppliers to a ‘holding bay’ that EDINA has built as a tool for a team of evaluators. The collection will be made available via the EIG service initially, and then via the Mediahub combined platform from early 2011.
• During 2009-2010, over 150 new films were added to the Wellcome Film collection in the Film & Sound Online service.
• As well as providing access to the existing range of OS collections available in Digimap OS, Digimap Roam added two views of OS’s MiniScale® product, which provides a nominal 1:1 million scale map showing larger areas of Great Britain.
• In addition, the Town Plan data from Landmark Information Group was made available through Ancient Roam.

Objective: Reach out to new communities of users

2009-2010 saw the opening up of two of EDINA’s services to a worldwide audience.

• JorumOpen and OpenDepot.org are developments of the Jorum educational materials repository service and the Depot Open Access repository, respectively.
• Previously, only subscribing UK HE and FE institutions could deposit and download content from Jorum. Now, while only UK HE and FE institutions can deposit in JorumOpen, anyone in the world can download content from it.
• Previously, only UK-based researchers could deposit in the Depot. Now, anyone in the world can deposit and download from OpenDepot.org.

In 2009-2010, EDINA has also developed the ShareGeo Open repository service, which is due to launch in autumn 2010. This will enable the sharing of geospatial datasets that are based on openly licensed data and will be available to anyone around the world.

The launch of Digimap for Schools took place at the end of the 2009-2010 year. This provides high quality mapping and printing services to the schools sector, including the large scale, high value OS MasterMap data.

In addition, the Education Image Gallery service was offered for a second year to schools as one of the portfolio of over 20 resources available for subscription under the JISC Collections for Schools project.

Objective: Provide high quality outreach and support services for contributors, end users and support staff

EDINA provides high quality, cost-effective helpdesk, training, promotional and support services, and has a reputation for excellent user support, which we seek to maintain and improve upon every year. Our support activities in 2009-2010 were as follows:

Helpdesk

• The EDINA Helpdesk is the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning EDINA services and successfully resolves enquiries from end-users and support staff. Helpdesk staff categorise queries and enter them in a licence and call-logging system (Helios) which was further developed in 2009-2010 to better integrate with licence databases. Queries are mostly resolved directly by the Helpdesk staff or referred to experts inside and outside of EDINA as appropriate.
• The helpdesk also deals with queries for a range of other EDINA activities. Many projects route enquiries via the main helpdesk and a range of partnership services use the EDINA helpdesk.
• A significant amount of time is also involved in supporting the Digimap registration system. This entails the manual approval of upwards of 45,000 applications to use the service annually, across the three collections requiring registration – OS, Geology, and Marine Digimap.
• Another routine activity is that of licence processing. The helpdesk handles licence requests in liaison with JISC Collections or directly for EDINA-administered services. As part of that process, information is submitted into a variety of places, including Helios (the helpdesk call and licence management system).
• Specific services also have individually identified support teams of which the helpdesk forms an integral part e.g. the Geospatial User Support team and Jorum.
• EDINA provides technical and operational support to members of the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research through the federation operator JANET(UK). Support calls from members are forwarded from the JANET(UK) support desk to EDINA helpdesk for resolution. While the helpdesk team at EDINA has sufficient experience and knowledge to resolve most technical and administrative queries, it has the support of the SDSS Expert Group at EDINA to solve the more complex problems.

Website and Documentation

• The EDINA website continues to act as the main access point for users of its services. In 2009-2010, small changes were made to the site following the major re-launch in 2008. Specific additions to the site were a collated Social Media area with links to the various blogs, twitter accounts and other channels. A page aggregating presentations and publications given by EDINA staff was established in late 2009.
• EDINA A5 flyers and A3 posters were produced and distributed, which are useful as publicity material for our site representatives and used by EDINA staff at events. As with existing services, new services were documented by means of Quick Reference Guides, and with support material on the EDINA website.
• In addition, individual posters were produced for exhibitions and to supplement the standard range of materials. EDINA’s quarterly newsletter Newsline continued to play an important role in helping academic support staff and others with an interest in its services to keep abreast of developments.
• EDINA continually strives to improve the quality of the supporting materials offered to help subscribers make the most of the services to which they have access. With this in mind, Digimap Collections help pages have been updated and rearranged thus improving the navigation and ease of identifying the correct answer to any given question. With the growth of Digimap itself, the significant volume of information contained in these pages has expanded proportionately. New case studies have been added and information for support staff has been improved.
• Work has now begun to implement a new system for delivering and managing help pages within Digimap Collections. EDINA has chosen Adobe RoboHelp as a content management system which will enable easier maintenance and greater flexibility of use.

Communication and Collaboration

• EDINA continued to make use of various JISCmail lists to keep users and support staff informed of service changes, e.g. for Digimap Collections to encourage discussion about the service between users in different institutions and disciplines. Other separate groups by email lists were contacted throughout the year with important announcements, as well as to enlist volunteers for trials and early adopters to new services and projects. A small number of user comments were submitted via feedback forms within service interfaces. Additionally comments received at events were fed back and acted on accordingly.
• EDINA collaborated with other related providers in promoting and marketing its services. Examples include the Census Registration Service for UKBORDERS and JISC Digital Media for publicising the Education Image Gallery. Links with the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) continued and EDINA User Support staff attended several of their events throughout the year. Several promotional webinars were run for the multimedia services and Digimap Collections. Often with support from RSCs, these short events have been attended virtually by groups of people from around the country as part of an ongoing series to showcase online resources.
• During the year, EDINA identified a number of relevant specialist conferences at which to exhibit e.g. GIS Research UK Conference, UKSG and Internet Librarian.
• This year Social Media has continued to become increasingly important at EDINA and this is reflected in the recent addition, on the front page of the EDINA website, of links to a new EDINA Social Media page where numerous blogs, Twitter accounts, and social presences can be accessed. An EDINA SlideShare page, Facebook page and recently expanded Wikipedia entry all reflect the growing importance that sharing and engaging with our users and stakeholders plays in the work of the organisation and in the day to day life of our projects and services.
• Blogs and social presences continue to thrive and build new connections for EDINA. A new EDINA hosted blogging platform, based on WordPress, was launched in early 2010, which hosts blogs for several services and projects. In the past year, EDINA has also established several Twitter streams. In parallel to our expanding social presences we have developed social media guidelines.

Training

• Thirteen training courses were designed and delivered by EDINA’s User Support team in 2009-2010. The content, structure and delivery of courses were reviewed at the start of the academic year, in line with feedback from course participants and to reflect the TAP® training delivery method.
• EDINA’s Training Officer attended a course on TAP® training methods at the start of 2009-2010 and cascaded the training to other User Support staff. TAP® provides a structured method of planning and delivering training sessions, to ensure learner engagement and that the transfer of skills takes place.
• Feedback from training course evaluation was very positive. Participants are asked to rate aspects of the course on a scale of 1 to 6, where 6 represents Excellent and 1 represents Very Poor. The pace of the course, the balance of presentation v. activity, the training delivery style and the training materials were typically rated at 5 or 6. When asked to rate the extent to which their learning objectives had been met, almost all participants rated this 5 or 6, i.e. their objectives were fully, or almost fully, achieved. The content of these will be used to inform the content and structure of courses in 2010-2011.
• A comprehensive set of training materials, available for re-use by users and site representatives, is maintained on service websites. New presentations are also disseminated via Slideshare
• User Support staff also contributed significantly to three workshops run by the ESRC Census Programme at UK academic institutions. EDINA staff delivered presentations and skills practice sessions. The content included retrieving data from the UKBORDERS service, plus mapping of census data and geo-coding datasets.

Webinars

• Twenty scheduled webinars were delivered, on Digimap Collections and EDINA’s multimedia services. The scheduled webinars were delivered using Dimdim, a low cost web conferencing product, and were open to any user of the relevant service(s). In addition to this, several webinars were delivered to individual institutions, either when they subscribed to a new service or when a change in service site representative took place.
• The user of web conferencing services allows the User Support team more frequent interaction with site representatives across the UK than is possible with face-to-face training alone. In 2010-2011, EDINA’s User Support team will participate in an Edinburgh University pilot of Wimba Classroom, both to deliver webinars and to provide one-to-one user support.

Service Demonstrations

• EDINA continues to provide service demonstrations for new services and interface updates. The service demonstrations are produced using the screen capture software Camtasia in a wide range of formats. New service demonstrations are published on the relevant service website and are also disseminated to a range of social media outlets.

Design

During 2009-2010 there were design updates for existing services and interfaces were designed for several new services and projects. Associated promotional materials and corporate documentation were also updated or created. The following are highlights of this work:

• Design Management - to make it easier for staff to understand the process, a flow diagram of each step involved in creating a new interface design was created. This also includes a template for a design brief for the relevant project manager to fill in. The designs have been annotated with the thought process behind aspects of the design to make it easier for project teams to understand why a design is put together in a particular manner.
• Digimap for Schools - a new technique (for EDINA) of creating ‘mood boards’ was used to help develop an appropriate design for the 8-14 year old target age range. Gathering information in this manner from other age-appropriate websites helped decide on a suitable style of illustration and font, as well as a simple-to-use layout.
• Digimap Collections - following on from the development of Digimap Roam, new interfaces for Ancient Roam, Marine Roam and Geology Roam were designed, ensuring consistency in terms of layout and icon design across all four of the interfaces so that users have a seamless experience when moving from one to another.

Usability Testing

• The User Support team performed usability testing for both new and existing services. Paper prototyping was used to inform the initial designs. ‘Accompanied surfing’ was used to observe how users performed tasks on newly designed services or pages. These sessions were recorded for analysis.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) support

• Support for spatial data and the use of GIS within institutions is significantly lacking across the academic sector. Beginning in June 2009, EDINA summarised and presented to JISC’s Geospatial Working Group a survey of institutional support staff to establish what support is provided within UK academic institutions for the use of maps, spatial data and specialist GIS/CAD software, as well as support for online geospatial resources. One of the headline findings was that 48% of support staff rated their institutions’ support for the use of GIS and geospatial resources as insufficient or non-existent.
• These results fed into a presentation given by EDINA’s Director at a meeting hosted by the ESRC in January 2010 to discuss Geographical Information Support Strategies.

Objective: Enhance content, presentation and delivery of services in response to community requirements

In 2009-2010, JISC provided Capital funding to undertake the following enhancements to services:

• Active Bi-Directional Legends – to implement dynamic, interactive map legends within the Digimap Geology mapping client, to allow users to query map features, customise legends and find statistics about features in the area they are viewing.
• Ediauth Login – providing a consistent style to login to EDINA services and providing a simple, flexible method for institutions to tailor links from their portals and elsewhere to EDINA services.

EDINA also had capital funding to undertake the second part of the Mobile scoping study.

Other enhancements to services undertaken during 2009-2010, and additions to content collections, are described in Section 3.

Objective: Future-proof access for the researchers of tomorrow

EDINA has long-standing expertise in managing e-journal content and providing continuity of access to scholarly resources, playing a leading role in such initiatives as the UK LOCKSS Alliance and CLOCKSS, PEPRS and PeCAN (described in Section 3), and also assists those with expertise in managing print journal collections, such as the UKRR initiative.

During 2009-2010, Pain Reviews, an open-access electronic journal that ceased publication in 2002, was preserved securely in the LOCKSS distributed preservation network. Published by Hodder Arnold from 1998 to 2002, the journal was available for library archiving between October and December 2009. Participating libraries in LOCKSS that preserve this journal will have access to it in perpetuity, without any further payment for access.

Jorum began its life as a ‘keepsafe’ for learning materials generated by JISC projects and other publicly funded initiatives, knowing that project teams producing such materials disband, and this keepsafe function for Jorum continues. Similar facilities exist in the ShareGeo and ShareGeo Open repository services for the deposit of research and operational geospatial datasets.

1b: Shape the future and gain understanding by undertaking innovative R&D projects

Objective: Build capacity in EDINA, including strategic capabilities, in each of our business areas

In order to meet EDINA’s strategic goals, investment needs to be made in innovative R&D in order to arrive at a position whereby we understand what will add value to the community and which skills we need in order to deliver on its requirements.

By undertaking R&D in our business areas, we develop strategic capabilities, and EDINA employs some staff members who have expertise that it would be difficult to replicate elsewhere – giving the data centre strategic advantage – and who have national and/or international standing in their fields. EDINA itself enjoys an excellent reputation.

Objective: Manage the transition of appropriate R&D projects into services

The Depot project was transformed during 2009-2010 into the OpenDepot.org service to support the Open Access agenda internationally. 2009-2010 saw work continue on the transition of the Jorum educational materials service into a full JISC service with service level definition. Transition work will carry on to 2012, subject to the JISC-funded review of the service in 2010-2011.

The ShareGeo repository was developed from a JISC-funded project and launched in January 2009. An open repository for the sharing of open geospatial data was also developed from the ShareGeo project. Funded by JISC, ShareGeo Open launches in autumn 2010.

Objective: Respond to opportunities to undertake R&D projects

EDINA’s Business Development team comprises staff members drawn from across our activity areas. It monitors sources of funding and takes opportunities as appropriate. In 2009-2010, economic circumstances dictated that there were fewer opportunities and for smaller amounts of funding than in previous years, but several R&D projects were funded .

Objective: Identify and create opportunities to undertake innovative work that fits with strategic goals

Apart from undertaking R&D, EDINA also takes and creates opportunities to shape the future by working with others to stage events and by giving presentations at high profile conferences. We aim to share our work and expertise, learning from others and influencing the future direction of developments in the online services provided to our communities.

1c: Gain leverage through national and international engagement

EDINA works at local, national and international levels in each of its business areas, engaging in initiatives that assist productivity, quality and cost-effectiveness in research and education. 

• Several staff members at EDINA are recognised internationally as experts in their fields.
• EDINA has links with important national and international groups, including Governmental, educational, standards development, research data, commercial, web services and grid development organisations. 
• Some of the JISC’s key strategic targets are expressed in contacts between EDINA and these organisations, and achieved in the joint work undertaken.
• EDINA’s national and international contacts are also important for the University of Edinburgh’s strategic aims as a world-class University seeking to enhance its global presence.

Engagement on the European stage has special strategic significance for EDINA, JISC and the UK academy.  In addition, EDINA continues to value work with colleagues in North America and is working with the emergent China through links with the Library of the Academy of Sciences.

Objective: Highlight gaps and opportunities in existing national and international engagement

EDINA recognised the importance of the emergence of community engagement using Social Media, and appointed a Social Media Officer in May 2009. During 2009-2010 much work was undertaken to exploit the opportunities, and activity in EDINA is integrated into a wider plan of publicity and outreach work for services and projects.

The Social Media Officer was invited to share her expertise by giving various presentations and contributing a chapter to the peer-reviewed publication.

Objective: Consolidate and improve existing collaborations

EDINA signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with several partners in 2009-2010.

National and international engagement in each of our business areas in 2009-2010 was as follows:

Reading and Reference

Scholarly communications work in EDINA has close links with the major national and specialist libraries, as well as libraries from some of the largest HE institutions in the UK. EDINA also has fruitful relationships with academic and commercial partners, standards organisations, union catalogues of serials, especially across Europe, and international networks, particularly in the Open Access arena, which it will continue to develop. In particular: 

• EDINA continued to be a Sponsor of the DSpace Foundation during 2009-10.
• EDINA continues to play an active part in the international work of the JISC Repositories Programme, through the SONEX Group (on scholarly output notification and exchange).
• EDINA has active commitment and responsibility for continuing access to the growing corpus of scholarly resources in digital format, as described in Section 3. CLOCKSS presentations were given to the UK LOCKSS Alliance community in October 2009 and at the IFLA 2010 conference in Gothenberg.
• Active participation in the ISSN Network continued, with attendance at the ISSN Directors Meeting, Beijing, 15 September 2009 to present EDINA’s activities in this area.
• There was also contact with other national union catalogues of serials, especially across Europe. During the year we attended a PARSE insight workshop in Germany, a Knowledge Exchange workshop in Edinburgh, and a joint EDINA and DPC event at the British Library.

Maps and Data

EDINA’s geospatial activities are world-class and have led to productive partnerships between EDINA and European organisations in academic, commercial and Governmental sectors. The Geoservices team have continued to advance thinking within the geospatial arena both nationally and internationally with ongoing work on security, geospatial data infrastructures and interoperability. In particular:

• In the UK, the Government’s Location Strategy is being implemented through the Location Programme. At JISC’s request, staff members from EDINA represent the university and academic sector to ensure appropriate levels of representation and engagement.
• The Geoservices team has secured a substantial role within the EU e-ContentPlus funded ESDIN project.
• A presentation was given at the INSPIRE conference in Krakow explaining how we have succeeded in demonstrating the use of Shibboleth to secure the geospatial web services that underpin SDIs. 
• The team has also been working with Eurogeographics and the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) to reveal the state of play within each European member state regarding higher education access to national mapping agency data.
• EDINA is involved in the academic European persistent geospatial testbed being developed by AGILE and the OGC. EuroSDR (the research arm of the National Mapping and Charting Agencies represented at a European level) will continue to be a focus of activity for EDINA. 
• EDINA continues to provide the chair for the OGC University Working Group and will continue to use this position to work for better UK academic sector access to developing UK and International SDIs.
• EDINA continues to work with Landcare Research, New Zealand, on the development of the e-Framework for Education and Research.
• EDINA presented a paper on the Go-Geo! service at the INSPIRE 2010 Conference in Krakow, Poland.
• We continue to attend UKLP metadata working group meetings, to provide expert advice in developing a standards compliant metadata discovery service. EDINA also has representation on the UK Location Information Interoperability Board and chairs the Metadata Working Group.
• EDINA Geo services decided for strategic purposes to standardise, where possible, on the open source database system PostgresSQL and its spatial extension PostGIS.  EDINA attended the PGDay EU conference in Paris, and the PGCon annual conference for user and developers in Canada.

Multimedia and Education

In 2009-2010, the main engagement opportunities in this business area were as follows:

• EDINA is a member of and contributes to the work of the JISC Film & Sound Think Tank.
• In the course of undertaking the Scoping Study for Aggregations of Metadata, EDINA engaged with stakeholders from a range of backgrounds, including museums, libraries, archives, existing metadata aggregators and service providers, and HE and FE institutions.
• Training and webinar events allowed fruitful engagement with staff and site representatives throughout the year.
• Presentations on JorumOpen were given at an Open Courseware event in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at Open Repositories 2010.
• We continued to engage with the JISC’s OER Programme and with CETIS, the JISC-funded Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards.
• We continued to engage with other projects and services working in the Learning and Teaching area.

Middleware and Infrastructure

Members of the SDSS team at EDINA continue to work closely with colleagues in the ongoing development of the UK Access Management Federation; with the core developers in the Internet2/MACE committee to develop the base standards, protocols and core software; and with international adopters of Shibboleth technology. 

• The team in in contact with the national federations in the USA, Switzerland, Finland, Australia, France, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 
• The adoption of SAML as a protocol and Shibboleth as the software foundation by an increasing number of international access management federations (including the UK federation) mandated the development of strong links between EDINA and the international access management community. EDINA staff members were involved with the development of the SAML2 protocol and have contributed to the Shibboleth code base.

Objective: Build new partnerships and collaborations

Collaborations that resulted in new work in 2009-2010 include those with the Scottish Government, the Edinburgh College of Art, the National Library of Scotland, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) at the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis, Queens College, Belfast and the Centre for e-Research, Kings College London.

2: Enhance our resource base through staff talent, technology and effective management of resources

2a: Recruit, retain and develop a flexible component of skilled staff, capitalising on reputation, ‘know-how’ and partnerships

Objective: Continue to bring in and retain able, committed staff

EDINA now has over 80 staff and works with 8 consultants under contract.

• EDINA recruited seven members of staff during 2009-2010, who have brought much valuable experience and knowledge to our business areas.
• A systems support officer was also recruited to assist EDINA members of staff with hardware and software support, a new post that has enhanced efficiency in the data centre, as it releases other members of staff to focus on their primary roles.
• We have said farewell to two Senior Managers this year.

Objective: Provide staff with equitable opportunities for their development, in line with University guidelines and within staff development resources available

Staff development plans were agreed between each staff member and his/her line manager, in line with the annual development review requirements of the University. EDINA staff participated in training events organised by IS and other groups within the University, as well as external training and development opportunities.

In common with the University’s IS group, EDINA is utilising the ITIL IT Service Management framework to ensure that it improves its IT services in line with best practice processes. Several staff members have attended University-arranged courses.

Objective: Empower staff to perform and succeed in their roles and recognise their success

As a knowledge organisation, staff and their ‘know-how’, expertise and skills remain EDINA’s greatest asset, and EDINA values staff of talent, skill and motivation as its most important resource. Several staff members received recognition and reward in 2009-2010 for exceptional contributions through the University’s Contribution Reward scheme, and all staff members are valued and appreciated for what they do.

Objective: Build capability by sharing and exchanging ‘know-how’ across the data centre, within Information Services and the University, with key partners such as Mimas and other JISC services, and with the outside world

EDINA aims to ensure that cross-fertilisation of ideas and ‘know-how’ takes place in the data centre, by means of regular workshops and meetings in which staff can share their knowledge, and by provision of online tools such as the staff intranet. Workgroups continued to operate during 2009-2010 to share and exchange expertise in the following cross-service activity areas:

• Repositories and preservation
• Mobile internet
• Web technology watch

A further cross-service group was established to work on the impact measurements required by the revised SLA with JISC, and to plan activities to demonstrate impact to the academic community.

In addition, EDINA aims to share and exchange knowledge with partners in the UK and beyond. This enables learning from others, as well as contributing to their learning, and builds expertise and capability. Several eminent speakers were invited to present to staff at EDINA.

2b: Develop and maintain outstanding IT capability

Objective: Maintain and continue to effect a rolling plan of hardware upgrade and replacement to fulfil current and future service requirements

EDINA develops and maintains exceptional IT capability, by engaging in ‘technology watch’ and thereby remaining relevant to the community; and by commanding sufficient resources, in terms of human skills, software and hardware, for planning and deployment. EDINA continues to gain from its position inside the University of Edinburgh, and its compatibility with the University’s ICT strategy. Recurrent hardware-funding from JISC continued in the second year of an agreed 3-year upgrade spend.

There has been a continuation over the year of the move to adopt virtualisation under VMWare, principally to support non-Solaris operating systems. This has become a fully supported enterprise environment. A number of authentication services have been migrated to VMWare and this will continue. The VMWare infrastructure will also be replicated.

Objective: Improve service resilience and ensure business continuity

Large new servers (both x86 and Sparc), a fibre channel storage array and network switches were purchased as part of the EDINA plan for cross site resilience. This hardware has been installed at the University’s second machine room which was already used to host EDINA’s backups. This is situated at a remote site several miles distant from the main machine room. The new servers will be used to host failover and load-balanced copies of EDINA services.

Hardware load balancers have been procured by the University of Edinburgh. EDINA was involved in the procurement process and contributed towards the capital cost. This was significantly more cost effective than purchasing standalone EDINA load balancing infrastructure.

Objective: Maintain a coherent and effective software strategy

EDINA continues to review software systems used across the data centre, with a view to ensuring efficient and effective use of software. EDINA monitors open source solutions and offerings from commercial software vendors to ensure that the most effective options are deployed in EDINA services. As web services are increasingly being supported by desktop tools, there is an growing requirement to provide existing services via a combination of current and new access routes. EDINA will continue to provide support for production web services.

2c: Provide effective governance and management of resources

Objective: Work within our governance structure to demonstrate effective management of resources to our key stakeholders

EDINA operates as a HEFCE-related body under the terms of a Funding Agreement signed between HEFCE and the University of Edinburgh. A Management Board was established under the terms of the Agreement.

The Director of EDINA sits on the IS Executive as director of the EDINA and Data Library division of IS and reports to the Vice Principal Knowledge Management, Chief Information Officer and Librarian of the University; the latter sits on the EDINA Management Board.

The EDINA Management Team aims to meet fortnightly and is responsible for leadership of activity, finance and resource planning in the data centre. The Business Development Group guides the development of new project and service activity within EDINA and also aims to meet fortnightly.

In 2009-2010 JISC revised EDINA’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) to reflect the change in how scheduled maintenance was measured. The SLA for 2010-2011 was also changed to mandate the annual collection of qualitative as well as quantitative information to support the requirement to prove impact to the academic community and the HE and FE funding bodies.

Objective: Ensure that we make better informed business decisions

Priority was again given in 2009-2010 to improving methods of projecting income, activity and hence staffing and accommodation requirements. EDINA is improving its management accounting systems to make better-informed business decisions.

Objective: Ensure that funding opportunities are considered in line with strategic goals and resources made available to undertake the work

In common with many other organisations that receive much of their funding from grant money, EDINA faces challenges in being able to react quickly to opportunities when staff members are already fully committed in their work. A new Business Development decision support tool was produced in 2009-2010, to assist staff in the decision-making process for funding opportunities.

Objective: Remove constraints on staffing caused by lack of suitable accommodation

EDINA continues to work from commercial premises in Edinburgh, where accommodation is available over two floors, and from a small office, also in commercial premises, in Warrington, Cheshire. It is anticipated that the accommodation in Edinburgh and Warrington will address for some time the constraints previously faced by the organisation due to lack of accommodation for staff.

EDINA has invested in equipment which enable more effective tele-working, both for meetings with colleagues/partners elsewhere in the UK and internationally, to reduce our impact on the environment and to support home-working as part of ‘business continuity’ risk mitigation. These arrangements also contribute significantly to supporting staff needs, welfare and flexibility.

3: Sustain and develop a well-founded UK national academic data centre

3a: Secure sufficient funding to meet strategic goals in the medium- to long-term

Objective: Plan for the future and identify suitable sources of funding

Each year EDINA produces a Strategy covering the next three years (a three-year rolling Strategy). The Strategy for 2010-2013 was made available on the website during 2009-2010, and work was undertaken during the year to produce the Strategy for 2011-2014, to be published in autumn 2010. EDINA also produces three-year rolling business development plans. Annual Operational and Service Implementation Plans for JISC-funded activity are guided by these documents.

As a division of the University of Edinburgh’s IS department, EDINA and Data Library contributes to IS plans and reports under the headings of ‘National and International Engagement’ and ‘Research Data’, with a key performance indicator for the Edinburgh DataShare repository.

Funding from JISC for core services is awarded on an annual basis, in keeping with the way in which JISC is itself funded by the UK HE and FE funding bodies. In 2009-2010, EDINA received sufficient funding to meet its goals for the year and is a financially viable organisation.

Objective: If possible, recover Full Economic Costs from funders

Contributions to full Economic Costs (fEC) are made by funders to recompense the University of Edinburgh for hosting EDINA; these contain a funding element for the sustainability of EDINA and its activities. EDINA is a significant earner of fEC for the University’s IS department and, as an organisational division, bids for sustainability funds to carry out small project work.

Objective: Widen the funding base of the data centre to reduce risk

In order to ensure that EDINA can meet its goals in the medium- to long-term, we aim to widen the funding base of the data centre. The Business Development team monitor opportunities to do this, especially, but not exclusively, from the European Union and the Research Councils. For the past three years, around 10% of EDINA’s funding has come from non-JISC sources. We have plans in place to increase this proportion, which is now given priority attention.

3b: Manage appropriately financial and legal liabilities

Objective: Meet our staffing obligations

EDINA met all of its staffing obligations in 2009-2010, having sufficient funding to meet all payroll requirements. EDINA also supported staff members with disabilities or ill health, bringing in expertise as necessary from Occupational Health and Human Resources, and it promoted equality and diversity in recruitment processes.

Objective: Meet external compliance requirements, including legal and financial

All external compliance requirements were met in 2009-2010, including compliance with Freedom of Information (FoI) and Data Protection (DP) requests, conducting Health and Safety assessments, and ensuring that relevant practitioners kept the staff informed of any information that it was necessary for them to know.

• An email account was set up for EDINA staff to forward relevant messages to the FoI and DP practitioners.
• Procedures for dealing with requests under FoI and DP were also drawn up in conjunction with the User Support team and shared with all staff on the staff intranet.

Risk Register

EDINA’s Risk Register for 2009-2010 was signed off in September 2009 and lodged with the University of Edinburgh, with the Management Board, and with JISC. The Register covers strategic, financial, staffing, accommodation and IT capability risks, compliance with various legal requirements, and risks to activity in the business areas and with third parties. The current Risk Register, for 2010-2011, was signed off in June 2010.

• The majority of staff members (including all technical and support staff critical to service continuity) have computers and internet access at home. EDINA has a pool of mobile equipment on which others can draw if necessary.
• Procedures, including staff back-up plans, exist for dealing with emergency situations, both short-lived and prolonged.
• EDINA has dependency on others in IS in the University of Edinburgh for keeping hardware operational. This aspect is covered by the University’s contingency plans.

Memoranda of Understanding and Schedules

In 2009-2010, EDINA agreed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with Mimas, JISC Collections, JANET (UK) and the ISSN (IC).

• In signing MoUs, the organisations demonstrate their commitment to working together to provide the UK HE and FE and Research communities with world-class data and information resources, in order to enhance the quality and productivity of research, learning and teaching.
• In signing Schedules to the MoUs, which can be agreed as legally binding, the organisations minimise any risks involved in undertaking the work together. Among other important matters, the Schedules detail the responsibilities of each party in the projects or services, the sharing of Intellectual Property Rights, liabilities incurred, confidentiality arrangements and dispute resolutions.

3c: Ensure EDINA’s long-term sustainability

Sustainability has different meanings in different contexts. In this context, the term sustainability is concerned with the data centre’s longevity and its ability to continue to meet its goals into the long-term. The earlier sections of this Review detail how we approached our strategic objectives in 2009-2010.

Sustainability is about being able to respond flexibly to change, including that demanded by our stakeholders and communities, and to play our part in shaping the future of research and education in the UK and beyond. This means producing services that the educational and research communities come to rely upon, and working with partners in research areas that lead to real change, greater efficiency and enhanced effectiveness.

The earlier sections of this Review contain evidence that EDINA is meeting these challenges. The shared services provided by EDINA reduce costs for the sector as a whole. EDINA and Mimas, as national data centres for the academic community in the UK, are providing services that save HE and FE institutions money.