4. Meeting our goals

This section of the Annual Review describes what EDINA has done in 2010-2011 to meet the strategic goals, themes and objectives that were given in its rolling three-year Strategy for 2010-2013.

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 institutions 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 2010-2011, 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 2010-2011 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 2010-2011.

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. Please see Section 3 for details of user support undertaken in 2011-2012.

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 Information Environment 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) 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 provides technical and operational support to the UK Access Management Federation, working in partnership with JISC Collections.

JISC set up the RDTF with Research Libraries UK, which published its vision and implementation plan in 2010-2011 for the creation of open metadata and aggregations for library, archive and museum collections. Mimas was engaged by JISC to provide a framework to support this initiative, which was launched in May 2011 as Discovery. In 2010-2011, EDINA contributed to activity supporting Discovery, through the geo-enabling provided by the Unlock service; the Linked Data Focus project; investigation of how SUNCAT might contribute an open aggregation; and reporting on a scoping study (undertaken in 2009-2010) which examined aggregations of metadata about images and time-based media

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 2010-2011:

• Digimap Roam added four styles of VectorMap Local maps and a new MasterMap Plan style to the existing range of OS products in Digimap OS. These provide different ways to view the most detailed mapping.
• Data Download added 3 new products: VectorMap District, VectorMap Local and OS Streetview.
• Offshore geology data was added to Geology Download.

As part of the continuing process of collection-building for JISC MediaHub, EDINA is in negotiation with numerous collection-owners, in most cases to harvest the collections’ metadata and, for the Bioscience Imagebank, to host the collection itself as it has been orphaned by the closure of the HE Academy subject centre at Leeds.

Objective: Reach out to new communities of users

In 2010-2011, EDINA launched the ShareGeo Open repository service. Currently holding around 140 datasets, ShareGeo Open aims to enable the sharing of geospatial datasets that are based on openly licensed data and will be available to anyone around the world.

Officially launched by Baroness Joan Hanham CBE, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 10th November 2010, Digimap for Schools has over 2500 schools with access to the service as at the end of July 2011.

The Jorum team developed an API and a set of simple widgets, to enable the resources in Jorum to be reached by new communities of users, through other service providers.

We have been developing significant relationships with the local history and genealogy communities and cultural heritage organisations through

• launches for AddressingHistory, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist O Riches and Carmichael Watson
• social media presences for Statistical Accounts of Scotland and AddressingHistory
• the EDINA presence at the LIFE-SHARE and Digital Futures of Cultural Heritage Education workshops and at the Scottish Association of Family History Societies Conference 2011

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

In 2010-2011, JISC funding was used to undertake the following enhancements to services:

• Further enhancement of 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.
• A new help system for the Geo services – RoboHelp software from Adobe was used to replace the old help system. The new software has enabled help pages to be presented and updated much more easily and quickly. It has also made it much easier to use the help documentation for email and web based support of the users.
• Annotation Tools – Users were calling for the ability to add in their own information to maps. To meet this requirement the annotation tools were developed which greatly enhanced the functionality of Digimap Roam. They allow the user to add in symbols, lines, polygons and text to the existing basemap. They can also modify what they have entered and print out the map showing all their additions. With the Digimap collections all having a Roam service it has been possible to put these extra tools into all the services.
• Measurement Tool – A simple addition to the interface that allows users to define and measure lengths and areas on the maps. This is available in all of the Roam services.

The following enhancements are currently in development for launch in 2011-2012:

• A new login page and home page for the Digimap Service, to improve and simplify access to the facilities within the Collections.
• A new data download interface, designed to cope with more varied data types and multiple versions. This will allow users to get hold of more data in a single order speeding up their workflow. It will also have a much more advanced interface that will be more flexible yet intuitive and easier to use.

Other enhancements to services undertaken during 2010-2011 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 through the relationship between SUNCAT and the UK Research Reserve initiative.

The continued growth of the collection of resources in Jorum has shown that its users value its ability to act as a ‘keepsafe’ for learning materials generated by JISC projects and other publicly funded initiatives.

The ShareGeo and ShareGeo Open repository services provide an infrastructure 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 second phase of the PEPRS project began in August 2010 with EDINA and the ISSN International Centre as partners, and launched a beta release of a preservation registry in April 2011. There has been wide interest in the project and the proposed registry service.

The Open Access Repository Junction project has successfully completed phase one of its activities, producing two main deliverables: the Repository Junction discovery tool and a proof-of-concept broker service.

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 launched in Autumn 2010.

Following JISC’s review of Jorum in 2010-11, and a competitive process between the two National Data Centres, Mimas will work with JISC to take Jorum forward into service.

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 2010-2011, 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 .

Details of the projects can be found in Section 3.

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.

Objective: Develop and consolidate our presence nationally and internationally as a national academic data centre, working with a network of partners

Some staff members at EDINA and Data Library are recognised internationally as experts in their fields. They have links with important national and international groups, including Governmental, educational, standards development, research data, commercial, web services and grid development organisations.  Some of these links are as follows:

• Peter Burnhill: Official Observer to the ISSN Network and various other engagements
• Paula Cuccurullo: ARLIS National Co-ordination Committee (ARLIS NCC) Corresponding Member; Scottish Visual Arts Group Reporting Secretary
• Fred Guy: Cataloguing and Indexing Group Scotland (CIGS) Vice Chairman of Committee; London Metropolitan University External Examiner
• Chris Higgins: Co-Chair of Open Geospatial Consortium University Working Group; Member of Location Information Interoperability Board; AGI Scotland Board Member; Management Committee of the European Persistent Geospatial Testbed for Research and Education; Liaison OGC and OGF
• Celia Jenkins: Career Development Group (Scottish Division) Committee Member; Career Development Group (Scottish Division) Candidate Support Officer; SLIC/MmITS/SCURL E-Books Conference Planning Committee Member
• Stuart Macdonald: Programme Chair of Repository Fringe 2011; IASSIST Regional Treasurer (Europe and Africa); Co-Chair of IASSIST Latin Engagement Action Group (from 2010)
• Tony Mathys: UK GEMINI Working Group
• James Reid: Member of Location Information Interoperability Board; Census Advisory Board; OS GeoScotland
• Robin Rice: Appointed Web Editor and elected regional representative of IASSIST
• Anne Robertson: Location Information Metadata Working Group
• Jo Walsh: Board Member of Open Knowledge Foundation

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: Consolidate and improve existing collaborations

National and international engagement in each of our business areas in 2010-2011 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 has active commitment and responsibility for continuing access to the growing corpus of scholarly resources in digital format, as described in Section 3. There has been contact with a number of journal preservation agencies (including Portico, LOCKSS and KB Holland) and organisations including Hathi Trust. Contact with those working with standards in the area of preservation has provided insight and fruitful engagement for the PEPRS project (via EDItEUR and its ONIX standards that are internationally used within the serials supply chains).
• There has been wide interest in the PEPRS project and proposed registry service with presentations given at the following conferences:
  • IFLA 2010, Gothenberg, August 2010; ISSN Directors, British Library, October 2010
  • Internet Librarian International, London, October 2010
  • RLUK, November 2010
  • UK Serials Group (UKSG), Harrogate, April 2011
  • American Library Association, New Orleans, June 2011
  In addition, presentations were given to staff from Columbia University and Cornell University in November 2010.
• Active participation in the ISSN Network continued, with attendance at the ISSN Directors Meeting, Paris, April 2011, when the PEPRS beta was released.
• Additional presentations on continuing access themes were given at the Digital Preservation Coalition Getting Started in Digital Preservation event, Glasgow, February 2011; and to the UK LOCKSS Alliance Members’ Meeting, York, May 2011.
• Other presentations in this business area included to
  • RepoFringe 2010, Edinburgh, September 2010
  • Scottish Local History Forum Conference, November 2010
  • International Digital Curation Centre Conference, Chicago, December 2010
  • Digital Libraries & Open Access at the British Academy, February 2011
  • JISC Managing Research Data (International) Programme Workshop, Birmingham, March 2011
  • Library Roles in Research Data Management, Edinburgh, March 2011
  • JISC Deposit Programme Meeting, Birmingham, March 2011
  • UKSG Conference, Harrogate, April 2011
  • Open Educational Resources 2011, Manchester, May 2011
  • CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva, June 2011
  • IASSIST 2011, Vancouver, June 2011.
• EDINA continued to be a Sponsor of the DSpace Foundation during 2010-11.
• 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).

Maps and Data

Some of 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. EDINA also has representation on the UK Location Information Interoperability Board and chairs the Metadata Working Group.
• EDINA sponsored the 2011 INSPIRE Conference in Edinburgh (which attracted over 700 delegates from across Europe), presenting three papers and running a workshop.
• The team published, in collaboration with Eurogeographics and the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE), a report revealing the state of play within several European member states regarding higher education access to national mapping agency data.
• EDINA is involved in the academic European persistent geospatial testbed being developed by AGILE, EuroSDR (the research arm of the National Mapping and Charting Agencies represented at a European level) and the OGC. This 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.
• Presentations given within this business area included to
  • the International Workshop on ICT and e-Knowledge for the Developing World, Shanghai, September 2010
  • RepoFringe 2010, Edinburgh, September 2010
  • UK Location Information Interoperability Board, October 2010
  • Developing for the Mobile Web, ILRT/DevSci Event, October 2010; CILIPS Autumn Gathering, October 2010
  • AGI GeoCommunity, October 2010
  • South Queensferry Community Group, February 2011
  • UK Location Programme Data Publishing Workgroup, March 2011
  • ESDIN Closing Workshop, Brussels, March 2011
  • 14th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, Utrecht, April 2011
  • Dyfi Biosphere Research Forum Meeting, Aberystwyth, May 2011
  • INSPIRE 2011, Edinburgh, June 2011
  • Digital Futures of Cultural Heritage Education workshop, Edinburgh, June 2011
  • Institutional Web Managers Workshop, Reading, July 2011
  • Open Source Junction 2: Context Aware Mobile Technologies, Oxford, July 2011; and International Cartographic Conference, Paris, July 2011.

Multimedia and Education

In 2010-2011, the main engagement opportunities in this business area were as follows:

• EDINA has collaborated more closely than ever before with JISC Collections in the development of JISC MediaHub.
• EDINA was a member of the JISC Film & Sound Think Tank, which issued some final recommendations that EDINA is pursuing with the BUFVC and JISC Digital Media.
• Training and webinar events allowed fruitful engagement with staff and site representatives throughout the year.
• Presentations on JISC MediaHub were given to MECCSA 2011, Salford, January 2011; JISC Conference 2011, Liverpool, March 2011; and the Strategic Content Alliance Board Meeting, London, May 2011. The Jorum team’s DSpace work was presented to Open Repositories 2011 in Texas and the UNESCO Chair for E-Learning in Barcelona.
• EDINA continued to engage with the JISC’s OER Programme and with CETIS, the JISC-funded Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards; and with other projects and services working in the Learning and Teaching area, particularly the Edinburgh College of Art and the MeDeV Subject Centre.

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 has 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.
• Presentations in this business area were given to
  • FAM10, Cardiff, October 2010
  • RDTF Discovery – building a UK metadata ecology, London, May 2011
  • Access and Information Management (AIM) End of Programme Meeting, Birmingham, June 2011
  • Activity Data Programme Meeting, Milton Keynes, July 2011

The CHALICE project involved working with three partners:

• CeRch at KCL to develop use cases through interviews with maintainers of different historic sources
• CDDA at Queens University Belfast, who extracted corrected text from previously digitised pages
• Language Technology Group at Edinburgh for text mining expertise and support of the Unlock text service.

Social Media

EDINA’s Social Media Officer gave many presentations through the year that covered activities across our business areas, as well as best practice guidance to the use of Social Media itself. Where her presentations related to specific business areas, they are given above.

Other presentations included to

• Edinburgh Beltane Social Media Breakfast, November 2010
• ELISA Open Forum, November 2010
• JISC and SCONUL Open Edge-Open Source event, January 2011
• Institutional Web Management workshop (IWMW), July 2011
• various events internal to the University of Edinburgh

Objective: Build new partnerships and collaborations

Collaborations that resulted in new work in 2010-2011 included those with JISC Collections bidding for and now managing the UK Access Management Federation, and with Edugate in Ireland, who are collaborating on testing use of the metadata aggregation engine for inter-federation working. Members of the expert group have attended meetings of TERENA’s REFEDS forum that discusses international federated access management issues internationally.

Other new collaborations in 2010-2011 include those with the Welsh Government; the University of Aberystwyth; the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University; and the international project partners affiliated to the Project Bamboo Technology Project Partner Institutions.

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 80 staff and works with eight consultants under contract.

Dr Conor G. Smyth joined EDINA as Head of Research and Geodata Services and EDINA recruited four additional members of staff during 2010-2011, all of whom have brought much valuable experience and knowledge to our business areas.

We have said farewell to one Senior Manager, Ed Dee, due to his retirement.

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.

Two members of staff also attended the IS Managers Development Programme over the course of the year to gain and build upon management skills.

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 2010-2011 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 2010-2011 to share and exchange expertise.

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 third year of an agreed 3-year upgrade spend.

There has been a continuation over the year of the move towards virtualisation under VMWare, principally to support non-Solaris operating systems. Authentication for EDINA services has now been migrated to VMWare. The VMWare infrastructure has been replicated and automatic snapshotting backup software has been purchased (with the University). The continuing move towards virtualisation is also a necessary prerequisite for the evaluation and adoption of cloud computing solutions.

Objective: Improve service resilience and ensure business continuity

The additional servers purchased in 2009-10 are in service and providing a failover service for almost all EDINA services. Over the year there has been major refurbishment of the University machine room at King's Building. This provided a major test of our new replicated service capability. Services were successfully 'failed-over' to the backup site on a number of occasions avoiding the necessity for extended service downtime. Some major software upgrades have also been conducted without downtime owing to the availability of a replicated service.

Replication will be ongoing as new services will be replicated as they are developed.

Automatic failover of both VMWare-based authorisation services and some EDINA Solaris container hosted services has been successfully tested using the University hardware load balancers. The intention will be to move to automatic service failover during the current year for the majority of EDINA services.

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 increasing 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.

The SLA for 2010-2011 was 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 H/FE funding bodies.

Objective: Ensure that we make better informed business decisions

Priority was again given in 2010-2011 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 Business Development decision support tool produced in 2009-2010 continued in use to assist staff in the decision-making process for funding opportunities.

Objective: Monitor accommodation requirements in the light of changing staff levels

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 2011-2014 was signed off by the EDINA Management Board in June 2010 and made available on the website. 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 H/FE funding bodies. In 2010-2011, 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 few years, around 10% of EDINA's funding has come from non-JISC sources. We have plans in place to increase this proportion.

3b: Manage appropriately financial and legal liabilities

Objective: Meet our staffing obligations

EDINA met all of its staffing obligations in 2010-2011, 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 2010-2011, 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.

Risk Register

EDINA’s Risk Register for 2010-2011 was signed off by the Management Board in June 2010 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 Risk Register for 2011-2012 was signed off in June 2011.

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.

Funding received from JISC to improve EDINA’s technical infrastructure has reduced risk levels as most services are now replicated.

Memoranda of Understanding and Schedules

EDINA has Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with a number of its partners, along with associated Schedules.

In signing MoUs, the organisations demonstrate their commitment to working together to provide the UK H/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 the long-term sustainability of EDINA

Sustainability has different meanings in different contexts. In this context, the term sustainability is for the purpose of the improvement of its capacity to meet its mission and goals into the long-term. The earlier sections of this Review detail how we approached our strategic objectives in 2010-2011.

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 knowledge and operational services that the educational and research communities can rely upon, 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. Working with all parts of the JISC ‘family’ including especially our ‘sister’ Mimas, EDINA will strive as JISC national data centre provide services that enhance productivity in terms of improved performance as well as lowered cost for higher and further education institutions and their academic community.