Wednesday 24 June 2009

Planning.....

I'm spending a lot of time planning at the moment. Planning for a possible pandemic flu outbreak, either now or later in the year. Hopefully won't happen, but we need to be prepared if it does. How would we manage if 20% of our staff were off? What services would we prioritise, and would our systems cope with the increased load of more people remote working? I chair the University Business Continuity Operations group, so I'm looking not just at the IT side of things, but all operational areas of the University. Fortunately we're about to appoint a Business Continuity Manager, so I'll soon have someone to delegate to!

Also planning for financial uncertainty. Not that I think there's anything uncertain about Higher Education funding - we're going to get less. So, planning for what our priorities are, what are the core things we should concentrate on, what could we outsource or stop doing. And just as important - how can we keep doing exciting and innovative things, not just running existing core services. Also looking at how we can help the rest of the University do more with less and work more efficiently. So, some interesting decisions to take over the summer.

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