As part of our series of FOTE Round Table discussion sessions, kindly supported by Microsoft, we gathered some of the leading IT professionals within the HE sector to debate the big issues impacting the sector over the coming 24 months.

Kicking off with the not uncontroversial topic of shared services, we expected a lively discussion and that is exactly what we ended up with!

Hmmm... from which I can only conclude that shared services aren't a no brainer and we don't really know why we can't get them to work :-)

As it happens, Eduserv offer a number of 'shared services' (at least according to the rather wide definition that seems to have been adopted here, which includes what I would call plain old 'outsourcing'), the best-known of which in the academic sector are OpenAthens (previously Athens) and Chest. Now you can argue with my inclusion of these as being 'shared services' (and I'd be reasonably happy to lose the argument, at least in the case of OpenAthens) but that is certainly how they started out (at the University of Bath) - the recognition that it was better to do something once on behalf of the whole sector, rather than replicate it within every institution. What is interesting is how the push-and-pull of centralised funding vs direct charging to institutions and the need to remain sustainable (albeit in a not-for-profit way) have moulded those services over the years.

The 'bottom line' with such activities is that they have to be paid for and as soon as one moves away from top-sliced centralised funding (something the HE sector is going to have to get increasingly used to I guess) one is forced to think quite hard about the real costs of continuing to do things in-house vs the cost of outsourcing. Making such services sustainable in an environment where lots of things are seen as being 'free' (because they have been funded centrally or because they are undertaken by staff who are already employed by the institution) is a constant challenge.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm not convinced that universities like asking questions about how much the internal provision of IT services really costs. My guess is that this situation is evolving?

True 'shared services', i.e. where relatively small numbers of universities get together and do something collaboratively are quite difficult. Bath and UWE shared their library management system for a while. I have no idea how successful this was in terms of reducing costs - I do recall hearing some disgruntlement (probably from both sides) about the way the other party 'did things'. I didn't get the impression that it was plain sailing.

On the plus side... one could argue that the UK HE community leads the world in its approach to shared services thru the various JISC and research council led activities - JANET itself being the prime example but there are plenty of others. So I don't think we should get too downhearted about it!