All CNA Programs: Covid speeds up Bradford University remote working job

Pandemic injected fuel into university’s existing job to present remote working

Karl Flinders,
Emea Material Editor, Computer System Weekly

Released: 01 Mar 2021 13: 49

The Covid-19 pandemic has put extraordinary needs on IT leaders in all sectors, but the higher education sector more than a lot of.

Faced with substantial demands from two user bases– personnel and students– IT leaders at universities have had to quickly turn from the norm.

Alongside 60 IT personnel, Juliette Atkinson, head of IT at Bradford University, has had to cater for the IT needs of 10,000 trainees and 900 staff during an unprecedented duration of disturbance.

In reality, at least 12 of her 18 months in the role have been dominated by the pandemic and the disruption it has caused.

Guaranteeing back-office staff can work from home is challenging enough, however universities are faced with providing the IT equipment and training required for speakers to teach and students to learn from another location.

Atkinson was at a conference in February in 2015 when she understood that an IT change programme currently under way at Bradford University would have to be accelerated. “Throughout general discussions over lunch, individuals were discussing Covid and it mirrored what I had actually been going over at the university about business continuity,” she said.

Atkinson and her group had been dealing with a task to support remote working since she had actually already identified it as a future requirement. “We typically would move from one building to another if we had a concern, but we had a restricted ability for individuals to be able to move off-site and work from another location,” she said.

The job had mainly been developed to be used by technical individuals, however what Atkinson heard at the conference made her realise that the university had to have the ability to move work off-site.

” It struck me that if we had a situation where it became a pandemic, we could have significant service connection problems,” she stated. “That sparked discussions with senior leadership and we understood we didn’t have the ability to get all staff working remotely, never ever mind students.”

They agreed to develop the capability regardless, “even if it didn’t end up being a pandemic”, and started work a few weeks prior to the very first lockdown. “By the time of the lockdown alert, we had taken steps to ensure we might continue to work,” stated Atkinson.

The group built three platforms to allow staff and trainees to link remotely. 2 of these were assembled using VMware’s Horizon technology and a third using older VMware innovation. One platform was for personnel and two, because of the high user numbers, were for trainees. “What this allowed us to do was to connect into high-powered workstations back on school,” she said.

This took just 10 days from style to release, said Atkinson. “This was a massive accomplishment due to the fact that it typically takes 2 years to create a facilities like that,” she added.

Atkinson said the biggest obstacle was not knowing what innovation trainees and personnel had at house.

There were likewise challenges in guaranteeing that individuals had the best gadgets to link to the new networks.

About 400 laptop computers had to be sourced for personnel and after that installed with the best software application, however that was just the start, with trainee need for devices to link very high. “We have an extremely high proportion who are in a low socio-economic situation, so we provide a great deal of off-campus gadgets for students to utilize,” stated Atkinson.

The IT department had the ability to instantly give out 80 laptop computers that it currently had, but understood this was not nearly enough as things got hard for students without the ideal hardware. “We were hearing stories that some trainees were attempting to do their dissertations and go to lectures on smart phones,” said Atkinson.

” We had to put something else in place quite quickly and it was a key job for us to go to the university board of directors and request for cash to be assigned to supporting trainees who could not link. They were very supportive and approved half a million pounds.”

The pandemic’s sheer magnitude was throwing up difficulties at every turn. When, for example, the university put in a big order for laptops for trainees, it quickly experienced an issue because of the interruption the pandemic was causing to the international supply chain.

Atkinson spoke directly to the senior management at provider Lenovo and explained that not only were majority of the university’s students from low-income backgrounds, however likewise there were a number of students each year who were leaving care, with potentially no devices. As an outcome, the university was prioritised by Lenovo.

Nevertheless, it still took a number of months since of a shortage of parts in China and big need, consisting of massive orders from the UK government.

Atkinson reviewed the difficulties up until now and stated universities have actually dealt with some unjust criticism about their handling of the pandemic response. “There has been a lot of unfavorable publicity for universities about levels of look after trainees, however I do not see that here,” she said.

However one thing she is sure of– the pandemic will change how universities operate in the future.

” We were moving in that instructions, however Covid meant we needed to do it rapidly and I do not believe we will ever go back to working five days in the workplace.”

Atkinson said she is presently writing a five-year method and part of that is how the university goes forward with a flexible workplace. “The university technique will never ever move away from in person lectures and one-on-one time with speakers and this will constantly form a big part of education,” she included.

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