The Shared Infrastructure Services Programme (SISP) is part of Oxford’s digital transformation, aimed at enhancing the University's IT infrastructure. The programme focuses on improving user experience, reducing complexity, and mitigating cybersecurity risks.
The programme was formed following the Infrastructure Service Review with some of the following objectives:
- Improve our user experience, thinking about how our staff and students interact with infrastructure services
- Make better use of economies of scale - not just financially but better resilience of services by sharing technologies and platforms
- Reduce complexity and improve efficiencies through sharing processes and having fewer ways of doing the same thing across divisions and departments
- Reducing our risk – particularly our cybersecurity risk through initiatives such as implementing a shared device management platform
Read the most recent programme updates:
Workstreams and Initiatives
There are three workstream activities that sit under the Shared Infrastructure Services Programme.
Workstream One: Shared Services
Shared Device Management project
The Shared Device Management project plans to deliver a Cloud based end point management service for optional adoption by the wider University.
The service will have been informed, built and then delivered by a team of technical experts from across the collegiate University.
Workstream Two: People
The People workstream is looking at a number of initiatives including:
ITSS induction
The Shared Infrastructure Services Programme (SISP) has identified the need for a revised ITSS induction that goes beyond a simple welcome pack. This professional development programme aims to enable new ITSS to become effective quickly, refresh and update knowledge for existing ITSS, and surface hard-to-find information about Oxford’s systems. The programme will establish a modular curriculum that can be built in stages and extended in the future, creating learning pathways relevant to specific ITSS roles
A working group comprising SISP team members and ITSS from various divisions, departments, colleges, and IT Services has been formed. They have agreed on the aims, generated an initial curriculum, and drawn up a delivery plan. Initial modules include replacements for the current online induction and introductions to Oxford IT support model, networking, SSO/MFA, and Microsoft365 collaboration tools. The group is working on the initial set of modules, expecting to publish them to ITSS in late summer, and is considering long-term maintenance to ensure they stay current
Infrastructure skills assessment
further details on this initiative will be shared in due course.
Workstream Three: User Experience
The User Experience workstream is looking at a number of initiatives including:
Understanding and improving the ITSS experience
The ITSS Experience programme is focused on making life easier for our IT support staff by addressing gaps in knowledge, introducing new services, and updating existing ones. The team is currently rolling out the 'User Lookup tool' to help administrative staff quickly view card record details for identity and access issues. They are also working with the Identity programme to make key processes like resetting SSO and updating MFA factors more accessible. The goal is to enable IT support staff to handle more tasks directly.
Next steps include continuing to update the backlog and engaging with the ITSS community for feedback.
Further details on the below initiatives will be shared in due course.
- Sharing tasks across IT teams
- Enabling ITSS to work across affiliations
- Better access to technical and non-technical guidance
The Foundations workstream will be investigating governance and funding and further details on this will be shared in due course.
