Shared Infrastructure Services Project

The Shared Device Management project is revolutionising how devices are managed across the university. With many teams using tailored, local solutions, there's significant duplication and costs. This new service, built using Microsoft Intune, will create an efficient device management solution for IT teams in departments and faculties, and will be mandatory for all teams.

The service includes understanding the 'Device Management Lifecycle', providing necessary functionality, and ensuring appropriate permissions. Microsoft Intune, a cloud-based tool, has been chosen for its ability to manage and secure devices and apps across platforms. It offers benefits like consistent Single Sign-On (SSO) experience, data protection, simplified management, reduced IT workload, scalability, and cost reduction.

The SDM team, led by Pete Jones, has developed a prototype and will focus on delivering the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) over the summer. Priorities include refining the blueprint, finalising solution requirements, and completing the discovery report. Once the new system is rolled out, all teams must use it immediately and stop using old systems.

The SDM team publish monthly articles covering their progress and project highlights, to subscribe to these updates, sign up below.

Sign Up

The People workstream is looking at a number of initiatives including:

Shared IT Apprenticeship Scheme

The Shared Apprenticeship scheme is an exciting enhancement of the existing Level 3 IT apprenticeship, which was previously limited to individual departments or divisions. This innovative pilot program, launching this year, aims to develop shared resources across various departments, including IT services. The scheme will offer a Level 3 IT apprenticeship, providing apprentices with industry-standard IT qualifications from our approved training provider, Basingstoke ITECH.

So far, the University's Heads of Technology have approved the role, job description, and placement options for the 2-year scheme. Two apprenticeship places were assigned: NDORMS and IT Services. The position was advertised in May and received an overwhelming 130 applications. Nine candidates attended an assessment day that included teamwork and presentation exercises, followed by interviews. Two outstanding candidates were selected and offered positions, with start dates in September.

What's next?

The apprentices will begin in September with a one-week induction that includes tours, meetings, and mandatory training. They will spend six weeks on the University service desk managing calls and gaining valuable experience in IT, followed by their first placement. At the end of the first year, they will transition to a different department. The induction also provides information sessions and workshops about the university. 

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 these initiatives will be shared in due course.

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.

Further details on these initiatives will be shared in due course.