Universities UK (UUK) 4th Annual Efficiency in Higher Education Conference talk from me and UCL's Jacky Pallas on accelerating equipment sharing. This covers Jisc initiatives such as our shared data centre and VAT cost sharing group, and our pilot of the Kit-Catalogue equipment database software - with a case study from UCL showing how they have used Kit-Catalogue.
Kit-Catalogue - Discovering the Value of Equipment Sharing - Universities UK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference
1. Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
4th Annual UUK Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Photo credit: The Lighting Simulator, UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
Universities UK 4th Annual Efficiency Conference, March 2015
2. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
3. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
4. :: About Jisc ::What we do
» Registered charity championing the use of digital technologies in
research and education
» Range of shared services for UK Universities and Colleges, e.g.
- Janet, world leading research network
- eduroam global wireless roaming
- Groundbreaking content deals with publishers
- Cloud brokerage with Amazon, Google, Microsoft
» Aiming to complement RCUK and Innovate UK / Catapults
- Open Educational Resources, Open Access and Open Data
- Just launched asset sharing initiative
5. :: About Jisc ::Value proposition
Generating £260m
savings per annum
e.g. KnowledgeBase+
- £4.5m
6. :: About Jisc ::Value proposition
Generating £260m
savings per annum
e.g. DigiMap - £40m
7. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
8. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What are we doing?
» Leveraging public investment in the Janet network
– Connecting industry: http://www.ja.net/janet-reach
– Where next - e.g. 10Gbit/s links to Science Parks?
– Testbeds for new technologies, e.g. UHD streaming fromTokyo
Olympics, Surrey 5G testbed, Catapult centres
» Where else can we add value?
– Exploit our cost sharing group (256 institutions, 93% of HEIs)
– Research clusters, e.g. Jisc shared data centre with Sanger,Crick, UCL,
King’s College,QMUL, LSE etc: http://www.ja.net/data-centre
– AnticipatingAusterity 2.0 efficiency savings
9. » £900K HEFCE investment
» Anchor tenants: Crick, KCL,
LSE, QMUL, Sanger, UCL
» First data hall now full
::Why Asset Sharing? :: Shared data centre
11. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next
» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry
– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC
– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test
– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise
» How can we do this?
– Standardized terms and conditions
– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage
– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.
» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?
12. ::Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next
» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry
– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC
– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test
– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise
» How can we do this?
– Standardized terms and conditions
– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage
– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.
» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?
13. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
16. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional commitment
» Members of the pilot will be:
› Committing resource to ensure significant proportion of
high value equipment recorded in Kit-Catalogue
– e.g. items costing £25K or above
› Making all (or a meaningful subset) of catalogue records
available as publicly available information
– For harvesting by the national http://equipment.data.ac.uk portal
› Contributing material towards a case study of their use of
Kit-Catalogue
17. :: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional benefits
» Members of the pilot will be able to:
› Influence product development through the Kit-Catalogue
user group
› Provide feedback on their experiences of Kit-Catalogue
– To help inform a future decision about whether Jisc should offer
Kit-Catalogue as a national service
› Contribute to a wider strategic discussion around facilitating
equipment sharing between institutions and with industry
18. Research Equipment Sharing
and UCL Research Equipment Catalogue
Universities UK
4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference
25th March 2015
Jacky Pallas
j.pallas@ucl.ac.uk @uclplatforms
19. Topics
• UCL Research Equipment Catalogue
• Communications and showcasing facilities
• Capturing data about equipment sharing
• Some examples of sharing
20. UCL’s Equipment Catalogue
• Now live at research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk
• Contains ~90% of UCL’s equipment >£25k
• Powered by Kit-Catalogue software
• Departmental Administrators are
configured to maintain records
21. Data Collection: iPad app
• Used FormConnect iPad app
to collect data when escorted
around labs.
• Can export data as .csv, .pdf,
.xml, and .html formats.
• We converted .csv files from
the app to the Kit-Catalogue
import format for upload.
24. Communications Strategy
Two key groups of users identified: ‘Finders’ and ‘Keepers’
Finders
Researchers who will
browse the catalogue
Keepers
Equipment owners and
departmental admins
Mailings targeted to each group. Posters, accompanying web site, user
guides and FAQs produced. Promotion at internal events.
Administrators configured from each department.
25. Positive user feedback
1490 visitors; ~17,000 page views; avg. visit 4 mins 15 secs
Tracking item enquiries; dedicated email inbox, 72 queries since Aug 2014
“No problems encountered.
Seems clean, intuitive and
well-constructed.”
72 items updated since Aug 2014
119 department administrators with
edit permissions
26. Showcasing UCL facilities
Science & Engineering South (SES)
Consortium
Exploit collected catalogue data:
Promote and professionalise our research facilities.
Other HEIs,
SMEs & Industry
Shared searchable
database of equipment
across SES
UCL public data in
equipment.data.ac.uk
Promote facilities through
London Life Science and
Open-SME
Work with UCL Enterprise
to professionalise
offerings.
27. Capturing equipment sharing - efficiently
• Working with Faculty finance and research
services teams, dept. and facility managers
• Annual financial review of research facilities
– TRAC listing and charge-out rates
• Implemented new data collection process –
income, estimated usage for
– Internal and external academic users (R)
– Teaching (T)
– Industry and gov’t agency (OSR)
28. Equipment and facilities sharing - data
• 29% of facilities provide services to industry or
gov’t agencies, with 5.4% of total income of all
UCL TRAC facilities
• 41% of facilities offer services to external
academic groups, with 7.4% of income
• Next step – calculate the value of the equipment
available for sharing through our facilities
29. Collaboration – examples in large scale
computing
• Centre for Innovation, EPSRC £2.8M, UCL, Oxford,
So’ton, Bristol
• Farr London, MRC £5M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Public
Health England
• Admin Data Research Centre England, ESRC £6.8M,
So’ton, UCL, IoE, IFS
• eMedLab, MRC £8.9M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Crick,
Sanger, EBI
• Farr, ADRN, Med. Bioinf : 18 HEIs working together on
SafeShare, JISC-funded project for secure data transfer
31. 1. About Jisc
2. Why Asset Sharing?
3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot
4. Discussion
Kit-Catalogue:
Discovering the value of equipment sharing
UUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015
Martin Hamilton martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Futurist @martin_hamilton
32. :: Discussion :: Blockers part 1
» “Time”
» “The sense the equipment is
'owned' by a research group is
still present. This is reducing
with new equipment, but
current/old equipment is still
seen as 'mine’”
» “No transparent system to see
the availability/capacity of
equipment”
» “Researchers (understandably)
choose the easiest option - so
they use the equipment which
is closest to them, as opposed
to most appropriate for their
experiment”
» “A lack of staff willing to
support initiatives like Kit-
Catalogue & overall staffing
levels”
» “No central resource
committed towards facilitating
this initiative”
33. :: Discussion :: Blockers part 2
» “Equipment sharing is still
viewed with certain amount
of cynicism”
» “Hard to evidence the
benefits”
» “Staff unwilling to travel or
sometimes walk to other
instruments that may be
available”
» “Nature of the applications
used”
» “Lack of time available to
help help with this”
» “Historical attitudes”
34. :: Discussion :: Enablers part 1
» “Senior management were
very supportive of Kit Cat”
» “We pushed this along for a
number of reasons; location of
researchers/building scattered
between four locations,
equipment asset register,
sharing of
equipment/resources, PAT test
register”
» “Communication and
awareness raising is always a
challenge in an institution
with large research staff
turnover. However we have a
good comms strategy”
» “We are also working hard to
align requirements for data
capture to existing admin
processes so there is no
additional burden on staff”
35. :: Discussion :: Enablers part 2
» “There are a number of key
academics who are bought into
equipment sharing”
» “With greater staff resource
I'm sure we could move the
project more quickly”
» “In general, there is buy-in, but
the practicalities of making it
work are very complex and
need full-time attention, which
we aren't currently resourced
for”
» “Integrated programme of
justify, purchase,
operate/maintain,
upgrade/replace”
» “School budgets are limited for
this so a proposal to increase
sharing/partnerships and
consultancy would enable the
programme to become reality”
Notas del editor
Welcome to the third Experts’ group meeting.
Jack doing this slide?
Our last meeting was just before Christmas, and since that time, we’ve made a lot of progress. There’s been a lot of cataloguing progress, which James will discuss, we’ve made significant progress with the IT side of the project, which Russell will describe, and we’ve been devising a strategy to communicate details about the project in the run up to launch, and beyond (which Jack will talk about).
I’ll now describe the way in which we catalogued our equipment at UCL. When we first started we were visiting labs with a clipboard and camera, making notes on equipment and taking photos. But with the quantity of items and number of departments we had to visit, this was becoming cumbersome and time-consuming. We were able to get hold of some iPads, and looked for an app that would allow us to collect the data, take pictures, keep each record together and export it all at the end.
So after some searching we convinced Jacky to part with £6.99 for this app, FormConnect. After consulting our experts’ group and finding out which would be the most useful catalogue fields to populate, we built a form within the app, and took the iPads around with us. We were able to catalogue much more quickly this way – and beginning just before Christmas, we were able to catalogue most of the 1300 items we collected by March. The app allows data to be exported in a number of formats, including CSV, and after collecting the data, we used Excel to convert the CSV from this app to the Kit-Catalogue import format for upload.
I’ve got an iPad with me, so if anybody would like a demonstration of the app we used, I’d be glad to show you. Also, we can make the form we built available, so if anyone is interested in using FormConnect to collect data, it might help you get started.
There were also some queries that came out of the beta test.
Permalinks – these are permanent URLs pointing directly to the item (which you could copy and paste for a direct link)
Access levels – these are being clarified (Jack to explain?)
Facility names could be clearer – there is more than one ‘Proteomics facility’ – so we need to name these better.
Searching for abbreviations – this is possible if an abbreviation is included somewhere on the item’s page, but if not, it would be up to custodians ultimately to ensure that suitable abbreviations that help searchers locate an item are included somewhere. There is a special ‘Acronym’ field, which custodians can choose to populate.
Thanks to those of you who helped with our first round beta test. If any of you want to try out the test and provide feedback to us, let me know before you leave today.
The second round will focus more specifically on editing items, and administrating departments, so we will be contacting those of you with these responsibilities to ask for your help with the second round.
The other major development to tell you about is….