and supporting data now being made available in digital or computerised form’.
20
This project, known as
the UK Research Data Service (UKRDS), has now been developed beyond the interim planning phase which was completed in June 2010. The report produced following completion of the planning phase recommended that the project should proceed and ‘lead to the establishment of long-term co-ordinated support for the rollout and maintenance of a nationally coherent approach to research data management at UK Higher Education and Research Institutions.’ It also noted that the cost of the threeyear development phase will come to only £9 million, which compares with $100 million over five years for the National Science Foundation’s Datanet initiative in the US, and A$78 million over three years for the Australian National Data Service. The UKRDS is expected to generate a return on investment through its facilitation of shared services, as well as through storage efficiencies and new research made possible by new opportunities for the recombination of data. The top-down drive to improve shared services in UK HE has had some effect, and HEFCE funding for 2010/11 included £20 million for the further development of shared services in the sector.
21
However, it
is important to note that the chief driver of shared services is bottom-up, deriving from the desire of individual institutions to improve the quality of their services, as noted by the JISC in their September 2008 report. The JISC surveyed institutions to assess the relative importance of drivers towards shared services and found that the two most important were ‘continuity and resilience’ of service and quality of service, followed by cost savings and ‘releasing staff for more customer facing activities.’
22
This has led
to a number of collaborative arrangements in service provision, ranging from local collaboration between individual institutions to the formation of national shared service organisations. Examples of bottom-up cooperation include The Bloomsbury Consortium (TBC), a voluntary, collaborative arrangement in academic and administrative matters between specialist colleges of London University (namely Birkbeck, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Institute of Education, the School of Pharmacy, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine and the Royal Veterinary College).
23
The consortium was formed in 2004 and has since embarked upon a number of
collaborative initiatives, including the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE). This involves the shared 24
use of an online learning platform known as ‘Blackboard’,
which allows students to access course
materials and submit assessments via the internet, and which is in widespread use in UK universities. The BLE represents the first time that Blackboard has been implemented on a cross-institutional basis in
20
UK Research Data Service, ‘Proposal and Business Plan for the Initial Pathfinder Development Phase’, May 2010 21 HEFCE News, 24 June 2010, available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2010/umf.htm. Accessed 12/09/10 22 Shared Services in the Higher Education Sector, Report for HEFCE by KPMG, July 2006, available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2006/rd15_06/rd15_06.pdf. Accessed 15/09/10 23 ‘The Bloomsbury Colleges Report’, 2009, available at http://www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/news/tbcreport. Accessed 07/08/10 24 See www.blackboard.com for more information
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