Periodically UCISA compiles a list of ‘top concerns’ from IT directors in the HE sector. Previous years are available on the UCISA website, and so are the results of the 2007 survey.
Interestingly in terms of most resource first of all it’s ‘business systems’ at the top, but ‘e-learning’ is number 2 – i find this quite suprising. Also quite suprising is that ‘web systems’ is low in the resource list (number 10). However, this may be misleading, as it covers a wide area – and much of e-learning may be ‘web systems’…
Probably the most interesting thing is the emergence of ‘green computing’ as a concern – which has never been raised before, but clearly topical (and see notes on the data storage talk). There is a session dedicated to green computing later in the conference.
I would guess that ‘e-learning’ is high on the list of ‘top concerns’ because of the Blackboard patent issue, which CIOs will be aware of as a significant threat, whether they use Blackboard (aiming for monopoly) or another solution (at risk of litigation).
Possibly – but in fact e-learning was at number 2 in a list of how resource was currently spent – which means UK HE IT directors (apologies for the string of 2 letter acronyms) feel they are spending staff time and money on e-learning – second only to business systems. This seems quite suprising, although may be skewed due to the injection of e-learning money from HEFCE in the last 2 years.