Information Services’ Business Investment Programme is a major investment by UWA to improve the standard of our Information Technology infrastructure to be a strategic enabler in support of the university’s goal of becoming a top-50 ranked university in the world by 2050.

The programme consists of nine projects to deliver the following outcomes:

• enhancement of the student experience
• facilitation of research and teaching collaborative activities
• increased throughput of our research data and its security
• increased efficiency and effective IT working practices
• release of IT staff capacity to better support research and teaching developments
• the reduction of risks.

The key objective for the programme for 2011 is to replace our aging core network with state-of-the-art high performance equipment, and to introduce changes to student printing and storage facilities for students to support increased student mobility across faculties with the introduction of New Courses 2012.

The programme was initiated in February 2011 and will implement new services in phases through until 2013. Regular news updates are available on the programme's progress.  The programme is a collaborative effort with all Faculties and Central Administration to ensure that the needs of all areas of the University are identified.

Background

The programme was initiated at the request of the Vice-Chancellor and focuses heavily on addressing the findings and recommendations of:

• an ITS review in August 2010
• a Student IT Needs Study 2010 (commissioned by the UWA Teaching and Learning Committee's E-Learning and Learning Spaces sub-committee)
• two recent audit reports from the Office of the Auditor-General
• an internal audit (Ernst & Young) concerning risk, business continuity and disaster recovery.

A Business Investment Programme all-staff site (accessible with your Pheme login details) has been set up to communicate project information and status updates on a regular basis.