Upgrading IT governance, policies, procedures, and processes for a Russell Group University
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key fact
91% of students now think that what their university offers in terms of digital services should be as strong as face-to-face lectures and life on the physical campus, according to recent research
Today’s higher education students expect digitally led learning and services to be an inherent part of their university experience. The faculty’s outlook is changing too, with digital playing an increasing role in supporting blended ways of working and teaching. These expectations have only accelerated in the context of the pandemic, rising tuition fees, and the increasing cost of living – all of which motivate students to seek out universities that offer added value through digital.
For universities, digital transformation is crucial to stay competitive. For IT leaders, transforming rapidly to harness the opportunities that digital brings is a pressing operational and commercial challenge. Plus, of course, innovation and modernisation must be supported by robust IT governance to protect users, ensure a seamless digital experience, and underpin stability and security across the technology estate.
Challenge
Our client is a Russell Group university, placing it amongst the leading 24 universities in the UK. In 2023, the university initiated a full technical debt upgrade as part of a major IT transformation. IT leadership recognised the need to review all IT governance, service management and security policies, procedures, and processes as part of the transformation. Key objectives were to simplify and optimise across these areas, as well as to ensure full alignment with regulatory compliance standards, including ISO certifications and ITIL for IT service management.
The legacy documentation was complex, consisting of more than 70 existing artefacts. Plus, the clock was ticking. There was an immoveable deadline to meet requirements for an upcoming audit, as well as a critical need to have everything in place to onboard faculty and students at the beginning of the new academic year.
Solution
Working closely with our client’s senior leadership, executive IT team, and key stakeholders, we hit the ground running on day one of this engagement. We adopted a sprint-based approach, tackling the priorities incrementally and collaboratively with our client’s people.
This enabled us to kick start a continuous improvement cycle of discovery, draft, review, improve and submit across the document library. It equipped us to secure all-important executive and leadership feedback quickly and at every stage, to ensure that the new document repository would effectively support the IT transformation roadmap moving forwards. And it facilitated fast, agile working to ensure that crucial deadlines were met.
We began by tackling IT security, before addressing IT governance and service management. We used our regulatory expertise to ensure that all new frameworks, policies, procedures, and processes comply with ISO and ITIL standards. And we used our extensive IT transformation experience in higher education to align the document repository with best practice parameters, ensuring that the new, simplified framework was fully adoptable and aligned to the university’s evolving technology stack.
Outcome
We completed the engagement and delivered all outputs within the specified deadlines. We consolidated all 70 existing artefacts into a set of 38 optimised new documents, designed to support and protect the university’s technology infrastructure, staff, and end users moving forwards.
Our client now has a future-fit, compliant, and refined IT governance and security framework with clear, actionable policies, procedures, and processes. The university has the ability and resources to easily onboard students, faculty and staff to the new policies, procedures, and processes and how they should be upheld. The simplified framework is aligned to the university’s new IT capability, supporting optimised ways of working with minimal impact on our client’s internal teams.
“It was a pleasure and a privilege to support this Russell Group university with a crucial programme of work to underpin their wider IT transformation initiatives. The project’s success has been attributed to a well-defined approach, collaborative teamwork, and a focus on delivering tangible outcomes aligned with our client’s strategic goals.”
Zubin Khan, Managing Consultant – Mason Advisory
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