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digitalmasterplan

DIGITALMasterplan

Summer 2019 update

UCL INFORMATION SERVICES DIVISION

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Every member of UCL will have a digital experience which meets all their needs simply and efficiently, enabling UCL’s research, learning and teaching activities to flourish and be world leading in a rapidly evolving digital world.

VISION FOR UCL DIGITAL MASTERPLAN

Cover image: Tony Slade

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Digital technology is essential for world leading research and forms a key ingredient of a modern learning environment. Today’s digitally enabled students expect technology to be used effectively to support their learning. Technology can also be an engine of efficiency, helping to deliver improved financial outcomes. Effective digital infrastructure will also underpin our ability to deliver against UCL 2034.

Whilst the need to invest in our physical estate is widely acknowledged, the need also to invest in our digital estate is perhaps less understood. For UCL to continue to be successful we need a high quality, highly performant digital estate that is updated and refreshed to keep up with the needs of our researchers and students.

Meeting the needs of the UCL community, including staff, students, researchers and visitors, is our number one priority.

This 5-year Digital Masterplan running from August 2016 to July 2021, describes the actions and investments needed to achieve these goals.

Our Vision

Our vision is for very member of UCL to have a digital experience that meets their needs simply and efficiently, enabling UCL’s research, learning and teaching activities to flourish and be world leading in a rapidly evolving digital world.

To enable UCL to realise this vision by 2021, we’ve developed six interrelated objectives:

• Objective 1 Provide a world leading student digital experience to enable teaching and learning to flourish.

• Objective 2 Provide world-leading research IT capabilities to enable UCL’s researchers to find new answers to the hardest questions.

• Objective 3 Provide the universe of UCL knowledge and functionality seamlessly to students and staff through a transformed Digital Experience.

• Objective 4 Manage our activities through functionally rich and easy to use administrative processes and rich management information.

• Objective 5 Provide effective Information Security services that protects UCL but also enables education and research to flourish.

• Objective 6 Provide a strong, stable and sustainable base through transformed IT infrastructure.

In the following pages we provide more information about each of these objectives.

Our visionA bold plan for a successful digital future

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UCL 2034 sets out a vision for UCL to become “A global leader in the integration of research and education, underpinning an inspirational student experience” and the Education Strategy seeks to establish UCL as a blended campus in which technology supports authentic, creative and collaborative learning, enables a wide range of assessment approaches, augments face-to-face contact and encourages productive learning outside of the classroom.

However, over the last few years we have slipped down the National Student Survey league table so not only do we have great aspirations in education but also some catching up to do.

An outstanding student experience, in all its breadth, can only be achieved when we harness the power of technology to foster collaboration and enhance our teaching.

Constrained funding and the need to focus a large proportion of the available funds on teaching space AV and student computers and supporting the use of external spaces has meant progress against Objective 1 has been slower than expected. Some initiatives which should have been at advanced stages by now are either still in development or have yet to start. These include the Open Education Repository (proof of concept delivered but development now paused), universal Lecturecast expansion and opt-out have not yet been implemented and learning analytics has yet to start.

1.1 Getting the basics right – improving the student digital experience

We will prioritise improving the student digital experience, providing a quality technology-rich blended environment for student study. The student digital experience encompasses the physical infrastructure for student study (WiFi, classroom AV, Lecturecast and student computers), virtual learning environments, and the support provided for students’ skills development.

Our aim is to offer high-quality and standardised AV facilities in all of UCL’s 453 teaching spaces1 together with ubiquitous Lecturecast. Standardisation is vital to ensure it is easy for our lecturers to use the in-room technology easily and effectively. Differences in standards between centrally managed and departmentally managed spaces can lead to a disjointed experience for staff and students and needs to be addressed.

The scale of UCL and the increasing sophistication of teaching space technology means we’ll need to invest at least £1.8m each year to maintain a good quality teaching space digital experience. In terms of cost per student this equates to about £50 per student.

Historically our provision of student computers has lagged the Russell Group median and it remains well behind the leading institutions in the sector even though we now have 3,534 student computers across the institution. Our aim is to be within the second quartile of Russell Group institutions for student computer provision. WiFi is also among the basics and it’s where we’ve seen some of the highest increases in demand with annual growth in the number of connected devices exceeding 33%. Just to keep up requires on-going increases in capacity to ensure students and staff receive an excellent experience with sufficient capacity.

In order to maximise the utilisation of learning spaces and student computer spaces, we will seek to use innovative furniture solutions so that desktop computers can be folded away to provide more flexible study space. The number of

Provide a world leading student digital experience

Objective 1

1With a capacity greater than 20, there are 1,041 teaching spaces in total and these smaller spaces would be the next priority.

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laptop loan computers will be increased, especially in Libraries, to enable non-computer equipped learning spaces to be used for computer-based study if needed.

Under the Digital Masterplan we have:

Continued to invest £500k per year in new and improved AV in our teaching spaces across campus. While this has certainly made a big difference, the scale of UCL means there is still work to do.

Added an extra 400 student desktop computers and 200 laptop loan computers over the last two years despite the space challenges; this has made up part of the gap between UCL and the Russell Group median but we still need to strive to exceed the median.

Recently, we’ve introduced new learning space availability technology that will enable students to easily find available study space or student computers using the library website or their mobile device.

Upgraded and enhanced our flagship Moodle and Lecturecast services.

Begun the rollout of a new WiFi system across the Bloomsbury campus to provide much increased capacity, higher speeds and extended coverage.

Under the Digital Masterplan we will:

Provide high quality and standardised AV facilities in all centrally bookable spaces by the end of FY 21/22 and then in all spaces after this.

Expand the Lecturecast service to cover all spaces with a capacity greater than 20 by the end of FY 20/21.

Continue to invest in more student computers so that by the end of FY 20/21 UCL is above the Russell Group median. Where space is available, flexible desktop computers will be provided but in other areas we will seek to increase the number of laptop loans.

Provide students and staff with high-capacity and pervasive WiFi. We will address those areas with no or patchy coverage

and provide substantially increased capacity. For the first time full UCL WiFi will be provided in the spaces between our buildings across Bloomsbury

Provide an integrated student service centre through introducing the Student Engage service for enquiries, case management and personal tutoring. This unified physical and online presence will bring together all the services students use such as Registry, Welfare, Library, IT and Residences, so that any problem can be resolved efficiently and effectively.

1.2 Digital Education – connected learning

Under connected learning we aim to support UCL’s ambitious Connected Curriculum and related initiatives. We’ll establish a distinctive digital education environment to connect students with each other, with staff, with research and with the outside world to support networked, research-based and interdisciplinary education.


Delivered a new blogging service – Reflect – for all students and staff to use.


Review how students want to learn, and how teachers want to teach, and map this against our digital learning environment, including Moodle, to design and environment which will meet institutional needs and aspirations We will need to enhance the VLE and augment it with new communication, collaboration, research and productivity tools to provide a rich environment for connected learning, including a new blogging environment for students.

Enable staff and students to exploit the potential of data about learning through a learning analytics service.

Deliver the personal tutoring elements of the new Student Engage service. This will ensure personal tutors are able to access the data needed to effectively support their tutees, as well as supporting student enquiries and case management.

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1.3 Digital Education – online credit bearing, open and life learning

We will develop our capability to support online credit-bearing and open courses to enable UCL to benefit from the opportunities new technology now offers. Credit-bearing courses include wholly online degree courses such as the recently introduced mba@ucl programme which is delivered in partnership with 2U. Open and short courses include open learning resources that are free to use such as MOOCs, and facilities to support Continuing Professional Development and life-long learning.

Our aim is to develop a reusable digital framework that will simplify our delivery of online courses, whether credit bearing or not. This will enhance the applicant and student experience but also enable new course and programmes to be added swiftly and cost effectively.


Introduced the UCLeXtend platform to support UCL’s Open and Short Courses initiatives.

Begun to develop the capability to work with partners to deliver wholly online degree and other credit bearing courses through the mba@ucl programme. Once this has been developed, UCL will be able more easily to deliver other online programmes through the same or different partners.

Implemented a course administration system to support the delivery of non-credit-bearing short courses.

Supported those who wish to develop and deliver fully online Mooc courses.


Develop our open educational presence, establishing an open educational resources (OER) repository to share and showcase our educational outputs, including student work.

Ensure continued support and development of the UCLeXtend platform, prioritising the needs of the Life Learning initiative, but also seeking to explore and develop UCLeXtend for other externally facing activities.

1.4 Empowerstafftomeetstudent’sdigitalexpectations

The Education Strategy commits us to providing improved tools, support and infrastructure for teaching and support staff to help them to develop their own digital scholarship and guide them in designing curricula for blended learning.


Introduced the E-Learning Baseline policy for 2017/18 and in summer of 2018/19 module leaders will be asked to review their modules for compliance with this in Moodle.

Established the effective and popular Arena Blended Connected (ABC) ‘rapid design’ workshops for designing blended and fully online programmes.


Provide additional advice and support in the use of learning and media technology and by supporting staff to develop their own digital skills.

Support the creation and use of media in teaching.

Equip a small media recording suite and provide support for students and staff to create their own video and audio content.

Assist staff in responding to new (2018) digital accessibility legislation which requires that all our websites, online platforms and online content – including online learning content – is fully accessible; this will involve introduction of automated tools, manual editing of files, and a substantial awareness-raising and training programme.

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With the ambition set out in UCL 2034 for UCL to be a world leading in Research Excellence, UCL needs to provide world-leading research IT services to our researchers as research continues to be increasingly dependent on computational methods and data processing.

It is estimated that over 30% of UCL’s research activity is already dependent on effective research IT facilities, a figure that can only increase. Our past investments in High Performance Computing (HPC) propelled us to the number 1 spot in UK University HPC provision in 2016 and within the top 500 globally, but we have since been overtaken by Cambridge amongst others. To be in the top 500 now, a machine needs to offer at least 1,000 TF1 and this threshold is increasing at 50% per year which shows the need to continue to invest to maintain a competitive HPC service. To be a global player in HPC facilities UCL would need to invest between £2m and £3m each and every year. Even then we would only be at the bottom of the top 500 globally. However, this is only about 0.7% of UCL’s annual research income which is perhaps modest when over 30% of this research depends on such computational facilities.

UCL’s Research Data Storage service has grown to manage over three petabytes of active research data, whilst the launch of the UCL Research Data Repository in June 2019 now provides researchers with a long-term home and publication platform for valuable data outputs once a project has concluded.

Besides HPC and research data storage facilities, researchers are increasingly looking to ISD to provide expert help in research software development. We are currently UK-leading in this area but need to further grow this capability to ensure we remain able to provide researchers with innovative and relevant services to meet their needs.

We must not forget the importance of research IT services to education at UCL. Our aim needs to be to provide the research IT services that are essential to our research-based education.

We aim to maintain, enhance and better integrate infrastructure to offer our researchers improved collaboration tools and innovative services. We will develop services to enable researchers to harness data to generate new information, knowledge and insight, while supporting the institution’s financial sustainability objective.

2.1 Supporting data-driven science & open scienceWith its disciplinary breadth and range of partnerships, UCL researchers work in an increasingly data-rich environment, offering new research horizons. Across the faculties, researchers are facing new methodological and technology challenges in responding to these opportunities. The desire to deliver broader societal benefits from researchers’ outputs have contributed to the rise of the ‘Open Science’ agenda, championed by the European Commission, supported by UK funders, and now a theme within UCL’s Research Strategy.

Under the Digital Masterplan we have:Worked with the UCL Centre for Data Science to develop a Data Science consultant role, based on our mature Research Software Development function.

Introduced the UCL Research Data Repository, providing a publication platform for research data. It allows data to be cited, and citations to be counted, in the same manner as more traditional research outputs. It also enables researchers to discover, reuse, and build upon data generated by others.

Under the Digital Masterplan we will:Support our researchers in deriving maximum value from UCL’s wealth of research data assets by investing in tools for data ‘search and discover’, big-data visualisation, manipulation and analysis as well as large-scale managed storage.

Expand our new data-science consultancy service, alongside other specialist research software development provision (such as medical health informatics; image processing & analysis). This will provide UCL with an efficient means through which researchers are able to fully exploit the data landscape. This includes supporting UCL’s new AI Network.

Continue to support UCL’s leadership of Open Access and place UCL at the forefront of Open Science – a key Horizon2020 theme. At the heart of the vision is UCL’s commitment to Open Science providing transparency of research outputs and providing high levels of reproducibility through easy access to published papers, supporting datasets and the software used in relevant analysis.

Enrich metadata associated with research data to enable better re-use and improve research reproducibility.

Provide world-leading research IT capabilities

Objective 2

1TF = Teraflop (1 trillion floating point operations per second)

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2.2 Creating and maintaining world-leading computational and data storage facilities

We need to ensure our High-Performance Computing (HPC) and research data storage facilities are kept up to date, grown in-line with UCL’s needs and regularly refreshed to continue to meet researcher’s needs. Investment cannot one-off and periodic, continuous investment is needed to ensure UCL is able to exploit new technologies as they emerge but also increase capacity to meet researcher’s needs and to replace obsolete technology. This will ensure UCL researchers have access to the right facilities at the right time to support their world leading research and reduce ‘time-to-science’, while also ensuring that unit operating costs are continually driven down.

As part of this, ISD will continue to meld together services at the national, regional and discipline specific level as well as new commercial cloud offerings to provide an easy to use one-stop shop for researchers. This will ensure UCL researchers have access to the right platform at the right time. Locally we provide a mix of services for different workloads (for example we provide the Myriad service to focus on data intensive workloads, and the Grace facility for traditional massively parallel HPC).

Researchers will be able to draw on the open standards we will continue to adopt and promote, and the interfaces we will develop, to facilitate the seamless integration of UCL’s research IT facilities and ready access to external resources.


Provided large increases in HPC capacity with the extension of the Grace HPC platform (to 10,944 cores, 341TF) and the EPSRC funded Tier 22 collaborative materials research facility (17,240 cores, 523TF) that is hosted by UCL.

Our success at delivering Tier 2 services has enhanced our reputation as a national centre of HPC excellence.

Further expanded our research software development group and developed a scalable model of delivery aimed at meeting the large amount of currently unmet demand in an agile responsive manner. The group has grown from 3 FTE in 2013, through 8 FTE in 2016, to 16 FTE at the time of writing, with additional recruitment continuing as demand continues to outstrip supply. Most posts are funded directly through research grants.

Trebled the amount of research data storage available to approximately 3PB3 and adopted an expand-on-demand model for the future.

Launched the UCL Research Data Repository, enabling the long-term storage and curation of research data and compliance with funder policies regarding data retention and access. Over time this will be extended to cover all data types including genomic and imaging data.


Continue to invest in HPC and data storage to ensure we maintain facilities at the highest level. This includes significant investment in the ‘Peta-scale’ replacement of Grace, and the high-throughput platform, Myriad.

Develop the second-generation Data Safe Haven to support processing and research using highly sensitive data in a secure manner.

Continue to develop UCL’s as a partner of choice for research funders in the delivery of large-scale collaborative services such as the current Thomas tier 2 facility at UCL.

Through alignment with the new eResearch domain we will ensure that we are poised to absorb new equipment funding and underpin strategic initiatives such as the Alan Turing Institute.

Use data from the new pre-award grant system (see below) to implement robust capacity planning for our infrastructure-based services so that new capacity is available to researchers when they need it.

2Tier 2: UK regional facilities 3PB = Petabyte, 1,024 Terabytes or about 1,000,000 Gigabytes

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2.3 Promoting world-class research through IT education

UCL 2034 seeks to integrate research and education to underpin an outstanding student experience and provide our students with the skills they need to be the leaders of the future. Technology has a key role in enabling this.


Collaborated with Digital Education to develop self-directed, online versions of our most popular Research IT training courses, to be made available through Moodle.


Partner with the eResearch domain, UCL’s Centres for Doctoral Training, other interested parties within UCL, and colleagues in other London institutions (eg QMUL) to develop a comprehensive shared curriculum in computational and data-intensive research methods, where our students benefit from hands-on experience.

Creating a London hub for innovation in digitally based research, seeking to make UCL the University of choice for early career researchers focused on this growing area. This includes leading-edge collaboration with UCL’s Computer Science department.

Create ‘Teaching and Training areas’ for our HPC and research data storage platforms.

2.4 Managing research from Opportunity to Impact

At UCL, our research activity is worth almost £500m per year but we have few tools to effectively manage such a large endeavour. We need easy to use tools and applications for key research management activities including grant management. These tools need to link together over the whole research lifecycle from opportunity to impact to provide the information needed to manage such a large research enterprise:

“Our aspiration is to have agile processes that are simple to use and deliver the right results first time; that are efficient and effective; and that limit the burdens of administration on our staff. In a large, complex, devolved institution with many stakeholders, this is a challenging set of aspirations”


Used the Worktribe system to develop the new Research Grant Costing system. Initially this replaced the old PFact (Project Financial Appraisal and Costing Tool) system to provide a modern web based grant costing tool.

Extended Worktribe to include post-award functionality, contract management and developed an interface into MyFinance.

Provided rich management data to the Data and Insight programme to provide new research planning and forecasting tools. These surface research grant information to answer questions such as ‘What are the trends for submitted grant volumes and budgets over time?’ across UCL.


Develop a target architecture model for the research applications domain to underpin a roadmap for the digitisation of research management process that integrates and simplifies to deliver an excellent researcher experience.

Further develop tools and reports to support UCL’s REF2020 and future REF submissions. This will include a suite of applications to capture and showcase the diversity and impact of UCL’s research excellence

Provide easier methods for data integration e.g. to meet funding bodies reporting requirements and applications process by improving our interoperability with these systems i.e. research-fish and JES.

Work with senior stakeholders across UCL to ensure we get the maximum value from existing suppliers, eg. Worktribe modules to support Innovation and Enterprise.

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At a time when the world is becoming increasingly dependent on digital services, the digital experience at UCL remains fragmented and frustrating. This is reflected in the recent National Student Survey and Student Barometer results.

Our staff struggle with fractured and disjointed processes that hinder their effectiveness and sap their time. In effect our staff and students are acting as the digital glue for processes and services which should have been digitally joined in the first place.

Our students have been digitally connected almost from infancy and alongside our staff now represent a significant group of connected consumers whose reliance on technology and expectations are perhaps greater than we appreciate.

This digital fragmentation cannot be repaired within the functional or departmental silos. A cross-cutting institution-wide programme of digital transformation is needed to meet the needs of applicants, current students and staff.

In short, we need to deliver high quality digitally-enabled and joined up services and processes that ‘just work’ for the organisation and this Digital Masterplan proposes addressing this through three key initiatives. These will be led by a broad group of senior academic staff, student representatives and professional services staff to ensure it is user-focused and truly institution wide.

By putting users first and understanding regular information and task requirements we will be able to streamline user journeys, improve structure, improve content and optimise the user experience.

3.1 Digital by default

A key objective of TOPS1 is to transform service delivery at UCL, transforming it so that staff and students are able to complete tasks easily and quickly using a device of their choice and from a location and at a time of their choosing. Many administrative services are currently fragmented across several departments and even now we don’t have a single integrated service desk for staff or for students. This fragmented service delivery harms the staff and student experience. Under TOPS, services are being integrated and a single unified service desk is being developed which will no doubt improve service delivery but there is also an opportunity to go direct to digital for many services. This would leap frog a generation of technology to reduce our costs and make those services effortless for staff and students. In a certain sense, the need for a service desk can be seen as a failure of service delivery in a digitally enabled organisation. Having to contact a service desk to resolve an issue is time consuming for the user and expensive for the organisation. High quality service delivery should avoid the need for most transactional service desk interactions, leaving those teams to focus on more value added services centred around advice.

Under the Masterplan we will implement the technology and processes that enable services to move directly to digital swiftly. A key element of this will be the new Digital Services Enablement (DSE) platform which is illustrated in the diagram (figure 1).

Over time, the Digital Services Enablement platform will replace current self service facilities, that often provide limited functionality, are disjointed and clunky. Once implementation of the new platform is complete, the majority of users across the organisation will only ever access the Digital Services Enablement platform for online services, never having to touch the backend source system such as MyFinance and Portico.

Transform the digital experience of UCL’s staff and students

Objective 3

1TOPS – Transforming our Professional Services programme aimed at improving service quality, providing better career paths for our professional services staff and increasing efficiency.

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Functional specialists (such as HR professionals and Finance professionals) will continue to use the underlying core system to gain access the full range of functionality offered by those core systems but for all other users (most staff, most managers and all students) their needs will be met by the Digital Services Enablement platform.


Delivered a new API platform that is a critical enabler for the proposed digital enablement. This will replace the current spaghetti of inter-connects between UCL’s system with a new technology that simplifies this and enables re-usability.


Implement the new Digital Services Enablement platform by the end of 2019 and deliver demonstrator apps early in 2020.

Digitally enable the improvements identified through the TOPS transformers.

Over time migrate all existing self-service facilities to the new DSE platform.

True seamless cross functional self-service. DSE platform joins up often clunky core system behind the scenes

Service layer covers all core systems

Finance systemHR system Portico systemEstates system

No frustration. Self-serviceis easy touse acrossall devices

1No confusion.One place for staff (and students) togo to for self-service

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Self-service AppsWorkflow, Orchestration and Robotic Process Automation

Integration and APIsDigital Services Enable (DSE) platform that’s a delight to use

Figure 1

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3.2 World class external web presence to market ourselves and attract the best students

As part of the Digital Masterplan we will ensure content is easily accessible and establish institution wide standards. We will ensure high quality delivery to the user’s device of choice.


Implemented the new Drupal content management system and migrated the vast majority of required websites.

Streamlined UCL’s digital estate by archiving over 300 sites which are no longer required.

Increased the productivity of UCL staff with web content responsibilities and the productivity of ISD staff for rapid development of UCL websites.

Improved the performance of UCL websites both for the audience and for editors, and increased support for and adoption of a stable, resilient content management platform.

Provided an integrated and high-quality web presence that overcomes the previous fragmented offering. This will improve engagement with prospective students throughout their journey from enquiry to application, to offer and finally to course enrolment.


Decommission the previous Silva web content management system.

Revitalise and refresh UCL’s student and staff mobile platform known as UCL Go.

Improve how we market our range of programmes, both degree-based and those linked to Life Learning using digital channels.

Respond to the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations (2018) which require that all web content is fully accessible.

3.3 An integrated internal UCL Intranet

An Intranet is a website used within an organisation to enable staff to easily access the information, guidance and advice they need. At UCL historically we have not had an Intranet, just an outward facing Internet website that has also been used by staff as a proxy for an Intranet. Going forward we’ll develop a comprehensive Intranet starting with the integration of the existing Professional Services websites into an integrated professional services website. This will be the one-stop shop for information about administrative services, such as finance and HR, at UCL.

The intranet approach will be task-based and remove the need to understand the structure and responsibilities of PS organisations.


Launched a preview or “Beta” intranet allowing staff to try and comment on around 70 common tasks.


Refine the information architecture of the intranet based on user and stakeholder feedback.

Work with CAM to develop a new communications model to reduce reliance on internal email.

Provide authentication controls to restrict access to relevant content as appropriate.

Use expert content specialists to help PS staff develop and enhance the range of available tasks.

Develop a robust governance framework for the future maintenance and development of the intranet.

Develop the intranet roadmap to align with and take advantage of digital services.

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Effective and efficient core administrative systems are essential for our key operational and administrative processes at UCL. Many of our existing systems are old and poorly integrated which imposes a major strain on the organisation, undermining the student experience and soaking up too much of the organisation’s capacity with broken and labour intensive processes. We need to move to modern and well integrated core systems that protect the integrity of our data since this is vital for the automation of processes and the digitisation of services.

Alongside improving our core systems estate, we will build on the successful initial release of UCL’s new management information platform that will enable a more evidence led approach to decision making.

4.1 Transform administrative systems, processes and experience

Historically, our core administrative systems have had little investment in comparison to the scale of the organisation, and have become a major drain on effort and harmed our user’s experience. For instance, Portico, out student administrative platform, needs to be transformed to provide UCL with the efficient and effective student administrative processes that will underpin an excellent student experience and increase efficiency. Increased automation and optimisation of processes will enable us to squeeze even more utilisation out of our constrained teaching spaces and, importantly, we will be able to respond to changing circumstances in an agile manner.

As with other systems, our administrative applications need to be accessible to all our users and support our equality and diversity objectives.


Delivered the upgrade to MyFinance to place it on the latest platform in readiness for the new MyHR system.

Delivered the CMIS Go service bringing together the centrally and departmentally managed spaces into a single booking system.

Delivered the Occupancy sensing system which in conjunction with the Data and Insight service has enabled a much better understanding of how we use our teaching and student space.

Completed phase two of the Academic model project which has transformed module and programme data quality in the system which has enabled automated progression and other processing to be used for the first time. In FY 18/19, phase three is delivering a huge step forward in the automation of reports for examination boards and will establish Portico as the single source of truth for the module catalogue.


Complete the implementation of the new MyHR system. Development is now well progressed but timescales have been extended several times.

We will further invest in our student information system to transform Portico to meet the needs of the university, both for admissions, student records and to introduce flexibility to accommodate online delivery of courses with multiple entry points during the year. This will enable UCL to continue to meet the challenge of increasing numbers of student applications and the additional compliance requirements coming from the Office for Students.

Implement new systems to support the activities of Innovation and Enterprise including a new conflicts of interest application.

In conjunction with the TOPS programme, to transform Estates services, processes through new systems that digitally enable Estates functions and provide staff and students with easy to use and effective services.

Introduce a new project portfolio management tool to enable to project management offices to manage their project portfolios in a standardised way and facilitate consolidated reporting.

Easy to use administrative processes and rich management information

Objective 4

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4.2. Digitally enable the PS Hub including thecreationofaunifiedservicedeskforprofessional services

Under the Digital Masterplan, we will seek to support the development of the PS Hub through the effective use of digital technologies. As part of this a unified Professional Services service desk is being created to provide a single point of contact for staff and students. The existing RemedyForce service management tool will be further developed to support the Hub and innovative technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are being introduced to increase automation and efficiency. Other technologies such as the new Digital Services Enablement platform will be used to provide fully automated digital services. These will increase the quality of services, reduce cost and make them available anytime on any device.


Brought together and integrated the IoE, Finance Systems and HR Systems IT service desks into a single IT service desk.

Supported the creation of the new Professional Services Hub and migrated the IT Service Desk to the Hub to begin realising the vision of a single unified service desk

Supported the deployment of RPA to support automation of previously manually processes.

Developed the RemedyForce software which underpins our service desk operations to provide a rich self-service portal, user satisfaction surveys and an integrated service catalogue.


Further develop the RemedyForce application to support the development of the unified service desk within the Hub

Continue the expansion of RPA to other currently manual processes.

Deploy the new Digital Services Platform to simplify and automate currently manual processes through digital channels.

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4.3 Arming decision-makers with information and insight

Effective management Information will be key to effective management of the institution going forward and essential for the evidence led and data informed decision making that we aspire to. Timely access to information will provide early warning of issues and enable early corrective action to be taken rather than it becoming a surprise later.

For the user, a range of advanced analytics and business intelligence capabilities will provide on-line access to standard reports as well as easy access to ad-hoc reporting and drill down. Batch reports will be run overnight to provide standard reports of record though a portal and via email.

Integrated management information will also help with the provision of an ‘information asset register for personal data‘ for GDPR compliance.


Developed the initial release of the new management information platform for UCL underpinned by a new Integrated Data-Warehouse (IDW) and using the industry leading Tableau visualisation tool to present data effectively to users.

Delivered visualisations and insights for three data sets in the new warehouse: Worktribe pre award grants, Worktribe research contracts and Admissions including UG, PG, ITE.

Delivered visualisations and insights for four other datasets within Tableau: UG award and progression, PG award and progression, NSS response rates and REF2014.


Develop the new data warehouse to provide a true enterprise-wide near real-time management information facility that joins up data from a wide range of functional areas including HR, Finance, Student Information, Estates and Research to provide rich insights through advanced analytics and business intelligence technologies. This will provide the information needed for informed and insightful decisions about the on-going management of the organisation.

Broaden the system to introduce new datasets including publicly available competitor information and research council awards. This would enable competitor information to be manipulated using business intelligence tools to support benchmarking of key activities.

Extend the system to provide the information necessary to support innovation and enterprise activities at UCL including the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF).

Seek to automate many aspects of the HESA return using the new IDW and so reduce the significant manual effort that is required each year to prepare the return.

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Effective Information Security is an increasingly critical consideration for UCL given the potential impact of a security breach on our reputation and our research and education activities. We need to increase our investment and focus in this area to ensure our staff and students are aware of information best practices and we implement technology to prevent and detect attacks.

Information security need to be an integral part of our technology design process to ensure security is a core consideration of any technology based project whether that’s for a new administrative application, infrastructure technology or other system.

Besides providing effective information security technology, we also need ensure our students and staff are fully equipped to face an ever-growing array of threats in a connected world across their personal as well as professional lives. They have a central role to play in ensuring themselves and UCL are effectively protected.

5.1. Increasing awareness of information security matters and compliance with policies

Awareness and education of staff and students are key elements of an effective information security strategy; technology will never be sufficient on its own. With effective awareness and education, the technology needed for effective information security can be simpler and more flexible. This is important for a diverse research environment such as UCL where researchers and academics need the freedom and agility to adapt their approach to respond to new research challenges quickly.


Established a comprehensive information risk management framework to ensure UCL’s information assets are effectively managed.

Provided widespread training on information security good practice including embedding this in the introductory processes.


Implement a comprehensive training programme with tailored training for different communities. For instance, professional services staff, researchers not dealing with sensitive data and those that need to process such data.

Some training will be made mandatory through the new MyHR Online Learning Facility, including refresher training annually for all staff.

The Information Security website will be refreshed and continually updated with guidance, training and policy information.

Provide effective Information Security services that protects UCL but also enables education and research to flourish

Objective 5

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5.2. Implementation of technology solutions to protect UCL

Alongside a comprehensive training and awareness programme, UCL also has a comprehensive information security technology investment programme to implement technology solutions aimed at preventing attacks but also detecting attacks when they occur and mitigating any impact.

Unfortunately, details of the technologies already implemented or those planned cannot be provided in an open document such as this.

5.3. Provision of platforms for the secure processing of sensitive research data

UCL processes increasing amounts of sensitive data including patient identifiable medical data. Processing of this data is essential for the research we undertake but it must be processed in a secure manner. To demonstrate this, our funders are increasingly seeking compliance with external security standards such as Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001 and the NHS DSP toolkit.

About five years ago UCL developed the first generation Data Safe Haven for the processing of sensitive medical data in a way that’s compliant with the highest security standard, ISO 27001. This facility was a first within UK HE and is now used by over 600 researchers across UCL. The most recent ISO 27001 audit in early 2019 was highly complementary about the security regime implemented for the Data Safe Haven.

The existing Data Safe Haven is now reaching end of life and there is also a need for new processing capabilities that cannot be provided by the existing facility. Therefore, a second generation facility will be implemented and again this will be accredited to the most stringent information security standards.


Implemented the first generation Data Safe Haven to provide a secure facility for the processing of sensitive data to ISO 27001 standards.


Implement the first phase of the second generation Data Safe Haven by the end of FY 19/20.

5.4. Proactive security validation and compliance with security standards

Alongside training and investment in defensive information security technologies, we will also proactively probe our defences to identify any vulnerabilities that may be exploited by attackers.

Our funders, especially government related, are also seeking compliance with security standards such as Cyber Essential even for research that does not involve sensitive data. Therefore, we will seek UCL wide accreditation against this and other necessary standards.

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IT infrastructure includes datacentres, networks, servers, storage, PCs and printing. Without such infrastructure the university could not operate and is also an important enabler of UCL 2034.

Our digital infrastructure is challenged by historic under investment and by the increased load that comes from the continued growth in the institution. This growth is exemplified by the use of our WiFi network in the central campus area which is up from 4,000 concurrent devices in 2011 to a new record high of over 30,500 in October 2018. This represents a 33% compound annual growth rate over those 7 years.

Standardisation, simplification and automation need to be key mantras for effective and efficient infrastructure. Without these our infrastructure become an increasing burden on the organisation with low reliability and maintenance challenges. Substantial investment will be needed to bring our infrastructure up to a modern standard but even when this is complete, we’ll need to continue to invest to avoid falling back.

Historically provision of infrastructure and other elements of IT has been federated with services provided by individual departments as well as the centre. This has led to patchy coverage as some departments have invested but others not. The customer experience is often not seamless due to different approaches and standards. Going forward the core IT infrastructure across UCL needs to be standardised with ubiquitous and high-quality services available for all.

UCL’s activities are already dispersed over a number of sites. We have a sizeable presence at the Olympic Park and this will increase substantially as UCL East is developed. Besides the Olympic Park UCL has many remote sites including the Royal Free, Whittington, Stanmore, Clare Hall, Chalfont St Peters, Dorking and more recently Canary Wharf. As we move forward, it will be important to ensure that our customers enjoy the same high-quality services irrespective of location and this will make reliability more important and mean more remote diagnosis and management capabilities.

Transformed IT infrastructure Objective 6

6.1 High quality desktop and print servicesWe will put the customer experience centre stage as we develop the next generation of our desktop@ucl and print@ucl services. Economies of scale, self-help and self-heal principles will be used to ensure the central UCL proposition is a competitive and preferred solution.

We will deliver an infrastructure that enables our users to enjoy the freedom they experience in everyday life with their own device while at UCL. Staff and students will be able to use their own devices to make routine tasks simpler and quicker. This will extend to payments, printing and location based services.


Rolled out a new Windows 10 version of the staff and student desktop. Besides offering the latest Windows technology, this new version has been streamlined to make it faster, more reliable and more functional. A good example of continuous service improvement.

Deployed the first release of our new managed Mac service for student clusters. This ensures the machines have up to date software packages and security protection.

Procured the second generation print@ucl service with lower costs and increased functionality.


Seek to extend the availability of the new print@ucl services across the whole of UCL.

Introduce better support for Linux desktops, as well as further extend the managed Mac service.

Continue to develop and enhance the desktop systems to ensure staff and students continue to have a highly performant and functional desktop system that leverages the latest technologies.

Provide better facilities for safe and secure file sharing for UCL people and third parties.

Provide integrated communication and collaboration (ICC) services, to replace our aged telephony systems with technology based around Microsoft Teams. This will provide an integrated environment that provides telephony services, collaboration and video conferencing facilities all from a user’s desktop or mobile device.

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6.2 Provideeffectiveplatformtechnologies

An historic ‘best of breed’ approach to application selection and the lack of a strategic approach to application integration have left UCL with many silo’d applications that don’t provide the institution with the most effective overall application suite. These many applications share information through interfaces of spaghetti like complexity that increase support costs and inhibit agility.

Going forward we will seek to reduce this complexity by taking a more strategic approach to application selection. Where possible we will reuse existing applications to meet new needs. We will implement an integration platform to minimise the number and complexity of interfaces between applications. This will enhance our ability to reuse existing interfaces for new purposes and provide swifter implementation timescales.


Implemented a new Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) tool to standardise and simplify how we move large volumes of data between applications.

Implemented a new Application Programming Interface (API) platform to provide a standardised and easy to use way for applications to talk to each other to process transactions.


Develop the new API platform to become the only way IT applications communicate with each other for transactional purposes. The interfaces developed through this platform will be reusable which will reduce complexity but also increase agility and shorten implementation timeframes.

6.3 Simplifying, standardising and automating through advanced technology

Through the implementation of modern advanced technology, we will address the fragility and capacity constraints in the current estate, improve customer service, increase agility and reduce unit costs.


Established a range of ‘dev-ops’ tools which allow development and support teams to manage infrastructure easily, without the need for manual intervention.

Simplified and standardised the IT operations core workflows through a process of business process re-engineering.

Doubled the usage of service desk self-service forms, this reduces customer request cycle times by ensuring the right information is collected from the start and it also potentially enables full automation of the request.


Roll-out the ‘dev-ops’ approach to speed up ISD’s delivery cycle times. This also allow integrations of UCL’s own service delivery capabilities with those of external cloud vendors. This can provide additional scale to match immediate/short-term needs.

Introduce a new identity management system to replace existing complex and fragile systems that have been developed piece-meal over many years. This will underpin the TOPS Digital Services Enablement initiative and is needed for GDPR compliance.

We will adopt new tools and platforms to automate repetitive tasks, free up staff time for more value adding activities.

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6.4 Modern and reliable datacentres, networks, compute and storage

Our new Bloomsbury datacentre has been completed and this together with our existing off-site datacentre delivers our strategy of two modern geographically separate datacentres that provide high levels of resilience and effective disaster recovery capability coupled with high levels of efficiency and flexibility. This underpins the full range of UCL services including offerings for departmental needs. The introduction of these two new datacentres will remove the need for local facilities within individual departments. We need to increasingly reach out to departments to encourage their use of the data centre instead of local machine rooms, freeing up space on campus.

We will continue to simplify our data network wherever possible.


Refreshed our compute and storage infrastructure as part of the move to the new datacentres and we will need to build on this to increase the agility of these services.

Designed and developed a hybrid-cloud platform which will minimise labour intensive business as usual activities and enable ISD to maximise the return on investment in infrastructure transformation programmes.

Network capacity has been increased to continue to meet research and student needs.


Roll-out the automated hybrid-cloud platform, reducing the need for mundane tasks and freeing up time for higher value work.

A new software defined networking system will be implemented to increase reliability, enhance our agility and reduce the support burden

A new high capacity WiFi system will be introduced to provide greater capacity and improved features such as full UCL WiFi coverage between UCL buildings around Bloomsbury

The UCL core network will be replaced with next generation technology to provide the capacity our researchers will need going forward

Adopt a more sustainable approach to maintain the broad data network across UCL through timely replacement of equipment as it reaches end of life.

6.5 Decommissioning

All organisations accumulate old technology as their need for new and improved technology adds new systems. Many of these new systems partially but not completely replace existing services meaning both the old and new need to be supported. If left unchecked, this continually increasing complexity leads to ever higher IT costs that become unaffordable. To be sustainable, an organisation must have a proactive programme to remove old technologies and reduce complexity to make way for the new systems and services the organisation requires.

Within the HS2 funded datacentre migration programme, good progress on decommissioning has been made but this will be a continuing need. To address this, we will fund the on-going decommissioning programme by allocating 5% of the Digital Investment fund to decommissioning each year.

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