The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) recently announced how, by bringing the leadership from across JISC into a more cohesive structure supported and enabled by the creation of a legal entity, it will reshape itself for the future.
The changes are designed to provide a firm footing for the organisation as it responds to the recommendations made in the Wilson Review in JISC which was published in February 2011. The Review was commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in response to the current economic environment looking at the value of JISC.
One of the first changes will see JISC become a company limited by guarantee on August 1, 2012 managing the JISC offering across its products and services. The new company’s primary focus will be on three distinct areas for UK education and research. These include: infrastructure services: networks, access management, cloud services; data and content services: procurement, data hosting, data management and interoperability; and JISC Futures/Solution Services: focussed on supporting education, students, research, and the running of institutions as businesses.
JISC will be set up initially as a holding (parent) company and following this, step by step, the current elements of JISC will be brought into this new company structure.
