Throughout this week London’s technology communities will come together to discuss, announce and consider the role of technology in the nation’s capital at London Tech Week. Driving a great deal of change and wider adoption of data are the first Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for London, Theo Blackwell and CIO for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and chair of the London CIO Council Stephen Docherty. The duo tell the Horizon CIO Podcast how CIOs in the public sector as well as their peers in startup and service providers are reshaping the city.

“It has three main functions, in 2015 the tech community got together, so people from progressive digital leaders from technology and public services to put forward the idea that London suffered from a collaboration deficit,” Blackwell says of why Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has a business technology leader on his team at City Hall by the side of the Thames.

“We had all these moving parts, 32 boroughs, NHS trusts, schools, higher and further education and yet together we were less than the sum of our moving parts. Although London does great things and is a hotbed for innovation. The innovation that happens has somehow clouded the sense that we could move to the next level,” Blackwell says.  In the 2016 London Mayoral elections the technology community clamoured for candidates to appoint a city CDO as already existed in New York.

“My role is focused on public service transformation and making us more open to the innovation in the technology community and our major institutions, so it has three main functions: one is to promote leadership in the city, secondly to create an institution that enhances collaboration within all our moving parts and thirdly to really push forward the boundaries of public service innovation and to help us explain our needs and citizen needs in a way that the tech sector can fully grasp,” the CDO says.

The role is more than just making public sector technology better, as CDO Blackwell is also ensuring that technology plays a role in the economic growth of London.

“I remember sitting in Kings Cross and sitting in those meetings deciding what was going to happen here and we have seen a wonderful transformation and it is a major tech hub in its own right,” Blackwell, a former cabinet member in the London Borough of Camden says.

“Fundamentally my role is to ensure that organic growth is fully supported in connectivity, we are open for talent, how the public sector is responsive to that opportunity that is happening around it.

“We are two-thirds of the way through a big listening tour and we are bringing that together as a list of missions for London to solve the collaboration deficit.

“The NHS is a key part of us being a smart city. Unlike other cities in the world, our closeness to the NHS, the learnings that go on within it, the data that it has, it is fundamental to a vision of London as a smart city,” Blackwell says of his working relationship with Docherty and his organisations.

NHS CIO Docherty adds: “What is really heartening, since I became the chair of the London CIO Council, the collaboration is there, across CIOs, from a health perspective, London is split into five sustainability partnerships, that is bringing people in your patch like the south east or the south west and working with your commissioning groups, GP practices and for social care the local authorities.”

The collaboration, Docherty explains is making sure that funds available for public sector transformation don’t end up in duplication projects across neighbouring NHS trusts or local authorities.

“We are all trying to achieve the same outcomes, we potentially have five lots of activity trying to achieve the same outcome, which is not efficient so we have formed the London Digital Board and the idea behind that is to oversee that activity and make sure that you have senior representation across the patch,” Docherty says of how the city is working towards increased coordination.

Devolved power

“This is really really interesting time for digital transformation of public services, we have had devolution of local authorities,” Blackwell says. The capital and its mayor have power over further education, health, police and transport, more than in any other devolved institution.

“So we have a moment where we have technological convergence, more power to local and democratic authorities and a thirst for reform. And I think crucially you have got citizen expectation rising, as people get more comfortable with technology in their daily lives, in their homes and at work, which means there is a moment for reform which has not existed in this combined way for some time,” Blackwell says of the opportunity.

Docherty (left) and Blackwell are also taking some innovation inspiration from other leading cities in the UK and highlight the high level of collaboration that exists in Manchester between local government and the NHS, something Rachel Dunscombe, who spoke on the Horizon CIO Podcast described last year as part of her focus on using local providers to deliver technology change and improve the local economy. The London duo also cite Scotland and Leeds, where in latter another former speaker on the Horizon CIO Podcast Richard Corbridge is working closely with Dylan Roberts of Leeds City Council.

“The first step that we will take is to take a step back,” Blackwell says.  “Too much of the debate around tech is focused on AI, robots, drones and smart mobility, there is great innovation and we are testing these in London. But what lies behind innovation is data. And so what we need to do first is look at the fundamentals, so we need a better way of working collaboratively, so we are setting up the London Office for Technology and Innovation that will bring leading public service organisations together.

“We want to reboot London’s approach to sharing data, improving data access agreements with local councils and the NHS and we want a new deal for public data. That involves the mayor speaking about the civic importance of p...

Old fashioned processes and approaches to human resources are hampering organisations from employing the technologists they need to become relevant digital businesses in 2018. Business technology leaders have discussed the ‘skills gap’ for the last five years, although there is a shortage of skills, recruitment and employment practices are exacerbating the issue.

“We need to see companies really begin to invest in people and to put a stop to this reactive culture that will be self perpetuating, because if you don’t support the juniors where are you going to find the seniors of tomorrow?” Patrick Crompton, CEO and co-founder of eSynergy Solutions tells the Horizon CIO Podcast.  Crompton and his organisation began as a “traditional recruitment company” but today is “delivering software outcomes through our communities”. Customers include CIOs at major government departments like HMRC, traditional bank HSBC and financial services challengers Nutmeg.

“It would be almost impossible to deny that there is a skills gap. There is a huge skills gap, but there is also a challenge in the approach for CIOs, HRs and there is a disconnect in that approach,” Crompton says of whether the skills gap issue really exists.

“For every candidate we get a minimum of five offers,” Crompton says as an example of the skills gap and he believes it is the processes of many organisations that means four of those five organisations miss out on the talent they desire. He adds that the rate of change in technology means that certain technologies and skills fall out of favour as rapidly as they enter demand and that is increasing the challenge for CIOs.

“At one end of the pipeline you have companies busy fire-fighting, trying to get the best talent from a pool that is ever decreasing. But they have very specific requirements for experienced people who can come in and get on with a problem with very little input from the companies, but the consequence is they have no capacity to manage an intake of juniors, says Nathalie Christmann-Cooper, a Full Stack Rails Developer with Skills Matter, the technology community and events organisation.

Christmann-Cooper has first hand experience of how challenging it can be for a newly qualified technologist to enter the workforce, despite having skills in one of the most sought after technologies. 

“It is very difficult to open those doors. I have seen job specs with what I feel are a really unrealistic set of requirements for a junior, but they want three years plus experience, they ask for a computer science degree,” she says of a miss-match between organisations wanting people with the latest technology skills, but applying old school thinking in terms of qualifications and work experience.

eSynergy Solutions’ Crompton says: “There is some very outdated hiring processes that take too much time to hire people, I don’t think there is a reasonable understanding of what is out there on the market, there is very very little flexibility and there is a serious lack of understanding of what candidates want.

“There is a lot of talk about millennials, it is understanding what this generation want and expect, which was not relevant 10 years ago and is absolutely relevant now. If you don’t offer those things they will not work for you and your organisation, they will go and work for Google or Facebook,” Crompton says.

“You can draw a lot of parallels with what has happened over the last 15 years. If you look at software development it was traditional waterfall methodology where you would capture the requirements, you would define the specs and that could take a year to 18 months before you even develop any software. If you take a look at these organisations like Facebook and Google they are delivering software every day. So these software processes are defining the way that you hire people and the way that they are trained,” he says.

Christmann-Cooper adds: “As technologists some of the onus is on us, we need to have an area of expertise, but to be successful you have to understand the bigger picture and how your specialism fits not only in the business, but also in the wider picture of how your customers are thinking and reacting to what you build and develop.”

Crompton believes organisations face no alternative but to modify how they treat staff and recruit them: “There is a handful of ways that you can build teams. You can either build teams yourself, you can hire contractors or you can go to traditional systems integrators and consultancies, unlike 10-15 years ago they do not have a bunch of developers sat on the bench waiting to be engaged as they cannot keep hold of their developers. All of these angles are coming under scrutiny in their ability to deliver software effectively.

“You are having to change and adapt and look at new roots. Organisations are missing out on a huge pool of talent by only being very blinkered about their approach, by saying I can only hire senior experienced people, if you are prepared there are options out there to consider it, there is a blended approach,” he says.

“There is plenty of people coming through from the more disruptive learning pathways like the coding bootcamps,”

Christmann-Cooper says. “And you have a complete diverse mix of students they are not all computer science based, it is less conventional candidates that have lots of important soft skills to bring to the mix.

“Remember diversity is not just a discussion about gender, it is age, accessibility, culture and background experience. People are looking at having three to five career changes in a life time,” she says.

To prove the point CEO Crompton has lost team members to new careers. “Four or five of our recruitment consultants have retrained as DevOps or software engineers. But what a great opportunity after seven or eight years in one industry to change careers.

“There is a bunch of extra skills that they have, the interpersonal skills, the business skills, customer experience that they have learnt and then have moved into technology, it is fabulous for the industry,” he says.

“Skillsmatter they have done a really good job of att...

“In cricket we capture all the data about every head strike, which goes into R&D about helmets and concussion protocols and data is turning that from an anecdotal method to a data led approach,” says Head of Information Technology at The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Damian Smith.

Smith is CIO for cricket’s governing body, his peers IT Director Matthew Reynolds, from Southampton Football club, Graeme Hackland at Williams F1 team and sports portfolio CIO Mike Bohndiek are all at the forefront of ensuring sport uses data to improve safety, entertainment and performance.  The CIOs, came together at the Williams F1 factory in Oxfordshire to discuss how sport needs technology to drive transformation as much as any vertical market.

When it comes to data and the rising importance of technology there is much in common between the four leading UK sports CIOs.

“We are a small club, we cannot compete financially for the top players, so we have to grow cleverly with fan engagement and money through commercial activities,” Reynolds says. Although Southampton fought hard to remain in the English Premiership, the highly lucrative championship is so competitive the IT Director is a key part of helping the club increase revenues and therefore become winners. All four CIOs describe how sport has gone through a transformation of attitude. In the recent past IT was seen as a necessary evil to keep the shop tills operating, but whether it is in the Premiership or on the global race track, technology is now part of increasing fan engagement and therefore revenue, which leads to a better performance.

“Most people are awakening to digital transformation and what that means. You are running a multi-million pound retail business, you are also running a doctors surgery, the professional game and the development of players and the match day,” says Mike Bohndiek. The former CIO of West Ham Football Club is now working in rugby, golf and two different leagues of football as all levels of the sport realise the benefits of technology and good technology leadership.

Customer engagement

A key area of opportunity for CIOs in sport is using digital methods to connect directly with fans and increase the customer experience.  

“In F1 the teams have been a bit removed from the fans and the governing body has owned that relationship. That is definitely changing, with the new ownership of F1 that has happened in the last year, which is unlocking digital channels, that allow us to put content in the hands of Williams fans,” Hackland says.

“We are now a global brand with a website with premium content that you have to register for,” Reynolds of Southampton FC says. “We now have to look at Saints globally and its new markets, which are China and India and obviously the States, so it is becoming engaged with a bigger community, not just Hampshire.”

“The more participants we have, whether it is playing the game, attending or following the game the more we have a relationship with those people and the more we understand how they follow it,” Smith says of why sport needs technologists to play a major part in developing a fan and customer relationship. “People don’t have those long stretches of time at the weekends to play cricket, so we have to find new ways of engaging with them in shorter time scales, because we are not just competing with other sports, we are competing with Xbox and mobile devices for people’s time.”

Sport relies on sponsorship for revenue to invest in the best players, venues and teams and in today’s digital environment the sponsors expect more audience value from teams, clubs and sports.  

“The more participants and fans we have, the more investment we can attract from sponsors and investors and the government to invest in our game. Part of that underlying model is, if we can demonstrate to sponsors why it is more effective to sponsor our sport over others, the more we can show them what they are getting we can unlock budgets that had not previously existed.

The days of sponsorship being a bit of hospitality and signage for a city firm, those days have gone,” Smith says.

“For a F1 fan they are never going to get behind the wheel of a F1 car, but us getting data into their hands, that is what excites them,” Hackland says. Above the Williams museum we record the podcast at fans are using simulators, the team has a high end restaurant and cinema venue that fans come to on race day to be with the team as its drivers take on Spa, Monaco and Silverstone.  

“With augmented reality they may be able to compete against their favourite driver at their favourite track,” Reynolds adds. The Premiership IT Director led IT for the Renault F1 team from 2006 to 2011.

Gaming and physical sport are converging too Hackland and Reynolds reveal as eSports continue to grow.  Failure to recognise this could see eSports become a digital disruptor to sport.

“We have dipped our toes into it,” Hackland says. Williams has invested in games where fans can become part of a virtual F1 pit team and change the wheels. “We have experimented with driver eye view, you get that experience of being in the car.”

The greatest challenge that clubs face at the moment is making their revenue performance agnostic,” Bohndiek says of these opportunities.  “There is a huge amount of revenue that goes into the on the field performance, but with attendance starting to fall, that model is falling away, so a lot of engagement work I am seeing at the moment is very much to do with getting to know the fans and the individuals and what drives them to the stadium and what does their non-match day looks like.

“Ultimately sponsors now want to know ‘who do you know that we can connect with and what is your global reach?’ That drives back down to how do you capture that data and analyse it and that is where digital transformation becomes the answer.”

Data logging

“The 1979 car was the first conn...

“I think it is really important that the customer can take responsibility,” says Simon Lamkin, CIO of Brussels Airlines. Lamkin, speaking at a Horizon CIO Podcast roundtable debate, revealed to peers how digital transformation in the airline sector is reshaping the customer experience, but also the business processes of airlines and airports.  

Lamkin has been CIO of Brussels Airlines since April 2016. The Englishman joined the airline headquartered in the Belgian capital following a 12 year career with the pioneering low cost airline easyJet.  You can hear Lamkin discuss the major disruption easyJet had on the airlines sector with fellow former easyJet CIOs Mike Sturrock, Andy Caddy and Colin Rees on this Horizon CIO Podcast.

Brussels Airlines is a full service airline operating different fare classes, long and short haul; and freight. Its aircraft fly to 120 destinations and was previously known as Sabena.  German airline Lufthansa took a 45% stake in Brussels Airlines in 2009 and last year purchased the remaining share.

Lamkin says the airline industry operates in two distinct environments; increasingly consumers are used to and demand a digital experience, but as a safety conscious and highly regulated market, the airline industry is still using many legacy technologies.  As Lamkin and his peers describe in the easyJet Horizon CIO podcast, full service airlines with a long heritage, such as Brussels Airlines, are carrying a great deal of legacy technology and processes.

In aviation we are a bit schizophrenic, as we have these web platforms that are driving business and on the other hand, we are a regulated travel company where we have to follow all sorts of rules,” Lamkin says.

“So it is very much we have to look at two sides. Technology is at the dawn of the fourth  industrial revolution and the Internet of Things, the aviation industry, despite being glamorous is still grappling with the third industrial revolution of computers,” the CIO says candidly.

“Too many organisations focus their thinking on the consumer end, it is a way for the workforce to come together, this is the thing that really exciting me. What is really exciting is how the consumer has changed our way of thinking, especially in aviation. If we go back 10-15 years we all went through the airport the way the airline told us to, now we all have smartphones in our pockets and we have access to Google maps, flight stats and maps of the airports so we can navigate and that consumerisation has taken some of the control away from the airport,” the airlines veteran says.

Lamkin points out that for years the air travel sector has been beset with a difference of opinion over the relationship with the consumer. He says at air industry conferences airlines and airport operates will claim they own the customer journey.

“They are both rubbish,” he says of the argument. “The customer owns the customer journey. I am traveling because I know why I am going and don’t you as an airline tell me what I have to do.” Another former easyJet CIO, Trevor Didcock told this scribe of how Michael Ibbitson, who was CIO of Gatwick Airport from 2012 to 2016 was a breath of fresh air for his collaborative approach to working with airlines.

“As a frequent flyer I get up at 4am on a Monday morning to get my 6.20 flight and I just need to get through the airport as fast as I can to maximise my sleeping time,” Lamkin says of his own personal regular flight needs, and how airlines and airports really need to understand each and every consumer and their unique demands.  

“I am a big fan of having many different ways to access the data, it would be arrogant of me to say ‘use my App’.  That only works if I can also check on Google and the airport’s App and they all say that your flight is going to leave at 6.55 because they all have access to that same information.

“All too often today you see two or three different variants. For you as a consumer it is already a stressful experience, but the stress increases if you don’t know if you have 10 minutes or 20 minutes for your flight,” Lamkin says. As a result Lamkin and Brussels Airlines are working on the hallowed single version of the truth.

“How can we aggregate the data and use it to create a seamless experience? That is the big challenge for any transport operator,” Lamkin says. The CIO says the challenge is expanded by the proliferation of Apps and different ways the consumer wants to travel through the airport, for example those that use a printed boarding pass and those using their smartphone and now the entrance of biometric technology.

“If we fly a long haul A330 you are looking at 230 on board, do we treat them all exactly the same? Do we segment them as a business passenger and an economy passenger or can we be a bit more specific and know that the business traveller is a frequent flyer that flies at least six times a year and has loyalty points? We are starting to drive that more and digital can make that happen. It is driving massive change in our industry,” Lamkin says.

“As an airline we try and differentiate ourselves and have different products and pricings to accommodate the changes that these low cost carriers that are disrupting our business have caused,” he says referring to how his previous career is impacting his current role. Lamkin says one of the challenges is fare classes: “It is a constant source of frustration to ticketing teams as we don’t have enough fare classes to create the innovation that they want. And the reason being is that we are all reliant on reservation and global distribution systems that all have one alpha character to differentiate the different classifications. So there are very few airlines that have an ability to have anything other than fare classes that match the 26 letters of the alphabet. It is your classic Y2K problem.”

Not only are digital methods changing how the consumer is treated on the aircraft, but also in the airport.

“When...

In 2017 Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) announced it was exiting the controversial oil sands sector in Canada and was focussing on becoming an energy company. As Fortune reports, the company wasn’t making a rash decision, it had invested expertise and research into understanding the disruptions to energy production and usage. According to Fortune, Shell realised the disruption was arriving sooner than many in the oil sector predicted. Since March 2017 the company has been expanding its portfolio and diversifying its business. 

Craig Walker is CIO for the Downstream business of Shell and tells the Horizon CIO podcast about the transformation of the Anglo-Dutch firm, how technology is core to that transformation and how he is changing how IT operates in order to enable Shell to become an energy firm.

“My glib answer is anything that is not the upstream,” Walker jokes of the difference between the Upstream and Downstream parts of the business. “The Upstream part of the company looks for the oil and gets the oil out of the ground and then they hand it over. Downstream starts with trading and supply, manufacturing and includes all our refineries, our petro-chemical plants and on into our B2B businesses such as aviation, bitumen, lubricants, marine and then onto the retail sites that the general public are aware of,” he says of the two sides. Downstream is the larger business, but also has the narrowest margins.

“As a trading company we are the biggest by someway with 27 major refineries around the world and a similar number of petro-chemical and lubricants plants.

“Every 12 seconds somewhere in the world we finish fuelling an aircraft, it is a phenomenally large company and you don’t get the scale of it until you come into it,” Walker says. During a long career with Shell he has worked in both downstream and upstream sectors.

In moving to become an energy firm Shell is responding to recent and rapid changes in the energy market.  Sustainable energy from wind and solar has become economically viable and is growing at unforeseen rates. Wind energy powers over 20% of the UK’s electricity needs on an almost daily basis and the price of solar panels is dropping rapidly, which in turn is being boosted by developments of batteries for buildings from the likes of Telsa. Electric car sales are also on the rise, as is the adoption of ride hailing and car club usage.  All of which is disrupting the Shell business model.

“I live in central London, outside the apartment block I live at, there are two Zipcars, it costs £8 to belong as a member and £5 an hour to rent, and there is a fuel card in there that says please as a curtesy to the next person don’t bring it back with less than a quarter of a tank in it. Where is Shell in all of that?” Walker is acutely aware of how businesses like Zipcar have the potential to cause  disintermediation of the oil sector.

“If I didn’t work for Shell, do I care if I put in the fuel that makes it perform best? Costs the least? It is not my car and it is not my money and I don’t care. So I am going to go to the place that is most convenient. So how do I take all this technology and commercialise it in a way that you still want to come to me? The same problem exists with rotating equipment, if you run a factory and you have a bunch of gas turbines and you are buying lubricant from Shell and then the firm you buy those pieces of kit from offers the classic pay by the hour model, I get pushed out and become a commodity. So the threat is not just the automotive industry it is the threat of the Internet of Things,” he says of how IT is central to Shell responding to new models.

“As we came into the early 2000s we got obsessed with volume and we lost site of the thing that was starting to happen, that the customer’s desires were changing. Thankfully around 2008/2009 we had a substantial change in the leadership team and we became very customer focused,” Walker candidly admits.

“As we globalised, we lost site of the customer and became obsessed with standards and ‘how do we run this as efficiently as we can?’ Of course the pendulum starts to swing back when you realise you have lost something of your heritage, which is being known as a member of the community and somebody special rather than  just being an oil company,” he tells the podcast.

“When I joined the company we were very much an oil company. We had six rivals, the so called seven sisters, now the world has changed and it is an incredibly exciting time to be in Shell,” he says of being part of the transformation.

“We have stated that our purpose is that: ‘we power progress together by providing more and cleaner energy solutions’; and I think those words are very interesting. Its about having to do this together. Back in those days you went alone, now you know that whatever you do it is with an ecosystem of players, be that NGOs, government, the public and energy firms.”

“What is interesting now, is that the technology has reached a tipping point; with solar panels and wind. It was all there in the past, but it wasn’t becoming mainstream fast enough.

“As an oil or energy company you can only go where the public want to go. If people want to buy petrol you have sell petrol. It doesn’t matter how many hydrogen points or electrical charging posts you put down, if there isn’t the customer to come to it, but we believe right now, with the experience we have to generate, store and deliver energy to the customer now is the right time to step in and be part of a greener more sustainable energy solution.”

Cynics might believe an oil company is bound to say this as an exercise in PR, but as Walker points out, businesses like Shell have made the investment in the infrastructure and the skills that will be necessary for sustainable energy proliferation.

“I don’t think anyone can go it alone. Governments can create the right policy and regulation to encourage both companies and people to go in the right direction, but we need to be a leader in that. We won’t be in business in 20 or 40 years time if we don’t become an energy company,” he says.

What ever energy Shell ships in the years to come the business has to become as service oriented as ba...

“I wanted to work much more closely with students and people who were at the cutting edge of working with technology,” CIO Claudette Jones says from University of the West of Scotland, where she is leading technology.

The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) has four campuses in south-western Scotland across Paisley, Hamilton, Dumfries and Ayr and even has a campus in London. The university took on its name in 2007, but can trace its roots to the 19th Century.

“This university has a real reputation for vocational courses, we have 16,000 students across five campuses and we are the first official training partner in China,” Jones tells the Horizon CIO podcast.  “It is a really big endorsement for the university and we are the first organisation in China to be accredited to provide technical and leadership training across China. I think this is evidence of the wide range of capabilities that the university has, so we will be training in areas like health, environment and smart cities.”

With its focus on vocational courses, UWS provides education on business, technology, engineering, health and sport as well as a range of more academic courses. CIO Jones says therefore her team has to “provide different solutions for different schools”.

“One of the bits of heritage of this university is that it was a technical college, back in the day, and it has a real reputation for vocational working and one of the attributes of that is we want our students to leave with, is the notion of work ready,” she says.

At the time of our interview UWS is developing a new technology campus in the heart of an international business hub in Hamilton.

“We are looking to roll out virtual desktops and lab environments. As one of the issues is that you need very high speed computing for games development, may be not so much in a social work course and what we want to do is provide labs that are flexible in computing ability so that they can be timetabled for any type of class.

New academics

“In previous roles it felt like the customer was a little bit distant, here in higher education we have 16,000 students you can get really immediate and face-to-face feedback on our services and I like that and I will genuinely stand and try and overhear coffee shop conversations to hear people talking about IT

As the Horizon CIO podcast interview with Alan Hill, CIO of the University of Exeter recently revealed, academia has discovered the importance of technology to attract the students and researchers, which therefore brings in the funding.  With funding thus becoming more commercially driven towards a customer’s outcome, institutions have found the need to hire a leading CIO to deliver great operational technology and deliver a range of technology services that delight students in the same way a CIO in retail, financial services or transportation has to.  Of late major CIOs such as Jones, Hill and Laura Dawson, previously CIO of the British Council when she was on this podcast have joined academia.

“I have only been in this job for 18 months and it does appear to me that previously the role of a CIO in higher education was to just provide line of business systems and audio visual equipment, but as universities have moved more to providing online training, then that partnership between the department and the rest of the business becomes more crucial and universities that don’t invest will be left behind,” Jones observes from Paisley. “That was one of the reasons why I joined the university.”

Jones adds that at UWS her IT team and the institution have taken the US term to heart and they eat their own dog food, members of her team are taking course at UWS alongside their full time roles in the technology team.  “A lot of my IT staff are doing degrees at the uni as there is a big culture of continual development, so having the staff go through the process helps us understand how we impact the students,” Jones says.

And on the flip side of that, the computing academics and their students are becoming part of the innovation community Jones can tap into.

“We have a really good school of computing and engineering here and I wanted to provide information to students, such as how busy the canteen is. So I am working with some of our PHD students on IoT to see if we can provide a heat map  to tell students when the best time is to turn up at the canteen and miss the queues.

“I was concerned with the map functionality,” she says of one recent improvement to the student App. “Paisley is a big campus and university campuses are a bit like a little city. The mapping on the App was Google Maps, which didn’t work well for internal mapping. We tracked down a European company who were doing a new way-finding method using photography. It shows you pictures with an arrow and it is really easy to use.

“In previous roles it felt like the customer was a little bit distant, here in higher education we have 16,000 students you can get really immediate and face-to-face feedback on our services and I like that and I will genuinely stand and try and overhear coffee shop conversations to hear people talking about IT,” she says. As with any business technology leader looking to help an organisation improve its customer focus, Jones has been implementing systems that improve understanding and reducing complexity in the organisation.

An infrastructure upgrade has seen new WiFi installed across the five campuses, which in turn has enabled collaboration technologies to be implemented which benefits the staff and reduces travel between the campuses. An application rationalisation ensured that students have fewer disconnected systems for timetables, learning resources, email and the library for example.

“There were 14 different systems, each with different log-in details and I was surprised at the number of systems that students had to use. That was the impetus for a single sign-on and single portal project that went live at the beginning of this academic year and that has made things much si...