Janet and the Man - Is HE ready?

(a paper prepared for the 5th Roundtable of the National Scholarly Communications Forum, Canberra, 21-22 October, 1996)

by Professor John Arbuthnott, Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Strathclyde.

Copyright John Arbuthnott. . Reproduction for non-commercial purposes is permitted providing acknowledgment is made, and this copyright notice is included.

1)Title Slide - JANET and the MAN Is HE ready for the future?

Introduction

• I am very pleased to be here today at the National Scholarly Communications Forum Round Table. I would like to thank the Council of Australian University Librarians for inviting me here.
• I am speaking today primarily in my role as Chairman of the Joint Information Systems committee. However I am also Principal and Vice-Chancellor of one of the UK's largest universities and I also chair the Information Working Group of the UK's National committee of Inquiry into Higher Education.. This means that there are a number of reasons as to why I am concerned about the development of Information Systems throughout Higher education.
• In this brief talk I intend to explain to you the role of the Joint Information Systems Committee in the co-ordination of UK Higher Education's information networks. I will outline some of the current and potential use of new technology within the Higher Education sector. I will explain what infrastructure exists and what is crucial for the future.

Achievements in the UK so far.

• I will begin speaking with some pride. We would argue that the UK Higher Education is in the fortunate position of having the most technologically advanced network in the world. This has not just happened, but is the result of many years forward planning by the Joint Information Systems committee and its predecessor bodies.
• A long time ago the UK universities took the opportunity to explore and develop the capabilities of computer networks. In 1984 JANET, the Joint Academic Network, was born. In 1993, SuperJANET, a network with a greater carrying capacity was added. Today JANET provides network services to almost 200 Higher Education Institutions in the UK. It provides links into other commercial services and into the global Internet. JANET is the largest network within the UK and as such forms the largest part of the Internet in the UK. It enables a wide range of activities to be carried out within and between connecting institutions.
• JANET has now teamed up with the MAN or Metropolitan Area Network. Throughout the UK MANs (not Men !) are being developed. These enable more institutions to access SuperJANET through local networks between institutions.
• The formidable combination of JANET and the MAN provides HE with a pervasive and powerful resource. There is a question I keep asking. Although JANET has now met the MAN , Is HE ready?

The Context

• As Chairman of JISC I have spoken to many different audiences about information technology and HE. To understand the context of developments in Information Technology, you also need to know the current position of HE in the UK.
• HE has gone through a period of rapid change with expansion of student numbers and a relentless squeeze on funding.
• In the past decade student numbers have increased by 50%.
• However public sector funding per student has fallen by nearly 30% in the last five years.
• There are many more mature students, part-time and distance learning students. All of this means that institutions have had to develop a much more flexible approach to teaching and learning. Alternatives to purely campus-based programmes are therefore attractive options.
• In my own University of Strathclyde for example, we have a full-time-equivalent student population of around 16,000 students. But the FTE figure conceals the real picture. A head count of all registered students on all types of courses (credit bearing AND non-credit bearing) totals over 55,000 students.
• So each year over 55,000 people are seeking to access the university's resources, for a variety of different purposes; This is sometimes for full-time undergraduate or postgraduate education but huge numbers are registered on part-time courses , continuing education and continuing professional development.
• Each of those students has different learning needs and the University has to cope with both a diversity of provision and pressure upon its physical space. This is where we need to fully explore the potential of the information networks for carrying interactive courseware and multimedia teaching packages that can be accessed outside the classroom. Also the huge pressure on libraries could be relieved by full development of the concept of electronic libraries, where texts, journals and other documents can be accessed from a PC on your desk.
• Our researchers too are in an environment with sharply reduced resources to support their work. Much research, especially in the physical sciences, involves the use of scarce resources such as specialist laboratories and equipment. Again I can cite my own University which has taken a 25% cut in equipment funding this coming year.
• The drastic reduction in public funding has meant that the universities must undertake increasing amounts of commercially funded contract research to generate new income streams But data collection, analysis and complex design experiments are labour intensive when we have fewer and fewer staff to undertake the work. Greater access to research articles on-line and enabling remote access to specialist equipment will help.
• The management of the institution has also become increasingly pressurised. The wide range and diversity of university activity can make for an administrative nightmare. Rising student numbers and the sharp increase in 'non-traditional' students and the growing need for institutions to work closely with their local communities mean that universities must be able to respond quickly and effectively to a range of situations
• . We are all juggling a vast array of activities. I am sure that this is the situation for you here in Australia also. Australian HE has undergone sweeping changes - and in many ways faced up to the need for change before we did in the UK. It is a time of a time of great upheaval. All of us in HE will need to use every source of support open to us to cope with the different working reality of the future.

Where JISC fits in

• Let me outline to you the role of JISC in the UK and how JISC is working to help UK HE.
• As I have said, for many years different groups within HE have worked on developing networking capabilities. However to ensure cohesive and co-ordinated development the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils was established in 1993.

SLIDE TWO: JISC Mission statement

• Its declared role or Mission Statement is:
• "To stimulate and enable the cost-effective exploitation of information systems and to provide a high quality national network infrastructure for the UK higher education and Research Councils community"
• Basically the Joint Information Systems Committee, or JISC, is an enabling body for the HE and research community. It provides the network infrastructure and funds selected development programmes which seek to test the application of new technology in all aspects of HE.
• JISC adopts a three pronged approach

SLIDE THREE: A World Class Education Network

JISC:
Infrastructure
Services
Initiatives

• JISC's main priority has been to develop the physical network, connecting every university and research institute and providing international links to other countries. However we also provide a range of services such as DATA-Centres (or information banks) and support a variety of projects and initiatives to develop the use of the network. Targeted programmes in the application of new software and instrumentation are also supported.
• That brief summary makes it all sound very simple! JISC oversees a vast array of activity through a range of specialist committees and agencies reporting to the Main Committee.

SLIDE FOUR: JISC Structure

Some JISC activity is contracted out to agencies such as UKERNA whose job it is to maintain and develop the physical network on behalf of JISC

The existing networks

• Let me show you what exists:

SLIDE FIVE: Map of UK showing MANS and SuperJANET

• Here you can see the extent of JANET and the Metropolitan Area Networks. This map outlines the existing and planned MANs .

SLIDE SIX: Map of London MANs

• The London MAN is the largest MAN. You can see that the infrastructure is extensively developed and will continue to grow.
• In terms of what is up and running now, Scotland is well ahead of the game. There are four MANs in Scotland: AbMan which serves the Aberdeen area; CLYDENET, serving the Glasgow area; EastMAN in Edinburgh and the unfortunately named FaTMAN ,which provides a network for the HE institutions in Fife and Tayside.

SLIDE SEVEN: Map of ClydeNet

• Clyde Net is an example of a MAN in action. It connects together the HE institutions of Western Scotland and provides a much more efficient route into SuperJANET than would be achieved by giving each institution an individual connection. Very soon now, all the MANS in Scotland will be interconnected to form a Scottish-wide area network for HE with the potential to link in other education providers and users. Plans will include links into the existing ISDN network in the Highlands and Islands, Most of Scotland will therefore be linked together, creating a Virtual University.
• With such a well developed infrastructure many development projects are underway exploring how we can use the networks to our advantage. After all, there is not point in being able to communicate faster, quicker and better if we have nothing of substance to say to each other.
• Right now there are many pilot projects which seek to exploit the networks to support university activity. Some of these are funded by JISC. Others have the support of the Higher Education Funding Councils (for example in Scotland, the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council has promoted an initiative to exploit the MANS, called 'Use of MANs' initiative. )I can give some examples.
• CLYDENET already hosts the Clyde Virtual University, which went live on 31 July this year. The Clyde Virtual University aims to use the CLYDENET MAN to deliver multimedia and interactive courseware to all universities and colleges on CLYDENET. It seeks to use material produced from other pilot programmes and has pinpointed five subject areas in the first instance. Existing software for statistics, business, modern languages, computer science and library and study skills will be converted into HTML documents for rapid access over the MAN. This is the first experiment of its kind in the UK. Other projects using the MANs include the NETMUSE project. This links the major music departments in Scottish Universities and Colleges to provide live fully interactive music classes. This music initiative is the largest and most challenging of all the Use of MANs initiatives.

SLIDE EIGHT: SuperJANET and teaching.

• There are many other examples of ways SuperJANET could be used to support teaching. Increased access to expensive and scarce equipment is possible. A good example of this is Netrolab, a project which is testing the practicality of making the advanced robotics laboratory in Reading available to students in Nottingham. In the same way the creation of Virtual teaching collections allows remote access to special material. For example the University of Cambridge is developing an advanced multimedia interface to a collection of sample material in the fields of archaeology and the history of science.

SLIDE NINE: SuperJANET and research

• The advantages of SuperJANET in teaching are also matched in its use to assist research. Highspeed SuperJANET connection enables fast reaction to data. For example: the real-time analysis of satellite data is currently used to assist the National Environmental Research Council's data collection through its fleet of survey ships. Satellite data collected at Dundee can be transmitted across the network to Plymouth for analysis. The ships can then be directed on the basis of the analysis - and about £1000 per day can be saved as a result. As well as its speed, the information carrying capacity of SuperJANET has proved vital in building the enormous database for the international Human Genome project which entails documenting millions of nucleotide base sequences. Through the Joint Information Systems Committee, JANET is the highway for a number of important datasets such as census information, bibliographies, maps and visual images.

SLIDE TEN: SuperJANET and communication

• The networks are already used extensively for email, and this usage is growing all the time. (In trying to arrange this visit to Australia, given the time difference, email was used VERY extensively! I am particularly interested in experimenting with the delivery of Video-Conferencing. . This can be a valuable tool for meetings, person-to person communication at a distance, distribution of live and recorded lectures and course material. There are many different video services technologies - ranging from very low quality desktop video over the Internet to medium quality studio video-conferencing through SuperJANET broadcast quality with digital sound quality. Again I would say that Scotland is leading the way here, as it can use its highly developed MAN infrastructure to ensure with the highest quality video-conferencing technology is available to institutions across the country. JISC is aiming to facilitate the widespread adoption of suitable video-conferencing infrastructures across HE.

SLIDE ELEVEN: JISC Strategy for the future

In consultation with the HE community, JISC has developed a strategy for the next five years. The key objectives in helping HEIs are to:

• - increase the efficiency and economy of the running of institutions
• - improving the educational environment and quality of teaching and learning. This includes supporting the diversity of the HE sector
• - supporting research with tools and services that can be best provided at the collective level
• -improving liaison with other bodies nationally and internationally
• -providing facilities to improve the competitiveness of the UK HE sector.

A) EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMY

Assisting Institutions to increase efficiency and economy can be achieved in a number of ways. This includes encouraging the exploitation of networks to increase efficiency in areas such as student recruitment and registration; the development of virtual and remote environments for distance learning, and crucially, the development of the electronic library. JISC also is able to provide services centrally across the network (such as access to large datasets) that individual institutions could not afford.

B) Improving the Educational Environment

The use of multi-media teaching material offers flexible and cost-effective teaching tools if used in the right way and for the right purpose. For example, this mode of delivery may be particularly effective in the teaching of large scale foundation and remedial courses, or as background reference to supplement classes.

JISC does not support teaching and learning activities directly but seeks to ensure the tools and services are available for these activities.

C) Supporting Research

As with teaching and learning activity, JISC does not directly support or fund research. JISC seeks to provide the network infrastructure that can aid research. For example, JISC will continue to secure suitable datasets and develop appropriate tools in areas such as visualisation and virtual reality. A major challenge facing JISC is in expanding international network links, which is of great importance for the research community. International connectivity is very expensive to establish - indeed a larger and larger slice of JISC resources are being taken up by the creation and expansion of international links. This is likely to become a serious funding issue for JISC and the HE community in the near future. Through the Electronic Libraries Programme JISC is seeking to assess the viability of a number of forms of electronic information of relevance to the Research worker.

D) Improving Liaison

JISC represents UK HE and research networking interests at both the national and international level, working with government, policy and funding bodies , such as the DTI, DfEE, the European Union and US based organisations. It seeks to improve liaison and links between HE and a wide range of other organisations including FE Colleges, schools, local commerce and industry. The development of the Metropolitan Area Networks are an example of JISC's encouragement of collaborative partnerships. The question of links into JANET and SuperJANET by organisations other than HE institutions is frequently raised. . Some links to FE Colleges, schools and to industry for collaborative partnerships are currently allowed and we need to devise cost-effective ways of enabling connections outside HE. However I must make it very clear that JANET is funded and has been designed to support the specialist needs of HE. It is not designed as a generally available public service. JISC will seek to work with other bodies and commercial providers where appropriate to enable HE staff and students to access the network from home through telephone lines etc., However allowing uncontrolled access to the network from outside the HE community could cause severe congestion and compromise its usefulness in supporting teaching and research.

E) Improving Competitiveness

JISC intends to ensure that through the provision of topclass network infrastructure and services, UK HE can lead the way in pioneering quality distance learning and other HE services on a global basis. This will be a very competitive environment. I want to encourage UK HE to exploit its current lead in technology to best advantage.

The JISC five year strategy has been the product of careful thought, discussion and consultation. You will hear more about his later today from Lynne Brindley.

Conclusion

• We are all aware that IT is not the answer to all of HE's problems . It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Its usefulness depends entirely upon how it is exploited and how easy it is to access. However its effective use can help us to face some of the future changes demanded of us. The development and use of new technology can radically change many of the ways in which HE institutions operate.
• There are many problems still to be hammered out if the information networks are to become truly accessible and widely used. There are many thorny legal issues that JISC is grappling with - such as the matter of copyright. However all of these matters can be resolved if there is a will to do so. The biggest challenge to be overcome in the successful exploitation of information networks is the HE community itself. Change can be frightening and in all our institutions there are many sceptics. The development and use of Information Systems has frequently been seen as something for the technofreaks to play with. Many staff are not convinced it will make any real difference to their work. Some simply do not want it to make any difference.
• To some extent I am sympathetic to the sceptics. Change can be frightening. Sometimes I too long to return to the days when a hard disk was some kind of medical condition and software for windows was a leather chamois.
• But part of my mission is to make colleagues realise that change is inevitable. The challenge facing HE is simple. The information network is growing . In a competitive world those who seize the opportunity to exploit new modes of communication and delivery will have a leading edge. Those who do not will be left behind. International competition in the business of HE will be hot.
• The next few years will be crucial in the development of information networks. Those countries who learn to take advantage and exploit technology to the full will emerge as economic leaders. Higher Education has a crucial role in the development of HE. (Do you want to say something here about the importance of collaboration and learning from each other - why you are in Australia?)

12 Return to Title Slide JANET and the MAN - Is HE ready?

I began with the question Is HE ready? I am looking forward to the day when the answer is a categorical yes.

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Updated 26 November, 1996

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