Kit-Catalogue - Discovering the Value of Equipment Sharing - Universities UK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference

Kit-Catalogue:Discovering the value of equipment sharing4th Annual UUK Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015

Photo credit: The Lighting Simulator, UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering

Martin Hamilton [email protected]

Futurist @martin_hamilton

Universities UK 4th Annual Efficiency Conference, March 2015

1. About Jisc

2. Why Asset Sharing?

3. Kit-Catalogue Pilot

4. Discussion

Kit-Catalogue:Discovering the value of equipment sharingUUK 4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference, March 2015



1. About Jisc



4. Discussion




:: About Jisc :: What we do

» Registered charity championing the use of digital technologies in

research and education

» Range of shared services for UK Universities and Colleges, e.g.

- Janet, world leading research network

- eduroam global wireless roaming

- Groundbreaking content deals with publishers

- Cloud brokerage with Amazon, Google, Microsoft

» Aiming to complement RCUK and Innovate UK / Catapults

- Open Educational Resources, Open Access and Open Data

- Just launched asset sharing initiative

:: About Jisc :: Value proposition

Generating £260m savings per annum

e.g. KnowledgeBase+ - £4.5m

:: About Jisc :: Value proposition

Generating £260m savings per annum

e.g. DigiMap - £40m

1. About Jisc



4. Discussion

Kit-Catalogue:Discovering the value of equipment sharing



:: Why Asset Sharing? :: What are we doing?

» Leveraging public investment in the Janet network

– Connecting industry: http://www.ja.net/janet-reach

– Where next - e.g. 10Gbit/s links to Science Parks?

– Testbeds for new technologies, e.g. UHD streaming from Tokyo

Olympics, Surrey 5G testbed, Catapult centres

» Where else can we add value?

– Exploit our cost sharing group (256 institutions, 93% of HEIs)

– Research clusters, e.g. Jisc shared data centre with Sanger, Crick, UCL,

King’s College, QMUL, LSE etc: http://www.ja.net/data-centre

– Anticipating Austerity 2.0 efficiency savings

» £900K HEFCE investment

» Anchor tenants: Crick, KCL,

LSE, QMUL, Sanger, UCL

» First data hall now full

:: Why Asset Sharing? :: Shared data centre

See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/research/projects/equipment-sharing

:: Why Asset Sharing? :: HPC use case

Image credit: CC BY-NC-ND HPC Midlands

» Brokering access to £60m public investment in HPC

:: Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next

» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry

– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC

– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test

– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise

» How can we do this?

– Standardized terms and conditions

– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage

– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.

» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?

:: Why Asset Sharing? :: What’s next

» Reducing sharing friction between institutions & with industry

– Sample use case: model 1,000 5G antenna designs via HPC

– Then build first physical prototype and wind tunnel test

– Relies on combination of facilities and expertise

» How can we do this?

– Standardized terms and conditions

– Trialling this approach right now with HPC brokerage

– Equipment sharing database “as a service” to aid matchmaking.

» What would a one stop shop for asset sharing look like?

1. About Jisc



4. Discussion




:: Kit-Catalogue Pilot ::

See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/research/projects/equipment-sharing

:: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Participating Institutions

:: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional commitment

» Members of the pilot will be:

› Committing resource to ensure significant proportion ofhigh value equipment recorded in Kit-Catalogue– e.g. items costing £25K or above

› Making all (or a meaningful subset) of catalogue records available as publicly available information– For harvesting by the national http://equipment.data.ac.uk portal

› Contributing material towards a case study of their use ofKit-Catalogue

http://equipment.data.ac.uk

:: Kit-Catalogue Pilot :: Institutional benefits

» Members of the pilot will be able to:

› Influence product development through the Kit-Catalogueuser group

› Provide feedback on their experiences of Kit-Catalogue– To help inform a future decision about whether Jisc should offer

Kit-Catalogue as a national service

› Contribute to a wider strategic discussion around facilitating equipment sharing between institutions and with industry

Research Equipment Sharing

and UCL Research Equipment Catalogue

Universities UK

4th Annual Efficiency in HE Conference25th March 2015

Jacky Pallas

[email protected] @uclplatforms

mailto:[email protected]

Topics

• UCL Research Equipment Catalogue

• Communications and showcasing facilities

• Capturing data about equipment sharing

• Some examples of sharing

UCL’s Equipment Catalogue

• Now live at research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk

• Contains ~90% of UCL’s equipment >£25k

• Powered by Kit-Catalogue software

• Departmental Administrators are

configured to maintain records

http://www.research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk/

Data Collection: iPad app

• Used FormConnect iPad app

to collect data when escorted

around labs.

• Can export data as .csv, .pdf,

.xml, and .html formats.

• We converted .csv files from

the app to the Kit-Catalogue

import format for upload.

1700 items

catalogued

502 publicly

visible

Item listing

screenshot:

Communications Strategy

Two key groups of users identified: ‘Finders’ and ‘Keepers’

Finders

Researchers who will

browse the catalogue

Keepers

Equipment owners and

departmental admins

Mailings targeted to each group. Posters, accompanying web site, user

guides and FAQs produced. Promotion at internal events.

Administrators configured from each department.

Positive user feedback

1490 visitors; ~17,000 page views; avg. visit 4 mins 15 secs

Tracking item enquiries; dedicated email inbox, 72 queries since Aug 2014

“No problems encountered.

Seems clean, intuitive and

well-constructed.”

72 items updated since Aug 2014

119 department administrators with

edit permissions

Showcasing UCL facilities

Science & Engineering South (SES)

Consortium

Exploit collected catalogue data:

Promote and professionalise our research facilities.

Other HEIs,

SMEs & Industry

Shared searchable

database of equipment

across SES

UCL public data in

equipment.data.ac.uk

Promote facilities through

London Life Science and

Open-SME

Work with UCL Enterprise

to professionalise

offerings.

Capturing equipment sharing - efficiently

• Working with Faculty finance and research

services teams, dept. and facility managers

• Annual financial review of research facilities

– TRAC listing and charge-out rates

• Implemented new data collection process –

income, estimated usage for

– Internal and external academic users (R)

– Teaching (T)

– Industry and gov’t agency (OSR)

Equipment and facilities sharing - data

• 29% of facilities provide services to industry or

gov’t agencies, with 5.4% of total income of all

UCL TRAC facilities

• 41% of facilities offer services to external

academic groups, with 7.4% of income

• Next step – calculate the value of the equipment

available for sharing through our facilities

Collaboration – examples in large scale

computing

• Centre for Innovation, EPSRC £2.8M, UCL, Oxford,

So’ton, Bristol

• Farr London, MRC £5M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Public

Health England

• Admin Data Research Centre England, ESRC £6.8M,

So’ton, UCL, IoE, IFS

• eMedLab, MRC £8.9M, UCL, QMUL, LSHTM, Crick,

Sanger, EBI

• Farr, ADRN, Med. Bioinf : 18 HEIs working together on

SafeShare, JISC-funded project for secure data transfer

Visit:

www.research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk

www.ucl.ac.uk/platforms

Contact us:

[email protected]

@uclplatforms

Research Platforms Coordinator post

available – see UCL Jobs ref. 1452534

http://www.research-equipment.ucl.ac.uk/

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/platforms

mailto:[email protected]

1. About Jisc



4. Discussion




:: Discussion :: Blockers part 1

» “Time”

» “The sense the equipment is 'owned' by a research group is still present. This is reducing with new equipment, but current/old equipment is still seen as 'mine’”

» “No transparent system to see the availability/capacity of equipment”

» “Researchers (understandably) choose the easiest option - so

they use the equipment which is closest to them, as opposed to most appropriate for their experiment”

» “A lack of staff willing to support initiatives like Kit-Catalogue & overall staffing levels”

» “No central resource committed towards facilitating this initiative”

:: Discussion :: Blockers part 2

» “Equipment sharing is still viewed with certain amountof cynicism”

» “Hard to evidence thebenefits”

» “Staff unwilling to travel or sometimes walk to other instruments that may be available”

» “Nature of the applications used”

» “Lack of time available tohelp help with this”

» “Historical attitudes”

:: Discussion :: Enablers part 1

» “Senior management werevery supportive of Kit Cat”

» “We pushed this along for a number of reasons; location of researchers/building scattered between four locations, equipment asset register, sharing of equipment/resources, PAT test register”

» “Communication andawareness raising is always a challenge in an institutionwith large research staff turnover. However we have a good comms strategy”

» “We are also working hard to align requirements for data capture to existing admin processes so there is no additional burden on staff”

:: Discussion :: Enablers part 2

» “There are a number of key academics who are bought into equipment sharing”

» “With greater staff resourceI'm sure we could move the project more quickly”

» “In general, there is buy-in, but the practicalities of making it work are very complex and need full-time attention, which we aren't currently resourced for”

» “Integrated programme of justify, purchase, operate/maintain, upgrade/replace”

» “School budgets are limited for this so a proposal to increase sharing/partnerships and consultancy would enable the programme to become reality”