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Abstract

National investments under the NCRIS Platforms for Collaboration program enter an interesting phase in their development. National services like the Australian Access Federation (AAF), Australian National Data Service (ANDS), and Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) are being built and rolled out to our research community.

Universities attempt to provide holistic support services to their academic staff across their portfolio of research, teaching and learning, community service, international and administrative activities.

How will nationally delivered NCRIS services be added coherently, and without attenuation, to the typical university researcher’s service experience? And how should an IT director and their central IT group assist?

What can we learn from our experience in university deployment of those national network services enabled by AARnet, as the Australian Research and Education Network (AREN)?

Given research IT is usually at the innovative edge of IT services in universities, what models could we use to accelerate advances in IT support for research, into the scaled up mainstream infrastructure of university IT services?

How should institutional IT prepare their infrastructure to take more advantage of these new services for their university research community? For example, how does a university prepare its identity management infrastructure, not just to access the AAF but also to enable benefits from federated activity in other domains, like work integrated learning programs outreaching to industry partner workplaces.

How does a university prepare its data service and storage infrastructure to integrate with ARCS data service fabric and use ANDS services and outputs, and thus ensure a quality data service to the range of academic needs. Given the practical limits of infrastructure performance, what models of federated infrastructure deployment might improve data service quality?

And most importantly, what skills or capability models can we use to ensure we have the staff to support academics in the use of these services. How will university help desks and second tier support groups integrate with national provider support?

The presentation will describe how the University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology are preparing, and speculate on how university IT groups might work together, under the Council of University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) umbrella, and with NCRIS service providers to exploit sector efforts. The presenter will also comment of the approach adopted in Canadian universities, based on a recent study tour.

About the speaker

After leaving The University of St. Andrews in Scotland armed with a Physics degree, Nick Tate worked variously as a Weapons Systems Engineer developing anti-missile missile systems for Royal Navy Warships and as a developer on real time air traffic control systems before joining the United Bank of Kuwait in London as Chief Programmer. He worked with the bank for over 10 years and was Head of IT during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the first Gulf war when there was a run on the bank and many strange requests from Baghdad! He continued to work in London in various roles including Vice-President and Head of Technology for the Citibank Private Bank and Technical Director of Global Asset Management Ltd before emigrating to Australia in 1997, where he became Technology Services Director at Macquarie Bank, based in Sydney. Five years ago, after navigating the obvious transition from investment banking to universities, Nick became both Director of Information Technology Services at The University of Queensland and the Director of Australia’s National CERT, AusCERT (The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team), which is based at the University. He is also Chair of the Council of Australian University Directors of IT (CAUDIT), a Director of Higher Ed Systems Pty Ltd, Chair of the Queensland Regional Network Organisation (QRNO), President of the Academic Board of the International Systems Security Professional Certification Scheme (ISSPCS) and Vice Chairman of the Australian Computer Society in Queensland. Nick holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a Master’s degree in Computer Science and is also a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered IT Professional and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He has over 30 years experience in IT, with over a decade at CIO level and has been responsible for IT security for over 17 years.