These blog pages will track design and development of the Staff Personalized Information Portal, which is a local computing project.
Description
The Staff Personalized Information Portal contains a personalised cut of data that is appropriate to the teaching and administrative duties currently held by the member of staff. For example: a member of staff that is a PGR supervisor will have a page containing a set of live data on those PGR students that they are supervising; a member of staff that is a PGR Selector for an institute will have a page containing a set of live data on the current applications being processed for that institute; a member of staff that is an institute director will have a page containing management reports for things like student numbers and funding information customised to their institute. The intention is that it provides a one stop shop for access to the data (and links to associated resources) needed to perform those duties (well, that which can be satisfied through our local systems anyway). It is more efficient for staff but also helps us meet various data protection obligations. In addition the content (or a particular view of it) can be subsequently used within a PDR. We also think it would be a useful resource for new staff (or existing staff taking on new roles) when they start.
We produced a rough prototype of what such a portal might look like and examples of what content it might have on it. This was reviewed by a number of administrative staff and was also demonstrated to over ten different academic staff for feedback. There was unanimous agreement that this would be a good thing. A more comprehensive report on the feedback received would be produced as an initial deliverable for this project. This project will define and produce an underlying technical framework, evolved from the prototype and user requirements, onto which multiple sources of data can ultimately be included, as well as a basic information portal for academic staff to cover the core known requirements. An initial deliverable of the project will itemise the specific datasets that will be included as well as the source, their construction and whether any new central data is required. However the actual content on the page is likely to change and grow over time based on what different users in different roles identify that they need (and this would constitute ongoing work beyond this project).
We would like to see a usable prototype in place during Semester 2 of 2018/19 with the final version being available from early in Summer 2019 (so as to cover duty assignment, TSP bid handling and course preparation).
