You may be aware that IT Services has been involved in an identity management project, known as ‘ID Manage’, ‘ILM’ or ‘IDM’, to increase automation and make efficiency, accuracy consistency and speed improvements in the following:

  • The processes for the provisioning and de-provisioning of University user accounts
  • The identity data propagated between systems
  • Reflecting changes to the status of staff and students with the corresponding adjustments to their access rights

There have been many benefits and improvements already delivered under this project work including:

  • Raising of awareness of the importance of accurate identity data and the implications of inaccuracy
  • The promotion of accurate identity data management within corporate source systems
  • Rationalisation of some processes involving identity information within corporate systems
  • Automatic issue of staff accounts on receipt of signed contract
  • Members of staff restarting within 12 months of leaving get their original account automatically re-opened
  • Sessional members of staff are gradually being moved to permanent contracts on Trent. By no longer treating them as leavers between contracts, administrative overheads have been reduced
  • Content free usernames have been rolled out
  • Members of staff no longer require multiple usernames for different departments
  • Registered users no longer have to move their files/email to a new username when they change department
  • Extensions for staff accounts are now recorded and processed in Trent
  • Extensive and on-going data cleansing
  • Student usernames recorded on RISIS for reuse if a student enrols on a new course
  • Staff Data View devised for IDM is used to drive other daily reporting requirements and updates. E.g. the Institutional Repository staff feed, Smartcards and the Timetabling staff portal
  • Provision of enhanced authorisation data for AthensDA, CMS pages and Employee Self-Service logins

Originally it was expected that this project would be fitted around other commitments so has been handled as low priority and over the years has been allocated minimal staff resources. Since the inception of the project a sequence of major changes to the administrative environment of the University have impacted both directly and indirectly upon the implementation of the solution and resulted in delays. Given the increasing pressures on staff in IT Services as well as the continuing changes in the University environment we ran a major review of the work and have decided to stop this project.

We wish to acknowledge the extensive hard work and commitment of the key project team members of over such a long period of time. IT Services are aware that stopping this project will have impact in a number of administrative areas and are currently running an impact assessment to identify alternative options for delivering some of the benefits included in the project definition.

I would like to encourage anyone who is concerned to contact me.

Christine

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Christine Storey

Assistant Director, IT Services, University of Reading,

Whiteknights, PO Box 220, Reading RG6 6AF

Tel 0118 378 8433

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