JANET(UK) Board Response to Sir Alan Wilson's Review of the JISC

1. The JANET(UK) board has considered the Wilson review of the JISC and the subsequent response from the JISC Board. It agreed with Sir Alan’s view that the status quo is not an option and recognised that the necessary changes will impact on us all. The company is therefore very keen to engage actively in the governance transformation process for the delivery of our services. It also agrees strongly with Sir Alan’s view that ultimately stakeholder consultation must play a key part in determining both JISC’s and our own future role and structure.

2. The Board welcomes the Review particularly the highlighting of key themes for the future: more focused activity, less bureaucracy, increased value for money and the optimisation of service delivery.  Such developments would guarantee that the research and higher and further education sectors continue to be served effectively in the future. The Board also welcomes Sir Alan’s recognition both of the achievements of the JISC and the success of the JANET service.

3. For more than 25 years JANET has successfully served the needs of the UK’s research and education communities by the provision of leading edge network services. The key qualities of the network are resilience, high capacity and security which have enabled collaborative communication across the UK and internationally to thrive. JANET has continually developed and matured into a critical national asset with recognised world-class network expertise within the company. Today the network is very highly regarded throughout the higher and further education and research sectors and beyond, at local government, departmental and ministerial levels. Sir Alan describes it as “indispensible” and a major source of competitive advantage to the UK. He found universal praise for it nationally and internationally.

4. It is against this background – of the network being a ‘must have’ national asset – that we set our specific responses to Sir Alan’s report and to the subsequent discussions. In particular, this response is focused on two critical points: the future structure of JISC and the related companies and on funding.

Future structure

5. At the heart of JANET(UK)’s operating model is the role of expert broker and manager, understanding the demands of our users and interpreting it to drive the best solutions from the marketplace to deliver valued services. The network is essentially provided by the private sector, configured and managed by JANET(UK) to meet the needs of higher and further education and other users.

6. To be effective in this role, JANET(UK) needs to be agile, both in the market and in responding to its users. It often operates where the market doesn’t exist or is not economically viable, leading the development and deployment of new technology subsequently taken up by industry. JANET(UK) is continually responding to the needs, concerns and feedback of its users to ensure it maintains the quality of its current services to them and understands their evolving needs. The connection with users is being strengthened by the recent establishment of the stakeholder group and by the changes in regional organisation, now underway, which will ensure more direct contact between JANET(UK) and its users in future. Finally, the skills deployed by JANET(UK), whether in procurement from the private sector, or in developing and managing the functionality of the network, are highly specific and involve continuous engagement with the end users’ network operating staff.  

7. Against this background, the Board sees much merit in JANET(UK) having a more direct relationship with our core community of users to ensure responsiveness to their changing needs. For example, improvement may come from some form of new, mutual organisation for JANET(UK) in which the users/members have greater direct control. This could either be with JANET(UK) as a standalone company  or through a lean corporate centre with strategic oversight of a small group of companies highly focused on different, distinctive missions. Whatever the option pursued, it is important that JANET(UK) is both clearly accountable to those who provide funds while also able to respond effectively to the changing service requirements and customer base. It is the Board’s view is that this is best achieved from a more direct control by those who are the users of JANET services and capabilities.

8. There is, however, little appetite from the Board or our members for JANET(UK) to be simply incorporated into a larger heterogeneous entity potentially lacking focus and having multiple strategic objectives. Such a governance model would risk the very criticisms made by Sir Alan of ‘breadth and complexity’ in the current JISC contributing to ‘a lack of coherence and follow-through’. He also warns that complexity and a lack of focus would detract from effectiveness. The Board is concerned that without the high level of focus, expertise and engagement with specific users currently concentrated in JANET(UK), there will be a serious risk of losing the very qualities for which JANET is praised in the Review and to which any reforms aspire.

Funding

9. Up to now JANET’s success has been underpinned through guaranteed core central funding, ensuring that it is universally available to all eligible institutions irrespective of geographical location or organisational size. A fundamental element in its usefulness and success is the very fact that it is a whole network, connecting reliably all the research, educational and related bodies in the UK to each other, to their international counterparts and to the internet. This universal reach is a key quality which makes the network a ‘must have’ national asset: in Sir Alan’s words, ‘a major source of competitive advantage to the UK’.

10. The Board recognises that the changing economics of the research and education sector will increase the pressure to charge institutions for services previously received free at the point of use. There are real concerns, however, that if the network was to be charged at “full cost” – or worse, its costs were to be bundled into a group of non-network or non-essential IT services - some may seek their own provision. Experience from other NREN’s where this has happened has shown commercial operators win network business by significant initial cost reduction and with a subsequent tendency to move back to a higher uncompetitive tariff, while not necessarily delivering the required level of service. Such a move, if repeated on any scale, would risk breaking up the network and compromising its universal reach – the very quality which led to JANET’s strong affirmation in the Review.

11. To sustain universal reach it is clear that a substantial level of central funding needs to be preserved, to ensure a ubiquitous resilient network provision. The evidence of the 1980s and ‘90s shows very clearly how, when faced with severe financial constraint, very many institutions cut or eliminated expenditure on their estates as a short term ‘fix’, the consequences of which are still being felt throughout the system. The national network is too important to allow its success to become dependent on the different responses of individual users to their own financial difficulties. Furthermore the development of HE/FE cloud services is a strategic priority with the potential to deliver lower costs and better service levels to all our users. One significant impact of a disaggregated network would be to seriously compromise cloud service development. JANET is already being referred to as the “national grid for cloud services.”

12. At the same time, if the user base can be widened without compromising the service to research and higher education, then central funding would deliver even better value for money. The successful incorporation of FE and schools has demonstrated that significant benefit can be delivered to these extended communities without compromising the “core” JANET users. Despite some reservation voiced by respondents to the Review, the requirements gathering for JANET6 further shows a keen appetite to capture the benefits of wider collaboration across the education sector and beyond to other areas of the public interest.

13. Recent evidence indicates that collaborations with public sector networks have delivered significant savings and reduced the burden on central funding. In Wales the Public Sector Broadband Aggregation has been recognised as a highly successful initiative with strong support from both the Welsh tertiary sector and its funding bodies.  This has proved to be an exemplar programme aligned with the government ICT strategy which promotes more efficient procurement and beneficial shared services. 

14. Engaging with a wider community is clearly in the nation’s strategic interest because of the benefit it delivers to higher and further education both operationally and financially. Such an approach delivers better services, improves skills and underpins the synergy that already exists across the sectors.

15. JANET(UK)’s Board is keen to work with the funding councils and JISC to create an improved and better governance structure within which to operate. The company’s priority is that articulated in the Review: to ensure the network remains a world leader, continually developing with agility to meet the changing requirements of research and education.

JANET(UK) Board 24/04/2011