ICT News, November 2007
New directors
This month we are very pleased to welcome three new directors: Gabbie Whelan – ICT Director, Operations; Mark Johnson – Director, Finance; and Ian Ross – ICT Director, Project Services.
Gabbie Whelan
Gabbie Whelan joins ICT as Director, Operations — a new role which will focus on improving capability and increasing performance. These goals will be achieved by adopting a continuous improvement strategy which will incorporate both quality and metric components. Already, Gabbie has identified key performance measures across ICT, and is working with other directors to embed a measures-based approach into ICT's activities.
Gabbie has over 20 years experience in IT, primarily in financial services working with both internal IT teams and vendors. Her career started as a CICS/Cobol/DB2 programmer, and progressed through roles managing production support, development, projects and programs, to IT manager and PMO manager. She spent the last five years managing AMP's pool of IT project managers, and established a continuous improvement program for AMP's IT processes, incorporating quality and metrics components and redeveloping project management capability.
Gabbie is mother and taxi driver to boys aged 12, 8 and 8 (twins). She plays hockey and touch football, and enjoys the beach, bushwalking, bike riding and wine tasting.
Gabbie's goals for her new position are consistent, effective processes and capabilities that improve ICT’s efficiency as evidenced by the measurement program.
Mark Johnson
Given the University’s substantial investment in IT staff, systems and infrastructure, we are also pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Johnson as Finance Director – ICT and SydneyPeople. While Mark’s role includes responsibility for both areas, he is located within the ICT space on Level 3 of the Services Building. Mark brings a wealth of experience to the University which comes as a result of some 20 years of working in senior finance roles in the private sector.
For the most part, Mark has worked in market research and IT organisations both overseas and in Australia. In such roles Mark has been instrumental in creating and driving corporate business plans for organisations that talk in the billions of dollars, as well as acting as the transition and transformational director for a number of significant company integrations. In addition, Mark has substantial experience in the development and implementation of shared service initiatives incorporating back office outsourcing opportunities.
Mark's aspiration in his new role (apart from "seeing Watford continue to sit atop the English Football League One table for the rest of the season") is "an informed business decision process as well as effective corporate governance processes".
Ian Ross
Ian Ross took over the role of ICT Director of Project Services from Rob Mackinnon in mid-November.
Ian commenced his IT career with the Southern Life Association in Cape Town, after having completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Computer Science, at the University of Cape Town. From this initial experience Ian ventured into not only into the world of contracting but also moved to Australia. Ian’s experience in contracting has spanned all facets – programming, testing, team leadership and project management.
It was late in 2002 that Ian accepted a permanent role for the first time in 17 years. After a short contract with StorageTek, Ian was offered the role of Principal Project Consultant and went on to be the NSW Professional Services Delivery Manager. After STK was acquired by Sun, Ian was appointed as a Senior Project Manager/Project Director within the Sun Client Solutions Delivery team. Ian’s last major project in this role was to deliver an Access and Identity Management project at Vodafone. This capacity to adapt to a changing internal and external environment will prepare Ian well for the University sector.
When asked to outline the focus of his role, Ian offered the following considered summary:
"To deliver quality outcomes for all ICT projects by building on the foundations created by Rob and others – and to achieve this by ensuring our methodology and processes are effective, efficient, understood and implemented." He added, "an integral part of that will be getting to know our current Project Services team, the broader ICT team and our university-wide partners, enlisting their help in agreeing and delivering improvements and most importantly, making sure we all enjoy the journey!"
Access Grid for Mathematics and University
In 2006 the School of Mathematics and Statistics received an equipment grant from the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM), and internal support in the form of a TIES grant, to build an Access Grid Room (AGR) on Level 8 of the Carslaw Building.
The AGR contains a collection of resources that includes multimedia, large-format displays, interactive whiteboards, shared presentations and shared applications. These resources are used to support collaborative interactions across the Internet.
It will be used for seminars, lectures, tutorials and training. The AGR is distinguished from conventional video conferencing by its multicast base and its ability to provide many-to-many interactivity.
Eventually the AGR will be made available as a general teaching resource for all schools within the Faculty of Science and, more generally, the University.
The AGR was switched on in early November and testing is now taking place. On 7 December 2007, it will be used for a National Symposium on Mathematics Education for 21st Century Engineering Students, hosted by RMIT University over the Access Grid.
The AGR project will be further enhanced by a successful Collaboration and Structural Reform (CASR) grant for $1.2M. The University of Sydney is the lead institution in this grant to "develop, implement and evaluate learning and teaching systems for advanced and honours-level mathematics education by sharing the capabilities of several Australian universities through the novel use of high-speed Internet-based communication technology" (i.e., Access Grid Nodes).