Monash splurges $2million on shared services push

By Beverley Head
Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:13

Business IT - Technology

With just three years to go before its ICT shared services initiative is due to be completed, Monash University has spent $2 million on a range of tools from BMC Software to help with the transition.

Chris Bridge, Monash’s ICT shared services programme director, explained that Monash – which has 55,000 student and 15,000 staff users of its computer systems - had decided to move to a shared services model in order to “improve the quality of services, reduce risk, install better practices and improve efficiency.”

Nine key shared service areas have been identified by the university, namely: ICT asset management; change and release management; data centre and server management; desktop management; financial management; project and portfolio management; service desk;  service level management; and, vendor and contract management.

The service desk function will be the first to move to the shared services model. At present Monash runs four separate help desk platforms which will now be compressed into one.

Buying the tools is one thing, bringing the shared services vision to life entirely another. Universities are notoriously political environments and to make a shared services model work will require the co-operation of the university faculties which will have to be convinced to hand over their current ICT responsibilities to the shared services group which is now being formed..

Bridge acknowledged the complexity of Monash ICT, which is spread over six campuses in Australia, with other Monash outposts in South Africa, Malaysia, the UK and Italy. He said that the group was now; “Sourcing people from the faculties and divisions to agree on the common processes.”

While Bridge is driving the shared services initiative, Monash is currently without a chief information officer, as the long standing executive director of information technology services, Alan McMeekin, retired late last year.