JOB TITLE: School ICT Service Manager
REPORTS TO:Head of ICT Operations
DEPARTMENTFinance & Resources
SECTION:Customers & Information, ICT Operations
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1.PURPOSE OF JOB
(Give in one or two sentences the basic reason why the job exists.)
To lead and guide the strategic delivery and development of ICT solutions and servicesacross the whole spectrum of school and education functions in line with the Council’s business objectives, ensuring that security and compliance standards and agreed service levels are met, and that quality targets are reached and maintained.To be the professional lead for the Schools ICT traded service, carrying out high level analysis and design, setting service levels and charges, planning, procuring and deploying resources effectively and growing the service and income levels in line with business need.
To maintain, develop, rationalise and integrate new and existing technical solutions, including enterprise integration projects.
To keep a professional watching brief on national education ICT initiatives and to initiate and support projects with a technical element that give school staff, young people, their parents and carers the best and most cost-effective services and opportunities for learning and teaching.
2.PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES
(Please list the key areas of contribution of the job. These would normally be 6-10 statements, listed in order of importance and approximate percentage of time spent on each.)
1To work with senior managers to align technical strategies and solutions to ensure corporate business strategy and priorities are met.2To initiate and lead school network, business systems and classroom technology design and development. To introduce new technology or develop the use of existing technology or systems. To lead and managecomplex proof of concept, high level design, testing and implementation work carried out by the team or their internal/external partners on behalf of schools/the LA and to contribute to large scale enterprise technology and systems projects.
3To lead the formulation of medium and long term School ICT technical and systems strategy, with particular focus on deploying new technologies to support teaching and learning and improved access to information at both school and LA level.
4To lead a core team of School ICT specialists, who are responsible for developing and supporting technology solutions and business systems with a brief across all aspects of education delivery, performance and reporting in the City. To ensure the smooth running of business as usual activities of the team. To ensure that incoming requests to the team are allocated, managing and forward planning the use of resources, where appropriate putting together multidisciplinary project teams in conjunction with other managers. To prioritise actions and monitor progress and outcomes so that internal milestones and customer deadlines are met. To ensure that security and compliance standards and agreed service levels are met, and that quality targets are reached and maintained.
5To ensure all team activities are documented appropriately and accurately.To design and implement services, decommission end-of-life services, write service and marketing documents and to negotiate, cost and price services delivered by the team. To maximise income generation and recovery and to monitor and report projected income and expenditure. To write business plans and produce and monitor service metrics. To formally report progress and lessons learnt for projects and work packages to stakeholders and senior managers.
6To manage and authoriserevenue and capital budgets where delegated to ensure maximum value is achieved in accordance with Council policy and strategy.
7To conduct regular performance appraisals for the team, troubleshooting areas of poor performance and putting in place performance improvement plans and support where necessary. To act as mentor and guide for the team as a whole and to set the overall direction for its’ members’ professional development.
8To contribute to the ongoing review and monitoring of council-wide technology implementations. With colleagues, to undertake a programme of rationalisation and integration to ensure coherent cost-effective service delivery.
9To develop effective methods of communication and collaboration with internal customers, non-ICT and ICT staff and suppliers. To undertake supplier management and procurement activities for the specialist areas assigned, alerting relevant teams to supplier availability or performance issues. To represent the Authority at regional and national professional conferences and meetings.
10To initiate projects that support the principles of a Value for Money approach through effective use of technology. To recommend process and productivity improvements. To highlight best practice in support management through continuous assessment, and to champion and highlight excellent performance. To ensure that the team works to the identified processes and within best practice guidelines of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).
11To maintain a comprehensive understanding and broad knowledge of new and emergent technologies and identify opportunities to deploy these in order to meet corporate and directorate strategic priorities and support identified business need.
12To ensure critical business processes and services continue operating at predetermined minimum levels following an incident or unforeseen interruption to service, and are restored to full availability following planned downtime. / 15%
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- GENERAL ACCOUNTABILITIES
(These accountabilities are applicable to all posts)
1.To be prepared to implement the Council’s Equalities Policy at all levels appropriate to the job and must at all times carry out his/her duties with due regard to the Council’s Equalities Policy.
2.To be responsible for the implementation of, and compliance with, the provisions of legislation relating to health and safety, of such employees and areas of the workplace as fall under direct control of the postholder and for complying with legislation relating to works and contracts as are within the direct responsibility of the postholder.
3.To undertake such other duties appropriate to the grade and character of the work as may be reasonably required.
Your duties will be as set out in the above job description but please note that the Council reserves the right to update your job description, from time to time, to reflect changes in, or to, your job.
You will be consulted about any proposed changes.
The list of duties in the job description should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive. There will be other duties and requirements associated with your job and, in addition, as a term of your employment you may be required to undertake various other duties as may reasonably be required.
POST TITLE:School ICT Technical Development Manager
DIRECTORATE: Finance & Resources
SECTION:Customers & Information, ICT Operations
CRITERIA
/ESSENTIAL CRITERIA
Job Related Knowledge, Education and Qualifications / Preferred qualifications:- Educated to degree level or equivalent knowledge gained as an ICT manager of leading and managing large complex ICT projects with a significant business change element
- 1 high end certification in a relevant technical discipline or 2 entry level qualifications whilst currently working towards 1 high end certification, AND willing to study for further high end qualifications;
- Evidence of a commitment to continuous self development in both technical and management/leadership skills.
- Extensive and detailed knowledge of modern ICT hardware, software & infrastructure
- Strong knowledge of the ICT marketplace
- Detailed understanding of the complex relationship between SIMS, school servers, operating systems and networks
- Sound strategic knowledge of the context of Public Sector ICT provision and both business- and technology-led developments, and very clear understanding and vision of ICT’s potential impact on education and learning
- Good knowledge of the solutions evaluated and implemented by various Public Sector organisations, and their benefits.
Experience
/- Significant experience of procuring, implementing, developing and supporting School ICT solutions in accordance with Service Level Agreements
- Significant experience of procuring, implementing, developing and supporting enterprise ICT solutions
- Experience of developing and delivering briefings to staff, including leadership teams, on key ICT technologies, tools and services; experience of writing and presenting major business proposals to senior managers and boards
- Significant experience of ICT project management and implementation and working in a controlled environment with formal testing and release processes.
- Experience of working at a senior level and managing specialist technical teams working to tight deadlines.
Skills and Abilities
/- Excellent negotiation skills with suppliers and customers
- Excellent communications skills – written and verbal
- Excellent person management skills to ensure high productivity levels in a very important and high profile traded service area
- Ability to produce clear information and presentations to all levels of staff and to proactively report to senior management at the appropriate level of detail
- Ability to manage and develop new initiatives to improve standards in working practice, information quality and the teaching and learning experience
- Ability to absorb and process complex information quickly and under pressure
- Ability to manage multiple projects whilst working within deadlines and tight budgets
- Methodical, accurate, organised and confident self-managing approach to work
- Ability to initiate and progress projects and to escalate appropriately.
Equal Opportunities
/- To be able to demonstrate a commitment to the principles of Equal Opportunities and be able to carry out duties in accordance with that policy.
4. ORGANISATION CHART
Please see Appendix 1. attached
5. HARDEST PART OF THE JOB
The most difficult part of the job is keeping abreast of changes and developments in national school strategies, legislation, business systems and technologiesand anticipating and strategically planning for their implications for schools and the Council at a local level.
The most complicated part of the job is the detailed planning, design, implementation, documentation and support of the many complex and interrelated technology solutions in schools, planning for consistency across schools of different phases, sizes and situations in terms of configuration and supportability, while allowing for local flexibility of use to meet schools’ differing needs. Add to this the needs and expectations of corporate lines of business, corporate strategic priorities and technology compatibility and supportability, anticipating directions of travel and working proactively while “keeping the show on the road”, and this becomes a very complex picture to lead.
For many projects there are often no obvious or existing technological solutions. New technologies and systems must be identified, sized and costed before they can be identified as suitable, feasible and acceptable solutions. New technologies often throw up new problems during project implementation adding to the unpredictability of innovative business transformation systems. These problems need to be identified, understood and tackled swiftly to prevent potentially costly delays.
To develop and maintain control of complex and rapidly developing enterprise technologies and services including their detailed functionality and to apply this knowledge and understanding to inform strategic direction for the use and development of ICT across the citizen facing part of the business (in this case largely, but not solely, children and their parents and carers) is equally challenging. This involves maintaining close contact with managers within the ICT Business Strategy teams and internal business customers to identify and advise system enhancements and developments to support the services to members of the public.
Being able to communicate the corporate perspective on shared corporate systems and solutions to different – and extremely diverse - business units in a clear and coherent way, ensuring all needs are met, requires a clear and focused approach.
Developing and maintaining working practices with the co-operation and support of senior staff, combined with very strong negotiation and diplomacy skills are essential to this role. The post holder will need to maintain a clear and objective view of what is a very complex and changing environment where particular parts of the organisation may seek to have their needs met above those of others and technical evangelists may try to influence their decisions.
There will be close liaison with Business Strategy teams, who will feed in business requirements to the design process, but at the same time there is a requirement to maintain broad based understanding of the operations of these diverse areas; applying this knowledge to the identification of appropriate systems and technologies is made more complex as each of these areas are subject to regular change. There is also the fact that technology-led change may impact business process, and being able to think ahead, identify and communicate the potential impact at an early stage is a requirement of the role.
Managing teams of specialist technical staff – including matrix management of multidisciplinary teams - and implementing major corporate projects requires the post holder to have a very flexible way of working. The post holder needs to carry out all line management duties required, as well as working alongside staff on projects to support front line services and lead on cross cutting citywide programmes.
6. DIMENSIONS
A)The post holder will be initiating and supporting the development of ICT for schools and their staff and children, across the city, coveringtheir business needs and classroom teaching and learning.
B)Areas of responsibility include, but are not limited to: Brighton & Hove schools’ wide area network; installation of LANs; whole school networks; internet and intranet technical environments; email for schools; remote access and support; remote client management; single sign on/authentication; cabling; data transfer; web services; content Filtering & caching; management servers and tools; other technical infrastructure;learning technologies and systems;school business systems and MIS;school communication systems and technologies;client devices including PCs, thin client devices, laptops and mobile devices
C)The post holder manages the deployment, training and support of school networks, equipment and software on nearly 90 sites with approximately 10,000 workstations and 30,000 + users
D)The team managed by the post holder delivers business transformationacross many schools simultaneously and impacts the quality of service provision for 30,000 children and their parents and carers across the city
E)The post holder is responsible for delivering support to80 schools and other education sites (such as the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital Teaching & Learning service) accounting for approximately £800,000 of traded income for the service, under a rolling contract working to agreed service levels and quality standards. The post holder also plays a key role in planning the spending of ringfenced capital grant monies totalling over £700,000 per annum and carrying out the resulting procurements. The post holder also leads on individual corporate procurements of goods and services up to a value of £1,000,000
F)The post holder leads on the deployment and transition to business as usual of up to 50 significant releases of software and operating systems per year across all sites plus additional minor releases and patches
G)The post holder supports the organisation’s collection and use of data and information, playing a key role in effective management reporting and formulation of performance indicators. The accuracy and timeliness of this data plays a key part in the organisation’s ability to support its most vulnerable children and young people and to put in place appropriate interventions for them
H)The post holder will be required to deal with managers, support staff and school staff at all levels, including Head Teachers and senior staff in schools
I)There are 4 direct reports, 3 of which are managers leading their own teams of ICT specialists.
7. SCOPE FOR IMPACT
The impact of this post will be on both internal and external customers and will be key to developing the way that staff and citizens interact with Council systems and information, and the way in which the children and young people of the city are equipped and supported to become productive and fulfilled members of society.
The post holder will operate at the middle management level within ICT and will work closely with members of the senior management team to help develop ICT technical strategy and governance for Brighton & Hove City Council. The ability to lead in the specialist area with a strategic approach that directs the investment in key technologies directly impacts the quality of services delivered to the residents of Brighton & Hove. Without this leadership, investment in technology would be exposed to the risk of being delivered in an ad hoc, inefficient, uneconomic and fragmented manner or not being delivered at all.
Responsible for a range of technology solutions and tools used across schools, the education service and the Council, leading the rationalisation and cost efficiencies down to provide best value for all users and residents.
Leading the complete audit of these to identify areas of poor performance, duplication of functionality or contracts/licences, cost saving opportunities and to strategically shape the Council’s supporting systems infrastructure on a rolling 5 year lifecycle.
Accountable for the availability and business continuity of the solutions and tools. To ensure that effective measures for reducing the risk to the Council from catastrophe are in place and to ensure critical business processes continue operating at predetermined minimum levels following an incident or unforeseen interruption to service.
The post holder will manage project focused matrix teams comprising ICT staff andkey business specialists, as well as external system suppliers and technology partners, to deliver business focused enterprisesolutions.