30 March 2020 - On site attendance and equipment issue
ucisa resource: on site attendance/equipment issue during this period
Based on discussions with around 20 universities, sector best practice for IT services has emerged as:
- All staff are to work remotely unless authorised to attend campus for a business critical purpose.
- A small pool of IT staff are authorised to attend campus when strictly necessary (often on a rota basis) in order to offer business critical support services.
- The number of staff required on campus is kept to the lowest possible number and for as few days/hours each day as possible.
- Wherever possible helpdesk services are run by staff working from home via email and telephone only.
- Wherever possible suppliers are asked to configure new equipment ordered and deliver to staff members at home.
- Supplier/IT departments are providing detailed written guidance to enable colleagues to set up equipment at home, usually supported by a helpdesk function for further advice by email/telephone.
- Staff should not be required to visit the homes of colleagues to set up or deliver equipment.
- Most universities are offering a limited equipment collection/fix service. Where this is offered, best practice is to have pre-arranged drop off/collection times and a process which ensures staff members do not come into contact with each other.
- Those required to attend campus for a specified/ business-critical purpose are issued with letters as evidence of their status as a business critical/key worker.
ucisa has however created a sample on-site collection/ fix process which includes all the elements of best practice that we have been made aware of, together with template letters to issue to staff attending campus. You will see that the letter of authority for staff to attend campus covers wider aspects than IT. We hope this will be helpful in providing information as to the types of activity that fellow institutions are treating as business critical.
We hope that you will find these templates helpful and, as always, we would welcome any feedback as to how they might be further improved or as to other sample documentation that you would find useful.
