Catching the information Bus

http://www.intuitivebusinessintelligence.com/Harper_Adams_University_College_Improves_Student_Experience

Came across this recently in one of my searches.  My old colleague Roger Greenhalgh had an idea to create an information bus, that sits on top of all the databases, that would allow for easy data reporting and manipulation.

The idea was that data depending on user rights could be accessible to staff, students, service providers and management.  You could cross tally results for research, for example how many students from a certain demographic scored  50% and higher on their exams. Or an easy method for managers to pull up information on student intake etc without having to higher in specialists or task others to develop reports.  It seems the company he has went with provides this service and allows you to create a 'dashboard' where you can easily see the reports that concern you.

Definatly something to think about if  you want to improve services, and not wholly unattainable.

Paperless Office

An e-mail has been doing the rounds this morning regarding, climate change. With the improvement of academics using electronic documents, are we at a stage were we can drop the paper and save the trees (im really a hippy in disguise ;) ).

With regards to the department that I work in, we could possibly turn all our document's into electronic format especially the forms....

Imagine that, a zero paper department !!

We already seemto be heading down that route, so why not give it a little push......