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EDINA Annual Review 2008/2009The Shibboleth Development and Support Services (SDSS) Expert group at EDINA released Discovery serviceversion 1.1, which includes dynamic searching and embedded WAYF capabilities. The group is working on anevolving technical design to allow practical inter-federation working via metadata exchange.The SDSS Federation Support team updates and manages the metadata that underpins the Federation. Themetadata is signed daily to ensure its integrity before being shipped to the Federation operator for distribution toFederation members.Sustain and develop a well-founded UK national academic datacentreProvide effective governance and management of resourcesGovernanceEDINA operates as a HEFCE-related body under the terms of a Funding Agreement signed between HEFCEand the University of Edinburgh. A Management Board that offers specialist advice and guidance has beenestablished under the terms of the Agreement, and it met three times during 2008-2009. The Director ofEDINA reports to the Board. The Chair is chosen in agreement between the University and JISC, and in 2008-2009 Professor Charles Oppenheim agreed to take the Chair. Membership includes representatives from theJISC Secretariat, the user community, the Director of EDINA, and the University of Edinburgh.The Director of EDINA sits on the Information Services (IS) Executive as director of a division of IS and, as anemployee, the Director reports to the Vice Principal and Chief Information Officer of the University; the lattersits on the EDINA Management Board.The EDINA Management Team met fortnightly and is responsible for leadership of activity, finance andresource planning in the data centre. The Business Development Group guides the development of new projectand service activity within EDINA and met fortnightly.EstateThe move to commercial premises in Edinburgh improved the working environment for EDINA staff andprovided additional resources, such as a number of meeting rooms that any member of staff can reserve.Additional accommodation was secured on another floor in the same building in 2008-2009 and some staffmembers moved downstairs in early 2009. EDINA’s office at St Helens College in Newton-le-Willows,Merseyside, closed due to the planned closure of the campus by the College. The 4 members of staff moved tocommercial premises in Birchwood, Warrington, Cheshire in July 2009.It is anticipated that the additional accommodation in Edinburgh and Warrington will address for some time theconstraints previously faced by the organisation due to lack of accommodation for staff.FinancePriority was given in 2008-2009 to improving methods of projecting income, activity and hence staffing andaccommodation requirements. EDINA started work on improving its management accounting systems to makebetter-informed business decisions. In common with many other organisations that receive much of theirfunding from grant money, EDINA faces challenges in being able to react quickly to opportunities when staffmembers are already fully committed in their current work. EDINA’s Strategy and the rolling businessdevelopment plans in each of EDINA’s business areas address the whole of the activity undertaken by the datacentre, and not just its JISC-funded activity. Service Implementation Plans for JISC-funded activity are guided bythese documents. The annual Operational Plan for JISC is based on the Service Implementation Plans.Managing RiskEDINA provides a Risk Register each year to JISC, as part of the requirements of the Funding Agreement andSLD. The Risk Register for 2008-2009 was submitted as required in September 2008. In December 2008,EDINA held two scenario-planning workshops for senior staff. The first addressed financial scenario planning,21