Business Development Plan 2009–2012 - Edina

EDINA Business Development Plan 2009–20125. Business Plan for 2009-2012Strategic goal 1:To provide added value, high quality services, leveraged by research, enhancement activity andengagement with others.This drives EDINA’s activity locally, nationally and internationally; and its value proposition to ourstakeholders and users.We identify three key strategic activities or themes:a. Providing a managed portfolio of added value, high quality services [the near term];b. Shaping the future, gaining understanding by undertaking innovative R&D projects;c. Gaining leverage through national and international engagement.Strategic theme 1a:Providing a managed portfolio of added value, high quality servicesSummary of activity:EDINA provides national online services primarily, but not entirely, to UK H/FE staff and students, andResearch Councils 1 . These services fall into the following categories:• Services on licensed content for designated communities, usually licensed by JISC Collections foruse by the F/HE community and Research Councils in the UK, but also supplied by other providers• Repositories of community-generated content• Services on open access to all• Access management and middleware 2 services• Preservation services• Knowledge exchangeSome services require institutional subscription and others are on open access; all are free at the pointof use. Most services use methods of access management supported by the UK Federation for AccessManagement.EDINA seeks to ensure that end users receive quality services, in terms of the online and addedvalue experiences offered, along with reliability, responsiveness and support; and aims to improveengagement with the community to ensure that services meet the needs of users and respond morequickly to changing requirements.EDINA’s reputation for high quality support for use of services and data is a key factor in the successof its services. This applies particularly to services which require some specialist knowledge andthose for which local support is difficult to find. Availability of in-house expert institutional support isreducing, due to the financial pressures placed upon institutions. Yet this comes at a time when thereis increase in the use of geospatial and other more complex data by the academic community.1. See http://edina.ac.uk for a full record of services provided2. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/middleware/team.aspx for definition of middleware3