Leading IS: A people business. Interview with David Harrison and Martyn Harrow

Information Services (IS) in higher education provide facilities that are crucial in supporting successful delivery of institutional strategies - not to mention day-to-day operations - in learning, teaching, research and business processes. Increasingly that strategic and operational importance is recognised with multimillion pound investments. It should be no surprise, then, that universities need to take the leadership, governance, management and development of their Information Services seriously. Few, however, have done so to the point of including, as Cardiff University has, the director of IS (Martyn Harrow, above right) as a strategic partner on the senior team with the clear objective that Information Services will make a defining, enabling contribution to the university’s success. Assistant director David Harrison is also chair of UCISA; developing IS people and IT professionalisation are high on his national agenda. Here Martyn and David talk to Dr Lesly Huxley about the step-change in approach that is helping IS make a difference.