Curtis+Cartwright: recent work
We have worked for a variety of clients across the public sector and we strongly believe in the "cross-fertilisation" of ideas, principles and good practice across sectors. Our clients have included:
- Central Government: Cabinet Office, CSIA, Home Office
- Defence: Dstl, DTIC, a range of IPTs, Hydrographic Office
- Education and research: HEFCE, JISC, SCONUL, RIN, British Library, RLUK, JANET(UK), The M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries (via LSE), Science Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Higher Education Academy/JISC Collaboration, the Strategic Content Alliance and the University of Surrey
- The European Commission: DG Information Society and Media
- Police: Bedfordshire Police, National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA)
Much of our work for the UK Government is not publicly available. However, listed below are some examples of work that we have undertaken in the education and research sector which are available:
- We conducted a project for JISC to review the evidence for the benefits, opportunities, enablers, risks and barriers to the linked data approach in UK HE and HEIs. This was an exciting opportunity to engage with the issues surrounding a complex and emerging technology, and to provide useful advice and guidance to a sector body. The study report is available here.
- We investigated the role of PhD supervisors in information literacy. This project was conducted on behalf of the Research Information Network and was published here. The project focused the place and role of PhD supervisors in the drive to ensure that research students possess the necessary level of information literacy to pursue their careers successfully in academia and beyond.
- We undertook the evaluation of the Higher Education Funding Council for England's programme of support for Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects. The report is available here.
- We recently conducted a strategic review of the JISC Datacentres EDINA and Mimas, considering the service provision structure and strategy for UK HE.
- We undertook a long-term evaluation of a JISC-funded programme. A series of evaluation reports (see here for an example) were delivered to the programme team and funding committee. The evaluation was part formative, part summative and part longer-term impact analysis.
- Cloud computing is a relatively recent concept that has arisen out of developments in grid computing, virtualisation and web technologies. We conducted a project for the JISC to understand where cloud computing can best be used in research for data storage and as a compute resource, and providing guidance to stimulate innovation in the use of cloud computing in UK HE.
- We undertook the evaluation of the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme.
- We developed a website for librarians clarify and advance their understanding of what they are entitled to do with the bibliographic records which they hold within their institutional library catalogue.
- We produced a report on the costs (open and hidden) involved in the digitisation of content, considering costs across the project lifecycle from the selection of relevant material through to the delivery of the digitised content.
- We conducted a study to investigate how the education and research sector could personalise online services. See the DPIE2 report here.
- We undertook a HEFCE-funded shared service feasibility study for the M25 Consortium to pilot Walk-in Access to M25 Libraries (WAM25). See the WAM25 Feasibility Study.
- We mapped the UK security services to the international e-Framework for education and research. See the Landscape Study and completed security documentation on the e-Framework.
- We developed guidance on audience research for the SCA. The resulting Guide to Researching Audiences and various briefing papers can be found at the SCA publications.
- We developed an information paper on the international aspects of federated access management including an overview of major activities and an analysis of JISC's involvement in the international community.
- We have conducted numerous market research projects engaging HE and FE institutions (UK and beyond), learners, researchers, librarians, ICT staff, funders and representative bodies. For example, we investigated the readiness of UK HEIs and FEIs to adopt federated access management. See the JISC Institutional Preparedness studies 1 and 2.
- We developed a Business Case Toolkit to help institutions make decisions about access management in light of the (then) new developments in federated access management.