Director, IT for SLMS, SLASH and IOE

Alan Harper, UCL Information Services Division.

I’ve been the Director of IT for a number of the Schools and Faculties of UCL for the last 4 years. My current role involves the strategic leadership and oversight of the delivery of both the local specialist IT requirements that each faculty possesses whilst ensuring and maximising the uptake and delivery of UCL’s central IT provision to our users under what has been called the ‘Local but Central’ model of IT service delivery. To facilitate this, I work with a number of heads of Faculty IT who manage both the faculty relationships and the local IT teams responsible for day to day service delivery. Overall, I manage just shy of 100 staff across 4 UCL schools, whose roles encompass much of the Delivery and Operations Job family and who possess a diverse range of skills needed to deal with the sorts of problems they are asked to solve daily. My job is both varied and thought-provoking, no two days being the same and each throwing up unique challenges and issues, logistical and financial which need to be overcome, often with creative solutions to ensure we deliver the best service we can to our users. It is this endless variety within the role that makes it so exciting and stimulating.
 

Before joining UCL I started out with a brief 2 year foray into retail management which gave me a good understanding of just how hard this type of work can be, especially come Christmas time! From there, I joined UCL and I’ve been here for the past 26 years (most of my working career) and over this period undertaken numerous roles across the IT spectrum of Delivery and Operations. I started my career at UCL working in an administrative role supporting an ODA 5-year work programme working for one of the departments within the GOS ICH Institute of Child Health (whilst it was still a separate postgraduate institute and before it merged with UCL). From there I joined the local IT team in a 1st/2nd  line support function which gave me a good grounding on the basics of IT service delivery. I then branched out, taking an interest in networking and moved to take on the management of the local ICH network. When the opportunity presented itself, I further expanded my role to oversee the management of the incident and service delivery function. When the then IT manager, moved to take on a more senior position, I took over management of the entire local IT team, and then progressed to manage a cluster of geographically collocated supports team (a precursor to what became the Head of Faculty IT function). During the course of my working life I’ve recognised the importance of the old adage “what got you here, won’t get you there” and the importance of continuous professional development as you progress with your career. I undertook both internal and externally provided training courses when offered to support my career development, but also undertook further study in my own time and obtaining two further degrees in IT and management, both of which I feel were critical in making the leap first into IT and then into more senior management roles.

My advice to others starting out or mid-way way through their careers would be to think about where you want your career to take you, and think about what attributes and skills you need to best prepare yourself for when opportunities present themselves. Having a career framework helps massively in this regard as it helps signpost you toward key skills, technologies and training you might need to take that next step (whether at UCL or beyond) and into which job families you might wish to progress into. Talk to individuals who work in these areas to understand the challenges their roles present and perhaps how they made their own personal transitions and try to avail yourself of any opportunities for either training, shadowing, secondments or assignments that might enable you to get a richer understanding of your areas of interest. Most of all chose areas that interest and stimulate you, these are likely to bring out your best work ethic, motivate you to succeed and help you stand out when thinking about future roles.

Ultimately, UCL has provided me with great opportunities to progress and develop myself and I hope you will take the opportunity to use this framework in developmental discussions with your line manager to help you in your future career at UCL.