Strategic Liaison at the University Of Sheffield

Over the last year in CiCS (Corporate Information & Computing Services) at the University of Sheffield we have been working to improve liaison with the rest of the University to improve our services.

The change of the University structure to faculties allowed us to build a more effective model for introducing Strategic Liaison, which started earlier this year.

We spoke with each academic faculty to gain agreement on implementing Strategic Liaison including defining its content to ensure it didn't end up duplicating the role of operational liaison.  

There was flexibility in terms of membership and numbers, with each faculty being asked to decide their own strategic representatives for the faculty.  For CiCS membership has been approximately 5 people predominantly members of the CiCS Executive.  For Faculties the membership has ranged from 5 to 15 representatives.

We decided to implement a structured agenda to provide some consistency across all the strategic liaison meetings, the structure fitted in with the  headings from our service catalogue (Learning & Teaching, Research, Communication & Collaboration, Help & Support, Infrastructure and Corporate Business Activity).

The meetings have been highly successful and we have recently received agreement from the Registrar to implement Strategic Liaison with Professional Services.