To enable people in higher education, further education and skills in the UK to perform at the forefront of international practice by exploiting fully the possibilities of modern digital empowerment, content and connectivity
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) was established on 1 April 1993 under the terms of letters of guidance from the Secretaries of State to the newly established Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales, inviting them to establish a Joint Committee to deal with networking and specialist information services. JISC was to provide national vision and leadership for the benefit of the entire Higher Education sector. The organisation inherited the functions of the Information Systems Committee (ISC) and the Computer Board, both of which had served universities. An initial challenge was to support a much larger community of institutions, including ex-polytechnics and higher education colleges. The new committee was initially supported by four sub-committees, covering Networking; Awareness, Liaison and Training; Electronic Information; and Technology Applications.
In 1995, the Northern Ireland Department of Education became a full partner in JISC. The organisation expanded again in 1999 when the further education funding bodies became funding partners. This expansion prompted a restructuring and a new set of committees:
JISC Committee for Authentication and Security (JCAS) November 1999 – January 2002. The work of this committee was taken over by JCN2 and JCIE3.
JISC Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI) November 1999 – January 2002. The work of this committee was taken over by JCIE3 and JCCS4.
JISC Committee for Integrated Environments for Learners (JCIEL) November 1999 – January 2002. The work of this committee was taken over by JCLT5.
JISC Committee for Awareness, Liaison and Training (JCALT) The work of this committee was taken over by JOS6.
JISC Committee on Networking (JCN2).
The expansion also raised wider concerns about JISC's governance, and Sir Brian Follett was appointed to carry out an independent enquiry. His report, published in November 2000, concluded that "JISC is perceived as a UK success story, providing a network of world-class standard and a range of excellent services. Importantly, it evolves continuously and is an excellent example of collaboration between the community and the funding bodies". However, Follett made various recommendations for reform, most of which were accepted by the funding bodies.[citation needed]
A new structure was therefore put in place from December 2001, consisting of a JISC Board, advised by a steering committee made up of senior officers from each funding body. Six sub-committees fell under two main heads: strategy and policy committees, which aimed to ensure that the needs of specific communities were met (in the fields of research, learning and teaching, and management); and functional committees, concentrating on specific areas of work (networking, information environment, and content acquisition).
In January 2005, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 came into full effect, giving the public a general right to access all types of recorded information held by public bodies. JISC took an important lead in raising the Act's profile in the academic community and published its own FOI Publication Scheme.
In the spring of 2005, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) announced a reduction in its funding contribution to JISC. The LSC and JISC Executive negotiated a package of services that the LSC would continue to contribute towards in the future.[citation needed]
Also in 2005, a number of strategies and policies for UK Higher and Further Education were published, reaffirming the importance of ICT: JISC was seen as taking an important role in supporting and implementing these strategies.
In the same year, JISC signed agreements with several international partners:
SURF Foundation in the Netherlands, cementing the considerable areas of co-operation between the two organisations;
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF) and SURF to create the Knowledge exchange which aims to increase the return on investment by the individual organisations in ICT infrastructure, services and projects.
Under the Government Spending Review 2004, JISC was awarded additional funding of £81 million for the period April 2006 to March 2009, and was able to launch a range of new programmes to support the work of the higher education and research community. Funding for SuperJANET5 was provided by all of its funding partners. Other activities were funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales.
In 2009 JISC published the In From The Cold: An assessment of the scope of "Orphan Works" and its impact on the delivery of services to the public. JISC stated this project had four goals:[2]
Provide qualitative evidence of how access to and use of content are inhibited
Raise the profile of the issue through strategic advocacy and press relations
A review of JISC's work, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Wilson, was published in February 2011. One of the principal findings of the review was that there is no comparable body to JISC within the UK, and internationally its reputation is outstanding as a strategic leader and partner. The Review concluded that "JISC is an invaluable national resource which has evolved in response to increasing demands over 20 years". However, the Review also recommended that, due to the breadth and complexity of JISC's activity, its structure, processes, projects, programmes and governance need to be simplified and reshaped: "[i]n an era of financial constraint, it is necessary to refocus activities around clearer priorities, and to ensure JISC operates with a sustainable financial model".[3]
In 2012 JISC became an independent not-for-profit charity funded mainly by the government and universities.[4] At this point it renamed itself Jisc.
In 2019 Jisc merged with Eduserv, another charity promoting IT in the public sector and in charities. The combined entity continues to be named Jisc, and is based at Eduserv's Bristol headquarters.[6]
In 2020 Jisc merged with HECSU, a careers information and advice service.[7]
In 2022 Jisc merged with HESA, the agency responsible for collection, analysis and dissemination of quantitative information about higher education in the United Kingdom.[8]
In September 2022, Jisc agreed to a closer working relationship with UCISA.[9]
In August 2024, Jisc announced that it would cease all activity on each of its X accounts. Jisc explained that the move was taken due to "recent events that are incompatible with our values as an organisation". Jisc announced that it would keep its profiles on X to prevent any misuse of its identity but would not post any new content after 21 August 2024.[10]
Services
Services offered by Jisc include:
Providing UK universities and colleges with shared digital infrastructure and services, such as the JANET network
Operating shared digital infrastructure and services, including eduroam UK (wireless access across different institutions), Library Hub, the Archives Hub (a catalogue of the collections of academic and other institutions), Sherpa (tools for checking permissions around Open Access), Learner Analytics and authentication systems (Open Athens and the UK Federation)
Negotiating sector-wide deals, such as the Jisc Collections licenses for academic journals as well as deals with IT vendors, commercial publishers and aggregators of e-content.
Advice on digital technology for education and research.
Jisc acts as a national consortium for the UK academic community.[11]
The National Academic Mailing List Service, known as JiscMail, was, as of 2017[update], the UK's biggest educational and research email discussion list community. JiscMail is part of Jisc.[12] JiscMail hosts over 9000 educational and research email mailing lists and in 2015 had over 1,500,000 unique subscribers. JiscMail uses LISTSERV mailing list software. JiscMail helps groups of individuals to communicate and discuss education/research interests using email discussion lists. JiscMail Helpline are the team who provide information, advice, support and help to users of the service, from setting up new lists, to helping customers find lists, join lists, update their details. JiscMail became the National Mailing List Service as the successor to a previous service, Mailbase, in November 2000.[13]
Services previously offered by Jisc include:
The Plagiarism Advisory Service, also known as JISCPAS, offered advice on plagiarism to higher education institutions.[14]
A public mirror service (mirror.ac.uk) primarily focused on free software, operating between 1999 and July 2007.[15]
ZETOC, a service providing access to the British Library's table of contents, including more than 30,000 journals and 52 million articles and conferences papers, which was provided by JISC free of charge to members of JISC-sponsored UK further or higher education establishments and UK research councils.[16] The ZETOC service was withdrawn with effect from 1 August 2022 after a review found "a progressive decline in its use and a diminishing number of users".[17]
Related Research Articles
Janet is a high-speed network for the UK research and education community provided by Jisc, a not-for-profit company set up to provide computing support for education. It serves 18 million users and is the busiest National Research and Education Network in Europe by volume of data carried. Previously, Janet was a private, UK-government funded organisation, which provided the JANET computer network and related collaborative services to UK research and education.
CARNET is the national research and education network of Croatia. It is funded from the government budget and it operates from offices in Zagreb and five other cities.
Formerly known as The United Kingdom Office for Library and Information Networking, UKOLN was a centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. UKOLN was based at the University of Bath and was funded through a mixture of core and project grants. Latterly it received its core funding solely from JISC, but had received core grants previously from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the British Library.
The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is an educational charity established in 1944 in the UK. It works to involve people in archaeology and to promote the appreciation and care of the historic environment for the benefit of present and future generations. It achieves this by promoting research, conservation and education, and by widening access to archaeology through effective communication and participation.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in England since 1992. It ceased to exist as of 1 April 2018, when its duties were divided between the newly created Office for Students and Research England.
The National Learning Network (NLN) was a UK national partnership programme designed to increase the uptake of Information Learning Technology (ILT) across the learning and skills sector in England. Supported by the Learning and Skills Council and other sector bodies, the NLN provided network infrastructure and a wide-ranging programme of support, information and training, as well as the NLN Materials − a substantial range of e-learning content. The initiative began in 1999 with the aim of helping to transform post-16 education. The Government's total investment in the NLN totalled £156 million over a five-year period.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) was the official agency for the collection, analysis and dissemination of quantitative information about higher education in the United Kingdom. HESA became a directorate of Jisc after a merger in 2022.
UCISA is a United Kingdom association which represents the whole of higher education, and increasingly further education, in the provision and development of academic, management and administrative information systems. It is a charitable company, based at Ruskin College, Oxford, England. Its current CEO is Deborah Green, who joined in May 2019 from the University of Hull.
Universities South Africa (USAf), formerly known as Higher Education South Africa (HESA), is an intermediary that represents all 26 public universities leaders to the general public and acts in the “best interests” of universities.
Chris Cobb is a British computer scientist and pro vice-chancellor, chief operating officer at the University of London. He has been pro vice-chancellor at University of Roehampton, London, England and prior to that was at London School of Economics. In 2020, he was appointed as chief executive of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, despite not having any professional background in music.
The Higher Education Careers Service Unit was an independent research charity based in Manchester for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, specialising in higher education and graduate employment. It funded research projects for the higher education careers sector, and conducted research into graduate employment and career decision-making on behalf of its own members and external funding bodies.
Intute was a free Web service aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education. Intute provided access to online resources, via a large database of resources. Each resource was reviewed by an academic specialist in the subject, who wrote a short review of between 100 and 200 words, and described via various metadata fields what type of resource it was, who created it, who its intended audience was, what time-period or geographical area the resource covered, and so on. As of July 2010, Intute provided 123,519 records. Funding was stopped in 2011, and the site closed.
OSS Watch is the United Kingdom's advisory service for issues relating to free software and open source software, based at the University of Oxford.
The UK Data Archive is a national centre of expertise in data archiving in the United Kingdom. It houses the largest collection of social sciences and population digital data in the UK. It is certified under CoreTrustSeal as a trusted digital repository. It is also certified under the international ISO 27001 standard for information security. Located in Colchester, the UK Data Archive is a specialist department of the University of Essex, co-located with the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). It is primarily funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the University of Essex.
The National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) was a digital library service provided by the NHS for healthcare professionals and the public between 1998 and 2006. It briefly became the National Library for Health and elements of it continue to this day as NHS Evidence, managed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and a range of services provided by Health Education England's Library and Knowledge Service Leads.
Netskills was a training and staff development organisation providing services to help the UK education sector make effective use of technology.
Learning on Screen - The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) is a representative body promoting the production, study and use of moving image, sound and related media for learning and research. It is a company limited by guarantee, with charity status, serving schools, colleges and post compulsory education interests in the UK.
The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an open access digital archive for archaeological research outputs. It is located in The King's Manor, at the University of York. Originally intended to curate digital outputs from archaeological researchers based in the UK's Higher Education sector, the ADS also holds archive material created under the auspices of national and local government as well as in the commercial archaeology sector. The ADS carries out research, most of which focuses on resource discovery, cross-searching and interoperability with other relevant archives in the UK, Europe and the United States of America.
CORE is a service provided by the Knowledge Media Institute based at The Open University, United Kingdom. The goal of the project is to aggregate all open access content distributed across different systems, such as repositories and open access journals, enrich this content using text mining and data mining, and provide free access to it through a set of services. The CORE project also aims to promote open access to scholarly outputs. CORE works closely with digital libraries and institutional repositories.
OpenAthens is an identity and access management service, supplied by Jisc, a British not-for-profit information technology services company. Identity provider (IdP) organisations can keep usernames in the cloud, locally or both. Integration with ADFS, LDAP or SAML is supported.
↑ "In From The Cold". Archived from the original on 17 June 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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