DfE digital leadership and governance standards
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Questions for senior leaders.
Summary
The Department of Education (DfE) digital leadership and governance standards outline the standards your college should meet on digital leadership and governance.
Jisc has created the following questions to help senior leaders to start to reflect on the implications of these recommendations for their college.
Introduction
These updated leadership and governance standards should be used as guidelines to support your college make best use out of the right digital infrastructure and technology.
Meeting them can help you make more informed decisions about technology leading to safer, more cost-efficient practices and new learning opportunities for students.
The DfE has recommended that each college should identify someone in a senior leadership position assume the role of a digital lead.
The SLT digital lead is usually someone with teaching experience. They will act as a link between stakeholders such as technical staff, the SLT, curriculum leads and the data protection officer etc.
This guide highlights the DfE recommendations and identifies relevant questions the digital lead should be asking to get a better understand of your colleges position in relation to these standards.
Recommended questions to ask your college
Recommendation: Assign a senior leadership team (SLT) member to be responsible for digital technology.
- Who amongst the leadership team has an understanding of the strategic teaching, learning and assessment and business support requirements of the college, and is best placed to co-ordinate the head of IT, curriculum leads, the SLT and other digital stakeholders?
- What resources and training might they need to carry out these new responsibilities?
Recommendation: Keep registers relating to hardware and systems up to date.
- To what extent is digital technology included within your existing contracts and information asset register?
- How confident are you that your IT asset database can be queried to provide SLT with accurate, up to date information on your digital assets?
- How is this information kept up to date and who is responsible for doing so?
Recommendation: Include digital technology within disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
- What processes do you have in place to review and update your disaster recovery and business continuity plans, including those related to digital technology?
- Have you created a summary document with top-level details (such as key contacts for when a disaster occurs) to be shared securely with all relevant staff?
- When was the last time you reviewed and/or tested your disaster recovery and business continuity plans?
Recommendation: Have a digital technology strategy that is reviewed every year.
- How is your current digital technology strategy aligned with your development plans?
- How does the college governing body provide oversight of the digital technology strategy and provide challenge on plans or changes to the strategy?
How can Jisc help?
Please contact your relationship manager to discuss how Jisc can help you meet these and other recommendations from meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges.
Further information
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