I headed to the Bristol office this week, in the main as the car was getting a service, but also, I do like working in the office on a regular basis.

This week saw the publication of the Radical Collaboration Playbook.  This report is one of the key outputs for Universities UK’s (UUK) transformation and efficiency taskforce which was established in December 2024 to understand where further opportunities for universities to save costs and transform their operations exist. It has become clear in this process that one of the greatest opportunities lies in collaboration – in building on what exists and in finding novel ways to deepen partnerships across the sector.

This is quite a substantial piece of work, covering 74 pages. My first reading and first impressions was that this was a detailed piece of work and certainly well worth looking at if you are looking at mergers, collaboration, or sharing. Though one question it doesn’t, and couldn’t answer, is when do you make the decision to merge? Do you wait until everything is falling apart or even afterwards? Do you plan for that possible future now? Or, what about biting the bullet and merging now, before things get bad.

This is the outcome from strand 3 of the UUK Phase 1 Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce. I have spent much of the last year working on strand 2.

Though there appears to be an appetite for collaboration, I haven’t seen much evidence for actual collaboration or sharing over the last twelve months. Will that change over the next year, who knows!

Went through a third draft of my objectives for next year. Our year runs from August to July, in line with the academic calendar. They cover three main areas, continuing the E in NREN work I have been doing, likewise a similar objective looking at optimisation and collaboration. The third objective is looking at the LLE (Lifelong Learning Entitlement) in UK higher education and what it means for Jisc.