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Lead administrator A is at the start of a very large multi-national research and policy-orientated project. The project is a continuation of a project that was previously managed by a two different consortia groups, and requires close collaboration between several academic and NGO groups in each of the 4 study countries and in the UK (not all of whom co-operate well together). Oxford is the new lead Directorate organisation and the Oxford project team is currently small but growing extremely rapidly. The project partners are not accustomed to having an upper Directorate level – and this requires new reporting/communications efforts that must be heavily enforced/monitored to ensure effective communications over many key matters.
The project is collecting longitudinal data from the field in 4 countries using a large number of survey interviews in each country. The project currently revising quantitative questionnaires and manage the distribution and analysis at least two thousand surveys across each of the partner countries in 2006 an again in 2009. All of this will involve printed surveys being re-keyed into a local database. Surveys results must then be entered into specific country databases, and will subsequently be archives on a national database (UK Data Archive) all in a very specific format. Managed by data managers in UK and 4 study countries.
The project is also commissioning and collating a large number of other media (still images, movies, digital radio).
Both questionnaire and other media can be highly sensitive and strict data protection needs to be maintained.
The Oxford project team must keep track of a large amount of equipment and indeed people. There is a high staff turn over mostly due to much of the work being carried out by freelance staff. This means recruitment and training is a highly demanding area.
The project team also expects to have to manage a large amount of fund-raising activities. For this reason (and others, including major policy-impact and dissemination commitments) the project must manage many electroni and hard copy mail-shots – tailored to different groups. The project must also continue to produce its own publication series, which involves the full publishing cycle i.e. from authoring to creating the final print layout – also produce papers for journals and conferences.
Project managing such a large number of resources/institutions over 5 countries is extremely complex. The are a large number of 'work tasks' that need scheduling so a very strong need for an alerting system to prompt the appropriate people when things need doing e.g. article submission, proposals, payments, meeting planning etc
In a similar vein the distributed project teams need to be alerted to key events and information (announcements).
There are a core set of documents that need sharin between the many team members in the 5 countries: i.e. latest versions of key documents, finalized questionnaires, ethical guidelines, support materials (reference materials/ training content), FAQs. There are also documents that need creating and sharing with partners and funders: reports, proposals, posters at conferences etc.
The project is presently based in an annexe building away from full departmental admin support, photocopiers, University messenger system, postal deliveries and key signatories etc – adding to admin complexities and delays. Financial reporting was extremely problematic due to paper copies needing signing by staff in separate buildings/countries. Then matching reporting codes on expenditure between university and DFES reporting mechanisms was nightmarish!
The project is using Plone to manage its new web site, and for internal discussion board (as yet unused).