Teaching Grid, Library

Wednesday 25th September 2013, 10:00-12:00

Minutes

Present: Anne Marie Brennan (WMS), Martin Price (Sociology), Eleanor Davis (Chemistry), Laura Downey (Politics), Ronny Scholz (CAL), Yfan Wang (IER), Yvonne Burrell (RSS), Stephanie Caven (RSS), Gosia Gzerwiec (RSS), Denise Hewlett (Politics), Jill Pavey (PAIS), Christine Leigh (Computer Sciences), Taherah Nureen (Physics), Sarah Parkin (Physics), Abigail Meadows (Physics), Jiao Liu (History), Chris Richley (Maths), Rimi Singh (Maths)

1. Role of the new EC compliance officer (Gosia Czerwiec)

Gosia described her role; her priority is to get to know projects and to set up new ones. She will be improving the RSS website and providing tools and guidance; will be helping to set up systems as projects start.

2. Document retention – policy discussion (Anne-Marie Brennan)

A basic draft of a policy has been circulated.

RSS is responsible for audit so all documentation needs to be stored there.

Electronic storage is ideal.

Shared drive with RSS-generated central folder which can be accessed by the project manager or departmental administrator. Should contain a suite of essential folders, and have the flexibility for the project manager to create additional folders based on individual project requirements.

Email storage is a more difficult issue. While it is possible to archive emails as pdfs, there would be some sifting required first to ensure that only the essential, relevant emails are kept.

Action: Gosia will contact IT to create a shared drive

Action: Yvonne will set up a draft folder in the new shared drive

3. Timesheets update (Laura Downey, Ellie Davis)

The working group on timesheets produced a description of a timesheet system which would be effective for the purposes of both the EC and internal recording.

This descripton was sent to RSS for review by Peter Hedges.

There are budgetary and political issues which mean that further progress in the immediate future is unlikely: a stand-alone timesheet package would be too expensive, and it would in any case be more logical to link the timesheet system to the RSS management system currently under development. Currently, work on the pre-award side of this is still underway and is over budget. The post-award section will not be developed until late next year.

There was a meeting on 24th September regarding the budget and scope: the outcome of this meeting is not yet known.

3. Future PiPs events – Horizon 2020 (Martin Price)

Martin is developing a workshop aimed at academics: it would provide a meeting and discussion space for the development of ideas, emphasising the cross-departmental collaborations which are increasingly a requirement of funders and will be key in Horizon 2020.

Objective is also to make PiPs useful to the academics as well as to administrators.

The workshop will be held on 27th November.

Laura Downey and Ellie Davies are working with Martin on the preparations. Further assistance would be welcome.

5. Terms of reference (Laura Downey)

Laura circulated a draft. PiPs is informal, but as the membership will vary with project managers arriving and leaving, the terms of reference provide some stability in describing the structure and purpose of the group.

The group can discuss common issues, raise problems, propose solutions.

It is not an executive group but a resource for the various European-related groups within the University.

It was suggested that the nature of the group’s informality should be added to the terms of reference.

Action: Comments to be sent to Laura by the end of the week. Laura will then circulate a revised draft for approval.

Action: There should be another drive to publicise the group. This can be done in conjunction with advertisements for the forthcoming Horizon 2020 workshop.

6. Date of next meeting

The next meeting will take the form of the Horizon 2020 workshop, scheduled Wednesday 27th November, 10am – 2pm, Wolfson Research Exchange in the Library.