Okay. Can you just start by saying your name and what your job title is?
Yes, I'm Tony. First time the director of medical Sciences Division i.t.
Services. Okay. And going back to the very beginning of when you first got interested in, well, I suppose science more broadly,
how did you get started in your career and what were the main kind of staging posts on the way?
Okay, so I arrived in Oxford University right at the end of the 1980s.
And so you'd already decided to be a scientist at that stage? Well, I had applied successfully to read a physics degree.
And so I think I and I probably made that decision at 16 at the point where I was choosing A-level studies.
It could have been language, it could have been science. And it was a tough decision as much as science.
And I don't think I have any regrets. I enjoy language, but I didn't obviously pursue it any further.
So I did a well, I came chosen to do a physics degree and decided it was fossils here.
So I actually changed chemistry in the first five weeks and so did a chemistry degree and graduated in 1993.
At that point I had a school friend who was working here in the the Institute of Molecular Medicine,
now called the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, because she'd done, I think, a biochemistry degree.
So it was in the first year of her doctorate when I was in my last year of my four year chemistry degree.
And it was kind of supported by often sort of lab staff because that was the only way you got money to do it.
Back in the early nineties.
So anyway, the imam decided that it wanted a a proper IT person whose job it was to do, I think rather than being a bit of a sideline.
And so the short version is that I was approached and got the job.
So how could you become aware that it. Well, doing chemistry.
Well, it's just been an interest through childhood.
And then in my part two year, I studied physical chemistry, doing a lot of nuclear magnetic resonance.
And of course, a lot of the research involved simulating the experiments with programming.
And we used for fencing so and so programming and simulating the experiments and then actually doing the experiments.
So that required quite a lot of physicality and code writing to make all that work.
So I suppose that's that's where it all came from. I was always interested in computers in my college days.
I was the one you'd find in the computer room at 10:00 at night rather than the volume.
So okay, so you say you started out at the imam as that?
Yes. Go to person for it. Yeah. Where did it go for?
So I did five years at the imam and had appointed two sorority staff to work with me at that point.
And an opportunity came up at him at my old college, Corpus Christi, actually, where I had read my chemistry degree five years ago.
At that point, to be there, I came out and just they had decided they needed a full time i.t manager having had a part time i.t. person.
So we joined as a team and I did five years there that a lot of getting networking
and self-financed student accommodation that was sort of that was in 98 2003.
So that was about the time that was happening. I'm just trying to remember when, when did we all start using the internet?
It's very difficult to think of the pre incidents in the mid to late 1980s,
so students would expect to be able to get online by the end of the nineties, maybe sort of two.
Yes, yes, yes. I mean, network connections and student rooms were was starting to become a thing in 99 and 2000.
And yes, it's interesting reflecting I think what connections to ten megabits and you know your average
broadband is probably five times that now and could be ten times that in your own home.
So it's it's amazing how it's moved on. So that was five years.
And then in 2003, I was asked to do a maternity leave cover at what was then the UK's the University Computing Service, which I did.
So I split my time, I think 6040 in a suite in Corpus and yes, yes.
And at the end of that, there was an opening for me.
That's all you see. So I moved fully 20, yes, in late 2003, and I did various roles there.
My main one was running the department called I.T Support Staff Services and my job was to coordinate the i.t
staff and run an annual conference and training events and supply relationship management and that sort of thing.
And this was for i.t staff who were in other departments around the Indian colleges.
Yes. Yeah. So I was at Oakes and until it became i.t services in 2012 and I stayed for another four years and then
the opportunity for this role the Director of medical Sciences division i.t came up and so I applied and.
So I've been here coming up in seven years now. So a kind of return to your original attachment to wanting to do medical research.
So what? Oh, I've got to ask these questions.
And are there particular challenges to do with working with and for academics and clinicians?
So we don't work for clinicians when they're in that capacity?
No. So we support research and teaching of administration.
Yes. Clinical I.T. is provided by the body called I Am and Information Management Technology,
which is part of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
So although we have a close relationship with them, we don't support clinical work.
But to answer your question, all the challenges, yes, there are always challenges and in research by its nature is unpredictable.
You don't quite know what's around the corner, and the way research is funded means it's a bit lumpy.
So a situation we often see you'll you'll have a PI get to the end of their grant and there might be a chunk of money left.
So they might think, oh, I'll buy that bit of equipment that I need. And then they'll come to us and say, Oh, we've got this bit of equipment.
It's going to be producing this vast amount of data. So could you store it for us?
And of course, there's no budget for data storage and we can't just promising growth and growth.
So so that can be a challenge. Sometimes my approach to this role is to try and be on people's range so they come and talk
to us before making i.t decisions so we can help them to make sustainable decisions without
other departments that have bought more and more and more storage but don't have a plan
for what happens when that particular hardware goes out of support and becomes a problem.
So yes, that's some of the challenges and i think in any i.t operation bear supporting academia or anything else,
the more support you provide, the more support people want. So I guess we should get some idea of the scope of what you're dealing with.
So you've got, you've got hardware, you've got software, you've got storage, you've got communications.
Yes, there. So networks right across the division, we work in close partnership with I.t Services.
He provides the networking around the city, sort of, you know,
not on university estate and then that effectively hands off to us as it comes into buildings.
So we're managing networks across about 60 buildings,
I think moved and probably approaching 10,000 people who are eligible to use our services and medical sciences.
And it's regarded by the users presumably as a kind of bottomless pit, as it were.
It's just something that's on tap, is it? Yes, There's a lot of scurrying in the background that has to go on to make it feel like that.
Yes, there's there's a lot of scurrying and it doesn't always feel like a smoothly running topic the most of the time.
I think it does. But yes, I'd say we learnt to use the image of the swarm, you know,
with the graceful body and neck above the water and the feet flapping like crazy over the wall.
So when people can't see, that is the picture. I think that's exactly how it looks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And have the demands on its systems increased as research has become has become more data focussed.
Yes, there is more and more demand for i.t systems and i.t systems that people can move around with while they're doing the research,
while they're gathering data. And yes, data just gets bigger and bigger.
As you know, the speed of sequencing machines gets quicker, the resolution of microscopes gets bigger,
there is more and more data and more need to move it around quickly.
And where do you actually keep it as a matter of interest? I mean, one here, massive data stores in the Arctic because of the heat issues.
But yeah, we keep a lot here. We have some of it parked.
So the university keeps quite a lot of data on site.
I mean, in terms of medical sciences, we have a fairly large data centre at the Gemini cliff and another fairly large one on the older campus site.
So that means that if we lose one of them, the other one will will support.
But that model of kind of owning all the storage is, is getting to the point of unsustainability.
So we're actively investigating using cloud storage and of course the universities, it's a three, six five system is all Microsoft Cloud.
So that's not servers that the university owns or has to look after.
The university does have a data centre in Slough,
the discursive centre where there's quite a lot of offloaded and and some of for it which is university land.
So it's kind of spread around the city and cloud is I think partly the solution to to this problem of ever demanding ever bigger demands on data.
And we have a new research group perhaps appear in the university and they might have 500 terabytes of data
and we can't afford to be sitting around with 500 terabytes waiting for someone who might need to use it.
We need to be able to expand quickly and cloud is the way to do that.
It means you don't have to buy a load of metal and configuration. On somewhere to put they find enough power for it and find some cooling for it.
So I think things will move more and more into the cloud.
Hmm. I suppose that partly raises an issue which should have been on the list of things I said before, which is security.
And a lot of this data is is presumably sensitive in one way or another.
Yes. So there are lots of contractual requirements around data. The GDPR legislation gives a lot of that.
And there's a special category of data that sort of sensitive personal data.
And of course, being medical science is quite a lot of else is that.
So any data that can be identified back to individuals has to be stored at a much higher level of assurance.
But that's that's perfectly possible in the cloud mean the cloud providers know
that and so long as they can show that they have taken steps to ensure security,
that's generally okay. There are sometimes questions about jurisdiction.
You know, if your data is in the face of the data centre in the US, then US law is very different to UK and EU law.
So so that something has to be considered. But that's that's all manageable and that's really the, the art of information governance.
So it's more than just I.T., it's governance as well. But is that that's all still part of your remit?
I'm part of my remit, but Medical sciences division, the divisional office,
also has an information governance hub, and that's an information governance expert.
And it would be wrong for me to lead on information governance as the lead author to provide it, because I'd be marking my own homework right then.
It's doing some accountability. Yes, yes, yes, of course. Both So you arrived into this post in was it 2010, 16, 2016 and 16.
Okay. So you got your feet properly under the table?
Yes, indeed. 2019. And so let's get round to COVID.
Finally. Can you remember when you first heard about it and how you gradually came to realise that it might be going to affect what you were doing?
Well, I think over the Christmas period time it became a thing, you know, in December 2019 it was sort of rumbling.
And then I think I remember hearing radio reports late December about, you know,
how this thing was happening in Ireland and might be a problem for the rest of the world.
I think the first time it directly touched domestic services or the affects of it is that there was a group doing a longitudinal study.
So getting data from people who had been hospitalised with COVID and then tracking them
through the journey through hospital and onwards and suddenly sometimes until death of course.
But so that was gathering a lot of data and we provide a service called Redcap from research data capture.
And I remember saying to the team in January 2020 says, Let's not put this on the red carpet so that everybody else uses this could get quite big.
So so we we spun off another sort of, you know, virtual environment and made it quite big,
but it rapidly got out of hand and my colleagues had to do a lot of work, sort of fragmenting that database into manageable bits through the pandemic.
So, yes, that's when we first became aware well,
when we first realised that the way we work was going to be directly affected by this global pandemic,
and we get to sort of mid-March, that was when the university decided it was going to essentially close,
that the students were no longer going to come in. So you weren't supposed to come to work unless you were doing something essentially.
That's right. Did that have implications for what you had you had to do as a department?
Yes. I mean, I remember saying to the team, you know, every night,
take your laptop home with you and work on the basis you may not be coming back for a few months.
But I think we all thought it was a few months that nobody really thought it was two or three years.
And so that was the immediate implication on the team.
But of course, that's the whole of the rest of the medical sciences division that suddenly became a massive demand,
as did web cameras and headphones and all that sort of thing. So there was a big scramble to to provide those things and of course,
providing support to people when you couldn't get any of them was was quite interesting.
And Gerald, one of my deputies and I have many stories of standing in people's front gardens with them, so they were near enough,
their wife or I, to get the signal, but not going into the houses to, to put each other at risk of of transmission.
So yes, we were extremely busy in those first few months trying to get people up and working in ways that they could at home.
And, you know, I remember driving some I take it to someone's house in Bicester and I sort of put it on her driveway
and then stepped away before she came to collect it so that we didn't have to have those two.
Mission risks. So yes, there was a lot of extra support.
And there were specific things, too. So I've already mentioned the longitudinal study that is work.
And meanwhile, the General Institute was doing the work on the AstraZeneca vaccine, and that attracted a huge amount of international attention.
Not all of the nine.
So we had very quickly to build a relationship of the National Cyber Security Centre who were very helpful and very supportive and helped us take
various steps to ensure that that research and its data integrity was acceptable to the actual threatened cyber attacks against it in with it.
I don't remember the precise details, but there there were cyber attacks around the UK academic community.
Nothing that ever got to us, thankfully.
But I think that's because we were proactive and the government was proactive in putting us in touch with
the National Cyber Security Centre and making a lot of resource available to to do that protective action.
So that was, that was helpful and interesting to actually dealing about social level.
Is that not something, something that hadn't come up previously, you know?
Well, you know, medical research happens all over the world and it's not it's not that interesting to criminals generally that,
you know, getting a vaccine for COVID in late 2020 was the Holy Grail.
And it were.
But for regulatory purposes, you you have to be able to demonstrate to a very high level of confidence that the data you have about those vaccines,
particularly the clinical trials, is intact.
And as you know, if you've got shares in AstraZeneca, it's in your interest to make the data look better than it is.
Isn't that something to make very sure that doesn't happen? And so there was a lot of work also protecting the clinical trial and its data.
And we made sure we were shadowing the people in the Oxford Vaccine Group to so that if any of them became ill or became otherwise unavailable,
we would be able to step in and continue to provide it.
So it was an interesting time, certainly. Mm hmm.
And what about new projects that it started up with? With it sudden demands for extra support?
Well, data projects and so on. Well, there was this thing called the Early Alert Service.
Yes. Which Chris Price, divisional registrar and I think you spoken to and asked demonstrate to take the lead on.
So that was that was a wonderful project actually. We we designed the light system to integrate with the university's single sign on and so on,
so people could book tests and get results quickly and people in their departments
and colleges who'd spox amusingly single points of contact were getting access
to data quickly so they could help students and staff to self isolate appropriately
and essentially keep the university running in as much as it could run.
And I think that was that was very successful in that aim.
And it was also fascinating working across departments.
And the way that they have conversations are not necessarily very good at so.
So we went through several operations managers.
I was the last one I did the last 11 months, I think, and we were having daily meetings on teams and and of course, because it was a pandemic,
this I built some really strong relationships with people who I'd never met and didn't meet until quite a long time later over.
So that was that was fascinating.
And, you know, the input from estates to make sure we had testing pods that was flowing through them to building testing pods.
When we were doing the lateral flow testing,
they assisted lateral flow testing and university sports for basically letting me take over the sports hall and turn it into a vaccination centre,
you know, all those things. It was just I mean, your responsibility went well beyond just the I.T. side of it.
It was the whole lot. Yes. So I was responsible for the I'd say throughout it when I was the operations director for the last 11 months.
Yes. So we ended at the end of March 22.
So I took it to the end of April 2018. That's right. No.
Sort of. Yes. Yes. I previously interviewed one of the group of retired GP's who had all the results liaison team.
They were fantastic. Yes, yes, yes. They were really, really good.
And so initially they would find students as soon as they saw positive results and say, look, you'll have seen a positive results.
Or if you haven't, you will shortly, here's what to do. They were very reassuring.
I'm very directive actually as well, and made sure the students isolated properly and didn't spread.
We're very proud that I think we managed to prevent spread from university staff and students to the general public.
And I think we've only documented cases of have that sort of spread.
So that was good. Yes, the resources and team were a great bonus, actually.
And, you know, some of us have had them as our college GP's 30 years ago as well.
So that was quite interesting. And there were the clinical leads as well.
So Professor Chris, what else was the clinical lead?
During my time as as operations manager and Chris Commonwealth, I thought if you interviewing him,
but professor of Infectious Medicine there, the person I spoke to was Liz Greenhill.
Okay. Yes, I think I've forgotten who put me in touch with her.
But actually she and I were fellow mums. I mean, our children are really.
Right. Okay. Okay. So that's interesting seeing her for ages.
And yes, I jumped on the name because she was kind of the hiring team over the lead leads and results liaison team people,
and they had a team of about eight of them. I actually just told you the list. Yeah.
And they were they were fantastic, actually. And it was the sort of situation where, you know, we all had each other's friendly wisdom.
We could all phone at any time of day or night if something had gone wrong.
So inevitably there was the field outbreak where we had to get in touch quickly with the College of Departments and give them quick advice.
And there was also the interface with what started as Public Health England and is now the UK Health Security Agency.
They would sometimes directors to test a whole bunch of people.
I think there was one time we had two people who'd been singing in a choir practice who tested
positive the next day and of course our hearts all sunk and came to see us to test the whole choir.
Nobody got it. So and I think that's the thing.
As we went through the pandemic, levels of immunity among the population have risen,
I mean, risen from infections initially, but then with more and more vaccination.
So transmission was not always guaranteed in situations where you think, gosh, that's going to have happened.
I thought we had a meeting in this office, Oh, it's probably September time, five of us around this table, this very table.
And then one of them ran away. The next morning.
He said, I just woke up in the middle of the night with an awful fever, and I've done a great thing.
Positive test line. I mean, I thought, oh, no, that's all of us, you know, inadvertent co-dependency, but none of us got it.
Which I thought was really interesting, was that after vaccination.
Sorry. Oh, yes, Yes, it was September 22, I think so.
Although that resolution doesn't necessarily. Well, clearly doesn't prevent infection, does it?
You know, it doesn't stop infection particularly well, but it does seem to stop severe illness lecture, which is good.
Mm hmm. And I mean, it's so I have talked to people about a number of big data hungry studies like combat.
Uh, I can I won't remember all the acronyms now, but also things like the work that Lisa does, modelling and so on.
Did they kind of come to you? Did they have increased?
So there were some things. So clearly attempts to coax in primary care thanked her.
I helped her spend a very large amounts of money on lots of service to do her air work,
which she basically crunches through raw data from GP surgeries around the country to try and see patterns.
So that was a piece of it, certainly. And.
Yeah. And as I say, this longitudinal study that I mentioned that kind of took on a life of its own and became much bigger than we thought.
And is there a research angle to what you do as well? I mean, other things that are newly developed?
Yes. I mean, we're not really a research department.
It's but yes, I mean, of course, when new requirements come along, then it is our job to research is perhaps a slightly strong word,
but certainly to investigate what's available in the market and evaluate this against requirements, whether you call that research or not Quite so.
I mean, people anything research these days didn't like it, but it's not research involved in writing new bits of software, that kind of thing.
Well, I mean,
we wrote software for early alerts and as the landscape changed and the government kept changing the requirements in response to the pandemic,
then yes, we had to keep rereleasing the software that we'd written to run it.
So that was that was quite interesting. And we developed a really sort of agile release cycle.
We had a really good business analyst called Brendan Donnelly, who was very good at keeping us to a minimum viable product,
but also to actually starting us through user stories so we could make sure that what
we were providing was actually fitting with what was happening at the coalface.
You know, the, the students in their rooms, the spokes in their offices, the nurses in the testing pods and all those things.
And, you know, all against a backdrop of having to try and avoid getting COVID.
So, yes, we did all work at home a lot, but we had to be out and about quite a bit as well.
You know, if a nurse can't log into a computer in a testing pod, somebody has got to go there and help you.
You can do some stuff remotely. But we were out and about a bit.
And of course at the beginning there was some departments writing letters of authority for people to leave their houses and go to work.
But I think we took the view that, you know, we all have university cards that say medical science is division.
And if if we were stopped by, the police would just say, look,
actually we're helping the university and this is why we thought that would probably be okay.
And actually it was never a problem. We just didn't know at the time.
And did you need to recruit more people or did you have enough in your team? So we recruited a couple of people.
We recruited a natural developer to do some work.
He was with us from about six months and then we recruited a wonderful and Coakley, who essentially staffed the enquiries line.
So we had a dedicated phone number and we had a dedicated email address and she was absolutely brilliant at keeping on top of that.
It was also for people to book if they didn't have I.T. access or I.T. availability.
So yes,
that was the two really sort of administrative support in terms of just dealing with the enquiries and then a bit of extra development support,
which we had for a few months. But otherwise, no, it was done from staff.
But as I say, across the whole university, they weren't all my staff and we took a decision early on that we wouldn't re charge for staff.
So we had a cost centre for expenses and I bought computers and swabs and God knows what was our button,
but we didn't charge for each other's time across departments because we figured that was
just not really going to make things any better and just make a load of extra admin,
which wouldn't have much. But it has formed some really good relationships.
And, and of course those relationships endure after after the events, and that's good.
And thus there are some Vice-Chancellor's awards happening next month and one of them is about professional services,
people working together across departments. So one.
So I nominated the whole team that we're working with and we have been shortlisted, so we're going to the awards ceremony next month.
So fingers crossed on the 21st of March. And it's that level of cross departmental and cross divisional collaboration unusual
compared with what I'm probably I think we saw a step change in the level of it.
I think in some ways all being stuck at home made it a much more level playing field because, you know,
if, if we want something from mistakes and we go in their building, it's very much come to home terms.
And likewise, if a child come to us, you know, it's the right place.
But if you're all just actually sitting on a team school and you remember when it started,
you could you could only see four people on the screen in the team school. It really it really moved on.
I think that made us gel as teams in a different way to how teams gelled before by being in the same room and,
you know, standing by the water cooler, having coffee together, that sort of thing.
We had to learn new ways to be teams and and it always kind of cuts across.
You know, you've got your departments in professional services going one way.
You cut across them all to make teams that are across them all. And it's a bit like the way academics work in the university.
They grouped by subject in their departments and. Faculties and then the group buy college in a completely orthogonal way, don't they?
But it was a bit like that with with the COVID response as well, I think.
Mm hmm. And were you also interacting with people in your job in other universities?
Yes. So I was organising it.
I'm. There was a weekly zoom straight teams meeting organised by I.
It was like this for education, I think actually, because it was about the schools and universities response.
So yes, there was a weekly meeting where there would be presentations from the government about what was happening,
what was coming and so on, and then Q&A from people in similar roles around the UK.
So yes, very much so. That was that was kind of the meeting not to miss each week because that's where you found out everything.
So that was good.
And then, yes, my counterparts in Cambridge, we had a few conversations about how we'd organise things and Cambridge took an interesting approach.
They did pool testing. So you take a household full of students, you get them all to 12 and you throw themselves all in together and just do one test.
And then if it's negative, know I found it. Obviously if it's positive, then you have to do the separate swabs.
And that was an approach that I did.
And, you know, we kind of confidentially shared stories of outbreaks and what we might have done differently to stop those things happening.
But no, it was it was it was a good spirit of cooperation actually, which was nice to see.
Mhm. Yes. And I know it must have been I mean essentially it in the with the, the early alert service you were,
you were dealing with people and people's problems rather than I mean sorry I'm putting this wrongly,
I'm not trying to say that when you're supplying somebody with a laptop that isn't solving a person's problem.
But, but it's about human behaviour isn't it. Yes indeed.
They and the operation. Yeah. And we had weekly meetings for the spokesman for the college folk.
Amongst the problem folk that I would attend in the medical leads would attend and in fact the insurmountable
ones were led by the safety office for the university and the college women's by one of the domestic versus.
She sort of took the lead role and that was good.
But it was I think key to the success was lots of keeping talking to each other and being aware of what was going on.
And of course, a very strong shared sense of purpose that you don't always get it in projects.
But you know, when when the clear purpose is to keep the university running as safely and as effectively as possible,
that's something that's pretty easy to comprehend. And nobody at any point in this project said, That's not my job.
Everybody just got in there and did it as a as a slide in my slide pack.
So says, Yeah, so all about the people.
So Chris Price was kind of the sponsor of it. And then we had operations director Sergio Ramos and only then me clinical director David Manson.
Chris when I was both retired and medics.
Chris come on and says, you don't know. He, I mentioned Brendan Donnelly, our business analysis analyst sorry.
And then we had people coding. So that was Peter is one of my deputies.
He leads our systems and networks team. We had Christopher Causer from central I.t who's also a bit of a demon programmer and then a contractor,
John, who came and joined us from out six months.
We had to have network experts, including from MSD and I c to set networks up in the parts, but also from RC services to get network to the parts.
And we had stuff going in the ground from a cliff observatory course and they were, you know, the pods were essentially for togetherness.
Were they? They were, yes. Yes.
Mean they were they were quite high class force accountants and they had to have quite advanced heating and ventilation systems, let's say.
Yes, they were porter cabins and they have clear routes through them.
So people didn't pass each other on the lane on the way out. But yes, that worked.
And we had people from lunch services doing testing the enquiry line in email.
I've mentioned our website design and the noisy stuff.
So the nurses, the spokes, I mentioned, the results Liaison Team Estates, Safety Office,
Data Protection Office were very helpful because there were lots of questions that came up.
The legal services in terms of contracts, because there's all sorts of things about, you know,
are you a health care provider or are you a test provider and does the CTC need to get involved and all that sort of thing.
So there was a lot to navigate to actually do this in a safe and lawful way and completely different from everything you've done before.
Yes. Yes, yes, Yes, indeed. Mm hmm.
And what are you doing now? Okay, so we're kind of back back to normal, as it were, when I started as director of Amnesty Authority.
I knew that I was joining a department with many people who'd been here for 20 years or so.
And so I've lost about four or five people since then, but only to retirement.
Nobody has left. And for them to retire. So that that's quite good.
So that's meant I've done a lot of recruiting and I've put some structural funds there.
Well, there wasn't any structure when I started.
So we have four teams now, the technical team and then the three customer support teams, one on the site, one an older one on.
The city.
So the structure, this line management, regular staff meetings, making sure we're represented appropriately on university committees that touch i.t.
We're building on a strategy for the whole division with the amnesty committee at the moment.
So, yes, it just sort of goes on and on really.
And technology refers to the technology we use to provide, file and print across the division.
It's quite a legacy now. I mean, it was very good in the time and it's finally I helped the previous head of systems and
networks build it in the early nineties when I was in my first job and he was very near here.
He just retired the ends November 22. So yeah, I'm very much overseeing a generation change and getting the next generation of people in.
So yes, I feel like in my time here I will go from being one of the younger members of staff to one of the older members of staff by the time I leave.
And so that's a it's interesting.
I mean, it's a big responsibility, but and recruitment is not terribly easy at the moment.
We have a bit of a skills shortage, I think, in the UK and of course people from the EU,
it's much harder for them to come and work here now and much more expensive to get visas.
So that has rather cut our pool of it. 10% of my workforce are settled status Europeans and they won't be getting any more of those.
So it's not ideal and there are other bits of the IT sector, the private companies that presumably can pay an awful lot.
Well, yes, I think institution can. Yes. Well, there we are starting to see a bit of a breakdown of that.
Your friends, as soon as the Silicon Valley is starting to cut down a bit on staff and Elon Musk is firing people from Twitter and so on.
So with a bit of luck in the wind in the right direction,
I hope we can catch some of those people because they're generally pretty bright and pretty good.
But yeah, I feel like I'm I'm in more of a condition steering the ship on a steady course now rather than trying to avoid I suppose around us.
Well that's come now to to a bit about what it what it was like for you.
I mean the first question I'm asking everybody is how threatened did you feel by the possibility of getting infected yourself?
I think not hugely.
And, you know, we we've got some of the world's leading medics here who understood COVID the threat sooner than most people in the world.
So in a sense, we were a bit isolated from the hype because we knew what was really what wasn't.
And personally, you know, I was I was in my forties at the time, generally healthy, don't generally get ill with things.
And I think I took the view that, you know, I won't be reckless, but we have to get on with doing what we're doing and I think we all did that really.
Some have different attitudes to risk, but I think we you know, we kept talking with the lead medics and say, look, how risky is this?
Do you think we can do this? Does it balance the need for it to be done?
So none of us got it early. I mean, we've all had it now because, as you said, vaccinations don't stop you getting it.
But I had it twice in 2022. The first time was three days of a couple of sniffles.
And the second time I didn't even notice and think because I did the tests and I was I was going to sing with some of the elderly, vulnerable people.
So a lot of their testing that it wasn't that messed up the whole of the next week at work, of course, so they couldn't come in.
But now I think and there's images out this will stick with us, I'm sure, from sort of January, February 2020.
I don't think we were ever thinking that was happening here. And it got a bit it got a bit difficult, didn't it, in sort of March and April time.
But but then it eased off and.
And what about working hours? I mean, were you working much longer hours than you normally would?
Yes. Well, it's hard to gauge when you're at home, isn't it, Because everything just sort of blurs into one.
I mean, we were producing daily statistics and daily reports for the senior officers of the university, so I could keep up with what was going on.
And yeah, I, I said to somebody once, I've never worked so hard,
but I've never been to the office so little, you know, I guess it was that sort of thing.
So, yes, I probably was doing more hours. I tried to make a point of having an end of day.
This when all you've got to do is walk out of one room to another at home.
It's it's hard for that to feel like at the end of the day. So I've heard actually he's into him while swimming and he got me into it as well.
So with, you know, we've arranged to meet at five or 6:00 or something and just got to swim for an hour.
And that was a good way to make a difference between work day and evening, even there in the same place.
Oh, no. That sounds like a very good way of retaining your sanity.
Yes. Yes. Because it it did. Yes, it was a lot It was a lot to cope with.
I mean, I don't think any of us felt that we were sort of falling apart, but we were very aware of the pressure.
And, you know, there were there were hairy moments.
We were dealing with this early alert system. We'd written.
We were working with the microbiology lab in the hospital and the staff that managed their systems, and it worked pretty well most of the time.
Sometimes they'd make changes, forgetting that that we were depending on the form.
After that, they certainly suddenly say, Why is this not working? And that would be a stressful few hours.
And there was one time where we we gave half a dozen people the right results, but for completely the wrong reasons.
You know, it was a good job that they were the right results.
But, you know, those things happen when when you're dealing with a an emergency.
But do you think that the fact that you were working on something that was important and supporting all
these teams of people who were doing really important stuff helped to support your own sense of well-being?
Yes, I'm it's somebody who was just stuck at home not knowing.
Now, I'm sure that I'm sure having a sense of purpose is very good for mental wellbeing.
And we certainly felt that we had a sense of purpose.
And did you feel that the way things like social distancing and who could come to work and who couldn't handle anything was well managed?
So it was different in different offices. I mean, being an I.T. provider, we kind of essential infrastructure.
So we never really made firm plans about when people would come in and when people couldn't come in.
We kept in touch electronically, and if we were coming in, we would say so it was to avoid other people coming in necessarily.
But, you know, if a network's where it stops working, you've got to come and prod it.
You can't just sit at home. You work or you've got to come on and replace it.
Or if the vaccine trial, people suddenly want 30 laptops to give to trial staff to gather data, you've got to come in and do it.
You can't you can't just do it remotely.
Um, so I think I was quite proud of the way the most irritating just kind of self manage that really, and, and avoided putting each other at risk.
Let's say we didn't have any transmission until much, much later.
And so I think we probably all had it now. But, and we've got a couple who were more vulnerable than others, so we were a bit careful with this.
And there's one member of staff who never had very good mobility.
And when the when the pandemic started, started working exclusively at home,
and he's actually still doing that, and that works really well for that individual.
I think we learned something that I think and if you'd said to me four years ago, okay, can you have some staff who always work at home?
I said, No, that wouldn't work. But actually it does with a bit of creativity.
And that staff member comes in occasionally for all staff meetings. We used to have an old staff meeting every two months, always in person,
and when the pandemic started, we switched to online every month and we're still meeting every month.
But we've just started this year doing every third one in person with an extra half an hour on it and some.
So that worked properly. So part of the shift to virtual working has remained as part of your normal practice?
Yes, I think there are some meetings, the sort of transactional meetings with lots of people in them that actually work really well online.
And in many ways they're a bit more efficient because people don't waffle on much like I'm doing now.
But other meetings where you've got gritty things to deal with and you actually
need to have discussion and you need to watch how people respond to each other,
both physically as well as verbally. That's really hard online.
So I think, you know, we have discovered a new way of doing things, but it's not the right new way to do everything.
But it is really useful in some cases, certainly.
And are there any other lessons from the pandemic that you will be able to take forward in in what you do?
Hmm. I think for the last 20 or 30 years, we we've all been talking about the paperless office and going paperless.
There was still an awful lot of paper the of the pandemic. We're much better at that now.
There are several processes that were paper based at the start of 2020 that by necessity couldn't be.
And we've actually just not taken them back to paper because that's nothing.
So, yes, there has been some some learning, I think. I think we're coming to the eye on truck travel as well.
You know, people come in two or three days a week and and that's good.
So the system team particularly, they sometimes have to concentrate on a piece of work.
And actually spending of that time to do that is really helpful for some of them. And nothing I learned, I think, is that situations are different.
So two staff doing the same job. One of them is the one who's working permanently at home and it's working very well.
The other one quite the opposite. Um, home situation, very different, making it very hard to work at home.
I'm trying not to give too many details in front of people,
and that person actually worked in the office throughout most of the lockdowns on their own and found that suited them very well.
And it was good for us to have somebody to receive deliveries and issue things to people.
So yeah, I think one size doesn't fit all.
And you know, some people, people with children who they couldn't send to school for them working at home was a huge juggling act.
So I have huge admiration for people who managed to homeschool their kids and work at the same time,
because normally we wouldn't let somebody work at home so they could do the childcare.
I mean, obviously if the child's ill, that's different.
But as a routine, you know, I would say if you're home, you're either working or doing childcare, you can't be very strict.
I think I've suffered considerably on that from having watched people cope so well.
So people don't necessarily need to take leave. If they've got a sick child at home.
They can we can trust them to just. Yeah, yeah. As I say, I wouldn't want it to go on for weeks or months.
But yes, if the child can't go to school because they're unwell and they're in bed, most of them I'm sorry,
have some of the staff member work at home, Why wouldn't they like to do it in the pandemic?
They can do it now. Yeah. I mean, we can't all work at home all the time, but some of us can work at home some of the time.
And if that makes life easier, that's a good thing.
I think you know that life is hard in many ways.
We have a cost of living crisis and we've got employment problems.
You know, we don't want to make it less attractive to work here when we're struggling to get staff already we've got a hugely congested city.
People are driving in or getting in. However, they do twice a week rather than five times a week.
That's got to help too. So there are many things I think, that a bit of flexibility helps to enable and do.
Yeah, I don't live with it, so I happen to be I follow you on Twitter.
So I think once was where you campaign about about cycling in the city.
Yes. Um, yeah, because I live in the city.
Cycling around the city for me is a no brainer almost all of the time.
I have a current sits in the garage most of the time and last Wednesday I had to drive down to Kent for a funeral.
So I didn't drive. I wouldn't cycle around.
But you know, for I'm southeast Oxford County sort of area to hear cycling reliably takes about 15 minutes walking, takes 40.
Driving or hit in the bus can take an hour when people do otherwise.
So yes, I wish the city was was safer for cycling and more more amenable for cycling.
And that's this. I think we need to shift people's thinking from moving cars around to moving people around because it's not the same thing.
But there is too much in people's minds that, no, I can't get anywhere unless I go in a car.
But it's just not the case in a city like that. So no, I'm completely with you on that one.
But of course, if everybody does, then everything else jams up. And I broke my ankle in May 21.
Um, so it was quite immobile. I'm sitting with a chaplain in trauma, and he said, Oh, let's drive here.
It was was really slow, so don't get the bus because that's really slow.
And I said, Yeah, that's because everybody drives and gets on the bus as well. That's Oh yes.
And actually I was cycling much quicker than I was walking after the ankle fracture because you don't have to balance on your ankle when you cycle.
You're just pushing with it. It's the violence, it's the whole bit. So yeah, I mean, this site, it's quite good for cycling.
There's quite a lot of cycle parking.
And the nice thing is there are lots of routes into the site that you can use on foot or on a bike that you can't use in a car.
If you drive in, you have to come from a headwind.
Even if you cycle, you can come from Haddington or you can go out to the housing estates over there and out to the ring road quite easily.
I take the most and cycle path across the university.
Yes, that's lovely too. Yes. Yeah. Well, not dextrously.
Yeah. Yes. And then you can go cross-country so you don't have to come up the main hospital road,
you know, go across town field drives and come in office at the bus stops.
Yes, that's what I do if I'm coming down to town and then from home I come up across one family.
That's another campaign. I'd love to see a proper cycle path across one of them.
And I think there is there is appetite for it in some quarters, but it's a tricky balance between the County Council,
the Oxford Health NHS Trust, which owns the Meadow and University Estates, and I think Brooks as well, and the friends of the.
Area. Pretty much everybody is in favour and the County Council has slightly cold feet
about the risk of getting prosecuted for putting a cycle path on us on green,
which is a debateable risk.
I think it's I've suggested that the council's legal department have a formal swap of legal advice with Sustrans and actually have a look at it,
so maybe it'll happen one day before I retire. We're just at the time here.
We can just about cycle over it again now, but coming from pretty much anywhere south of Trinity Road and it cuts on all of Hilltop Road,
that top bit of divinity road and all of one lane.
And so it's a much better route and one fatality is better.
That was my parking on it. But the junctions are still not much fun.
And actually if you're coming to our old road campus, the metro brings you out in the right place.
It brings you to south side of it rather than the north side of it. And I could talk about cycling, but just Yes,
so I'm just I just throw this in because people have a tendency to wait till
the end of the record and then tell me a really funny or interesting anecdote.
So I just wanted to check whether there were any anecdotes or things that particularly stick in your mind from working through the pandemic,
either on the Early Alert service or on providing the means that the research to get on with their work that sticks in your mind?
Well, the thing I mentioned about how they were my blood run cold because I realised we'd given people the right results,
particularly the wrong reasons. That was a bit of that's, you know, it was like.
And you've probably heard this one before when you've been working with somebody online for months,
if not years, and you meet them and they are completely different proportions to what you expect.
But it's like I had no idea at all. I had no idea you were so short seller because everybody's just a head and shoulders screwed.
So that was the thing. And it was really good to finally meet people, actually.
And it's interesting how different people work differently.
Some people are completely happy doing everything online, but something clearly that's out, I actually need to see people and be with them.
And it just just has a bit of physical presence, you know, And it's it's really subtle things.
He watch how they respond. And I mean, you're not touching them, but you're kind of feeling them as a presence.
And I think that's quite important for for mental health, actually, for a lot of people from the office.
Mm hmm. And is there looking back, I mean, is that anything in the light of your experience that you that makes you feel
differently about your area of work or that you'd like to see change in the future?
Well, I mean, I've talked about not forcing people to be in the office just for the sake of being in the office.
I'm on my line. Always with the team was in towards the end when we were we had several guys that returned to on site working,
didn't leave it and said, look, I'm not going to tell you where to work.
What I care is that you get your work done.
So know if it becomes apparent that the place you're choosing to work is getting in the way of getting your work done,
then we'll have a grown up conversation about it. But otherwise, you know, do what works for you.
And by and large, that's been fine. Actually, I have the luxury of a team of 20 or so.
If I was the registrar and I had a team of 12,000, obviously I'd have to be much more prescriptive.
So it is a good thing at the level of a kind of large cottage industry in the West where you can be quite flexible and formal about those things.
I think that suits me quite well. But what you're doing there is actually giving some autonomy back.
Yes. Staff member which is good for their mental health and yeah, and, and it is presumably quite rewarding for them.
I mean it makes the job more rewarding. Yeah, Yeah.
You know, I'm very clear as director, my job is to make sure people can do their jobs and through the managers nature of the job, something done.
My job isn't necessarily to be friends with people, but I don't need to necessarily be enemies, even, you know, not less trust.
And so, yeah, I mean, we have a fairly convivial atmosphere and I'm a celebrity, and I think that's what that's that's worth keeping.
One of the things that we've done for many years is we have a thing called first Friday lunch.
So we choose somewhere often a pub or a restaurant on the first Friday of each month and be rotate it round
at three sort of centres of primacy and we all just get together and and have lunch and have a good chance.
And I think we really missed that during the pandemic.
We tried it online a couple of times, but yeah, I'm done with eating food or drinking drinks as, as an online activity.
It just doesn't work. And we were part of a pub quiz team, the Mark Harris Company where I live.
There were about four or five teams and we take it in turns to lead the quiz and the other teams that just take part.
And we kept them off on Zoom for a few months.
But it got to the point we were all just desperate for the quiz to finish so we could actually have a catch up with each other.
This is silly and. Yes, I suppose.
I suppose that's the thing about being flexible. I know I'm not assuming that people have to be anywhere in particular to do what they need to do.
Great.