A day in the life of a director of IT

Gary Henderson, ANME ambassador and director of IT at Millfield School, takes us through a day in his life

Different schools use different job titles for the work that I do, and, in addition, the specific tasks and requirements differ from school-to-school based on size, context, budgetary constraints and a variety of other factors. As such, I thought I would share a brief outline of a day in my life.

So, it’s a Thursday, and the day kicks off for me around 8:15 am when I arrive at the office and get set up for the day. My first port of call is to get emails on screen plus my collection of daily web pages, including my to-do list, our help desk and any other apps I need on a daily basis. One of the first things I look at is any alerts in relation to suspicious user account activity to see if there is anything that might merit my involvement and I also make sure that anything which requires logging is noted ready to be reported to SLT.

My next activity is a quick chat with our network manager in relation to some wi-fi usage data I have been looking at. We started gathering the data and analysing it in response to some general student complaints regarding wi-fi connectivity; however, the data doesn’t quite support the existence of a general issue, albeit individual students may have specific problems in relation to their devices, connectivity, or services which they are trying to access.

It’s now 9:00 and I have my first meeting of the day with our director of finance. There are several projects which make up the agenda for our discussion, plus a discussion of cyber security issues and some recent infrastructure challenges we have been facing.

The clock hits 10:30 and I am working on our annual IT services perception survey. This consist of three surveys that go out to staff, senior school students and prep school students to gauge their experience and perception of IT services and of our devices, infrastructure, etc. We have been gathering this information now for around five years and it is this type of longitudinal data which is most useful in highlighting trends over time.

My departmental weekly briefing is my final task before lunch. This is a weekly document, rather than a face-to-face meeting, and serves to share thoughts, notices, etc with the IT services team – hopefully also serving as a record of activities, etc., and as a repository of useful info.

Following lunch I have meetings with the head of IT at our prep school and our director of edtech for our senior school. I work closely with both; their focus is very much on what happens in the classroom and the pedagogy, whereas my focus is more on the technology, infrastructure, support services and cyber security. The key thing is that, together, we are able to provide a guiding direction in terms of technology use within the school, each able to bring our different experiences and skillsets to bear in discussions. As a result, we make up a central element of the school’s IT management group, which also includes SLT members and a number of teaching staff.

The end of the day is now fast approaching so I spend a bit of time continuing to work on my end of term report. I try to provide a termly report which contains useful data in relation to our infrastructure, systems, user support, etc. The purpose of this data is very much about transparency and making sure that the SLT is always aware of all the work going on in IT services even when everything is working fine. It also serves to identify trends, opportunities, and concerns.

Reflections

Looking back, it was a reasonably busy day with a number of reports being written. Cyber security was certainly high on my order of thinking; however, this is increasingly the case. Our technology strategy, which we recently updated, was also high on the priority list.

I suspect that, although directors of IT, or those in similar roles at other schools, are all travelling in roughly similar directions in terms of technology use within their schools or trusts, the routes taken can differ significantly. As such, my day may look totally different from your day, but that’s not a problem.

The key is that we each know which direction we wish to go in, and are taking the necessary steps to get there.