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Digital Services Enablement project: UCL Together
2 April 2020
The Digital Services Enablement (DSE) project team, alongside colleagues in the HR Recruitment team, have developed 鈥楿CL Together鈥�. UCL Together is an application to connect teams in need of more support with offers of help from other areas of the university.
The aim of the DSE project is to deliver a platform that allows UCL to build and develop our own web and/or phone applications quickly and efficiently. This will give UCL more control of our digital services whilst support the evolving needs of the UCL community.聽
The team have been working with the UCL community and other TOPS projects to explore and develop a number of initial applications which demonstrate the possibilities of the new platform.聽
UCL Together
Across UCL, we鈥檙e all having to rapidly change the way we work as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. For some these changes may lead to an increased workload and a need for some additional support, while others might find themselves with more time on their hands. The idea for UCL Together came about to try and address some of these challenges.
The DSE project team has been able to use the capabilities of their platform to respond to the requirements for UCL Together provided by the recruitment team. They were able to rapidly develop the application in time for the launch on Friday 27 March. Through this, departments can submit requests for support and be matched with volunteers from across 911爆料网ith the skills and experience they need.聽
Other applications we are working on
We have several other applications that we are currently working on developing. These include:
- LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework): A sustainability initiative designed for the research & technical community. It aims to provide a standardised and easy approach to reducing the environmental impacts of laboratory work. LEAF contains criteria which laboratory users can work through and implement around areas such as waste & recycling, equipment, procurement, and more. Criteria are divided into Bronze, Silver or Gold levels. A key feature of LEAF is that it allows users to quantify both financial savings and impact (carbon footprint).
- External visitor expenses: A web based application that will enable visitors who do not work for UCL to submit expense claims electronically in much the same way as staff. This will be released as a fully functioning product, enhancing the user experience and processing times for approximately 20,000 claims per year.
- Dynamic risk assessment: A checklist which allows maintenance staff to answer a series of questions regarding the health and safety status prior to initiation of work. The team currently process around 100 of these assessments a week through a manual, paper-based process. Introducing the application will reduce the time spent on administration, enable electronic document storage for a better audit trail, and make it easier to adapt to any changes in health and safety regulation.