Centre for Enabling Technology Generates Economic Impact on a Worldwide Scale
Submitting Institution
University of the West of ScotlandUnit of Assessment
Computer Science and InformaticsSummary Impact Type
EconomicResearch Subject Area(s)
Information and Computing Sciences: Computer Software, Information Systems
Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration
Summary of the impact
The Scottish Centre for Enabling Technologies (SCET) operates as a core
element of UWS's
Knowledge Exchange Strategy. Formed in 2008 to redress the effects of
increasing offshoring in
the UK IT industry (high-valued jobs being sourced outside the UK), SCET
has assisted over 175
companies with short-term project interventions in creative technologies
(database, web and
mobile applications) since its formation. SCET's activities have been
evaluated, and economic
impact has been shown to exceed £80m. Companies report increased
investment in innovation by
£4.6m, 200 new products or processes introduced, almost 500
new jobs created, 940 jobs
safeguarded and 9 new companies formed.
Underpinning research
The Institute of Creative Technologies and Applied Computing (ICTAC) in
the School of Computing
has a major focus on the commercial applications of technology, in line
with the Institution's own
strategy on supporting the local economies of our 4 regional campuses, and
this manifests itself in
a wide range of applied research projects with companies. These were
predominantly funded by a
range of KTP, SCORE (Scottish Government SME Collaborative Research) and
other proof of
concept/principle funds.
Research by Gray and Connolly (Director of the ICTAC at UWS) (2005-2008)
(PAPER1),
highlighted the challenges to the software and creative technologies
industries of the practice of
increasing offshoring of software development in the early 2000s, and
identified major threats to
the industry going forward.
Gray and Connolly argued against the perceived wisdom in the government
of the era that basic
coding jobs were commodities due to the large number of surplus graduates
being produced by
India and China, and that the industry should thus focus instead on
high-end activities such as
project management, domain knowledge expertise and technical architecture.
To do so would, they
argued, skew the entire shape of the industry to such a degree that there
would be insufficient
employees at the lower levels to feed the sector with experienced staff in
the future. They predicted
that interventions would lead to a shift in the industry's hierarchical
structure, which would make it
unsustainable.
The research identified that confusion and uncertainty persisted within
government, business and
education as to what skills would be required to make the UK IT industry
globally competitive, and
how these skills could be developed and taught in a timely manner using
the UK education system.
Key findings from the research were:
- That future skills required by the UK IT industry would present a
major lifestyle change for
many parts of the IT workforce;
- That government needed to take a holistic strategy for the UK IT
sector to position itself for
future competitive advantage, or risk losing a prized high technology
industry to developing
countries;
- That Higher Education Institutions would play a major role in
developing the supply of skills
needed for the UK to compete globally, and that there was a clear need
for government policy
and business to inform educational directions.
Other research helped underpin a number of key interactions with
industry, particularly web-based
component architectures. For example, Connolly and Beeby (PAPER 2)
proposed and developed
a dynamic component-based architecture using a variant of the Model View
Controller (MVC) and
Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns, which we termed MVDVM
(Model-View-DynamicView
Model). This proposed architecture was evaluated in a number of live
industry projects (KTP CC
Technology; KTP Invec Solutions) and was shown to have better performance
than existing
models. Research by Connolly et al. (PAPERS 3 and 4) proposed a novel
transaction model for
disconnected architectures that was subsequently implemented in industry
(KTP Invec Solutions)
to provide significant transaction throughput and reduce abort rates.
Key Researchers for SCET
Professor Thomas M Connolly, Director of SCET; Director of ICTAC (all
grants)
Dr Fraser Clark (KTPs with VMS, GMI; various SFC projects)
Dr Richard Beeby (KTPs with CC Technology, Cooper Software, Invec
Solutions; SFC projects)
Dr Graeme McRobbie (KTPs with UK Whitegoods)
Dr John Nixon (KTPs with UK Whitegoods)
Dr Thomas Hainey (various SFC projects)
Professor Malcolm Crowe (transaction model research)
References to the research
PAPER 1: Gray, W and Connolly, T.M. (2008). The Impact of offshoring in
the IT Workforce within
the UK, International Journal of Information Technology and Management,
Vol 7, Issue
4, pp. 356-373
PAPER 2: Baillie, G., Allan, D., Armour, B., Milne, R., Connolly, T.M.
and Beeby, R. (2011). A
Model-View-DynamicViewModel and its Performance in a Web-based Component
Architecture. Twenty-Third International Conference on Software
Engineering and
Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2011), July 7-9, 2011, Miami
PAPER 3: Lessner, T., Laux, F., Connolly, T. M., Crowe, M., (2011).
Transactional Composition
and Currency Control in Disconnected Computing, International Journal
on Advances
in Software, Vol 2, No 3 and 4, pp. 442-460
PAPER 4: Lessner, T., Laux, F., Connolly, T., Branki, C. and Crowe, M.K.
(2011). An Optimistic
Transaction Model for a Disconnected Integration Architecture, 3rd
International
Conference on Advances in Databases, Knowledge, and Data Applications
(DBKDA
2011), January 23-28, 2011, St. Maarten, The Netherlands Antilles.
PAPER 5: Connolly, T.M., Boyle, E. A., MacArthur, E., Hainey, T. and
Boyle, J. M. (2012). A
systematic literature review of the empirical evidence on computer games
and serious
games, Computers & Education. 59, 661 - 686.
PAPER 6: Connolly, T.M., MacPhail, A., Scott, D.W. (2010). Developing a
Web-based MIS System
for Occupational Health, 6th International
Conference on Web Information Systems and
Technologies (WEBIST), 7 - 10 April, 2010 Valencia, Spain.
Grants
Scottish Government/Scottish Enterprise
• Scottish Centre for Enabling Technologies (SCET), funded through the
SEEKIT programme
(2008-2012), £1,108,514
KTP (Technology Strategy Board)
• VMS Ltd, 2006-2008, £68,743
• Gas Measurement Instruments Ltd, 2009-2011, £74,898
• Occupational Health Records Platform (for Sterling Healthcare,
2007-2009), £111,463
• Web2.0/SaaS business platform (for UK Whitegoods, 2010-2012), £156,086
• Grant
Management Technology Platform (for CC
Technology Ltd, 2010-2012), £128,873
• MiView
Business Intelligence Platform (for Cooper
Software Ltd, 2010-2011), £128,873
• VIPER 2
Technology Platform (for Invec
Solutions Ltd, 2010-2011), £128,480
• Mobile B2B/B2C Platform (for UK Whitegoods, 2012-2014), £122,545
• Physical Properties Database Software (PPDS) (for TUV SUD, started Oct
2013), £81,323
Scottish Funding Council
• 28 company Innovation projects (£163,000) (2012-2013)
R&D projects
• Variety of company R&D projects, £454,410
Details of the impact
The key findings of the research in the publication "The Impact of
offshoring in the IT Workforce
within the UK" identified an urgent need for business, government and HE
to work in parallel to
develop and support the industry, strengthening it against the threat of
increasing offshoring.
As a direct consequence of these findings, UWS, working with Glasgow
School of Art and Glasgow
University, designed and led an intervention — the Scottish Centre for
Enabling Technology — to
facilitate cooperation in R&D and knowledge exchange related to
enabling technologies for content
and knowledge management. In particular, it was designed to stimulate
contact with SMEs and
start-up companies that had the potential to benefit from productive
knowledge and technology
transfer, and were willing to innovate to help achieve a competitive edge.
The project was pitched to Scottish Government on the basis of the issues
emerging from the
research and also attracted support from Scottish Enterprise. As noted by
Scottish Enterprise: "His
[Connolly's] paper on offshoring in the computing sector was also
pivotal in attracting support to a
sector that was in danger of being systematically weakened by low cost
programming sourced
outside the UK, and particularly Scotland." This research focus was
strengthened by other
publications derived from projects working directly with industry,
principally on implementing web-
based component architectures in service-oriented commercial entities, as
evidenced by the
statement from CC Technology: "We were initially attracted to working
with UWS because of
underpinning research performed by Professor Connolly and his team at
the University on database
systems, component architectures and offshoring."
The project initially ran from 2008 to 2010, being the only SEEKIT
project to have an expansion of
funding and targets during the initial project period, and then going on
to receive a further project
time extension to the end of 2011. During the funding period, over 150
companies were assisted
directly through the provision of University expertise to develop proof of
concept demonstrators,
and SCET's activities were evaluated as part of the final reporting
process. The economic impact
has been shown to exceed £80m. Companies report increased
investment in innovation by £4.6m,
200 new products or processes introduced, almost 500 new
jobs created, 940 jobs safeguarded
and 9 new companies formed.
Since the end of the external funding period, UWS has continued to invest
in SCET infrastructure
and staffing as the Centre continues to play a central role of its
Knowledge Exchange strategy.
Today SCET continues to employ 4 externally facing researchers on a
sustainable basis. Since the
end of the formal funding period, SCET has continued to attract funding
directly from Scottish
Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council to underpin company projects
and has completed a
further 50+ projects.
SCET provides an initial entry point to the HE sector, addressing the
first major gap in the links
between business, government and HEIs. Following initial project delivery,
companies are
encouraged to maintain on-going relationships with the University and
these incremental
relationships have led to successful follow-on projects funded through
R&D Tax Credits, direct
investment SFC or SE follow-on funds and/or KTP funds.
As an example, initial work with a local SME — Invec Technologies — led
from a SCORE funded
project to a KTP project and then to a direct investment of more than
£0.5m for UWS to help
develop their web-enabled product and workflow tracking back-end systems.
As a direct result of
Invec's high-end systems, it was acquired during our collaboration by
US-based multinational
Celestica. UWS was then quickly hired to help the underpinning R&D to
redesign the Invec
systems for the US, Canada, Mexico, the Czech Republic and Thailand.
Figures supplied to UWS
by Celestica indicate that the UWS supported system development increased
turnover on a per
country basis to the tune of $40m. In addition, the system also "had
a strategic impact on
Celestica, significantly changing the way the company operates its
worldwide service operations".
For CC Technology, a new platform was developed through a KTP project
that allowed the
company to expand and diversify its provision. From an economic
perspective, the company
estimated that "annual sales turnover increased by about £250,000 and
annual exporting sales
increased by about £100,000 during the two-year project, and contributed
to our winning of a very
prestigious and valuable contract in India. We have estimated that over
the next three years, the
KTP project will increase our pre-tax profits by £750,000". The
project has also had a strategic
impact on CC Technology, significantly changing the way the company
handles its software
development processes leading to a more efficient and effective software
products.
SCET is now a key part of the core UWS KE Strategy. It has been praised
as a highly successful
SEEKIT project, and has had a significant impact during a major economic
downturn both in
economic terms (increased turnover and direct investment) and human terms
(jobs created and
protected). Much of these inputs and many of the impacts have been
directed towards the
developing creative industries in Scotland.
Sources to corroborate the impact
Final Report for the Scottish Government/Scottish Funded SEEKIT Project
Final Report for the KTP projects for Crawford Scientific, Sterling
Healthcare, CC Technology, and
Invec/Celestica, UK Whitegoods
SFC CASE STUDY (KE REPORT 2012)
Corroborating statement from Scottish Enterprise
Corroborating statement from Celestica
Corroborating statement from Crawford Scientific
Corroborating statement from CC Technology