STRATEGIC INNOVATION FUND
The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) is a multi-annual fund, amounting to €510 million over the period 2006 – 2013, which is directed towards support for innovation in higher education institutions. Projects approved to date under SIF are aimed at enhancing collaboration between higher education institutions, improving teaching and learning, supporting institutional reform, promoting access and lifelong learning and supporting the development of fourth level education. The Strategic Innovation Fund is awarded by the Department of Education and Science and is administered by the Higher Education Authority(HEA).
Sectoral Initiatives under SIF Cycles I & II
SIF Cycle II
Equity of Access
Building on the outputs from IUA-SIF 1 Project (Widening the base for High Quality Student Recruitment), this project will implement nationally-agreed indicators of educational disadvantage and utilize these to accurately direct pre-entry, admission and post-entry activities at those students and communities most marginalised in terms of access to HE. It will formalise and quantify systems and approaches to access. The new structured approach involves a radical overhaul of the existing access system. One of the main aims of the project is to significantly increase the proportion of students from under-represented socio-economic groups and students with a disability entering higher education, particularly into the high-points programmes. This is a 2 year project.
For more details on the Access Project click here.
Sectoral Human Resource Capacity Building
This project, in concert with the outcomes of the SIF Cycle I Leadership Project, will enable the full scaling of the Leadership Academy and add value though building the capacity of the sector to more effectively manage and plan for Human Resources Development. The Universities are conscious of the need to develop their Human Resources policies and practices in a way which is strategically consistent across the sector. Each University will identify and develop areas of expertise/excellence, which will be cascaded through a sector-wide network of HR experts. The momentum established by the process will be sustained into the future by the Leadership Academy which will have an ongoing responsibility to support HR and Organisational Development activities, including management development, performance indicators and performance management. This is a 3 year project.
Full Economic Costing
The project builds on the SIF1 initiative which scoped a Full Economic Costing Model (FEC). This project will implement that model and allow quantification and analysis of the full costs of Teaching, Research and other activities. Implementation of FEC will bring greater transparency to costing university activity, will assist strategic resource deployment and will ensure recovery of research overheads. The project’s objectives are to facilitate planning and decision-making by providing accurate financial information. It also aims to support research sustainability through quantifying research overheads and provide funders with accurate, consistently calculated costings. This is a 2 year project. Click here for more detailed information.
Building Strategic Information/Decision Support Capacity
This proposal builds on SIF1 projects to establish key performance indicators for the universities, together with associated data models. The outputs of these projects are a “superset” of sectoral performance indicators, more detailed institutional indicators, and data models required to generate these. These are key enablers for institutional decision-making and essential for long-term university strategy. This SIF2 proposal will create the data-warehousing capability to extract relevant data from institutional systems to feed local/national performance indicators. It links with FEC and is part of the strategic drive to effectively manage, plan, and deliver value for money, increased transparency in decision-making and resource allocation. This is a 3 year project.
Towards an Integrated Knowledge Transfer Platform
The internet provides a vehicle to increase access to Irish research. However, the web presence of Irish research is fragmented, relatively inaccessible and lacking structure of content for the end user. Valuable experience in developing the IUA portal www.expertiseireland.com from 2004-2007 and the SIF1 Institutional Repositories Project can now be leveraged to solve this and create a one-stop-shop to showcase and disseminate Irish publicly-funded research to national and global audiences. Under the new www.Research-Ireland.com “brand”, the project will scope and define the fields of content, user interface and technical specification for a new more broadly based platform, making research information and technical expertise widely available and highly visible. This is a 1 year project.
Access to Irish Doctoral/Premier Research and National Bibliometric Data
The benefits of making research data, articles and academic content freely available for sharing and re-use are internationally recognised. Under SIF 1, the universities established the infrastructure for individual institutional repositories and a single national repository to hold research outputs in digital format. As the repositories funded under SIF 1 are embedded, there is real potential for data to flow between them and other systems at institutional and sectoral level, and for these added value services to interplay with repository content.
This project will make Irish university theses available on open access for global use, resulting in vastly increased promotion of research and authors, thereby creating a critical mass of outputs from the entire university sector. Secondly, the project will make research articles of Irish university researchers published in top journals openly available internationally. The third aim of this project is to acquire internationally-recognised high-quality bibliometric datasets, supporting university and national research strategy and benchmarking activities. This is a 3 year project.
SIF Cycle I
4th Level Support Network
This four year project will create a new sectoral expert network supporting graduate education, engaging stakeholders, informing and analysing pertinent aspects of graduate schools and programmes. The project will have a dedicated resource in the IUA and in the universities. Year 1 will involve the establishment of the network, while years 2 - 4 will see the roll-out and expansion of network activities.
Attracting International Graduate Students (including pilot PhD exchange project with China)
This three-year project will establish the "Irish PhD brand" and target China as a specific exemplar market, resulting in competitive academic placements for Chinese PhD students in Irish universities. The project's key feature will be its facilitating role in providing Irish universities officially approved access to China, one of the biggest producers of graduate students. The project will encourage the full hosting of PhDs from China and elsewhere. In addition to the PhD exchange, the project will enable universities to promote the university sector collaboratively. Accordingly, the IUA has produced a postgraduate brochure in English, Chinese and Spanish, promoting Ireland as a destination for graduate studies available from www.i-studentadvisor.com/iua
Open Access to Research Output
The purpose of this three year project is to create institutional digital repositories of publications and a single national repository to make Irish research output freely available internationally. This is key to the universities' strategy of raising the international profile of Irish research.
Widening the Base for High Quality Student Recruitment: improved access mechanisms for socio-economic disadvantaged and disabled students
This three year project, involving the seven universities and Dublin Institute of Technology, will build on best practice to support national and institutional policies regarding enhanced participation of non-traditional students in higher education. It will raise awareness in target groups, essential for promoting participation.
Towards a Full Economic Cost Model
The objective of this two year project is to scope a university Full Economic Costing (FEC) model and to assess the feasibility of applying the model across the sector. The development of FEC is a key requirement for effective management reporting and decision support.
Strategic Planning and Decision Support
The purpose of this one year project is to agree a common set of data definitions and key performance indicators to provide university management with comprehensive and integrated information for decision support, strategy development and external benchmarking. It will enable university reform and benchmarking of performance across the sector and internationally.
Irish Universities Study
This project will develop a web-based survey system, targeting the 3rd and 4th level population in Ireland, which will provide a continuous feed of information to those developing and implementing education policy in Ireland. This is a three year project. It will transform the ability of the education sector to respond to student needs and concerns.
Towards a HE Leadership Academy
This two year project aims to evaluate the potential of establishing a national collaborative leadership programme in the universities. The project will develop a sectoral leadership training framework, design programmes in areas of "organisational, people and personal leadership", pilot their delivery and evaluate their success.
