An important aspect of communicating with service users is a set of activities sometimes called "Liaison", or alternatively "Relationship Management".

[Insert definition here!]

A meeting hosted by the University of Edinburgh on 19 March 2008 brought together liaison practitioners and managers from the Universities of Aberdeen, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds and (by conference call) the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We discussed the differing approaches taken to Relationship Management in our respective institutions. A number of common themes emerged:

• Science and Engineering disciplines are challenging to liaise with - Computing Science particularly so. They value their independence from the central IS provision. There is also in such departments a tendency for the head of department to leave IT issues, including strategic direction, to the department IT manager.
• The role of representing central IS within departments is easier than the job of representing departments within central IS!
• Linked with this is the challenge we all have of getting central IS staff to understand what our role is, what it involves, and indeed to recognise and value the skills required.
• And again linked with both the above, but also to ensure it is adding sufficient value to the institution, it is important to find ways to evaluate the success or otherwise of the liaison activity.
• It can be challenging to strike a balance between liaising on operational and strategic matters, although there is some evidence to suggest that strategic issues take on more prominence with time as the relationships grow.
• It was generally agreed that a key 'tool' for managing relationships is a Service Handbook/Catalogue listing all the services that central IS provide from the top-slice.
• [Add more common themes]

Of particular interest was the idea of developing a Community of Practice in the UK, bringing together liaison staff in UK HE institutions. The experience of Steve Winig of MIT was particularly interesting - he has found that the MIT Relationship Management Programme has greater commonality with RM in the corporate sector than with other apparantly similar roles in the HE sector. The Community of Practice he has built up involves MIT and a few industrial partners, and they have together developed a four-stage "maturity model" describing different phases of a relationship.

It is important to understand the extent to which the HE IT community is engaging explicitly in Relationship Management, and whether the scope of that activity is sufficiently wide and strategic in nature to support an HE-only community of practice. One way forward is through UCISA-TLIG, and it's been confirmed that theTLIG Communications, Liaison and Information Working Group (CLIWG) has a remit which covers this activity. The forthcoming TLIG/SDG conference will have a discussion panel on the issue.