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UKERNA will provide a set of computer networking and related services to the UK research and education community. The Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales, the Learning and Skills Council, the Scottish Further Education Funding Council, the Council for Education and Training for Wales and the Department of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment (the Funding Bodies) will be represented by their Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the JISC Committee for Networking (JCN). The JISC Secretariat acts on a day-to-day basis to implement the policy established by the JISC. The Higher Education Funding Council for England will make payments, on behalf of all the funding councils, to UKERNA in order to have such services provided. The levels of service provided will be monitored by the Technical Advisory Unit of the Joint Information Systems Committee (TAU).

Annexes A - J of this Memorandum of Understanding define the services to be delivered by UKERNA, as follows:

Annex A Service Level Definitions

Annex B - D Financial Reporting Framework

Annex E Change Control Procedures

Annex F - H Additional Reporting Requirements

Annex I Core Access Points

Annex J Referenced Documents

In the remainder of this Memorandum of Understanding, "Community" refers to members of the UK research and education institutions which are eligible to receive UKERNA services under the terms of this Memorandum of Understanding. Those institutions, referred to as "eligible institutions", are listed in the standing document "Institutions sponsored by the JISC"1 which is to be kept up to date by the JISC Secretariat.

The JISC Secretariat shall be responsible for notifying UKERNA of revisions of this standing document, and UKERNA shall respond, where necessary, with a change control request quantifying additional costs or savings and updating the list of institutions which are to receive service under this agreement. These institutions are referred to below as "client institutions".

The services to be provided by UKERNA are:

1. a set of operational services which allow users at client institutions to communicate with each other and with users at sites outside the Community;
2. a set of information services and support services which increase the effectiveness of the use of the basic operational services;
3. a set of network security services which provide response to network security emergencies and provide information and advice on network security matters.

The Funding Bodies require a basic set of services to be provided to all client institutions. The Funding Bodies may also require that charges be applied for all or part of this basic set of services. Other services will be optional; that is to say, they will be offered by the JISC, but will only be provided when client institutions explicitly request them. Such optional services may be separately chargeable.

The full set of services to be offered or provided by UKERNA is listed in Annex A.

Annex A sets out the Service Level Definitions for each of the service categories defined in Section 3 above. Each Service Level Definition is described in the following terms:

- Specification

- Performance Indicators and Service Levels

- Reporting

UKERNA shall not be required to discharge its commitments under Annex A when any event or series of events beyond its reasonable control prevents it from providing the services defined in Annex A, provided that UKERNA promptly notifies the JISC Secretariat of:

1. the estimated extent and duration of its inability to discharge its commitments
2. the resumption of the provision of the Service Level

If the event or series of events are such as to affect only part of its total commitments, then UKERNA shall continue to discharge those commitments that are not affected.

The services shall be subject to monitoring and to occasional auditing on the following basis:

1. One of the purposes for which the JISC has established the TAU is to monitor the services defined in this Memorandum of Understanding. The TAU may appoint independent experts to assist it where necessary. From time to time it shall carry out a technical audit of one or more of the services defined in Annex A. The purposes of any such audit will be to assess the extent to which UKERNA has met the requirements specified for the service or services being audited and to suggest ways in which these services could be improved. Such audits will pay particular attention to the performance of UKERNA with respect to the listed indicators. The audits will also take account of the budget available.

2. The JISC may also request an audit of the methods and procedures used by UKERNA to measure the values of the service level parameters defined for the services. The purpose of the audit will be to confirm the accuracy of UKERNA’s reports. Client institutions may ask the TAU to instigate an investigation in cases where they have prima facie evidence that the service levels are not being met. UKERNA shall receive at least 10 working days notice of any such audit.

3. Technical audits will normally be carried out no more frequently than once per year. The auditors shall have access to all reports described in Section 9 below, and to any material provided by UKERNA to client institutions as part of UKERNA’s service provision. UKERNA will allow the auditors to spend reasonable amounts of time interviewing UKERNA staff. UKERNA will be given the opportunity to make comments to the auditor on a draft of the auditor’s report. A copy of the auditor’s final report shall be made available to UKERNA within one month of its presentation to the JISC.

4. The costs to the TAU of employing technical auditors and of expenses directly incurred by them shall be borne by the JISC.

All client institutions which receive UKERNA services shall have a formal agreement with UKERNA as a condition of service. Aspects of the agreement which are common to all institutions are documented by the "AGREEMENT for the Provision of the JANET Service to the Higher Education Institutions and Research Council Establishments" (ref. Annex J.2) issued by UKERNA.

UKERNA shall establish agreements with each site individually, making their acceptance of the terms explicit and covering site-specific details. UKERNA shall keep records, available to the JISC, of the institutions connected, and, for each institution, shall record in them:

1. the optional services, if any, selected by the client institution;
2. the financial payments, if any, to be made by the client institution, or by UKERNA;
3. the contact points within the client institutions for dealing with fault reports and other communications;
4. the other institutions, if any, supported by the client institution under the licencing procedures, and the responsibilities of the client institution for the services provided to those institutions.

In general, UKERNA will communicate only with the central computing service (or equivalent organisational unit) in any client institution and the Regional Support Centres. Although UKERNA will take reasonable steps to deal with enquiries and demands from end users, such steps will normally take the form of referring the enquiry or demand to the most appropriate contact point (as defined in c) above) in the end user’s or another client institution. Exceptions may, however, cover bookings for conference or meeting attendance and other such activities which, by their nature, involve individual end users.

If an institution does not discharge its obligations and provide the necessary information, UKERNA may be unable to provide the defined level of service. In this event UKERNA will alert the JISC Secretariat to any such failure on the part of an institution, and agree subsequent actions with it. In particular, serious breaches of the JANET Acceptable Use Policy (ref. Annex J.3) may lead to suspension of service.

The budget and the operational plan, taken together, provide a picture of the development of the service over the planning year and provide a monitoring framework for the subsequent operational year.

Annexes B – D cover the arrangements for preparation and monitoring of the budget and operational plan.

New services will be discussed in outline by the JCN before a detailed plan is drawn up. This allows decisions in principle on the need and importance of new services to be taken before resources are committed.

New services will normally be introduced as part of the budget/forward look process, although, exceptionally, items may be introduced under the change control procedures to exploit previously unforeseen opportunities or to counter new and urgent needs. More speculative developments for which operational services cannot yet be planned will not normally be introduced in this way; the JISC has other programmes under which to manage such developments.

The definition of a new service involves:

1. an outline service definition with a preliminary indication of the expected scale and performance of the service; an indication of when definite text for inclusion in Annex A of this Memorandum of Understanding can be defined should be given;
2. a predicted date for availability of the service, and the level of confidence to be attached to this prediction;
3. a plan for any commissioning and piloting necessary to establish the service;
4. a business case for the service, a budget for any piloting activity and an indicative budget for the eventual production service, throughout the three-year forward look. The initial budget shall indicate estimates of any sub-contracted development costs and the forward look shall include estimated set-up costs for the initial deployment of the production service. Savings or efficiency gains arising from the introduction of the service shall be clearly indicated.

UKERNA shall provide copies suitable for reproduction of the following reports to the TAU at the times and the frequency indicated below.

For each of the services, the agreed information relating to the reporting items listed for that service in Annex A (using the formats defined in the document "Formats for performance reports to the TAU" (ref. Annex J.4)); this information shall be delivered according to the following schedules:

• by the sixth working day of the following month, for that reporting information that has been agreed shall be delivered each calendar month
• by the eighth working day of the subsequent quarter, for that reporting information that has been agreed shall be delivered on a quarterly basis
• within three months of the operational year end, a report of a quality and content suitable for general publication, including the principal activities and results of UKERNA in relation to the services listed in Annex A
• as agreed between the JISC Secretariat and UKERNA on a case-by-case basis, other reports requested from time to time by the JISC Secretariat

Other services provided by UKERNA out with this agreement shall not be subsidized by the funding associated with this agreement. Any UKERNA overhead costs shall be clearly apportioned between JISC supported services and other services offered.

Where a charge is made for service defined within this agreement, UKERNA shall collect the agreed charges and report the receipts to the JISC broken down in terms of the services provided.

UKERNA remains responsible for ensuring that the services are provided to the client institutions with the agreed levels of quality, even if it were to choose to sub-contract for the provision of some or all of the services covered by this Memorandum of Understanding.

The TAU and UKERNA shall review annually the list of services given in Annex A, starting six months before the end of the operational year, and submit revisions to the JISC for their approval. At least two months before this anniversary, they shall by mutual agreement specify a revised list of services which UKERNA will offer during the following operational year and the values of corresponding service level parameters.

Where the annual review makes significant changes to the set of services or to the service levels, a date during the following operational year on which these changes will come into effect may be specified.

The definition of the services to be provided, and of the schedules, priorities and financial bases for them are normally established during the annual cycle of budget and operational plan approvals. Minor details of these approvals may, through force of circumstance, need to be varied on a shorter timescale.

a) changes to the service level definitions;

Changes to the service level definitions may be proposed by the JISC Secretariat, TAU or UKERNA and will be agreed between TAU and UKERNA, then submitted to the JISC Secretariat for approval. The JISC Secretariat will consult the JISC or its advisory committees, as appropriate, to obtain support for more significant changes.

A register of agreed changes will be maintained by the TAU.

Changes agreed during an operational year will be incorporated into the service level definitions for the subsequent year. If they are not, the agreed changes will be deemed to have lapsed.

The Change Control procedures detailed in Annex E shall apply

2. changes to the approved budget;

The JISC Secretariat shall release funds to UKERNA on the basis of the agreed budget. If necessary, UKERNA may submit proposals for changes to the agreed budget to the JISC Secretariat. The JISC Secretariat will consult the JISC or its advisory committees, as appropriate, to obtain support for more significant changes.

3. changes to the planning objectives;

UKERNA may propose changes to planning objectives in its operational plan as part of its quarterly reporting against the operational plan. The JISC Secretariat shall inform UKERNA of agreed changes to the planning objectives, following any necessary consultation with the JISC or its advisory committees.