Recommendations: 27, 43

Recommendation 27: We recommend that the Funding Bodies, through the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), should continue to manage and fund, on a permanent basis, quality and cost-effective Communications and Information Technology (C&IT) services for researchers and should, in due course, introduce charges for services on a volume-of-usage basis.

7.1 The UK higher education sector is among the most advanced in the world in terms of its network and it is important that it maintains a world class C&IT infrastructure. The Government supports the Committee’s recommendation that the funding bodies, through the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), should continue to manage and fund, on a permanent basis, quality and cost-effective C&IT services. The Government welcomes the support by JISC for a programme to build on SuperJANET, designed to bring the benefits of a broadband SuperJANET network to a wide range of institutions in the most cost effective way. It welcomes plans by the Funding Councils, in line with the Committee’s recommendation, to introduce charging for transatlantic networking from 1998/99 in order to ensure that effective use is made of expensive network resources.

Recommendation 43: We recommend to the Government that it should review existing copyright legislation and consider how it might be amended to facilitate greater ease of use of copyright materials in digital form by teachers and researchers.

7.2 The Government notes the concern that exists about the implications of copyright legislation for use of copyright digital information. It welcomes the current discussions that are taking place between the Publishers’ Association and JISC on access to digital copyright material and believes that the key to securing greater ease of use lies in a licensing arrangement between them.

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