Wellcome Trust to give employees more choice over IT devices

IT | Kirsty Weakley | 9 Feb 2012

The Wellcome Trust plans to give its employees more choice over the type of device they use for work.

It already has 130 Apple iPads in circulation used mainly by the charity’s executive board, board of governors and committee members.

They were introduced gradually to reduce the amount of paper committee members had to carry around with them and the Trust has found that they have improved the efficiency of decision making.

Mark Bramwell, CIO at the Trust, told civilsociety.co.uk that the Trust looked at offering alternative tablet devices but that the iPad was the “best in class” at the time.

He went on to say that the future is not necessarily about which devices, and that “rather than focussing on the device we’ve been trying to focus on developing device agnostic* applications that people can access from their own devices in a controlled and secure way.”

He added: “We have a grown up policy – people have personal preferences and we should embrace that.”

Like many other organisations the Wellcome Trust already provides access to email accounts and by the end of the summer he plans to expand the range of Trust applications available on users own devices.

He says that there would be a wider selection of devices that staff could pick from or they will be able to provide their own device, however the Trust would not provide support services where people have brought their own devices.

*Device-agnostic software operates across various types of devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet PCs and smartphones.

Directory: Wellcome Trust

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.