MRC Units and institutes

The request was successful.

Dear Medical Research Council,

As of April 2014, you have:
3 institutes
27 units (11 intramural units and 16 university units)
24 centres and related charity partnerships

During 2012 you started a programme to transfer the ownership of some units to their university partners.
Could you please list the units and Centres which are still owned and managed by the MRC.
Also, could you advise whether MRC are looking to eventually transfer all university units to the ownership of the university?

Furthermore please could you answer the following questions regarding the 3 MRC institutes. (MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, The Francis Crick Institute). I have specified these institutes of interest to bring my request within the cost/time limit (18 hours)

Software
1) How many users of Microsoft Office do they have at their institute?
2) Do they have an EA/ campus agreement? Who is responsible?
3) What is their Microsoft strategy, do they have plans to upgrade to office 365 as an institute or part of a MRC wider rollout?
4) how do you manage your software infrastructure? what tools do you use?

Hardware and support
5) Could you provide a breakdown of each institutes hardware maintenance and costs:
Including a list of the models of the physical servers, storage devices, tape, libraries, network switches and routers under support contracts; as well as the cost and duration of said contracts, with start and end dates and service level associated with the equipment. Could you also supply the names of the suppliers of aforementioned support services?
I would also request the name of the person/s in the institute's responsible for the maintenance support contracts.

yours faithfully,

Jason neary

Dear Mr Neary,

MRC Reference FOI 2015-022

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request. We will investigate what information is available and respond in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Cherrington
Information Officer
Knowledge and Information Management Team
Medical Research Council
 
www.mrc.ac.uk

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Dear Mr Neary,

 

MRC Reference: FOIA 2015-022

 

Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request of 15 August 2015 in
which you asked for information about the units and institutes of the
Medical Research Council (MRC), and the software/hardware used by the
MRC's Institutes.

 

The MRC’s Institutes and Units

 

The Institutes and Units that the MRC are currently responsible for are:

•        MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC)

•        MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB)

•        Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit

•        MRC Biostatistics Unit

•        MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit

•        MRC Human Nutrition Research

•        MRC/CSO Institute of Hearing Research

•        MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit (including MRC UK Mouse Genome
Centre)

•        MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit

•        MRC Prion Unit

•        MRC Toxicology Unit

•        MRC Unit, The Gambia

•        MRC / UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS

 

The future of the existing MRC units and institutes continues to be
reviewed on a regular basis.  At present there are no plans to transfer
all remaining units to university partnerships.  However a number of
proposed transfers are at the early stages of discussion as agreed by the
MRC’s Council.  Further information on the work of the MRC’s Council can
be found at: [1]http://www.mrc.ac.uk/about/council/.  

 

Further information about Institutes, Units and Centres can be found at:
[2]https://www.mrc.ac.uk/about/institutes-u....  

 

 

Software and hardware use at the MRC’s Institutes

 

Your request for information relating to the software/hardware used by the
MRC’s Institutes has been discussed with the MRC’s IT Service Delivery
Manager. 

 

The Francis Crick Institute is a consortium of six of the UK's most
successful scientific and academic organisations - the MRC, Cancer
Research UK CRUK, the Wellcome Trust, University College London, Imperial
College London and King's College London.  The MRC is not responsible for
IT Services at the Francis Crick Institute and therefore does not hold
this information.  Information about the Francis Crick Institute,
including how to contact them, can be found at:
[3]http://www.crick.ac.uk/.  

 

The MRC’s IT Service Delivery Manager has confirmed that the MRC does not
hold a central record of the information that you have requested for the
CSC and the MRC LMB, and that each site would have to collate this
information for you. 

 

The MRC has estimated that the time that would be required to compile this
information would total 27 hours.  This would exceed the appropriate limit
as laid out in Section 12 of the FOIA to identify, locate and retrieve the
requested information.  As the MRC is a Non-Departmental Public Body this
limit is £450 or 18 hours. 

 

It may be possible to bring your request for information into scope by
reducing the number of sites that you are interested in.  Alternatively,
if you would like to give me some more background on what you are looking
for I can investigate whether there are any alternative routes that can be
taken to get this information.

 

I look forward to hearing from you about the direction you would like to
take with your request.

 

If you are not satisfied that this response has been handled
appropriately, you may appeal using the MRC's complaints procedure.
Details are on the MRC website at:
[4]http://www.mrc.ac.uk/about/information-s....  You may
contact the MRC Complaints Officer at:

The Complaints Officer,

Medical Research Council,

14th Floor, One Kemble Street.

London,

WC2B 4AN.

email: [5][email address]  

 

If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint,
you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire,

SK9 5AF.

Telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Website: [6]www.ico.org.uk  

 

There is no charge for making an appeal.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Tiffany

 

Tiffany Lay

Senior Information Officer

Knowledge and Information Management Team

Medical Research Council

 

www.mrc.ac.uk

 

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Dear foi,

Please could you narrow down the request to only the LMB to allow it come within scope

Yours sincerely,

Jason neary

Dear Mr Neary,

 

MRC Reference: 2015-023

 

Thank you for refining your request to information relating to the Medical
Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB).

 

In discussing your request with my colleagues at the MRC LMB some of the
information that you have requested has been identified as potentially
being commercially sensitive.  This e-mail is to inform you that we will
be carrying out a Public Interest Test (PIT) to assess whether in these
circumstances it would be suitable to apply Section 43(2) of the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) to withhold the information.  Whilst the initial
20 working day limit for responding to you refined request for information
would be 14 October 2015, the FOIA does enable Public Authorities to
extend this time limit in order to undertake the PIT. 

 

For your information Section 43(2) states:

Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would,
or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person
(including the public authority holding it).

 

Further information on the exemptions of the FOIA is available from:
[1]https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gui...

Further information on the time limit for compliance is available at:
[2]https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...

 

I will contact you again with a full response to your questions in due
course.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Tiffany

 

Tiffany Lay

Senior Information Officer

Knowledge and Information Management Team

Medical Research Council

 

[3]www.mrc.ac.uk

 

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Dear Mr Neary

 

MRC Reference: FOIA 2015-023

 

Thank you for narrowing your request to information relating to the MRC
Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).

 

Hardware and software provision at the LMB is managed through two
facilities: 'IT' looks after end-user support, desktops, network switching
and a number of servers, and 'Scientific Computing', provide Unix high
performance computing, storage and a number of other servers.  I will
answer your questions in turn, but will be providing separate answers for
the two facilities.

 

Software

1)    How many users of Microsoft Office do they have at their institute?

IT

770

 

Scientific Computing

Not applicable

 

2)    Do they have an EA/ campus agreement? Who is responsible?

IT

MS Select agreement - IT Manager Paul Hart

 

Scientific Computing

Not applicable

 

3)    What is their Microsoft strategy, do they have plans to upgrade to
office 365 as an institute or part of a MRC wider rollout?

IT

There are no plans to move to Office 365

 

Scientific Computing

Not applicable

 

4)    how do you manage your software infrastructure? what tools do you
use?

IT

CasperSuite, FileMaker databases, Paper

 

Scientific Computing

Not applicable

 

Hardware and support

5)    Could you provide a breakdown of each institutes hardware
maintenance and costs:

Including a list of the models of the physical servers, storage devices,
tape, libraries, network switches and routers under support contracts; as
well as the cost and duration of said contracts, with start and end dates
and service level associated with the equipment. Could you also supply the
names of the suppliers of aforementioned support services?

 

IT

Servers - 9 Apple servers and 2 Windows servers. All are maintained
in-house.

 

Storage - 3 Apple x-Raid - 120TB , 3 G-Speed RAID - 1780TB, Isilon - 800
TB.  The Isilon device is on a maintenance agreement until March 2017.

 

Tape Libraries - 3 Dell, 1 Spectralogic.  Dell Maintained in-house,
Spectralogic under 1 year warranty inc support.

 

Network switches - 150 Juniper EX4200, 2 Juniper EX8216, 4 Juniper EX4500,
10 Juniper EX4300. All are on support with Alternative Networks until
March 2018.

 

Support services were provided as part of the total purchase, and is not
listed separately.  Therefore the MRC does not hold this information.

 

 

Scientific Computing

Hardware type Number of Model Duration of Expiry date
devices support
Physical 112 Dell Poweredge M620 5 years February
server 2018
Physical 77 Dell Poweredge M620 5 years January 2019
server
Physical 80 Dell Poweredge M630 3 years March 2018
server
Physical 2 Dell Poweredge R730XD 5 years November
server 2019
Physical 6 Dell Poweredge R730XD 5 years February
server 2019
Physical 12 Dell Poweredge R720XD 5 years February
server 2019
Physical 2 Supermicro 3 years November
server SYS-4048B-TR4FT  2018
Physical 1 Fujitsu R4770M1 3 years November
server 2018
Storage 3 Supermicro 3 years July 2016
devices SSG-6047R-E1R72L
Storage 2 Supermicro 3 years January 2017
devices SSG-6047R-E1R72L
Storage 3 Storinator 45 1 year January 2016
devices
Storage 16 Isilon NL108 5 years March 2017
devices
Network 2 Mellanox MSX1710 3 years March 2018
switches

 

All support has been provided by vendor with the exception of Fujitsu &
Supermicro who are supported via OCF ([1]http://www.ocf.co.uk/).  

 

Support services were provided as part of the total purchase, and is not
listed separately.  Therefore the MRC does not hold this information.

 

 

Contact information

I would also request the name of the person/s in the institute's
responsible for the maintenance support contracts.

 

Contact information is available via the MRC LMB website
at: [2]http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/about-lmb/...

 

 

I hope that you find this information useful.

 

If you are not satisfied that this response has been handled
appropriately; you may appeal using the MRC's complaints procedure.
Details are on the MRC website at:
[3]http://www.mrc.ac.uk/about/information-s....  You may
contact the MRC Complaints Officer at:

 

The Complaints Officer,

Medical Research Council,

14th Floor, One Kemble Street.

London,

WC2B 4AN.

email: [4][email address]   

 

If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint,
you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

 

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire,

SK9 5AF.

Telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Website: [5]www.ico.org.uk   

 

There is no charge for making an appeal.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Michael Cherrington

Information Officer

Knowledge and Information Management Team

Medical Research Council

 

[6]www.mrc.ac.uk

 

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