ISO Profession

Information Services Organisation

What is it like to work for ISO?

One of the initiatives across the nuclear estate and everyone being a part of the One NDA umbrella highlights the central coordination needed to bring focus to the best use of technology to enable more efficient and effective operations, as well as to accelerate transformational change.

Connecting our people, organisations, information and systems to enable transformation of business operations and decision-making mission

The ICT elements of the One NDA strategy set out how an appropriate central co-ordination role across the estate can bring focus to the best use of technology to enable more efficient and effective operations, as well as to accelerate transformational change. So how are we going to do this? ISO’s continued focus on the underpinning ICT infrastructure is an essential springboard for transformational change and this includes projects that will allow SL to exploit new capabilities offered by existing tools, opening up potential options for new ways to meet business requests. Through strong stakeholder engagement influencing the rational for the identification of current roles and the requirement for new future roles, we work with Resourcing to recruit individuals who will help drive our mission and vision statements whilst ensuring collaboration with the One NDA. We ensure individuals are correctly skilled and experienced to deliver and supporting development through our succession planning. Our Capability Strategy helps to bring focus on future forecasting of our needs. Being a part of this transformation journey is rewarding, we’re embarking on a huge leap in the Cloud for our tools which is making our work just a little bit more intense, but the positive is we’re making it our own, we’re listening and engaging with our customers to ensure the processes we’re embedding is value add.

Success and future challenges for ISO

After years of success stories for ISO we want to share with you the work we achieved to keep our networks operating and our employees working. https://youtu.be/Nt99I6cQ6Ik

Our next milestones, will be the successful completion of The Procurement of Information Communications Technology Services Programme (PICTS) a programme to establish a new ICT delivery model across Sellafield Ltd. The current provision for the majority of ICT services is via a mono-source contract with Atos.  The future contract model for Sellafield Ltd is multi-sourced – comprising multiple contracts, ensuring Sellafield Ltd is aligned with NDA and Government IT strategy. Our team will the working closely with HR to establish the new organisation design and grading of current and new roles within ISO. Our other notable challenge is the development of a new ICT profession which will bring together teams currently operating in different professions this is will enable us to maximise resource and deployment of key skills.

Roles within ISO

Architecture – Owns and develops the strategic technology roadmaps to ensure ISO successfully delivers against the organisation strategy. IT is accountable for Sellafield’s IT standards, policies and guidelines against which detailed designs and solutions for new IT services must comply. Solutions and Network Architects are our technically skilled professionals who require years of experience in other IT technical roles i.e. Software Development, Control Systems, Cyber Security before settling in to this type of role

Information Management – Holds the information, knowledge and data capabilities to govern Sellafield’s information assets and support the business in improving operational efficiency and business insight. Roles: Data Stewards, Information and Records Advisor

Capability – This function ensures the people, capability, change and communication priorities within ISO are met in line with the business priorities. It is responsible for the development and recruitment of ISO resources and ensures there is clear communication and change support through any IT projects to Sellafield, ISO and the supply chain.

Service Management – Consists of three subcategories, Management and Control, Service Operations and Service Delivery. Service Operations ensures that services are running and operations are on track. Service Delivery prepares services to be supported.

Delivery – Commissions and creates the new projects required by customers, which are then delivered and monitored by Service Management. Roles include; Project Managers, Test Analysts, Developers

Career Pathways /Development opportunities within ISO

There are various career paths based on your talents and aspirations. Because of all the ICT challenges that arise in ISO, people have gained promotions to other areas of the profession and also roles we work closely with outside of profession. There is no direct career path and next forward step, but it instead rounds all your skills so that when promotions sitewide appear you stand in good stead to receive one. We do, however, recognise the importance of them to enable our people to grow professionally. Work to embed career pathways will resume in 2022.

What do we want to attract?

IT and ICT professionals conduct research, plan, design, write, test, provide advice and improve information technology systems, hardware, software and related concepts for specific applications. Information Technology provides an individual with inspiration and realisation that there is so much to learn in a world where new technology is being developed, you will encounter many challenges and addressing problem solving scenarios to help support skills and abilities with the rapid technological advances we need to keep abreast of.

Any individual who has an aspiration to learn more about IT, problem solve and have blue sky thinking would be a welcomed individual to apply against our roles. Typically, depending on the grade of role we would ask for individuals to have relevant professional qualification, degree or equivalent specialist qualifications, for individuals starting their career pathway, newly or part qualified in a relevant discipline or practical experience would be advantageous.

Meet the team

Michael Johnson

Career Background: I worked as a permanent employee of Barclays Bank for the first 29 years of my career, starting as a Computer Operator before moving into Operations, Systems Programming and then into Service Management where I held a variety of service-related roles. In 2012, I left Barclays and worked for the Co-operative Group as a Service Design & Transition Consultant (contract) followed by other contracts as a Technology Controls Manager, Supplier Manager and Service Management Consultant before arriving at Sellafield Ltd as a Service Transition Lead within ISO where I am today.

Describe yourself in 5 words: Professional, Happy, Organised, Caring and Honest

What do you enjoy most about your job? The fact that every day is different

Tamsin Edgar

Career Background: I recently joined Sellafield after leaving my last role within Sky. I started my career there as a change manager before moving over to a process improvement analyst role, and finally a business analyst for the remainder of my time. I have worked on a variety of subjects however, I spent most of my time working in RPA automation, Broadband technical solutions, Chat bots, Contact channels and digital strategies.

Describe yourself in 5 words: Friendly, Introverted, Informal, Moral, and a bit of an idealist.

What do you enjoy most about your job? I’m new to ISO and Sellafield, but as a business analyst I enjoy the variation in the work that I do and that each new piece of work I pick up is like unpacking a new puzzle. I get to work collaboratively with a whole host of people with different skills and backgrounds to implement new tools, systems and process that make people’s life easier and help the organisation achieve its goals. That’s very rewarding!