About Me

 

Roger James - Profile

A chemist by training and an IT Director by vocation Roger has over 20 years experience in applying IT to research led, information intensive industries including the Defence Industry, the Life Sciences and Academia. In his primary role as IT Director he has worked for Sema, Glaxo, Napp, The British Library and The University of Westminster.

In Pharmaceuticals Roger was active in developing advanced informatics systems for drug research, clinical trials, dossier production, competitive intelligence and innovation. In addition his operational achievements included new systems for production, finance, sales and HR. Strategic accomplishments include outsourcing, portfolio management and enterprise architectures.

At the British Library Roger led the delivery of Version 1.0 of the Digital Library system. He also devised a strategy for the integration of the in-house system and Web 2.0 demonstrator.

Roger joined the University of Westminster in July 2007. Since joining he has led the design of a new, skills focused, organisation. He has initiated improvements in Project Management, Service Management, Quality and Customer focus. Early changes include the outsourcing of student email and winning research funding for Web 2.0.

After launching the Glaxo Knowledge strategy in 1996 Roger has worked extensively in Knowledge Management; as an independent consultant, as an author, as an MBA tutor and as co-founder of the Knowledge Anarchists. His current thinking is focused on the economic impact of 'cheap computers and expensive people' and its ramification throughout organisations.

Since pioneering the web at Glaxo in 1993 Roger has also maintained an active research involvement in ‘web’ developments. After award winning work on Information Architectures his current enthusiasm is for Web 2.0. The research portfolio is in exploring the use of Open Source in the not for profit sector, in using user groups to develop the information infrastructure and in healthcare. He is an early adopter and pioneer in ‘cloud computing’.

Currently Roger is visiting professor in Computer Science at Southampton University with interests in agent based computing and web science. He teaches an MBA programme in Strategic Life Science Management for the Open University. This site is primarily for experimentation and my professional details are at my LinkedIn profile on www.linkedin.com/in/rogerjames<

My papers are currently being collated here<