The latest version of the AIDA Toolkit has been released May 2009. The new version and its accompanying blank scorecard can be downloaded here.

The new Toolkit has the same three-leg and five-stage structure as before, but features a new “two-tiered” approach, reflecting the Institutional - Departmental method of self-assessment. Those completing the assessment should enter two scores for each element. The first score records how the entire Institution is doing. The second score records how you personally are doing within your elected department, or with regard to the asset collection, or project, that is being assessed.

We recognise there may be variances between Institutional and Departmental practices, and that is precisely what we want to assess. A Department might be doing very well with technological resourcing and receive a score of 3, but the overall Institution may be performing so badly in this area as to score only a 1. The AIDA project has added the second tier to the toolkit in an attempt to accommodate this variance; many early users reported that “it is difficult to fill in for the University as a whole as there is so much variation.”

Bearing this in mind, there may even be some synergy between the two levels, such that good (or bad) practice with regard to resource distribution at Institutional level has a top-down effect on your own Department. Conversely, your own Department may be forging ahead with technological development at a rate that leaves other parts of the Institution behind. We realise these relationships are very complex in real life, but they can be expressed to some extent within the confines of this assessment exercise.