By Antoinette van der Merwe, Chief Director Information Technology
Aligned to the Educause Top 10 issues for building a trusted, resilient institution, IT will focus in 2025 to be SU's strategic partner on our digital transformation journey by increasing collaboration with all our stakeholders and streamlining the IT project management portfolio.
We cannot do so without a cohesive and collaborative team, and we will pay special attention to staff wellness and attracting, developing and retaining staff. We recognize the urgent need to modernize the IT ecosystem and the institutional business processes. We will partner with our stakeholders to do so with a special focus on security, the mapping of as-is and to-be ICT architecture and the governance of Institutional software solutions. We will also focus on establishing an adaptive governance framework paying special attention to the acceptable use of ICT resources, including security, data management, identity access management and AI.
The “data-empowered institution" is a top priority on the Educause's top 10 issues list. IT looks forward to working with all stakeholders to unlock the tremendous potential whilst mitigating data management and governance risk. Cybersecurity and AI are also identified as some of the most severe global risks over the next 2 and 10 years, and here, we will also closely collaborate with all stakeholders to harness the opportunities provided by AI while increasing our security posture.
Source: The largest risks faced by the world
Lastly, we cannot engage in these priorities without a clear focus on further streamlining and simplifying the ICT funding model and procurement process to ensure cost optimization and sustainability.
