As we approach the end of a turbulent year caused by a global pandemic and shrinking economies, we are filled with gratitude and pride when we look back on what we achieved and prevented from happening this year. As we see many businesses failing, we recognise our vulnerabilities and exposure to business disruption. The fact that SU could not only maintain and continue its operations, but even accelerate its digitalisation strategy, is evidence of exceptional efforts by the IT colleagues of our university. Nobody foresaw what happened this year. Our response was remarkable, and successful.
More specifically, the following IT-related interventions should be highlighted for the significant contribution to business continuity and support of general productivity:
- In March, immediate action by IT management in organising the necessary initiatives to upgrade and stabilise the IT infrastructure and services to support increased workload and data flow;
- Collaboration across functional borders to arrange new services like the provision of laptops to students, and continuously organise the provision of data bundles to qualifying students;
- Adjustments to administrative information systems to implement management decisions related to operational challenges;
- Initiatives to form new support structures to support staff and students working at home;
- Resilience and agility to continue with major projects and deliver on institutional requirements, without using the pandemic as an excuse;
- Finally, the general willingness to make sacrifices, collaborate and conform to new protocols and ways of working.
To all our partners and colleagues in IT and other functions of the university, we express our sincere gratitude for what we achieved together. We are now in a much better position to plan for known and unknown challenges that may occur on our journey to a digitalised society and university. How soon we’ll get there, depends very much on this good start and our perseverance, maintaining quality standards and focus.
Best wishes for the festive season, and I hope that all of us of will enjoy some rest to prepare for the next challenging year.
Attie Juyn
Senior Director: Information Technology
25 November 2020
