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IT Strategies Committee
The IT Strategies Committee provides executive direction and oversight to Simon Fraser University’s information technology strategies, priorities, initiatives and investments. The committee advises the University Executive Team on IT decisions, performance and investments. They help ensure that the right IT investments are made at the right time and are strategically aligned to support the academic, research and administrative needs of the university.
IT Strategies Committee Goals
- To ensure all IT initiatives are directly connected to SFU strategic goals
- Increase level of transparency and oversight with the Executive Team
- Provide committees the right information to make informed decisions
- Simplify process from idea to execution
- Ensure that IT investments are managed in a sustainable way
Sub-Committee Visions and Goals
On-campus Digital Experience
Create a digital experience for the university community wherein members can connect, collaborate, communicate, teach, learn, and access relevant information everywhere on campus.
- Provide the university communication tools and capabilities to disseminate information that is relevant to the community, and in a timely manner.
- Enhance connectivity by bridging the gap to allow seamless transition between physical and virtual campus experience, and by being accessible and inclusive to community members.
- Improve campus digital infrastructure across all campuses to enhance Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity.
Student and Instructor Experience
- Provide reliable and consistent classroom and online technologies which enable engaging and responsive teaching & learning experiences for instructors and students.
- Improve student experience and retention by providing seamless access for students to diverse services (recruitment, advising, registration, learning supports, etc).
Faculty and Staff Experience
Create a streamlined, interconnected IT experience wherein faculty and staff can work efficiently and access data to inform decisions
- Transform regular day-to-day manual, non-automated processes into interconnected, streamlined, automated digital workflows.
- Improve and streamline our data capability so that data from multiple sources can be accessed, processed, formatted, and shared with the right level of information for different types of decision making.
Researcher Experience
Provide SFU researchers equitable access to computing and network infrastructure to conduct research in all disciplines
- Provide affordable and equitable access to data storage, network and computing infrastructure.
- Enhance functionalities of research administrative systems to provide ease of access to grant information and related workflows.
- Provide research computing advisory/consulting services for researchers from different disciplines, regardless of their computing backgrounds or research focuses.
Terms of References
What is being led and considered by each committee.
Projects in Progress
Classroom Technologies Improvement & Upgrade
This project bring classrooms and theatres up to the same capabilities across all campuses to enable a consistent learning and teaching experience. This project will be broken into two main phases to address highest priority spaces in highly utilized theatres that lack the most-required capabilities, and to complete teaching space review and prioritization for all remaining teaching spaces.
eTRACS Faculty Management System – Phase 3
eTRACS is our enterprise system that supports the operations and administrations of faculties. The purpose of eTRACS Phase 3 is to continue building upon the modules and integrations already developed, so that system capabilities grow in both breadth and depth in terms of services we can already provide to Faculties and Faculty Relations. The focus in this phase is to build a centralized TA Management module for the end-to-end management of TAs across the University.
Cellular Coverage Improvement in Burnaby Campus
The objective of this project is to improve and maintain 911 and general cellular coverage for the Burnaby campus at 97% to 100% coverage to support the growth of the community.
International Undergraduate Recruitment & Admission Improvement
The purpose of this project is to improve various individual processes within the University’s Student Information System (goSFU) that will improve the application, evaluation, decision, communication, and enrollment process for international students. These improvements will increase our applicant pool and allow SFU to make offers to students much earlier.
Exchange Online Implementation
The purpose of this project is to transition from Exchange 2016 (hosted locally on SFU’s servers) to Exchange Online (hosted by Microsoft in Canada). Exchange Online offers the key benefit of multi-factor authentication (MFA) for apps outside of the web-based client, as well as the ability to obtain ongoing feature updates for optimal compatibility with Outlook and other Microsoft products. Exchange 2016 is essentially an end-of-life product.
IT Strategies Committee Members
FAQ
What kind of projects does the ITSC review / process?
Each ITSC subcommittee will discuss and decide on the vision and goals that will deliver the ideal experience for each group. Project requests, whether they are generated by the committees, SFU community or IT Services, will be prioritized into a roadmap of projects that follows the overall vision, goals, and priorities defined by ITSC and its subcommittees. The ITSC will make decisions or recommendations on these requests. Decisions on smaller project requests ($500k or less) will be delegated to the subcommittees, and the ITSC will be informed of all the decisions. The CIO will make decisions on mandatory operational projects, as well as minor change requests.
How do I start the process? And how does a project get submitted?
Create a business case. The business case is a lightweight document that outlines and communicates why this idea is important. The ITSC will review this, provide feedback and prioritize this business case on the roadmap. After it has been reviewed, it will have a tentative start date on the ITSC project roadmap.
Projects can also be initiated directly from the subcommittee, or can come from the SFU community through subcommittee membership or IT Directors / CIO. Business cases submitted into the subcommittee for discussion should be drafted into a standardized business case template and sent to the Digital Transformation Office (its-pmo@sfu.ca). Each subcommittee will review and discuss these business cases and prioritize them into a ranked list.