The University of the West Indies

Office of the University CIO

Projects

The cross-campus ICT teams are involved in four highest priority initiatives to support the University’s strategic plan. 
 

Single Virtual University Space (ICT) Programme

The Single Virtual University Space (SVUS) programme will enable students and stakeholders to equally access the best teaching and learning resources ANYTIME from ANYWHERE across the four campuses of The University of the West Indies. It is a technical platform that will seamlessly connect, in a sustainable manner, the campuses of the University across the Caribbean to provide increased, viable, efficient, cost-effective and enhanced service.

The University has launched a number of technology-focused initiatives, projects and activities including:

  1. A university-wide ICT Governance structure which provides formal decision rights and an accountability framework relating to ICT.
  2. Web portal technology that will allow students of the University, irrespective of their home campus, to access services from a single university portal.
  3. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video conferencing to provide voice and video communication across the University campuses to demonstrate the SVUS concept.
  4. An Enterprise Identity Management solution which will enable access to ICT resources by staff and students and facilitate a single identification for each student and staff that will be recognized from any UWI campus.
  5. An Integrated Learning Management Platform to allow students to seamlessly access courses at other campuses.
  6. A platform to enable cross campus collaboration (e.g. Sharepoint)

At the end of the project the youth and adult population within the Caribbean Region will have equal access to a student-centred, high quality, sustainable, technology driven, integrated Single Virtual University Space that allows for convenient, cost-effective completion of their academic, social, financial and registration processes in a timely manner. 

 

Business Intelligence

The vision of the Business Intelligence project is to enable the University to become a more intelligent, information-driven and evidence-based organization. The project aims to foster a management culture in which decisions are made based on and driven by quality information.

The Business Intelligence Executive Dashboard enables access to consolidated information from the Enterprise Application Systems across the University. Providing information seamlessly across the University is a strategic theme of the University Strategic plan 2012-2017. The Executive Dashboard is intended to provide management information that will be used in the furtherance of good governance of the university’s business. The collection of reports represents the kind of information gleaned from the information systems used to process operational data. The visual impact will help to ensure that the data entered into the enterprise systems are of the highest quality. The intention is to provide real-time reporting which will ensure that the University is better informed of the emerging trends and developments.

ICT Governance

The aim of the ICT Governance project is to establish a collaborative, advisory and consultative ICT governance structure with both central and distributed representation, to coordinate decision-making and resource allocation.

The key benefits of ICT Governance to The University are:

Benefits Details
Increase Productivity, Speed & Delivery of ICT Projects IT departments are challenged to maximize ICT investments, minimize costs and do more with limited resources.
Consistent service quality Better alignment of ICT priorities will derive more value from ICT as it supports the University/Campus strategy. Closer integration and cross-campus collaboration on ICT.
Defined ICT Decision Making Process More agile, effective, transparent and well documented decisions, improved communication and improved stakeholder engagement.

The successful implementation of this project will ensure that ICT optimally contributes to and brings added value to The University’s performance and the savings to The University from the implementation of the ICT Governance Structure.
 

Project Management Methodologies and Procedures

The objective of the Project Management initiative is to create an awareness of Project Management principles and metholodogies and to apply these in every area of work. The cross-campus team is developing a framework for standardization of project management templates which are relevant to ICT projects. The impact of this initiative will be standardization, reduction of duplication, clearer prioritization of projects, improved quality and delivery of ICT Projects.