Paving the way for standardisation in higher education

FROMHEREON, ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTS AND CAUDIT ANNOUNCE RELEASE OF INDUSTRY REFERENCE MODELS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

FromHereOn, Enterprise Architects and the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT Inc) have jointly released two industry standard enterprise architecture reference models. These will support strategic business and technology planning across the University sector.

The intellectual property embedded in the reference models has been developed over a seven-year period. Mac Lemon – Managing Director, Enterprise Architects said “We’ve worked now with 15 of the 43 Australian universities as well as a number of international universities over a period of seven years. These models are a robust expression of the business capabilities and information that support the higher education sector. We know that the industry will benefit from the availability of standard reference models and feel it’s time to provision this benefit to the industry”.

Michael Kirby-Lewis, President of CAUDIT said “We are really appreciative of the gesture by Enterprise Architects and FromHereOn. This is a worthy initiative – as part of its activities, CAUDIT’s Enterprise Architecture Community of Practice will explore standardisation across the sector. This initiative advances the effort to offer immediate benefits to the sector. We anticipate widespread engagement locally and internationally. The sector has needed this for some time and this gesture is very timely”.

As with other industry reference models, like SCOR for supply chain and BIAN for banking, this will provide the higher education sector with a standard way to assess business capability and information needs. Made up of a business reference model and a data reference model, the artefacts provide a standardised approach for universities to engage in strategic business and technology planning as well as assess investment priorities and solutions. The agreement allows CAUDIT to freely distribute the reference model to its members under a Creative Commons attribution license, allowing continued development of the models by the higher education community. FromHereOn and Enterprise Architects have further committed to support the ongoing rationalisation and publication of subsequent revisions.

Institutions interested in adopting the Higher Education Industry Models should enquire via the CAUDIT repository of standardised reference architectures. For more information about CAUDIT, visit their website.

The Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) is the peak leadership association supporting the use of information technology by CIOs, IT Directors, and their staff in higher education institutions in Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea, and in the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. https://www.caudit.edu.au