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Curtin University: Behind the innovation Curtin

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Curtin University: Behind the innovation Curtin

Curtin University’s CIO Chris Rasmussen tells Niki Waldegrave how its multi-million dollar Digital Futures program is transforming and empowering the global organisation

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urtin University has campuses in Australia, Dubai, Singapore and Malaysia, partnerships in Vietnam, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, and Aberdeen (Scotland) and more than 30% of its students are from overseas.

Obviously, IT is critical for the university, which is currently is celebrating ‘50 years of innovation’ and has an annual digital budget of $57mn.

When chief information officer Chris Rasmussen joined in February 2013 he was tasked with transforming the organisation’s digital capabilities and offerings - no mean feat considering it boasts 4,160 staff (FTE) and 58,216 students.

“We had strong support from the COO, Ian Callahan, and looked at the organisation from an ‘outside in’ perspective,” he says, “and it was obvious we needed to be more agile, more flexible and have certain capabilities, some of which we’d have to work on as we go.”

A program called Transforming Curtin IT - later renamed Digital Futures - was born. It looked at what wasn’t working across the whole of the university, and heavily leveraged Gartner’s advisory services.

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“There is some very interesting technology out there. It just has to align with our strategy and where we need to get to” – Chris Rasmussen, CIO

“Gartner has been really key to shape out the programme, especially their expertise in the higher education space,” Rasmussen says. “We don’t just read the research and look at the magic quadrants and those sorts of things. We actually talk to their analysts and then make an informed decision in what we’re going to do.”

Digital Futures also employed someone with psychology skills to interview new students. ‘Stephanie’ was the result - a profile of a firstyear student showcasing ‘her’ first

4,160

Number of Employees at Curtin University

17 weeks’ experience at Curtin.

“It was a holistic experience, not just IT focused.” explains Rasmussen. “We wanted to

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Seque rest volorum aute velestio intem illibus es qui ut alit et, sita iuntur? Click Here Electrical and Computing Engineering students approach it from the point of view, of ‘you’re a new student here, these are your first weeks, and, how is it?

What are the touchpoints, what’s working for you? What’s not?”’

A biggie was the number of systems students used - around 10 they’d log into four-to-five times a day, so around 50 log ins daily. Troubleshooting this, Transforming Curtin IT Portfolio of Work was developed, building profiles not just for new students but second year students, researchers and general staff.

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One of the key projects that came out of that was the ‘Elsie’ app. A tribute to the wife of John Curtin, who was the Prime Minister of Australia in World War II and who the university is named after, it ties these log-ins and systems together.

The IT team built it on two platforms, one for iPhone and one for Google Android, and it launched last year. Now, it’s got almost 100% utilisation with new students.

“Students find it much easier to navigate a lot of what they need to do now,” Rasmussen

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explains, “like getting to classes on time, communicating, and logging in to the systems.”

About 14 other projects made up this portfolio some for research, some for teaching and some for central areas -and at a cost of $48mn over four years, it’s the biggest non­capital works piece of work that’s ever been approved at the university.

Running parallel to this, Rasmussen was also responsible for transforming Curtin IT Services (CITS), providing many new capabilities for efficient integration between applications.

He also restructured the 300-strong team into four directorates: Operations & Projects, IT Planning Governance & Security, Architecture & Innovation and Service Delivery -with the four heads reporting to him directly.

“Service Delivery is a bit of a misnomer,” he says, “but it oversees the services and makes sure the rest of the team is delivering services

Ian Callahan, COO the client is looking for. And it has a great procurement team.

“When I started, we had a good contract management team but we weren’t managing the vendors like partners, and there weren’t any KPls to hold them to, so we’ve changed that and renegotiated a lot of agreements. The team has been very effective.”

It certainly has - the Service Delivery team saved the university approximately $18mn last year, through strong negotiation and contract management.

The CITS team also enlisted the help of consultant companies Braestone and DSBS, who also helped with planning and the

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coordination in the workshops the ago and the global IT leader recently university did around Digital Futures established its ninth innovation as a programme, as well as providing centre at the Perth campus with essential skills along the way. another partner, Woodside.

“For example, even the “It’s a big feather in Curtin’s cap to development on the phones for have that here,” adds Rasmussen. the Elsie app was not a capability “We’ve had about 180 companies that we had before, so we come through that innovation started putting in a lot centre since it’s opened. of new capabilities “Cisco provides a other functionalities lot of the technical to make us more horsepower behind efficient and get it and some staffing better integration resources, and Number of Students between systems,” Curtin provides at Curtin University he adds. the research and “We installed a academic brains. cloud-based industry “The commercial service bus tool for organisations come in and integration called MuleSoft. We they provide the problem and the are also reshaping the IT teams subject matter expertise. It’s like to get the right skills in place this little incubator, and by getting for when this starts delivering the three together it actually over the next few years.” puts you in a very powerful Curtin is a long-standing Cisco position to look at ways of customer and runs the biggest solving real-world problems.” wireless network in WA on a single He says the biggest site, in the southern hemisphere. challenge for IT is doing more The university forged a strategic with less money, and that’s partnership with Cisco two years another reason why partners

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like Gartner are so important, because they provide critical advice and guidance, while partnerships like the one with Tech Mahindra provide extra skills, giving the university the ability to scale and flex when needed to meet the business demands.

“That’s part of the agility, about us not trying to be everything,” Rasmussen adds. “And from a team point of view, we’re getting skilled up in Design Thinking.

JourneyOne is helping us with this.

“With Design Thinking, you park

“Students find it much easier to navigate a lot of what they need to do now… like getting to classes on time, communicating, and logging in to the systems” – Chris Rasmussen, CIO

Science and Engineering Student

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Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Centre Building

any solutions at the door. You walk into a room and you have a diverse mix of people in there - someone to lead the discussion, a solutionist who can look at ways of capturing a problem, and a mix of different people at different times.

“The idea is to getto the core of the problem before you look at solutions, and we’re trying to build that into the DNA of how we operate.”

For the next few years, Rasmussen will continue to work with all the stakeholders to shape and focus the digital strategy and spend, whether it’s an upgrade to a major system or new apps for students or research, to make sure it ends up on the agreed roadmap somewhere.

“There are some immediate things we must do next year, just to keep the lights on,” he says, “but there is some very interesting technology out there.

It just has to align with our strategy and where we need to get to.”

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Kent Street Bentley, WA Australia 6102 Tel. 08 9266 9266 Fax. 08 9266 3131 www.curtin.edu.au