The Faculty of Information Technology Revised Its Strategy As the society gets more and more digitised, information technology has become an integral and everyday part of our operating environment. Information has become increasingly dynamic and dispersed. The users of technology from global businesses to ad hoc networks and individuals operate in the same value chains. In order to respond to these challenges, the Faculty of Information Technology revised its strategy in the spring of 2012. In addition to current goals and objectives, the strategy structures the operations and roles of the faculty in relation to the overall strategy and profile of the university. − Our starting point was to raise awareness of IT among other disciplines and to reflect the strategic goals of the university at our faculty’s level. Furthermore, we consciously aimed at creating an image of a diverse but harmonious faculty, summarizes Timo Tiihonen, the Vice Dean responsible for leading the strategy process. − In terms of content, these actions focus on ICTbased services and information security, both of which have also attracted active societal dialogue in recent
years. When it comes to the internal collaboration of the university, eEducation has developed into a prominent project, Tiihonen continues. The strength of the Faculty of Information Technology is its ability to approach information technology from various viewpoints as well as to recognise the joint effects of different phenomena. In practice this way of thinking was reflected in the open planning of the new strategy. The strategy was developed in working groups consisting of faculty staff, and everybody had a chance to comment on the working groups’ ideas in open wikis. − The faculty’s strategy lives and breathes where the possibilities offered by the rapidly developing ICT and the society’s capability to adopt to these technologies meet; the strategy evolves on their terms. In this operating environment, the strategy is not a five-year plan and it cannot be changed on the basis of today’s news either. An intensive strategy process helps to create and share a common understanding of goals and provides a criteria to support decision making, Vice Dean Pasi Tyrväinen describes the revision of the strategy.
Mission: The Faculty of Information Technology responds to the challenges in research and education brought by the development of information technology and digitalisation. The Faculty holistically integrates the perspectives of technology, information, organisations, business and people in its research and education as well as in its cooperation with interest groups.
Vision:
With its internationally recognised and distinctive profile, the Faculty of Information Technology will be Finland’s most versatile unitary academic unit in the field of information technology.
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