The University of New England is on the hunt for someone to lead its Information Technology Services (ITS) Directorate.
Former UNE director, information technology, Robert Irving departed in January. Irving is now IT director at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
A UNE spokesperson said that the vacant role had been reclassified to chief information officer “to reflect the increased demands of the role brought about by the university’s increasingly multifaceted information technology environment.”
The university is offering a five-year contract for the position.
The CIO will report to UNE’s chief operating officer, Professor Peter Creamer — a former chief information officer himself, having been responsible for IT at Victoria University until he left in 2015.
“A key component of the role is to develop a unified ICT approach for the University that recognises and facilitates the varying requirements across the academic and business units to take advantage of technological advancements, whilst at the same time safeguarding the universities physical IT and data assets for all forms of attack, whether originating from internal or external sources,” recruitment documents state.
The university’s 2017-2020 IT strategy outlines six priorities including digitising UNE’s key business processes, developing a digital application ecosystem that is “innovative, effective and exceeds the expectations of students, staff and researchers”, developing effective partnerships “with local and international research infrastructure and service organisations”, utilising data to support decision-making at the university, enabling the UNE workforce “to operate at the highest level in the digital world” and adopting an agile development methodology.
UNE has around 20,000 students, some 80 per cent of who study through distance education or online, and some 1250 academic and general staff.