Services approach in dutch higher education

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04/08/23

Services-approaches in Dutch Higher Education Expectations, opportunities and current activities

Expectations, opportunities and current activities3

Services ……..

- Relatively small software components- Each component provides a unique functionality- These can be linked to support more complex work

processes- Standardise on the messages, allowing diverse

technical implementations


Service Orientation: the expectations

- For the user (students and staff):- Increased user-friendliness and transparency- Demand-driven instead of supply-driven

information function- For the ICT department:

- Standardise interfacing between system components (integration)

- Leading principle for (shared) information architecture development

- For management- May lead towards shared services centres


HEI services adoption in the Netherlands

- Closely linked to IT governance and ‘working under architecture’

- Services approach as a leading principle in reference architectures

- Practical work often in reaction to disappointing portal projects

- Main drivers:- application integration- reduction of duplicate functional components


Some sectoral initiatives

- Services approach to integrate existing institutional e-learning infrastructures: 3TU Graduate School

- SIS User Group taking the lead in making their application service-enabled: Osiris

- Joint SIS requirements specification & selection on the basis of services definitions: SaNS


National level framework: NORA

- Dutch Public Sector Reference Architecture

- part of ‘e-government’ strategy

- functional perspective: ‘client first’

- technical perspective: semantic- and service oriented

- Defined at 3 architectural layers:

- Business architecture

- Information architecture

- Technical architecture

- 20 ‘fundamental principles’ + 140 derived principles:

- Interoperability principles (mandatory)

- Internal principles (advised)

- De jure principles

- Now working on sector instantiations


National methods and tooling

- Service oriented architecture modelling language: Archimate

- Archimate-approved tools: BiZZdesign and ARIS- But:

- Limited adoption- Various ‘local modelling dialects’- No shared underlying semantic models


SURF activities

- Developing SOA building blocks

- Federated identity management: A-select

- National integration: StudieLink – ‘almost soa’

- Federated educational and research repositories:

LOREnet and DAREnet

- Promoting cooperation and dissemination

- Architects community

- Archimate partnership

- Cheap licences for archimate tooling

- Support ‘business demonstrator’ projects

- Plan to make outcomes widely and ‘standardised’

available for repurposing


International cooper-ation

- E-Framework

- Partnership between UK-JISC; Australian DEST; New

Zealand MoE; Dutch SURFfoundation

- Aim: “…harness the development and wide adoption of

open standards and flexible infrastructures to support

… education, administration, teaching and research.”

- Products: Service Usage Models, Service Descriptions,

and Core SUMS (pattern)

- TENCompetence:

- 4-year RTD project, EU-IST-TEL programme, 15

partners from 9 countries

- Aim: Establish a technical and organisational

infrastructure for lifelong competence development


SOA reality in Dutch HEI

- Most HEIs have entered the ‘awareness phase’- The ‘early adopters’ apply SOA to address

operational problems, not so much for strategic purposes

- ‘service enabling’ of existing applications and ‘self services’ exposed through portals, but no full fledged SOA implementations yet

- Cooperation for system replacement and selection – soa is one of the criteria

- Sectoral initiatives towards interoperability and shared services ‘the next thing’?


Present issues

Just-in-time and just-enough

architecture

Convincing our own manage-

ment is complex enough

Implement an institutional

services architecture

Web2.0 means giving in to

anarchy

…………………………………

Overall architectural design

Only cooperation leads to long

term advantages

Work towards defining and

implementing shared services

Web2.0 provides exiting new

opportunities

………………………………………


So, what’s in it for students

- Personalised electronic learning environment through a ‘plug and play’ architecture

- Transparency in educational offerings, leading to more demand-driven education

- Life-long personal services, spanning education, work, and private life


But still a lot of work to do


Eric Kluijfhout

[email protected]

www.surf.nl/en

http://www.e-framework.org/

http://www.partners.tencompetence.org/

http://www.e-overheid.nl/atlas/referentiearchitectuur/