6/21/2007
| In the final year of its Strategic Plan 2003-2006, SURF focused on completing projects and activities and starting up new ones within the context of the new Strategic Plan. SURFfoundation reports on these projects and activities in its Annual Report 2006, now available online and in print (copies may be ordered from SURFfoundation). It was a successful year for SURFfoundation, one in which it achieved good results and put down solid foundations for implementing its plans in the 2007-2010 period. |
The DARE programme was completed in late 2006. DAREnet, containing more than 110,000 publications, was transferred to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 1 January 2007. Among the highly successful results of the DARE programme are the “Promise of Science” site, a repository of more than 13,000 doctoral dissertations by Dutch PhDs, and the HBO Knowledge Bank, with more than 5,000 final papers by graduates of Dutch universities of applied sciences.
The Nationwide Programme e-Learning was launched in 2006 with SURFfoundation at its helm and in close coordination with the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (HBO-raad), the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Digital University, and E-merge and Apollo (consortiums of institutions for higher education focusing on ICT and educational innovation). The partnership produced five projects in the programme category Continuing Learning Paths.
One important priority in 2006 was the setting up of Studielink, an online system that allows students to quickly and easily enrol in or re-register with an institution for higher education. Several institutions commenced using Studielink version 1 in the spring of 2006. Unfortunately, the launch of Studielink 2 met with various problems, including the interruption caused by a political debate about “learning rights”, the new financing scheme for publicly funded higher education. In late December, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands approved plans to set up Studielink and the learning rights financing method as an integrated system. SURFfoundation will be working on this project in 2007.
At the request of the Transparent Higher Education Steering Committee, SURFfoundation provided support for the “Studychoice123” programme, which involved developing a website that helps students choose an educational programme.
Collaboration in the European Knowledge Exchange and, in particular, the British Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) was intensified in 2006. SURFfoundation was also active in other less domain-specific activities in 2006, for example learning technology standards, digital rights, and identity management.
The Board adopted the sixth SURF Strategic Plan, covering the period 2007-2010, in late April 2006 on behalf of the participating institutions for higher education and research. It describes how SURF, in a coordinated effort, will eliminate discrepancies between the ICT environment as it presently exists and the ICT environment SURF hopes to achieve. The SURF organisation will use the plan as a basis for developing and implementing its activities over the next few years.