Magazine

For decision-makers in education and research

From good intentions to firm choices: public values in procurement

"It seemed a complicated step, but in retrospect it was darned simple," says Jan-Paul van Staalduinen, CIO of Utrecht University (UU). He is referring to how UU gave public values a central role in a procurement process. How do other institutions approach this? For SURF Magazine, we talked about it with three administrators .

Magazine

Survive or innovate? The library in a digital world

What does the future of the library look like? What opportunities and threats are there? We discuss with Hilde van Wijngaarden, president of the UKB consortium, and Tecla ten Berge, president of SHB.

Magazine
A new maturity model: Thinking about responsible use of AI

Treating AI responsibly starts with thinking about ethical issues. Although the use of AI in teaching and research is still in its infancy, there is already a model that helps institutions organise AI ethics.

Magazine
Open source: crucial at the board table, but who takes the lead?

Open source is not just another technology. It is an essential tool to safeguard public values such as autonomy, transparency and collaboration. Highlights during the Open Source Leadership Summit.

Magazine
Public values under pressure: libraries draw line at licence negotiations

For the first time, a negative procurement opinion has been issued against a publisher of scientific publications. Not because of the price of the licence, but because the publisher does not have its privacy rules in order. The chairs of the licensing working groups of UKB and SHB explain how they arrived at the opinion.

Magazine
"Working with digital and open educational resources requires a culture change"

How can digital and open educational resources shape the future of educational institutions? What is needed to achieve this? In this article, two board members share their views and an open science expert provides insight into the benefits as well as areas of concern of these innovative educational resources.

Magazine
Working together to scale up in Uganda

For Uganda's RENU, eduroam was the game changer. This NREN has big plans for it. In Uganda, you encounter the future everywhere. Because no country in the world has a younger population: as many as half of its 50 million inhabitants are under 16. And its surface area is six times the Netherlands. So providing Ugandan educational institutions with Internet is quite a job for RENU.

Magazine
Highlights of the SURF Summit 2024

The Netherlands has designated digital infrastructure as its official mainport. As a research and education sector, we use this infrastructure on a daily basis. And also build on it. During the SURF Summit 2024 on 9 October, board members and decision-makers were confronted with existing and new challenges, and above all, there was plenty of room for exchange.

Magazine
"At level 3, you have your information security under control'"

Sector-wide agreements have been made in education about information security. Together, we express its level in 'maturity'. On a scale of 1 (ad hoc) to 5 (optimised), the average rating within the education and research sector is currently 2.3. Administrative commitment is crucial to move forward.

Magazine