SURF Members' Council highlights 10 December
General updates
Pauline Satter joins the Members' Council for the first time in her role as board member of SURF. Everyone welcomed her. In other functions and roles, she has participated in the Members' Council before.
With Pauline's arrival, the division of tasks within the board has been revised. Pauline takes on education and business operations. Hans continues to do the procurement and infrastructure files. Ron, as chair, is the face to the outside world and deals with digital infrastructure content.
Annual plan and budget 2026
The annual plan and budget for the next calendar year were discussed and adopted. The annual plan is called 'Collectieve kracht als springplank' and it contains 7 priorities for the coming year:
- Continuity in services with high member satisfaction
- Successful introduction of new organisational structure
- New steps in setting up sector facilities/commons
- Successful start of AI factory & AI strategy
- Drawing up SURF strategy 2028-2033
- Implement process improvements Fit for Purpose for cost control
- Obtain long-term funding for computing capacity
For the budget, the focus has been on a so-called zero budget: no profit or loss is anticipated for the upcoming calendar year. This is in line with the idea that the cooperative has not-for-profit basis. However, the total budget does grow as SURF grows, both in staff and tasks. The long-term affordability of SURF is a challenge that is discussed at length in the Members' Council. This will continue to be a topic of discussion.
Board regulations
Due to the introduction of the executive management layer and the appointment of the third executive board member, several amendments to the board regulations are required. Approval from the Supervisory Board and the Members’ Council is required for these changes. The Members’ Council has agreed to the proposed amendments.
New member
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) would like to become a member of the cooperative. PBL has had a user agreement since 2009 and has been purchasing various services and products since then. The next step for PBL is to become a member. They meet the conditions, as they are a knowledge institution and they are subject to public procurement requirements. The members' council approves PBL's membership.
AI
In decision-making around the AI factory, the members’ council has been involved more frequently. Now that the application submitted to EuroHPC has been approved, attention turns to looking further ahead. Hans provides an explanation of the activities SURF is undertaking in the field of AI and the courses of action available to board members. The guiding principle is that SURF, as a cooperative, benefits from AI, while maintaining control and doing so in a trustworthy manner. We achieve this by evaluating solutions from the market, but also by building solutions ourselves as a cooperative, such as the AI Hub, eduGenAI, or GPT-NL.
NIS2
NIS2, also known as the Cybersecurity Act, has implications: both for the cooperative and the various members. Together with the members’ council, it will be discussed what these implications may look like, which options and choices are still available, and what their possible consequences are.