Working with architecture

As an institution, you want to support your target group in the best possible way. To do this, your information provision must be in order. This can be done by working with architecture, which describes the relationship between facilities. With a joint information strategy, SURF helps institutions collaborate in setting up their information services.

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Higher Education Sector Architecture (HOSA)

Achieving better facilities that are clearly interconnected: that is the aim of the Higher Education Sector Architecture (HOSA) project. In it, SURF and higher education are jointly developing domain architectures: (architecture) frameworks for shared sector facilities within higher education.

SURF takes over management and further development of HOSA by 2023

SURF, higher education and sector partners have jointly developed domain architectures for shared sector facilities within higher education over the past three years. To ensure that HOSA continues to develop in the future, SURF will manage and further develop HOSA from 2023. This will be done in close cooperation with higher education institutions and sector partners. In addition, SURF propagates the frameworks of the HOSA and steers its application.

What is the HOSA project?

HOSA stands for Higher Education Sector Architecture. This sector architecture should contain frameworks that help suppliers of the common information and technology facilities develop and deliver these facilities. To this end, it is important to identify the requirements that these facilities must meet. This involves consistency and balance between the different needs of the various stakeholders in the sector such as students, citizens, institutions and sector partners.

View the goal structure of the HOSA

More and more shared facilities

Educational and research institutions currently already use a number of shared facilities. As institutions increasingly work together, we expect to see more and more of these shared facilities. Developments from the Acceleration Plan for Education Innovation with ICT, as well as developments from UNL and VH, are accelerating this. Sectoral (architectural) frameworks are needed to ensure that these shared facilities are properly aligned with the higher education sector. To this end, we have launched the HOSA project.

HOSA brings in frameworks

HOSA stands for Higher Education Sector Architecture. This sector architecture contains frameworks that help suppliers of the common information and technology facilities develop and deliver these facilities. To this end, we have mapped out the requirements these facilities must meet. This involves consistency and balance between the different needs of the various stakeholders in the sector such as students, citizens, institutions and sector partners.

Better facilities with clear coherence through HOSA

If the sector partners in education and research embrace this architecture, current and new initiatives in the field of sector facilities will soon be realised more quickly, more future-oriented and more future-proof. SURF and sector partners will then be better able to respond to this with products and services. And then students, teachers and researchers will experience better facilities with a clear coherence.

Incidentally, the HOSA is not something to be used by everyone this year. Our aim is for the HOSA to be used by all partners in the sector in the next five to ten years.

Three domain architectures

Based on the requirements we have mapped out (see also below under Approach), we give concrete substance to those requirements in domain architectures. We create a domain architecture for the following three domains:

We have chosen these domains because the provisions for those domains are important for strategic cooperation between higher education institutions, SURF and sector partners.

The HOSA welcomes change proposals on the domain architectures. The HOSA Change Process (pdf) tells you how to submit a change proposal, and how we process such a proposal.

Approach

For each domain, we have set up a working group with representatives of institutions, sector partners and already ongoing initiatives on the specific theme. In 2020, those working groups collected a lot of information in the sector and from already existing cooperation initiatives: what are the requirements for sector facilities? What knowledge and insights already exist in this field? The working groups then started designing and writing the domain architectures.