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Vision

Vision

Our Vision

Enriching the community’s experience and capacity to act through technology

Our Mission

York IT provides inclusive technology-based service experience to the York community in support of the University’s goals

Our Mandate

UIT provides IT leadership, planning, and services for York University. We work with other IT groups to offer solutions and support that help the York community achieve its academic, research, and administrative goals.

Guiding Principles

Two Women Working Together

People

Our approach to user-centred service is grounded in the belief that technology should prioritize our community and its people.

Value

We aim to create value for our community by providing services that meet their wants and needs. Value also implies operational cost-effectiveness. In times of scarcity, this is as much an ethical principle as a business one.

Community

Technology is a means of bringing people together and facilitating collaboration. This starts with our IT community and extends to the entire university community and beyond.

Woman Holding Notebooks

Agility

To foster innovation, we must act quickly and adapt to unpredictable conditions. We use the term “agile” because it reflects a valuable project management approach that enhances our ability to remain flexible and responsive.

Innovation

In an environment of constant change and unpredictability, innovation is crucial for upholding our value-driven service philosophy. We see innovation as the catalyst for everything we do—from everyday tasks to long-term strategic objectives.

Our Strategy

Our strategy to ensure a solid core, establish new digital strategies and enable community, as detailed in the section below.

Ensure a Solid Core

Ensuring a solid core requires fortifying the foundational elements established to support our technological ecosystem. The following are some of the critical areas of York’s digital core that will be invested in over the next two years:

  • Service Availability & Responsiveness: We aim to ensure that UIT services are available and responsive. This means maintaining high uptime, quickly resolving issues, and continuously improving our service delivery to meet our users’ evolving needs. In addition to targeted service improvements, York will complete IT service harmonization activities across the institution and improve monitoring and reporting.
  • Modern Digital Infrastructure: A modern digital infrastructure is the backbone of our operations. We are committed to upgrading our infrastructure to be more resilient, scalable, and secure. This includes investing in cloud technologies, enhancing our network capabilities, and modernizing legacy solutions and platforms across the portfolio.
  • Strong Security Posture: In today’s world, security cannot be an afterthought. We are enhancing our security measures to protect our data, systems, and users from threats. This involves expanding our security awareness and phishing campaigns, reducing areas of vulnerability and risk, and automating, where possible, our responses to ever-evolving threats.
  • Strong Teams: Our people are our greatest asset. We are dedicated to building strong teams through continuous training, fostering social activities that build camaraderie, and recognizing our team members’ hard work and achievements. A motivated and skilled workforce is vital to our continued success.

Establish New Digital Strategies

Establishing strategic digital capabilities involves laying the groundwork for new platforms that enable increased automation, intelligence/visibility, and innovation. The following are some of the new digital platforms that will be deployed over the next 2 years:

  • Gen AI Platform: We are investing in and deploying several Generative AI (Gen AI) services that will enable us to harness the power of Gen AI. These platforms will support everything from automating mundane tasks to providing sophisticated analytics and insights.
  • Budgeting & Forecasting: York has an opportunity to eliminate a significant amount of manual work by automating its budgeting and forecasting systems and data. By implementing advanced financial planning tools, we’ll significantly increase York’s ability to perform complex scenario planning and make informed decisions that align with our strategic objectives.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM): Our IAM program will ensure that the right individuals can access the right resources at the right times for the right reasons. Specifically, we will ensure that York’s privileged accounts are protected through technologies like CyberArk and that our legacy Passport York infrastructure is modernized with IAM technologies—ForgeRock & SailPoint.
  • Data & Analytics: Data is one of York’s greatest assets, and we are committed to enabling York to harvest value from it. Our data and analytics investments will focus on expanding our analytics and government reporting infrastructure, supporting data-driven decision-making and operational efficiency while removing technical debt.

Enable Community

Enabling community is about recognizing that only when York’s greater community can use and engage with these digital platforms can innovation and value truly scale and impact the institution. We are committed to enabling students, faculty, and staff to make positive change for our community and the world. The following are some of the critical areas of enablement that UIT will be investing in over the next two years:

  • Research: We look to enable and advance York’s research agenda through services that may include high-performance computing resources, automation services, advanced data analytics, and collaborative tools that enable our researchers.
  • Teaching & Learning: Our teaching and learning initiatives are designed to enhance the educational experience through innovative technology. This involves integrating modern digital tools in the classroom, supporting online and hybrid (HyFlex) learning models, and ensuring that faculty and students can access the resources they need when they need them.
  • Productivity, Insights & Automation: We aim to provide technologies (MS O365, MS Power Platform, MS Copilot Platform) that enable and accelerate personal productivity and meaningful insights throughout the institution. Our commitment extends beyond merely provisioning technology; we will work with our members to increase their access, understanding and ability to leverage these services.

Financial Stewardship & Constraints

Our commitment to financial stewardship upholds our three strategic pillars. With a complex economic situation on the horizon, we need to ensure we manage our resources wisely and make strategic investments that deliver undeniable value. We will continue to be good fiscal stewards and ensure the sustainability and growth of our initiatives

Initiatives

Learn what we’re working on and how it benefits everyone at York.

Artificial Intelligence

Cybersecurity

SSRP