ICT News, May 2007
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Service Delivery Managers
ICT is pleased to announce the recent appointment of two Service Delivery Managers, Mat Myers and Christo Willemse.
The SDM roles have been introduced to focus on three key areas:
- to review existing ICT service delivery, to identify issues and opportunities for potential improvement and to work with ICT teams to agree and implement improvements;
- to oversee the migration of new customers to ICT support;
- to provide leadership and guidance to non-ICT IT staff in various Faculties and Departments (where requested).
Mat Myers has over 15 years experience in the IT industry in public, private and tertiary education sectors, both in Australia and the UK. This includes 10 years of management roles specialising in service delivery. He has worked in the private sector for technology and telecommunications organisations such as Digital/Compaq/HP and Optus, and in non-ICT organisations such as Diageo (the world's largest alcohol company). He also has previous university experience, beginning his IT career at UNSW. His most recent role was as the Head of Service Delivery for the British e-Government Unit, responsible for service delivery of online government shared services for over 10 million registered UK citizens and organisations.
Christo Willemse started his IT career in South Africa in 1991 and worked for a variety of companies in the IT industry, primarily focusing on systems integration. In the last 10 years he held senior IT management positions with Swiss chemical manufacturer, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, in South Africa, UK and Singapore. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, his most recent role was as the regional CIO for Asia Pacific. This role involved, in addition to daily operational responsibilities, the implementation of a continental hub based in Singapore, providing end-to-end shared IT services for 80 branch offices and 18 manufacturing sites across the Asia Pacific region, with about 4,000 users in total. Christo holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science from UNISA (South Africa) and is in the final stage of completing an MBA with Manchester Business School (UK). In his spare time he enjoys reading, traveling and a range of outdoor activities including cycling and tennis, and in particular has a passion for kite surfing (this means that he may sometimes look a bit miserable during the Sydney winter). Christo recently relocated to Australia with his wife Clare, who is very pleased to be back in her home town and to be close to her family.
Faculty of Engineering and IT: HP Technology Grant
ICT would like to congratulate Dr Josiah Poon of the School of Information Technologies and Dr Rafael Calvo of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering on the award of a Hewlett-Packard Technology Higher Education Grant.
The grant provides 21 HP wireless-enabled tablet PCs and associated funding, with a total value of $US75,000, for a project entitled "Enriching Interaction Inside and Outside the Classroom". The project, designed to improve students' success and engage the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies through the innovative use of mobile technology, will develop an approach for encouraging interaction and therefore learning, by allowing students to use the tablets to voice opinions and ask questions comfortably and without embarrassment during the course of classes, and to continue online discussion outside the classroom across the campus.
