娇色导航

Cathy O'Sullivan?

Hello and welcome to 娇色导航Leadership Live Australia. I'm Cathy O'Sullivan, the editorial director for Foundry's Enterprise and Channel brands in Australia and New Zealand. On today's episode, it's a pleasure to be joined by Sinan Erbay, who is the Chief Information Officer at RMIT University.

Welcome to the podcast, Sinan. I appreciate you being with us today. ? Sinan Erbay?

And thank you and hello, and I really appreciate the invite. So looking forward to a good chat. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Excellent looking forward to it, too. So take us back to the start, then Sinan, tell us a bit about you and your start in IT. And I guess what have been some of your career milestones? ? Sinan Erbay? Sure.

I have to rewind a few decades here. When I started? in IT,? I started in IT operations on the good old - showing my age here - on mainframes and working on large scale mainframe systems.

And over the decades, probably described it that I had a number of different roles. So moved from IT operations to project delivery to networks to development, you know I could almost count - don't have enough fingers - all parts of IT I had spent in.

Industry wise, I started off in the insurance sector, and from there, moved across to finance, worked in retail, worked in oil, utilities, and more recently, in education.

So most of my career, the career trajectory that took place, typically was in working for organizations or starting in an organization where there were some significant investment or transformations that were taking place.

So remembering the days where we were moving from mainframes to you know, mid range systems to open systems. So I did take take part in a lot of those programs of work across across those various sectors. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So you mentioned you've moved into education, and you have been the 娇色导航at RMIT now for several years. So tell us a bit about the university, give us an overview of the organization, I guess, and what you and your team look after there? ? Sinan Erbay?

RMIT University is a university of technology and design. Our purpose is to create those transformative experiences for our students, both in the world and the impact they have.

Our value proposition, it's very much an applied learning style, where we do have both face-to-face and the virtual learning experiences as well.

My team is responsible for technology and enabling all of those journeys for our students, from the moment that you know, they knock on our door, and they're interested in studying with us, all the way through to post studies as well.

So we do look at our students as that lifelong learner, and fully connected in our ecosystem. My group's responsibility is technology for the entire university.

We have a footprint in in Melbourne here, where the main campus is, but we also have a university in Vietnam, where we have quite a large student cohort. And then we've got international partnerships as well.

I would describe RMIT as probably the largest, or one of the largest universities in in Australia, with just over 100,000 students studying those various disciplines that we have. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Great to hear that the university is stretching globally now and all the way to Vietnam, as well. So tell us a bit more about some of the key achievements of the team in the last few years. You know, how has that digitalization journey been tracking for you?

? Sinan Erbay?

Well, if I describe our digital journey, and the journey never, never really stops. It's a journey that has many chapters, and many beginnings and many starts, stops and then restarts.

But what I'm really proud of over the years is there's probably three or four key initiatives that really come to mind. You know, cloud adoption, and being a cloud first capability that's been really embedded in everything we do.

One of the proudest moments over the last two years now we have it up and running is RACE Hub, we call it which is our supercomputing facility that is based on cloud services. So we're providing supercomputing computing power to our research community, on demand anywhere at any time.

Along with that, our digitization journey, we've significantly improved our operational efficiencies.

And we'll probably talk a little bit about that with automation and AI, some of the new emerging technologies that have been put in place but we've also been focusing quite a bit on that student satisfaction and improving the student experience with student systems and really digitizing their college experience for our students.

I'd also flip it to the academic side and our professional teams as well. So digital literacy is is important to us as it is for everybody. So there's been quite a bit of leaning into that digital literacy in the programs that we've been running across the university.

Not to mention cyber. So there's been quite a bit of cyber focus and investment. And that's something that I think the whole sector, if not the entire world, is really coming to grips with and doubling down on their cyber investments. ? Cathy O'Sullivan? Yeah certainly.

And while I'm, we'll talk more about cyber later in the piece, but look, take us through your approach to your tech strategy. I mean, how do you ensure what you're putting in place,? your initiatives, that they align with that overall mission and the goals of the university?

? Sinan Erbay? Yeah.

It's, it's, I'm going to describe it as you know, the technology strategy really does underpin and enable the university strategy and our university strategy is knowledge with action. It's a nine year strategy that the we've put together as an executive group. And that's only the three horizons.

So we describe it as three horizons. What's really important is, the technology strategy really does need to be, it's got to be built with agility, which innovation and ability to adapt as well.

It's important to continue to walk together, side by side with all of your stakeholders, understanding the true impact that the strategy will have on them and their experiences. So it's, it's forever evolving.

There's regular reviews that take place, understanding the various needs of our communities, both our student communities, our research communities, our academic, and then we also supply industry. So it's also having industry embedded in what we're doing as well.

So it's a strategy that, you know, we're quite proud of, you know, we are in our first phase of that nine year strategy, and, you know, pretty proud to say there's quite a few things that I believe we've ticked, and there's a few few items there that we'll continue to progress further to the second stage of that work.

But ultimately, it comes down to get the basics right, if you can get the basics right and build the trust with your communities, then you really get to enjoy that conversation on the table about creating and innovating together with them. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Now speaking of innovating, universities are known for pushing the boundaries and experimenting with with new new things. So tell us about you know, any new and emerging technology that you have been looking at or implementing at RMIT? And is there any other technology that you're super excited about?

? Sinan Erbay?

Well, you are spot on there with universities really being at the cutting edge and innovating. And we've got some amazing individuals - really smart, smart individuals -? that I'm lucky to work with on a daily basis.

You know, the capabilities of recent times we've been really focusing in on is AI, you know, couldn't go past the podcast without talking about AI. But yeah, we are we have implemented a number of different AI capabilities.

If I describe them, one is in your typical, you know, smart campus or we describe it as the Living Lab. So the campus is a living lab.

So there's so much opportunity about automation, AI and Internet of Things, you know, bots, chat capability, that we're looking at in that space, but also then on pedagogy and students. How do we assist our students in their learning experiences, complementing with AI capabilities as well.

And then we look at the other side where we've got our research communities, and they're doing far better job at research and innovation.

And we're working closely together with them to see how we can enable, I guess, accelerate some of their research work, take out some of the administrative burden for them, and automate a lot of those manual remedial,the lower value tasks for them as well.

So AI is -? and we sort of look at it as a family of products - we've got AI intrinsically built within capabilities that we're already leveraging. We've got a good investment in our machine learning and analytics platforms that I've worked closely with my peers on.

We then have automation when we're looking at how we operate.

Think of a university and? a university's size, especially RMIT, it's a significant footprint, size and scale and the buildings that we have So, to be able to automate and find efficiencies in those buildings, there's quite a bit of automation that needs to be applied there.

So that's definitely one part. And then a big part of that also plays in, in our own technology, how do we automate?

How do we accelerate our development, our delivery, and landing ideas from pilots to proofs of concept all the way into production so end users can benefit of the capabilities that have been designed. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Now it's easy to get so excited about all the shiny new toys and their capabilities in the organization. But of course, there is, you know, the maintenance of the existing IT stack.

So how do you manage that within your team of you know, looking at cutting edge technology, but also maintaining current infrastructure and systems. ? Sinan Erbay?

You have to plan these, it's a balancing innovation with you know, we all have some legacy systems that are still there that are still poor and quite important to operating the business.

So it's taking a phased approach, gradually implementing change, maintaining, I guess, those robust practices, to ensure that you've done all of your quality checks, before you then release it into the production environment. And it's also regular regular assessments of and prioritization of what needs to be delivered.

So it's keeping the poor robust, and ensuring that you're always adhering to at least adoption of good standards for both your security and cyber practices as well. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Now, cybersecurity comes through strongly every year in our State of the 娇色导航survey, it's one of the top concerns of CIOs globally.

So tell us a bit about your approach to cybersecurity, you know, you've got a lot a lot of data there on students, obviously, you know, important research going on at RMIT. So how do you ensure that security and privacy of all that data in your systems?

? Sinan Erbay? Not easily.

It is an environment, and especially if I could describe the university environment. It's an environment that we encourage open learning collaboration, not only within the university, but external to the university.

So if I think of both our student cohorts as well as our academic cohorts is collaboration across the world. So the sharing of data, working on, you know, really big problems together, and finding solutions for those.

So for us, you know, it's maintaining a balance, you know, what is the core, what's significant is a different level of protection there that you would apply in different protocols to be used.

You then move down that layer, and think, 'Okay, what what are those platforms that are far more open and accessible to our community?' So a different level of security that needs to be applied across there as well. But all in all, I'm not saying we've got it right.

I think it's a journey, it forever, you might need... it's a catch up game.

There's a lot of investment happening out there, I'd say from, you know, the players that aren't playing too well the nasty groups, but for us, it's very much around adopting, I guess that continuous monitoring, continuous improvement, and it's using technology as well.

So if you think of the events that are taking place on especially this sector, I think we we are a significant target, the education sector, I think, even Australia, just the geopolitical landscape that we're in.

And that's where for us, it's continuing to maintain, be vigilant, and also a balance on... You'd love to lock everything down lock and key and air gap and not be connected to the world. But that's just not pragmatic and that's not the way a university should be operating.

? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Yeah, yeah, very good point there, you raised as well around education actually being one of the sectors that is being targeted. I think it was government, healthcare and education came through quite strongly in terms of what bad actors are looking at us.

So obviously, you can't do everything internally yourselves. So what do you look for them when you're going out to market and you're selecting either technology partners or providers, what's important to you when it comes to partnership? ? Sinan Erbay?

Partnership to me, needs to complement. So the way I would best describe - and it's both a give and take working with partners. There needs to be that cultural fit in the way they operate. I see a partnership as an extension of my team.

And I hope that they also see us an extension of their team.

So I look for a partner that, one can be be trusted, brings innovation to the table, operates collaboratively, and really does align the, you know, the goals and the ambitions of both organizations to achieve successful outcomes. You know, we have a number of partners that we operate with.

And, you know, we, again, you know, we do see them as that extension of our team.

So, I like to be able to pick up the phone and call the partner, and you know, either kick something, you know, kicks, kick some ideas around, and what we can do some innovative things, bring them into even the university, and share some experiences that they have, where they can mentor/guide some of our students, and vice versa, there's an opportunity for our students, or even our staff to be seconded and working, work with our partners as well.

So I'm going to come back to: it's trust, reliability, openness, and culturally, it needs to be aligned. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Yeah, absolutely man, great that you can provide that forum for those partners as well in the university environment and expose students to what they do as well. That's, that's, that's wonderful to hear. Some of switching gears a bit, tell us a bit about you as a leader, Sinan.

How do you describe your leadership style? ? Sinan Erbay? Great question.

I would describe my leadership style -? and I would hope that everyone that I work with, would have a similar view - quite open, personal, pragmatic, but also quite engaging, as well.

So I do believe in, you know, the best outcomes are achieved when you do collaborate together, working together and keep... and also creating a safe place, so psychologically safe. So you know, opportunities, success can only be achieved if the truth is laid on the table.

So I'm quite conversational, I do love to have a chat. I am reminded that I can go over my five minute opening speech in usual town halls, and so but yeah, I do love the conversation.

I do love exploring, and I do love, also trying to build or create or bring together teams of different diverse backgrounds as well. So diversity in thinking, diversity in age, diversity in gender.

So bringing all of those different people together, I do believe you get at very, a much richer conversation. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

100%, couldn't agree with you more on that. So tell us a bit more than about the environment at RMIT. You know, you've been 娇色导航now for for several years, you clearly, you know, love collaboration.

So what else do you think are important factors when it comes to getting the best out of your team and creating an environment that helps them thrive? ? Sinan Erbay?

For me creating an environment and we've been we've been adopting a, we call it a customer first approach or a customer centric style that we've been working with. So I'm, I'm very passionate about distributed groups and distributed teams.

So absolutely, you have a home and you come to your home for your development, and personal growth, and so on. But it's spending a lot more time out there across the university, sitting together with your stakeholders, working together on problems or opportunities with them.

So for me, it's really encouraging our team and our operating model, to spend a lot more time working outside of IT, rather than working within IT.

At the same time, I love capstone projects where, you know, we we've run a few initiatives last year, and we'll continue to do it this year, where we bring small cohorts of students into IT, the technology department, and think of it like a graduate program where we do spend time with them a few weeks in each group, or each department within IT, giving them some, let's call them wicked problems to solve that they're experiencing from learning, a real world experience point of view.

And it's just amazing to see some of the ideas that come through. More recently, we ran a capstone project with one of our colleges in a student cohort, where they really embrace what Co-pilot could do, AI and automation.

So look out for that one, hopefully, there'll be a few use cases or stories that will be published out of one of our partners with what we've been able to achieve there. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

And great that you're exposing the IT department to different cohorts of students. Are there any other things do you think can be done on a practical level to attract more minds of all kinds, different communities to consider IT as a career? ? Sinan Erbay?

There are - and you know, one of the areas this is where with the student groups, what we've been exploring. I think in the job skills, especially in the cyber landscape, you know, we are struggling, and I think most organization, organizations are struggling to fill those positions.

Rather than just looking at technology, or, you know, STEM related disciplines, we've been working with our design school, and bringing in students with those design thinking disciplines, and spending a bit of time with them in the cyber practice in the cyber space.

So they really do bring a different perspective to how to investigate how to identify how to do the forensic analysis, and play that back. So I think you've got to broaden your mind.

It's not just technologists or technology degrees that sort of make their way into technology, there's human centered design, there's, you know, user experiences, there's change and change is significant. Whilst the technology may deliver a capability back to any organization is to change adoption.

And does it really meet the customer need, you know, is it is it really something that they can adopt and work with? So I think it's looking across those various areas in finding those different different personalities or different skill types that you can introduce into your team.

And it also really does bring a different mix and a culture to an organization when you start to blend those various disciplines? ? Cathy O'Sullivan? Yeah, for sure.

And certainly, as we enter into this age of AI, the soft skills are becoming more and more important - those human centered skills and customer first approach, as you mentioned. So clearly, cybersecurity is a massive challenge for every 娇色导航in Australia and globally at the moment.

Are there any other challenges that you think face CIOs in Australia? And in particular, any particular challenges that for the education sector? ? Sinan Erbay?

Well, cyber is, cybersecurity absolutely right up there is challenge for the education sector.

The other is the adoption and the transformation that is taking place post COVID, I'd call it the post COVID era, where, you know, predominantly, we think back to my younger days, university was when you went to campus, you had a lot of fun on campus, and then maybe you studied a little bit as well.

That's really changed, where there's there's that blended learning that's really taken off, and that will continue. The challenge there is how do you create an inclusive, an immersive learning experience? That is not only just face to face, but in that online or virtual world?

I still think you know, delivery of content is is still two dimensional, what you were seeing in a classroom or a lecture theater on a screen. While now you're seeing on a on a small screen in your house.

How do you make that a lot more immersive and better experience? I think that's one of the challenges for the education sector. The other challenge is financial constraints, you know, that we're all working through.

Some of the changes, you know, the positive changes that are taking place with legislation, we will also have an impact on on the education sector as well. So there's a number of, I guess, challenges that we're all working through and and will continue to work through.

But the experience, you know, I come back to how do we create a delivery of education and learning to our student cohorts that is far more immersive and rich? And has that impact, regardless of whether it's in person or in front of a screen? ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So then, what are your hopes I guess for the next generation of technology leaders coming through, is there any advice that you'd pass on to aspiring CIOs? ? Sinan Erbay?

Aspiring CIOs or any leader or aspiring leader, the advice is be open to growth. You know, move out of some of those comfort zones. Take on some of those innovation initiatives. Champion those. But also be collaborative.

Success or your opportunities really to collaborate and partner across a broad skillset in an organization and continue to embrace change. You know, change is inevitable. So, continue to embrace. But also do not, you know, always keep keep in mind on the balance of safety and security.

Ensure that the culture, you create a great culture for your organization, the people that you work with, give them a safe place to design and create. And yes, there’ll be other challenges that you’ll be facing. But yeah, be prepared. And resilience.

Resilience is, I think, the key attribute the leader does need to have as well. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Yeah, for sure that growth mindset and also being resilient, definitely key for any, any leader in the future. So then, finally, Sinan, what's important to you and the team in the months ahead? Any other exciting initiatives in the pipeline for RMIT? ? Sinan Erbay?

I will continue to drive our, you know, AI ambitions that we have for the university, both internally as well as externally with some of our partnerships that we're doing. Cyber measures, continue to… belt some braces… ?or build up our cyber capability and maturity, and then collaboration tools.

So, simplification, you know, further simplification and consolidation of our of our environment. You know, just to make it easy to do work.

So, you know, I think the administrative burden on most organizations with AI automation bot capability, if we can start to take that away, you can move people to higher order of high value tasks in an organization.

So, they're probably the three key areas that we'll continue to double down on and focus in on. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Well, we look forward to seeing the fruits of your labour and hearing more about it in the months to come. Sinan Erbary, Chief Information Officer at RMIT University, thank you so much for joining us today. ? Sinan Erbay? Thank you, Cathy.

Really enjoyed the chat.