CIT wants extra money, U-Council demands an improvement in the working environment

The RUG’s Center for Information Technology (CIT) wants an extra 700,000 euros annually to work on cyber security, among other things. The University Council (U-Council) agrees, provided that the CIT puts its affairs in order.

The fact that the CIT is asking for extra money while the university has to make cuts is unacceptable, says Björn de Kruijf of the Personnel Faction in the University Council. ‘If money comes in somewhere, money also has to be taken out somewhere.’ In addition, the CIT employs a lot of external staff, making costs very high.

The CIT wants to use the money to work on services to faculties and cyber security, among other things. The latter is important since universities are regularly targeted by cyber attacks.

This happened, among others, at Maastricht University (UM) during Christmas 2019. The cyber attack brought email traffic to a standstill and the university no longer had access to scientific data. UM is said to have paid a few hundred thousand euros to the hackers.

High dropout rate

Science faction member Guido Visman recognizes that the CIT needs to be strengthened, but prefers to focus on improving working conditions. The center is said to suffer from a high dropout rate and complaints about working conditions, Visman says. ‘I have seen that there is an unpleasant working situation.’

Moreover, the question is whether the CIT functions well as a large central IT department and whether it would not be better to accommodate it elsewhere, says De Kruijf.

Patch

The working situation is not addressed in the current expansion plans – which talk about additional licenses for software, security testing for IT and staff members – according to Visman. ‘This looks like a stopgap, but a very expensive one that I cannot sell to the supporters.’

But Hans Biemans of the Executive Board sees the need. ‘It’s about ICT security and ICT is becoming increasingly important. We should be willing to do more for that.’

Conditions

The University Council was ultimately convinced, but on the condition that the CIT works to reduce workload, absenteeism and the expensive hiring of external employees.

“We are not anti-CIT,” says Visman. ‘We are concerned with making the organization function better.’