Digital Master Plan: The University of Montpellier charts its digital course
The Digital Master Plan (SDN) was approved at the Board of Trustees meeting last June. It outlines the University of Montpellier’s digital strategy for the next five years in nine key areas and will engage a large part of the university community in approximately 120 projects. Adeline Fabrié, Director of Information Systems and Digital Technology, provides further details.
It’s a small revolution within the organization. Over the past few weeks , all UM staff members have been able to move away from the aging Adhoc application and familiarize themselves with two new scheduling and leave management software programs: Logeca and Planum. But few realize that these changes are just two small building blocks in the vast structure that is the 2024–2028 Digital Master Plan (SDN), approved by the Board of Directors on June 10.“The SDN is a long-standing project at the University of Montpellier,” explains Adeline Fabrié, Director of Information Systems and Digital Technology. “It is an extremely foundational framework for outlining an institution’s digital transformation journey.”
Meet all 271 requirements
Until now, different master plans have coexisted at the university, each tailored to its respective field of application. However, recent societal changes linked to the boom in blended learning, the rise of open science, and the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and cybercrime have prompted the UM to include in its latest five-year contract“the development of a digital master plan capable of covering all its areas of operation, from research to education, including support functions such as HR, finance, facilities, and administration,” the director continues. In doing so, the University was also responding to the recommendations of HCERES and the Court of Auditors (Recommendation No. 9, September 2023 report).
After more than two years of work led by President Philippe Augé in collaboration with the vice presidents—and in particular David Cassagne, Vice President for Digital Technology in Education, and Anne Laurent, Vice President for Open Science and Research Data—as well as Chief Administrative Officer Bruno Fabre and the teaching and research departments (see the box on SDN governance), the University of Marseille has thus established a five-year development roadmap. Practical, coherent, and sufficiently flexible, it can accommodate the many changes in professions and practices related to digital technology and IT. “We analyzed the 271 needs identified during the first phase of this work to create a portfolio of 120 projects, the development of which will be organized around nine strategic priorities,” explains Adeline Fabrié.
Nine priorities for 120 projects
One of the primary objectives of this digital strategy, as formalized by the SDN, is to explain how each of these nine priorities contributes to the University’s overall strategy as defined in the institutional contract. The first three priorities address educational needs: the development of digital teaching practices; addressing the challenges of educational transformation; and, finally, improving digital services for students.
Guidelines 4 and 5, meanwhile, address the needs of research and innovation, which require better coordination and greater visibility of activities. The SDN also aims to improve the capacity to manage research activities, which are necessarily linked to the institution’s international outreach and modernization.
This modernization initiative underpins the four key priorities. Specifically, it will involve: streamlining administrative procedures; securing management information systems; rationalizing infrastructure; and ensuring business continuity through robust security measures.
“These guidelines have enabled us to organize and plan the upcoming rollout of 120 projects and, above all, to prioritize them in a roadmap that takes into account the workload and capacity of the DSIN [ estimated workload of 19,000 person-days] as well as the relevant business units [ 5,100 person-days]. “Currently, 38 projects have already been launched,” announced Adeline Fabrié.
Must-See Projects
“Among these projects, some are classifiedas ‘essential,’ meaning they are mandatory due to regulatory requirements, a mandatory update from the software vendor, or technical obsolescence that jeopardizes the security of the IT system. “They affect a broad audience within the institution and therefore require special efforts in terms of change management,” emphasizes the director. This category includes the introduction of Planum and Logeca, which we’ve already discussed, as well as an evolution of Siham, a core HR software system that will also be revamped through a complete overhaul of its technical and application infrastructure.“ Our goal is also to promote and deploy integrated, interconnected applications, which, for example, prevent the need to re-enter the same data multiple times and simplify usage. We call these ‘urbanized’ systems, modeled after how a city functions.In a context where cybercrime can no longer be ignored, securing our tools is also our top priority.”
But other significant challenges will arise starting in 2025 with the upgrade of Sifac, our financial management tool, to Sifac+, and especially with the phased phase-out of Apogée, the administrative application for student enrollment management, as we transition to Pégase around 2028. These changes are being driven by the Agency for the Pooling of Resources among Universities and Higher Education Institutions (AMUE), the provider of numerous tools including Siham, Sifac, and Apogée—three cornerstones of our institution’s management. “This is where the SDN really comes into its own, because developing it allowed us to become aware of the changes ahead and better anticipate them to support our staff. Some of our applications are aging, but staff are so used to them that the change will inevitably require a period of adjustment and familiarization.”
"Flagship" projects and easy wins
Flagship projects, meanwhile, account for 54% of the project portfolio in terms of workload. In the training sector, these include the implementation of the European Charm-eight project and the establishment of the digital health school; the development of digital exam rooms; and the creation of a tool for managing assessment procedures… On the research side, notable initiatives include the rollout of the “open science plan,” the provision of a tool for managing calls for proposals, and the continued development of the Occitanie regional data center (Drocc) for ESR partners.
Alongside these flagship projects, which are particularly important for the university, there are the “quick wins”—projects that can be completed more quickly or easily:“The president was very keen on them. He realizes that the flagship and essential projects will require a great deal of effort from the teams, but certain smaller initiatives can be simple to implement and provide significant benefits to the university community. ” Among the thirty or so projects in this category are, for example: digitizing the CMS card; implementing the Payfip online payment tool for certain services or continuing education; promoting the university’s health services; and providing a data encryption tool.
Reach a milestone
Finally, there are the “foundational” projects, which are less visible and more technical; they represent the core mission of the DSIN.“Their goal is to consolidate and improve the security of the information and digital systems and to adapt to changes in technical and security infrastructure to address the new challenges of digital transformation. This could involve strengthening the institution’s network, Wi-Fi, backing up our technical components, and services that are rarely noticed—except when they aren’t working,” emphasizes Adeline Fabrié.
This digital roadmap therefore organizes and plans the University of Montpellier’s response to the challenge of taking the digitization of its activities to the next level. This transformation requires additional human resources, particularly within the DSIN, as well as financial resources. The total cost of implementing the SDN is currently estimated at 7 million euros over five years. The specially designed governance framework will be tasked with adjusting or even adding new projects to ensure the master plan remains relevant as needs evolve.
For more details on the planned projects, download the 2024–2028 Digital Master Plan.
Digital Governance
According to the director of information systems and digital technology: “The essential element for implementing the SDN!” Digital governance is divided into three traditional areas: strategic, management, and operational. The strategic component is embodied by the Digital Monitoring Committee (Cosnum). It primarily involves the president, the deans of schools, faculties, and institutes, as well as research clusters, and meets once a year.
The management of the initiative is coordinated by the SDN Monitoring Committee (COSUI SDN), led by the Director General of Services and comprising the DGSAs, Vice President for Open Science Anne Laurent, and Deputy Vice President for Digital Technology in Education David Cassagne.“This monitoring committee has been in operation for over a year now. It meets monthly, makes decisions regarding the roadmap, and ensures that all the resources necessary for the successful development of the SDN are available,” explains Adeline Fabrié.
This governance structure also includes eight IT steering committees. One for each major area: research, digital solutions for training, training, finance, HR, management, facilities and logistics, and finally IT and digital security.“The monitoring committees for research, training, and digital technology for training already existed; the others were created as a result of the extensive work we all did together to design this new governance structure.” Led by their respective vice presidents, they meet every six months to monitor the various projects and refine the roadmap based on on-the-ground constraints. The completion of this Digital Strategy Document (SDN) after more than 18 months of work now serves as a benchmark and roadmap for the institution’s digital projects. The digital strategy, through its nine key areas, and the established governance framework enable its management and evolution to best align with future digital transformations.