SECC Smart University Reference Architecture

Digital transformation is achieved through heavily relying on information technology. It is becoming a global trend in all sectors and businesses. Education is a critical sector for the sustainable development and it has a great potential to achieve valuable and strategic outcomes by adopting technology and digital transformation strategies. Trends in this direction include smart schools, smart universities, and smart education in general. In response to these global trends and as part of its role as a catalyst for the technology in Egypt and as a software house for many standards and industry best practices, SECC launched an initiative for smart universities in Egypt. The initiative aims at defining a standard reference architecture for smart universities in Egypt under the name of Smart Universities Reference Architecture (SURA). SURA is typical example for enterprise architecture reference models applied to the universities business. It covers the four EA domains: business, data, applications and technology within a university specific architecture. The reference architecture is evolvable and is targeted to be continually updated to cope with recent and up-to-date advances in technology and educational standards and best practices. TOGAF9 is the primary framework applied in managing this initiative. Other complementary frameworks include COBIT5 for IT Governance and IT4IT for IT Management. This paper introduces SECC vision for the smart universities, the proposed capabilities that constitute the smart university vision, and the suggested reference architecture. SURA targets being a roadmap for digitally transforming universities in Egypt but it can be useful reference for any university around the world. As part of its strategic vision, SECC is studying the model applicability and needed customization for adoption in schools which have many similarities with universities from the perspective of targeting smart education services.