#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:00

Hi, I'm Pat Perdue, and I'd like to welcome you to Season Three of the Seneca Proud podcast. This is a co-production between my company Ycastr and Seneca College in Toronto. These days because of the global pandemic, yep, that's still a thing. So much of Seneca is remote; from working to teaching to studying. But hey, Seneca College has always been more than a place or a bunch of buildings. Seneca College is an idea. It's a vision for a better future. And it's a challenge to do what it takes to transform that vision into reality. And that is exactly what Season Three is all about. Seneca College is transforming, there are really exciting changes in the works. And this season, we get to take a close look at some of those changes, as well as the people who are helping make those changes happen. 

So, if you haven't already, subscribe, and download and join me as we discover the changes and meet the people who are transforming vision into reality because the next episode of Seneca Proud starts now.

Welcome to Episode Four of the Seneca Proud podcast. I'm Pat Perdue, and I'm really glad you've joined us today. This is the first episode of 2021. Here's to a fabulous year! 

In case you haven't noticed Seneca College is, with very few exceptions, determined by program necessity, virtual because of the pandemic, everything about Seneca is online. So, whether you're a student staff member, or faculty member of Seneca College, you've personally benefited from the work of today's guest. That includes sending an email, logging onto a course, uploading an assignment, pretty much anytime you've had an interaction with Seneca College. It's been through the work of today's guest and his team. Do you know who it is? Well, you may not know the name, but you certainly know the work. Today's guest is Radha Krishan who is the Chief Information Officer for Seneca College. That means he and his team of dedicated professionals keep all the bits and bytes and megabytes flowing from your computer at home, wherever on the planet home is through to the right computers at Seneca College or elsewhere. From email security to enterprise learning technology and eventually to devices that rely on the internet to function Radha Krishan and the Seneca IT department is in charge of keeping everything talking to each other. I'm so excited to have Radha join us for today's episode. 

Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about Radha Krishnan as Chief Information Officer at Seneca College. Radha has over 30 years of global IT experience in various industries including higher education, nonprofit supply, chain distribution, retail and lots more. Radha has diverse experience in architecting. implementing and managing core IT functions in complex multi stakeholder environments like Seneca. So, what does a CIO do? Well, simply put, Radha is responsible for the digital and technological transformation of Seneca College. In 2013 Radha joined Seneca to lead the I3 implementation. My experience with I3 is as a super handy portal for faculty that links teacher schedules, class rosters, grades, and a whole bunch of other stuff in one very handy point of access. After that successful implementation, he took over the role of Director of Software Solutions, and then assumed the role of Chief Information Officer at Seneca in 2016. Radha and I spoke before the break, and I had asked him about what it must be like in the IT department, you know, everybody's got an emergency of some kind. I can't log into my email; I can't upload a document seems like a day in the life of the IT department is all about putting out fires. Well, apparently, it's a lot more than that. Here's my conversation with Seneca College Chief Information Officer Radha Krishan.

 

Radha Krishan  04:14 

We're trying to move away from firefighting into a different mold. There's something that we've been doing for three, four years to say that we should get out of this operational firefighting mode, otherwise, we would never be able to focus on things we should be doing. But that's actually helping.

 

Pat Perdue  04:30

Love it. How does one do that? That's like saying, I really need to go on a diet or I really need to join the gym, but you never do. How do you break the cycle of not fighting fires anymore?

 

Radha Krishan  04:41

You know, it's really difficult. It does happen. But I think over the past four or five years, the stuff that we've been doing is purely focused on that. About four years ago, we used to have what we call the situation rooms. So, you call a situation room and there is a problem. So, we said that we should get to a situation where there is no situation room. So that's one of the main focuses that we've been working with, to make sure that happens.

 

Pat Perdue  05:08

Is that a matter of better planning or good planning or how to even do that?

 

Radha Krishan   05:15

It's not just planning, it is just that in the world in which we operate in, when the problems come, we look at the problem, we treat every problem as an incident to say that if this incident shouldn't come again, what we should be doing into that. So, if there is a VPN, suppose the VPN fails, we go back and check that. What if we put a second VPN so that if the first one fails, the second one takes over automatically, then the first one tells that it failed, so go and fix it without any service outage. It is those kinds of things we continue to work on. It's kind of an endless journey. But we made a significant progress. I believe that.

 

Pat Perdue  05:51

That's so fascinating. And I can attest to my personal experience of when that happens, you know, when I call the IT department, and as we've talked about before, I'm a big fan of calling the IT department your team is excellent. And they're patient, they don't rush you off the phone, and they stay with you, so it's great. And they also not only stay with me till my problem is solved, but they make sure I understand how to fix the problem, should it arise again. And I think that probably is part of that whole initiative.

 

Radha Krishan   06:27

That's very good to hear, I will certainly pass on to the teams that work behind the scenes to make it happen.

 

Pat Perdue  06:32

Let's talk about IT at Seneca. Seneca is a massive organization with radically different needs, from staff to faculty to students. Walk me through what that looks like. It seems like a huge, huge department and huge, huge undertaking to keep it running smoothly.

 

Radha Krishan   06:54

That's a good opening question. Yes, Seneca is a very large organization with 4,000 plus employees, and now 27,000 students and very complex needs. It is very easily possible to get lost in the operational weeds and details. Many days and weeks and months may go by before you realize that we've gone down the wrong path. So, in order to make sure that we don't do such things, and we stay on track to ensure that we serve everybody in the way we should be serving, we tried to give individualized focus and realize that having that kind of a focus in every service area is absolutely essential to stay on track. 

In order to give that kind of excellence, what we do is we build teams that are dedicated doing a specific function, and we tell them that your job is to do this, just go ahead and do it. They are able to focus on it build on it. In the way the IT department is structured, we are split into four teams. For the sake of simplicity, if I have to explain it, the first team, we call it as a front-end team, that's the team that you and most of our students will get to interact with every day. That's the team that fixes your laptop problems that fixes your password problems, we call it as the front-end team. The other team is the back-end team that takes care of the complicated stuff like the servers, the data center, the systems and things and all. And we have a third team, which is the software team that builds the I3 and the Blackboard and all kinds of systems. And then there's a fourth team which provides the centralized support structure and security things. We tell all these four teams that your only focus is to be doing everything with the service minded approach. Our only business here is to make sure our students and employees are successful. If they are not successful, then we are not successful. We don't have a job. Over the past five years, this thought has been driven into everybody's mind. Everybody is approaching with that in mind. That's why we've been able to make Seneca continue to grow, grow, grow. 

If a class gets canceled, due to a technology issue, we treat it as a major incident. That's the kind of mindset that we approach. Students come to Seneca to be able to successfully learn in a class. Faculty is going to be able to successfully teach in the class. These two activities are paramount and they trump everything else. Having these kinds of things in mind is what is ensuring that we are able to manage a complicated environment like Seneca. From time to time we step back and say that in these four or five individualized teams, we tell them that okay, what are you doing step back to see what you're doing, can you do it better? Can you do it in an improved way? So, we try to keep on improving every day and ensure that at the end of the day, it's the smile that we see in the face every day of the students and employees, that drives us that motivates us. And to ensure that we are able to manage such a large Seneca

 

Pat Perdue  10:08

Nice, it's interesting how your focus in keeping the classes going forward. And that's exactly the same focus as the professors’ as the faculty and the staff. It's interesting that that very, specific outcome is the mark of success. I think that's a really, really neat approach.

 

Radha Krishan  10:29

Thank you. Thank you.

 

Pat Perdue  10:31

Can you give our listeners a sense of how many people are working in the IT department overall with four teams and basically a million people to look after I'm rounding up, but it seems like a ton of people and everybody's got a computer. And recently, you launched the initiative of duo, where we all had to log in with a two-step verification, which I personally think is super, super cool. Share with me how big your team is, and a little bit of that, so we can have a have a sense of the scope of it all.

 

Radha Krishan 11:03

In the IT department, we've got close to 400 people, in all the four teams that I talked about the front-end team, the back-end team, the software team, as well as the support structure team, all put together, it's about 100 people. But what we have done with these 100 people to ensure everybody has got the service minded approach is that we try to cut across the structures and the reporting bureaucracies etc, etc. Everybody has got access to everyone, like the way David spoke about in the season three opening podcast, I have an open door. And everyone in the management team they all have an open door, every one of them can walk into it if they have a thought. And we want them to express their thoughts. We when I took over this portfolio four years ago, I gave an example that most organizations operate like a triangle, where the senior management sits on top everybody else is at the bottom. I said that we want to invert the triangle, where the staff members who actually make things happen are at the top. And the management is here to listen to them and ensure that they are able to do what they're supposed to do and be successful in the job that they're doing. These are all the approaches with which all these 100 people are working to support something. 

 

Pat Perdue  12:26

Nice, and it shows. It's really interesting how, the really high-level concept of this is how we want to approach our department bubbles up to somebody like me having a challenge with getting my password reset, simply because I'm clicking on wrong buttons, it's your 100% user error. But I can call and the excellent, excellent, excellent person, and they're always so great, I've mentioned this to you before, and I will say it 1,000 times, I'm such a big fan of your client facing IT department folks. Because they are so great, they're patient, they seek to learn what I could do differently next time I have the problem and get in front of it that way so that the next time I run into that issue, I can fix it myself rather than having to call the IT department. They’re so great. I wanted to make sure that that point was hammered home on this podcast, because I'm a big fan of you guys. So, thank you,

 

Radha Krishan  13:24

I will certainly ensure the message reaches to the right people who are making it happen. Thank you.

 

Pat Perdue  13:29

Sure, for sure. So, we talked about the scope and the overall approach, what's changing as a result of COVID because your department is really facilitating everything that happens at Seneca College right now. We are essentially virtual in many ways, a virtual college. How has that changed life in the IT department?

 

Radha Krishan  13:56

It changed quite a bit. We had in a way anticipated this change. But I am not saying that three years ago, when we started this preparation, we knew that there was a pandemic coming. That's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that we kind of realized three years ago that there is a need to provide flexibility in the way people operate. That's the basic mindset with which we started it. And the two strategies that helped us to get there: one is the digital strategy; the other is our cloud strategy. These two strategies form the backbone of our preparation. For example, very simple thing we said was, why are we buying desktops for people? We should stop buying desktops and we should buy laptops. We started three years ago, at a time when the cost of laptops were 25% more expensive than a desktop. We said that the desktops actually hamper the flexibility and the movement of people. Let's get laptops. And another initiative is as part of cloud strategy we said all our mission critical operation should be on the cloud, and as a part of digital strategy, which we will talk about I'm sure in a number of initiatives that we put in place. A combination of all these things ensured that when the COVID-19 situation came, we were much better prepared than the other colleges. 

I know, David has mentioned a number of times in his town hall speeches and all, we were in a much better preparedness status than the other colleges. Like, another major portion of this preparation is MyApps, like yourself, and most of our students are using MyApps, it literally changed the way the teaching and learning is conducted into it. And it just moved the need for everyone to be in the classroom. As long as you're able to teach online students are able to learn online and you got MyApps, you're good to go. Like, these are the kinds of things that we have been doing for the past three years, that helped us to transition into this new normal that's been going on for the past nine months. And now it has become, how can we better this and continue to improve on it to make sure that everybody feels even better before they come back to the campus?

 

Pat Perdue  16:15

Wow. And you anticipated my next question, what's on the horizon, in terms of the things that you're working on now, that can do just that, you know, help facilitate folks returning back to campus, or even help facilitate further online courses if those courses choose or end up being, permanently online?

 

Radha Krishan  16:38

A few things we are doing, you may have heard about this initiative called virtual comments that we launched about three weeks ago, in that when the COVID-19 situation started, all those preparatory activities that were done, helped us help all the employees to be able to work from their homes and all the students to be able to learn remotely. But a few months later, the situation changed the expectation of the students, the expectation of the employees changed in a way that what you did three months ago helped me to get started. But I would like to have a better service. I would like to have a better this better that. So, we started thinking about how can we get to the next level to support them? Virtual Commons is one of the initiatives from that. What it does is that we've got this huge competing Commons with about 400 computers in the Newnham campus alone, that's not being used. How can we make sure that we put a system whereby students can connect to it remotely and then take advantage of the powerful computer that is sitting there? That's Virtual Commons. 

So, in the same manner, we're trying to identify what other initiatives are there. We were the first college to provide a VPN service to the students who are studying from mainland China that cuts across the government firewall. That has been set up so that they don't have a slowness in the way they do online learning. Like we gave access to the specialized labs. All this didn't exist when the COVID-19 situation started. 

There are all kind of improvements and evolutions that we are continuing to do when people return back to the campus. Things are going to be different. A lot more virtualized Seneca a lot more flexible Seneca virtualized in the sense that you got a virtual OneCard now you which we can use for all services within the campus. You got a flexible Seneca in the sense that this is part of the larger initiative, that there's going to be a flexibility in the way people work. What is that flexibility? You will decide. But what we have done so far, and what we are continuing to do is going to enable that flexibility. There's going to be a full video conferencing capability in every meeting room so it doesn't matter whether you are on campus or you're working from home, you can still have that virtualized environment with people who are on campus. Most of us are going to be moving into that intelligent new CITE building fourth and fifth floors. That is one of the best built facilities, it's fully wireless, there is no wire there, it uses the Wi-Fi six. We are all going to be in open offices. With the flexibility and what's being done in the CITE building it is going to enable a whole new way of working that will enable a lot more possibilities. And hopefully we'll fast track most of the large initiatives. That's our intention.

 

Pat Perdue  19:34

And speaking of fast tracking, a lot of the changes that occurred had been part of an earlier vision. And maybe it was just a product of accelerating that vision a little bit as a result of the pandemic would that be an appropriate way to describe it?

 

Radha Krishan  19:51

Yes, many of these initiatives are part of our digital strategy. This is the strategy that we put in place. This is the third year of implementation of the strategy, as a part of digital strategy, we have identified five major buckets under which we should be doing improvements. These five buckets are operational efficiency, student and employee experience, digital learning, smart campus and digital workforce. Under these five buckets, we identified 22 initiatives, various different initiatives. 

I will just tell a few of them, which are directly aligned to where we are now and what we are doing paper to electronic conversion. Like in our human resource department, we had about 150 tall filing cabinets. Those filing cabinets had a file for every employee who ever worked for Seneca in the past 52 years. Those 150 cabinets don't exist anymore, they are gone. They've all been digitized. Another one is electronic signature. It's been four years that I haven't signed a physical paper. Most of the center employees do not sign physical paper anymore. Everything is electronic. We will the first college to implement chatbot chat which you will see on our Senecacollege.ca. And again, we were the first college to provide digital transcripts to our students starting with the summer term. We have the virtual 

OneCard, we have the most flexible tools for online and hybrid learning. We gave five different tools for faculty and students to be able to do that. Open education resources, collaboration tools, experiential learning, and smart classrooms. These are part of the Smart Campus initiative. In the Newnham Campus third floor, we have smart classrooms that can tell that are we making best use of this classroom based on the size. How has the utilization been? How can we improve the utilization of smart lighting, if you're not there, the lights will switch up automatically and so will be the cooling and heating. Smart waste picks up the waste as per a predefined schedule. If the bin is full, the bin will tell you that I'm full come and pick me up. And smart washrooms, the washroom again, will send an alert to say that, hey, it's time to clean, those kinds of things. And under digital workforce, we have virtual phones, we are having artificial intelligence-based cybersecurity protection. That's how all 4000 of our employees are working from home. Still, Seneca is safe. And we got a lot more of this virtual monitoring going behind the scenes for all our IT services. Then finally, the data analytics, these are some of the major components that form part of the digital strategy and we've been making progress on most of these initiatives. It's things like this. That's why we've been able to do what we've been able to do during this COVID 19 pandemic timespan

 

Pat Perdue  23:00

That sounds phenomenally exciting. As you were describing that, in my mind, I thought, okay, there's a team of people. And a big part of it is not only the software, but also the hardware. The stuff that your team has had to have to be accountable has just gone from, let's say computers, and projectors and some other things to just about everything in the colleges. That's so huge.

 

Radha Krishan   23:25

Yeah, that's true. That's why in many cases, it's not information technology, it is as a whole, information. There's a whole lot that happens. That goes just beyond the laptops and everything into it. Like you may have used the wayfinding that is there in most of our campuses that helps the new students to find their way, that wayfinding uses your Wi-Fi network. So suddenly, you have technologies that do not serve one purpose. That's more than one purpose that complicates stuff even further. But at the same time, you're right, as you're trying to expand the horizon more and more to service our students more and more there are more things to be addressed. There are more things to be done in the CITE building, like I mentioned, the fourth and fifth floor, we have smart lighting, that means every light on those floors, I've got one of those IoT devices that you mentioned, that needs to be monitored, that needs to be controlled, that needs to be protected. A whole lot of things goes behind the scene. 

 

Pat Perdue  24:28

And what you're describing also is a lot of change. So, folks like me, you know, faculty, students, staff, are all recipients of that change. What are your thoughts about the change management and communication piece of all of that?

 

Radha Krishan  24:45

I do know, that's one of the toughest parts to handle the change management as well as the communication. We've been trying to continually improve the ways by which we let our faculty and students know how to use the things and how to get to know the changes that are happening. It's one of the difficult things that they've been struggling with. But we are continuing to evolve our level. Earlier, once upon a time, we used to communicate only on emails, we don't do it anymore. We do realize that by sending an email, it only reaches a certain set of audience. So, we started going to the welcome backs, we started going to the faculty meetings, we started going to the co-ordinator meetings to say that we're going to talk about this most recently, about a week ago, we went to the Deans and  
Chairs meeting, and we took the full hour to explain various initiatives that we are doing. So, we go in person.  When the term starts, our team spreads out to go to the classrooms to explain to the faculty and the students, the kinds of facilities that we have built for them. We use the social media to do it. We try to expand the different ways by which we can reach out to the students to be able to ensure that people understand and be able to make use of it. We also have drop-in sessions for various different things. It is a challenge. But we are trying to find out more ways whereby we can make it happen. And like among the 400 people that I mentioned are part of IT, there are some people who also have the talent of producing videos. So, we use their services to produce small, small, small videos, if you go to the Seneca website, there are a lot of videos of that nature that have been posted. We try to explain through these different means and manage the change.

 

Pat Perdue  26:35

And it's almost like, there's all this great stuff that we can use. And the trick will be saying, hey, you know what, there's this great stuff that you can use. Did you know that you can do this? Or did you know that you can do this other thing? And what's your expectation about how quickly people will take up these new changes or these new facilities? It may not be overnight, but maybe it'll be a few months or a year? What are your thoughts on that?

 

Radha Krishan   27:04

What we have seen is that whenever we implement a change, there is a spot in the usage of that service. But as the term ends, when the new term starts when a new set of students come in, whenever we try to introduce a service, and when we tell people about that service, there's a spot in the usage. But as the term goes to an end, when the new term begins, unless and until we continue to communicate to the new batch of students who are coming, they've got no clue what's happening. So that's a big challenge that we're trying to make to just make sure that we do this on an ongoing basis. 

You'll see an announcement coming in the next few weeks about the new employee intranet project that we’ve all been working on. Through those services, we're trying to give capabilities which students and faculty can use to do self-serve. So, you are able to find things today, in the way we operate. If you look at even our ideas website today, you cannot search it. If you want something, you don't have a Google kind of a search whereby you to figure out things and all that kind of hampers the knowledge and the capability to find where the knowledge exists. We try to overcome those kinds of things. And you talked about the Service Desk, how well they serve, we're also trying to change the Service Desk system per se. Behind the scenes, the people with whom you're talking at the service desk, they've got something we call the knowledge base documents, we've given the team about 500 plus knowledge base documents. But as a faculty or as a student, you don't have access to those 500 documents. So, with the new service desk system that we are implementing, we are trying to find a way whereby we try and expose all those 500 documents to you. When you have a problem, instead of trying to reach the Service Desk, when you go to type in a problem, that system will tell you, hey, hang on, I have a knowledge base document. Can you try this to see if it solves your problem? If it solves your problem, you don't have to call the Service Desk. We're trying to find different ways whereby you're able to find the service and use the service and self-serve.

 

Pat Perdue  29:22

It sounds like SAM might play a deeper role in helping folks like me reset my password

 

Radha Krishan  29:30

For sure in the future, it will certainly do that. The goal chat with SAM that sits on Senecacollege.ca primarily helps the prospective students to Seneca. For the current students and the faculty who are here at Seneca, if you go to the student home or the faculty home, there is a different version of SAM that sits on the student home. We call it SAM the student. SAM the student today can help you do transactions or chat. But we want to extend that capability so that you can tell SAM, that I want; to drop my class, or I want to drop this course or add a course, or I want to pay my fees, when is my next class? These are all the capabilities that we are building into SAM. 

 

Pat Perdue  30:29

And you mentioned AI, obviously, that's artificial intelligence, which is super cool. As you talk about all of the things that are on the horizon, what has you personally most excited about?

 

Radha Krishan  30:44

The one thing that I'm most excited about is our teams have all the initiatives that are coming as part of transformed Seneca. It is going to build the new Seneca and the kind of engagement that is happening, the kind of initiatives in which our teams are involved in is the one that we are most excited about. It’s what we've been thinking about or where there have been small pockets of discussions that have been happening over the past many years have all been brought into this huge initiative called Au Large. And many of those dreams that people have, have been put into this project. And when we complete it, those dreams are going to become reality. That's the most exciting part we are looking forward to.

 

Pat Perdue  31:32

Sounds super exciting. And I'm a bit of a Star Trek nerd. So, it's almost like going from Star Trek, the original series, where Gene Roddenberry had all these dreams of stuff, like a holodeck and stuff like that, that he couldn't realize because of technology. But in Star Trek, the Next Generation, he could do all that stuff. It feels like it's kind of like that. 

 

Radha Krishan  31:51

In Star Trek Discovery it is now taking it to the next level.

 

Pat Perdue  31:55

That's right. Exactly right. There's one question that I'm asking all the guests on the podcast, because I'm just super curious about it. And it's a little bit about the human side of our experience with COVID-19 and the pandemic, and shutdown and stuff like that. Do you find for you personally, has your experience with COVID allowed you to either discover or rediscover something about yourself simply because maybe you haven't been going back and forth to the office as much or anything like that.

 

Radha Krishan  32:29

When the COVID-19 situation started, I personally realized how much of a value being in the office plays to my doing my work in the way I should be doing. I couldn't take it, even after the campus shut down. I sneaked into my office every day, and I was working. But I didn't realize that the breaks that I take to walk around the office, the kind of informal discussions that you have with your colleagues and meet with them, how critical those discussions are to ensuring that you stay sane, and you're able to continue on to do what you're doing. I personally realized it during those times. But slowly, as the time progressed, I started cutting down, going to office once a week, I still do once a week, I still go to my work. But I do realize that those people who cannot come to work who may be in a similar situation, it's a challenge we are seeing as time passes by, people are tired, people want to come back, people want to see each other we are seeing that slowly, the mental stress is building up. We're trying to do different ways to reach out to our employees, I want to meet them. We have something called a virtual cafe within our IDs that we do once a month. When we do it, I tell everybody, switch on your videos, where you are doesn't make a difference. If you have your family with you, if your kids with you bring them on. We want to create that office social environment so that we are able to reduce that mental stress, I'm able to reduce my mental stress, I'm able to interact the way I used to be interacting when I'm in office. It's a challenge, but we're finding new ways to make sure that we just continue but it's tricky, and I absolutely 100% aligned with what you were describing,

 

Pat Perdue  34:23

It’s another opportunity for me to say thank you. It's the technology that's helping to facilitate the solution to what you just described. So right out, we're getting to the end of our conversation, and thanks so much for your time today. I've got another question for you. You know, the idea of IT and IT departments, you know, it's almost something that's invisible to us, as users, it's like salt in cooking, you know, if it's there, and we don't notice it, it's just right. But often we notice it when something goes wrong. So, as a result, a lot of your successes are seamless. And we don't notice it right. What are you most proud of that? Nobody notices?

 

Radha Krishan  35:15

That's a very tricky question. But I would like to answer it, and also kind of allude to why it's a deliberate strategy from our side. We are happy to take a backseat. And that's part of a deliberate strategy, that I feel that’s the success of any company's IT department can only happen when its stakeholders are in the driver's seat. If we have an IT department in the driver's seat, I don't think we will be successful. We're trying to implement that strategy deliberately, where we work very closely with all. And we let them take charge of the situation, our goal is to ensure that we provide the tools and technologies for them to be successful. Once we have done that, they are in charge of the ship, we will make sure that that goes on the right path, it doesn't deviate, and then get lost and all those kinds of things. I'm very proud to say that the other colleges look to us with envy. They keep asking questions like how do you do things the way you do? The answer myself and all our management team, everybody provides is that we are much closer to our stakeholders than anyone else. We constantly work to understand them and ensure that they have everything that they need to be successful. If I have to define the goals of the IT department; first is that we implement initiatives to deliver great services to and support our students and faculty. Second one is continue to innovate with new technologies. Third one is actively engage the stakeholders to realize the full benefits of IT modernization. And the fourth one is build the confidence in your users through customer service and service-oriented mindset to establish it as a trusted partner for them to be successful. Like, this is what keeps us moving. I do agree that we are like salt but we just want to make sure that even though we're not noticed, we don't mind doing that as long as you're successful in what you're doing.

 

Pat Perdue  37:30

Well, it's obvious to all of us that you do that very well. You're, the best quality salt though, thank you. And while I have you on the line, I've got a question for you. I'm having trouble resetting my password on my email. I was wondering if you know, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

 

Radha Krishan  37:53

Can I can I tell you something? Can you show me something? It was since the pandemic started; we have stopped forcing people to change their passwords.

 

Pat Perdue  38:01

I noticed that, I noticed that thank you. We all love that.

 

Radha Krishan  38:06

And our goal is that because we got the dual protection, we are now thinking should we be forcing changes to passwords? Like you got a second factor authentication now, then why do you have to change it? The banks don't force you to change the password. So why are we forcing our stakeholders to change the password? These are all the continuous improvement thinking that goes behind the scenes and a part of that is this one more initiative.

 

Pat Perdue  38:34

Again, like salt, right? It's happening, it's functioning and nd I'm not noticing it, but it's making my life unbelievably better. Radha Krishan thank you so much for joining the podcast. You and your department have so many fans and so many people rooting for you and the IT department here at Seneca College because we all know the great work that you all do. Thank you very much for all of that. And thank you so much for joining the podcast today. It's been a truly fascinating conversation.

 

Radha Krishan  39:03

And thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be on the podcast. It was a wonderful experience. Thank you very much.

 

Pat Perdue  39:09

Thank you so much. Bye, bye. 

And that was my conversation with the Seneca College Chief Information Office,r Radha Krishan. What was your takeaway from our conversation? For me, I was really impressed by the level of complexity involved in what falls under the umbrella of IT. With COVID, our reliance on technology and our need for innovative solutions has grown exponentially. And the folks in the IT department well, they just need to be able to roll with all that. It's pretty incredible. It's like trying to play a football game with the goalposts always moving. All I know is that I'm grateful every time I can log into my Seneca email account. Speaking of grateful I'm very grateful to Radha for finding time in his busy schedule to join us and I’m grateful to you for listening. Until next time I'm Pat Perdue stay proud Seneca!