Mr. Boeta Pretorius, newly appointed Director of IT remembers his career journey as one where he had started off as a junior lecturer at Computer Science. He confesses, that it led him to this very challenging position where he, his team of managers and everyone in IT will strive towards excellence. 

He also stated that: “I never thought I would be in this position one day. When I think about all the great people before me, Prof. Giel Hattingh, Dr. Philip Welman, Dr. Cobus van der Walt and most recently Mr. Attie Juyn, it still feels too good to be true. Fortunately they laid a solid foundation for me to work from and I am very grateful for that”.

Asking the question, which his best event was, Boeta replied: “Apart of this privilege, there are a few things that stand out in my life - the choice of a lifetime partner, a highly talented daughter and a sporting career which enabled me to see the whole world”.

Boeta is a highly motivated person, he claims that it derives from the fact that: “I stretch myself, even as a student I wanted to be first in the class, in sport I did not stop before I was the best in my age group, ...therefore I think that I was born with drive and enthusiasm and to always look out for new challenges.

On a lighter note, Boeta replied that his music preferences are strictly exercised during leisure time: “I have to be aware of cars when I am on the bike, so I do not listen to music while training. If I have to listen to music I will most probably listen to Bob Dylan or Neil Young”. For fun Boeta admits: “there is nothing better than to be out on a dirt road on my mountain bike”.

According to Boeta, taking 2014’s accomplishments into account, the following deem to be noteworthy:

• Taking eFundi content offline
• Implementing the NWU eCommunication strategy
• Piloting the Lecture Capturing
• Implementing the new print strategy
• Implementing the new student email strategy

It has been said that a Director makes a 100 decisions per hour, if that holds true for the IT industry, it still remains to be discovered...  Thus when Boeta was promted to reveal the IT Departement’s emphasis for the current year, he replied as follows:

• Start a process to move towards maturity in all three value disciplines of IT, namely operational excellence, customer intimacy and product leadership.
• Achieve a better balance (projects, people, time, budget) in terms of our domains of work, namely: Learning and teaching enablement; Research enablement; Administrative systems; Shared services; Ancillary services.
• There are lots of other challenges for this year, Boeta replied. “I will only mention a few: IT Governance, eResearch strategy, Restructuring (completed), IT strategy, Business continuity planning, Disaster recovery planning, broader transformation, peer evaluation improvement plan, national and international collaboration…”

This inspirational words are both comforting and reassuring as Boeta states:  “With a highly competent IT team, I feel comfortable to tackle any challenge coming our way”.

10 July 2015