XJTLU information technology head named as top CIO

The head of the Management Information Technology and System Office (MITS) at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University has been recognised by a Chinese technology and business magazine as one of the country’s top chief information officers.

Xudong Feng was named “Excellent Chief Information Officer in China 2016” by ‘IT Managers’ World’ magazine. He was the only winner of the award working in a university.

‘IT Managers’ World’ magazine was founded in 1998 and it is one of the leading technology and business magazine in China.

After six months of visits, interviews, case studies and evaluation, a total of 50 chief information officers were selected as winners of the awards. They were chosen from nearly 200 candidates from enterprise, academia and industry across Chinese Mainland, China's Hong Kong and Taiwan by the assessment committee of ‘IT Managers’ World’

The assessment committee praised Xudong’s work, saying: “IT support is essential for outstanding education and teaching. While the university is developing rapidly, he and his team have provided professional IT support to each departments’ teaching, in various ways [including] internal cloud services for XJTLU students and staff to support their learning, teaching and administrative work.”

“We built the campus IT service platform by referring to international best practice, providing services to support students and staff learning, teaching and research based on their requirements and experience,” said Xudong, who joined XJTLU in 2009.

MITS is in charge of XJTLU’s informatisation management, building and maintaining the campus network, the server for the university’s website, classroom multimedia facilities, student self-service printers and software, dealing with staff IT issues, and organising software training and seminars to support teaching.

“We also check over 1,500 computers and dozens of public printers periodically around campus to keep the devices available. We estimate that MITS provided services 30,882 times in 2016, including dealing with 16,690 IT support request tickets,” he added.

Xudong said that MITS recently set up a service desk, which provides computer-related services to students, on the fourth floor of the University library. In addition, MITS also communicates with information departments from other universities and institutions. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, for example, visited XJTLU last year and shared their experiences. Members of the delegation praised XJTLU’s expense control system in particular, noting that they would be interested in implementing a similar system.

“This award is an honour to me personally and also an achievement for the University,” said Xudong. “We will continue to provide better services to XJTLU staff and students to keep XJTLU’s IT provision among the top level of Sino-foreign cooperative universities in China.”