I am humbly honored to get this opportunity to utter a few words
explaining the performance of the office of vice president for Business and
Development in the year 2020/21. Indeed, it cannot be sufficed to mention all
that we have done as Business and Development Office in the fiscal year in one
or two paragraphs of this web page. Nevertheless, we believe that a few words
have to be addressed to the community within and outside of the university.
As many of you might have been well aware the office of the vice
president for Business and Development was officially opened for service in
Oct. 2020. Since the date of establishment, the office has done numerous
changes in the reorganization and management of the subordinate offices;
particularly dismantling the engineering unit which had been a ten-year-old
construction project management unit and; the opening of the construction
project office which according to the civil service directive should have been
established in the university since 2012. Moreover, the directorate of campus
sanitation, beautification and treatment plant development has been put in
effect as of July 2021.
Currently, the office of BDVP has four major subordinate units. Namely;
To let you grasp a few among the many achievements of the offices
in the year 2020/21 one can skim through the following paragraphs.
The year 2020/21 could be said a heyday of development in the area
of ICT at DDU. In this regard, I can note the completion of two flagship ICT
infrastructure projects: the DDU-Modular Data Center Project and; the
DDU-LAN/WLAN infrastructural Project which together used up over 200 million Birrs.
As a result of this accomplishment, today the university staff, researchers and
students have got a wide range of access to the internet at almost all corners
of the university premise. In addition, the ICT Directorate in collaboration
with the Directorate of Diaspora affairs of the DDA accomplished a 309-thousand-birr
project of system development which is meant for the management of Dire Dawan
Diasporas living across the globe.
Moreover, during the Covid
19 seasons, the directorate has witnessed its supportive role in ensuring the
continuance of the teaching-learning activities by creating e-learning platforms.
Furthermore, digital literacy trainings were given by the directorate for more
than 100 administrative staff to enhance their performance that will ultimately
contribute for the realization the vision and missions of the university.
A robust change we made in the management of construction of projects by reorganizing the office itself and improving the monitoring and follow up of projects has created an ease-of-doing-work environment. It can be taken as a great move to our commitment to responsibly and accountably doing on projects. Today, the Construction Project Management Office leads more than 12 incumbent projects which are found at different status.
Last but not least to mention is the opening (in July 2021) of a
new directorate, the Directorate of Campus Cleaning, Beautification and
Treatment Plant Development. The tasks related to this office had been left
concealed in the General Service directorate. With a view to ease the loads in
the GSD and enhance better services in the area, detaching the tasks and
organizing them in one directorate became a better alternative. So, done! As
seen from its offset, we hope, it will bring a difference in the near future!!
Cheerio!
Temam Awel (PhD)
VP, Business and Development Affairs
Dire Dawa University