Outi Tasala, CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland

Secretary of EUNIS, elected to the EUNIS Board of Directors till June 2019.

Outi Tasala is a Customer Solution Manager at CSC – IT Center for Science, organization co-owned by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the institutions of higher education in Finland. Serving also as a deputy director in CSC’s Account, Business and Customership Development unit, Outi leads the strategic and customer relations development with the Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences. Her primary focus areas are developing new cooperation models and competencies at CSC and strengthening the joint efforts in new initiatives and service ideas. The aim is to find synergies between the higher education institutions and research organizations: to orchestrate the right expertize to where it is needed by working together. To achieve this, Outi is active in many higher education institutions’ cooperation networks, and helps them find common ground and ways of working together. Outi has expertise in relationship management, digitalization and enterprise architecture, where interoperability, ensuring the flow of information between the institutions’ own systems and national services is in the focal point.

Related to her role at CSC, Outi helps the higher education institutions in Finland to network internationally, and share experiences and benchmark best practices across borders. Shepromotes this in particular throughNordForum, thecollaboration initiative between organizations dealing with Student Information Systems in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands.The aim of NordForum is to promote and advance the flow of education information, to benchmark Nordic best practices and to keep up-to-date on the developments going on not only in the Nordic countries but in the whole of Europe. Outi acts as a contact between EUNIS and NordForum.

Outi’s interests within the EUNIS community include:

• Institutional, national and European joint services and the collaboration between research and education
• Increasing the added value of a EUNIS membership and strengthening EUNIS as a platform for sharing experiences and best practices – EUNIS serving as a community thatbrings people together
• Supporting Task Forces and SIGs- Outi has contributed to Teaching and Learning Task Force and the Enterprise Architecture SIG
• Building relationships to other organizations – serving as a contact to Nord Forum
• Future trends and their impact on higher education and how to prepare for them together
• Making digital data available, also internationally, with a human-centric approach where the individual is in charge of his/her own information (MyData)
• Promoting diversity and equality – younger generation and women in IT involved in EUNIS.

Outi has worked at CSC since 2015, focusing previously on digitalizing higher education and coordinating enterprisearchitecture cooperation. Prior to joining CSC, Outi worked as an Admissions Information Specialist at the University of Helsinki, working for a consortium dealing with international Master’s admissions in Finnish Universities.

Outi has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Helsinki majoring in English philology.

Outi has been a member of the EUNIS Board since 2017.