Many people agree that ICT is a backbone for almost all activities in academics, research, industry and governance. As a matter of fact, many institutions, industries and governments put their ICT directorate right under the chief executive office within their institutional structure and at ministerial level when it comes to government structure. This supports the fact that an exhaustive use of ICT is a key for organizational success. The history of ICT at Debre Berhan University, hereafter referred to as DBU, started about three years back. The broad duty and responsibility of the ICT Directorate is to ensure proper deployment of ICT in teaching, learning, research and overall administration at DBU.

The Vision of the ICT Directorate is to become a directorate of excellence in utilizing the potential of ICT in learning, innovation and education environment for the benefit of DBU and the nation’s development as well.

The ICT Directorate has overall mission of proving state-of-the-art ICT services to students, faculty, researchers, and staff so that it facilitates the work of the university in its different areas like instruction, general research, administration, and service to the wider community in line with the mission of DBU.

The objective of establishing the ICT Directorate is to empower its capability to assist academics, research, consultancy, and overall administrative tasks at DBU with a broader range of ICT Services. Moreover, the ICT Directorate enforces policies and standards, conducts research, consultancy, and provides short term training in the area of ICT for students, instructors, administrative officials and the outsider communities.

All the duties and responsibilities of the ICT Directorate focus at assisting academics, research, and consultancy by exploiting the potential of ICT. Some of its expected activities are described below.

• Develop ICT strategic plan aiming at providing broad rang services and advising the university management on matters related to ICT.
• Administer and upgrade the existing network and Internet infrastructure and provide relevant network-based services.
• Provide hardware/software maintenance, and User support services.
• Enhance local content that provide up-to-date information about public relations, academic research, consultancy, and other social activities in the university.
• Plan, design, implement and/or consult the automation of different processes in the university. It is also responsible to follow up existing applications.
• Establish and enforce ICT use standards and policies in the university.
• Ensures that the university community has sufficient access to ICT Services.
• Provide research, consultancy, short term training and, outreach services to the larger community.

Outcome of the establishment of ICT Directorate will:

• Be sufficient in man power in different case teams.
• Have sustainable budget
• Enhance quality of service of ICT in DBU