Seeing the Bigger Picture: Talking About Interoperability Across Roles, Institutions and Borders
Date: April 8, 2026
Time: 11:00 AM America/New_York
Presenter: Evelien Renders, President of EUNIS & Advisor on the Internationalization of Education at SURF
Evelien Renders facilitates international collaboration in higher education at SURF, the cooperative organisation for IT in Dutch education and research. Complex processes, manageable data, and interoperability between systems make her happy.
She keeps track of international developments in student mobility and other logistical processes. In doing so, she contributes to flexible and agile education, both in the Netherlands and abroad. With a commitment to public values and open standards, Evelien advocates for communication, trust, and collaboration between IT stakeholders in higher education.
DESCRIPTION:
Interoperability in education is a conversation that keeps getting stuck. Not because people don’t care, but because architects, information managers, application managers, process owners and policymakers are often looking at the same problem through completely different lenses. Open standards get lost in translation before they ever reach the people who need to act on them.
This interactive webinar brings a European perspective to a global challenge: how do we build digital education ecosystems that actually work together, across institutions, across alliances, and across continents?
Drawing on experience with European University Alliances, national research and education networks, and cross-border initiatives around shared open standards for education, this session explores what it takes to scale shared services, align processes, and make open standards land across an organisation, not just in the architecture team.
The session is deliberately visual and participatory. Expect to think out loud, compare notes with peers from other countries and contexts, and leave with more than slides. We will explore together:
- Why interoperability conversations so often stall, and how to unstick them
- What European University Alliances are learning about scaling collaboration and shared digital services
- How to talk about open standards in a way that crosses the gap between technical specialists and information managers, process owners and decision makers
- What a global view on digital education collaboration could look like
The link to access this event will be included in your registration confirmation email.
Please Note: The start time is 11:00am Eastern U.S. time
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