Spread over all three campuses, this department is part of the portfolio of Prof Marlene Verhoef, the NWU registrar.

What’s what at CIGS?

The department comprises four subdepartments: Secretariat, Risk and Compliance, Records, Archives and Museums, and Administrative Logistics.

Before the restructuring, some of the four subdepartments functioned separately and reported to various management members. Since the restructuring, all the departments related to the work of the registrar and dealing with governance and information have been grouped together for optimal functioning.

Secretariat’s services are twofold

The Secretariat subdepartment is divided into the Central Secretariat and the Faculty Secretariat.

According to Amanda van Merwe, the director of CIGS, the Central Secretariat is responsible for the statutory committees such as the Council, the Council subcommittees, Senate and its subcommittees and the Institutional Forum.

“Their day-to-day operations consist of compiling minutes and agendas, looking after the governance of the statutory committees, elections, membership matters and nomination processes, and implementing terms of reference, which specify what each committee should be doing,” she says.

Each of our eight faculties has a Faculty Secretariat with committee coordinators who are responsible for all the faculty board meetings, subcommittee meetings and the faculty management meetings.

The staff members of the Faculty Secretariat use a system of double reporting lines, brown and yellow. They have a brown line to the Central Secretariat for receiving directives, guidelines and standard operating procedures for their committee coordination tasks. They use the yellow line to the senior faculty administrators to communicate their day-to-day duties. (They work closely with the senior faculty administrators and the executive deans.)

Staying on the safe side

Amanda explains that the Risk and Compliance subdepartment is fairly new and currently has one staff member. This subdepartment is responsible for the risk register of the university, and for administering faculty risks.

Risk and Compliance also sees to the administration and coordination of the compliance programme. The NWU needs to comply with about 350 acts of Parliament, and the subdepartment ensures that these acts have “owners” who are responsible for ensuring compliance. The subdepartment also assists the act owners with compliance administration.

On the record

The Records, Archives and Museums subdepartment focuses on the safekeeping of the university’s historical knowledge, memory and the information contained in records.

For the first time, the NWU now has dedicated records and archive offices on the campuses to ensure optimal functioning.

Amanda adds that at this stage the NWU only has one official museum on the campus in Potchefstroom, and as part of their mandate, CIGS wants to open up museums on the campuses in Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark too.

Part and parcel of CIGS

Before the restructuring process, the Administrative Logistics subdepartment was known as Postal and Courier Services. This subdepartment provides mail and courier services to staff and students across all three campuses for both professional and private use.