Alignment with Strategic Objectives

• AI initiatives must deliver administrative, academic and research missions, business value and align with uOttawa’s strategic objectives. AI use cases that enable or create business capabilities aligned with the organization’s academic, administrative and research initiatives will be prioritized.

Security and Privacy in Mind

• Ensuring robust security and privacy controls is paramount to Information Technology’s AI strategy, where the responsible and ethical use of data is foundational. Transparent practices, continuous risk assessment, and proactive measures to safeguard user information in order to foster trust in uOttawa AI-powered solutions.

Integrate With Existing Governance and Processes

• Constructing an AI roadmap for uOttawa by integrating AI into existing student experience/academic, research mission and administrative processes for efficiency. Ensuring AI governance aligns with overall institutional governance.

Buy Over Build

• Information Technology will prioritize the sourcing of existing market solutions over the in-house building of machine learning models.

Ensure Robust Data

• The AI strategy will emphasize the collection, storage, and utilization of high-quality data, and will establish robust data governance and compliance practices.

Safety

• AI models and system should be driven by safety guardrails throughout their entire lifecycle.

Fairness and Bias Detection

• AI models, systems and data used to make predictions should be fair and free from bias.

Transparency

• Models and systems should provide meaningful information that is transparent and explainable to end users.

Security

• Al models and systems must embody security at its core.

Respect for privacy 

• AI models and systems must embody resilience while maintaining privacy throughout their entire lifecycle.

Reliability and Validity

• AI models and systems should perform reliably and provide valid results as expected.

Accountability

• AI models and systems and their respective decisions will have accountability clearly attributed to individuals and organizations.