Educause HECVAT Vendor Assessment Tool Gets an Upgrade
Educause has announced HECVAT 4, the latest update to its Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit.
HECVAT is a community-driven tool designed to help institutions evaluate solution providers against an institution's policies and appetite for risk, Educause explained in a news announcement. Version 4 was developed with extensive community feedback via surveys, conferences, and user testing.
Among the new features, Educause said:
- A new set of questions evaluating solution providers' privacy practices and compliance, created by volunteers from Educause's Chief Privacy Officers Community Group;
- A tab for a privacy analyst to provide input on a completed HECVAT;
- New AI-specific questions developed by community volunteers;
- The ability for institutions to customize their HECVAT review based on their individual requirements;
- The HECVAT Full, Lite, and On-Prem versions have been combined in one file that guides solution providers on which questions apply to their offering;
- Institutional Evaluation tabs allow users to select categories to include in a solution's score;
- Institutions can mark items as "non-negotiable" and view those criteria in a new tab; and
- A "high risk" score provides a lightweight solution evaluation.
Educause has launched a new HECVAT website in conjunction with the update, which offers improved training materials for both solution providers and institutions.
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Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].