Source: own illustration
The first admin meeting of the year took place on February 4, 2026. This article explains why the admin meeting is an important platform for exchange and which topics were presented, discussed, and debated in particular detail.
This time, the agenda included news about the state-wide backup system “Datensicherung.nrw,” the AI chatbot “Ritchy” as digital support in IT support, and the Webex Hybrid Calendar Connector for improved appointment and meeting integration.
Why an admin meeting?
For over 14 years, the RWTH Admin Roundtable has been a central exchange platform for administrators and IT enthusiasts at RWTH Aachen University. It promotes cooperation between the IT Center and local IT managers and facilitates regular dialogue on current IT topics relevant to the university. It is organized by a five-member team from various institutions and the IT Center.
Datensicherung.nrw
Datensicherung.nrw is a state-wide backup cooperation project for universities in North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the state’s security initiative. The service enables versioned, location-redundant backup of work servers and computers as well as reliable recovery in the event of data loss.
Currently, 26 universities are already using the service with around 14,700 systems and over 14 PB of data volume. The service is available exclusively to employees for work-related systems and is uniformly managed under the name Datensicherung.nrw.
The infrastructure will be comprehensively expanded and consolidated in 2026 to improve performance, security, and operation. In addition, the service will be gradually expanded to include the backup of work-related end devices, accompanied by a pilot phase. Funding is secured for the next six years and includes licenses and hardware renewals.
Ritchy
“RWTH IT Center Helps You” – the IT Center’s AI-powered chatbot for IT support was presented in this admin round. Since April 8, 2025, Ritchy has been publicly accessible via a web interface and complements the existing support channels independently of opening hours and without registration.
Ritchy answers queries based on the public IT Center documentation, handles standard issues such as password or MFA resets, and offers further, context-related assistance with basic IT services. The goal is to reduce waiting times and relieve the IT-ServiceDesk, especially when there is a high volume of inquiries.
Technically, Ritchy is based on Azure OpenAI with current language models and uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) process to generate precise answers from the knowledge database. It operates in compliance with data protection regulations within the EU and without using the data for training purposes.
The admin meeting also provided information about the configuration, the review system, and the ongoing evaluation and acceptance survey for Ritchy. The presentation met with great interest and was accompanied by numerous questions and lively discussions from the audience. Ritchy recorded over 30 chats from the administrators’ tests alone. In addition, the high level of interest led to further questions in one-on-one conversations.
Due to its high potential for professional exchange, constructive discussions, and obtaining valuable feedback, the admin round is a central component of IT networking at the university. We are already looking forward to the next admin round and further joint exchanges.
Responsible for the content of this article is Merrit Mielke.
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