Introduction
Our core systems are outdated and difficult to use, which has created a complex administrative environment that impacts every individual in our community, holding us back from achieving our bold vision of being the university the world needs.
In our current state, we need to spend valuable time on manual and repetitive tasks. We struggle to find quality data to support our decisions. We miss opportunities to collaborate and innovate.
We need to modernize our administrative environment by better leveraging our people, processes, data, and technology so that we can excel as a U15 research intensive university and reach our potential.
This work can only be successful with the support and active engagement of the entire campus community. Engaging our stakeholders is critical to ensure that the future is co-created by the entire community.
Opportunities for participation, input and feedback will be designed into each step of the process and communicated broadly.
The schedule for technology and partner selection will hinge on project funding. As we finalize our plans, we will communicate the specific timelines.
Excellent universities require administrative services that are aligned to support and facilitate their mission. As a member of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, USask needs an optimized administrative environment to support its world-class research, scholarly and artistic work, and academic mission.
Guided by the University Plan 2025, the Administrative Services Renewal (ASR) and Integrated Services Renewal (ISR) Initiatives are focused on aligning and modernizing our administrative environment through differing, yet complimentary approaches.
The Administrative Services Renewal (ASR) Initiative focuses on working together with campus leaders to co-create a structure that aligns and supports our people, operations, and resources. ASR’s initial focus is on organizational changes to achieve a more centralized network of administrative professionals that support leaders, faculty, and staff within colleges, schools, and support units. The Integrated Services Renewal (ISR) Initiative works in parallel with ASR to leverage our people, processes, data, and technology. ISR is supporting a campus transition to a modern cloud-based enterprise system and supporting technology, which will lead us to have more consistency and standardization in our roles, policies, and processes.
Although both ASR and ISR Initiatives are focused on people, the former is concentrated on distribution of administration professionals centrally and within colleges and schools, and the latter provides clarity around job roles, expectations, responsibilities, processes, and policies.
In the future state, our administrative environment will be fully integrated, user-focused, and future ready, fully capable of supporting USask to be the university the world needs. However, we still have much work to do and achieving the goals will require commitment from all members of the USask community.