Tuesday 20 September 2011

Meeting the Challenge

Panel on Delivering Efficiency and Improving Quality.

Ewart Woolridge leadership foundation:
Difficulties of working in a sector where no clear mandate for change. Will never happen with 160 autonomous institutions, in competition. Need other ways to generate energy for change and keep it going.
Need to look at core business of universities, ie academic area. Has to be about whole institution, not just operational.
Change is about transition. Sector transition, institutional transition, and personal transition.

Leadership foundation and HEFCE innovation and transformation fund announced today. £1m for innovative ways of improving efficiency in Universities. More information here.

Richard Barrett, Deloittes
Look closely at processes. Don't make efficiencies in one area and move inefficiency to another. That's where LEAN comes in.
Universities need to manage processes as one holistic activity, not piecemeal. Can see dependencies and risks, and single line of communication if looked at holistically.
Have clear view of benefits.
Involve all staff in process, they have the ideas.

Tim Marshall, JANET
Passionate about shared services and synergy. JANET is a mature shared service, funded on a model that may not continue. But need to retain some top slice for universality. JANET brokerage just been set up. Lots of autonomous institutions, but lot of collaboration. How can we build on this? Answer is trust. Also, Why do we take so long to do things in our sector? Need to be able to move quicker and make decisions better. How are we going to implement report because we have to. Need more passion about service. Lot of passion in sector about academia but not about service.

Will this be the driver for efficiency in Universities? One in 5 unis are in deficit .

Not just an urgency to deliver this report, but a compulsion. It is non negotiable. Alternative is imposition from government.

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