A commitment to service improvement

Ensuring that staff and faculty across our community have the processes and tools to do their best work is key to achieving the university's teaching and research mandates. As the university continues to work within the new operating model and reporting structure, we continue to listen to the feedback of our university community and analyze progress.

While the model will help us better focus on the university's core mandates, we have heard about the inconsistencies staff are experiencing with business processes, long wait times and uncertainty around how to request services. We recognize these are not isolated concerns and understand we are not yet where we want to be. Work has started to address these concerns through the Continual Administrative Service Improvement Program (CASIP), a program that will review human resource processes and analyze our current business and IT architecture to understand the university’s enterprise resource planning needs. 

This work is led by the University Initiatives Office — a portfolio within USF established to coordinate complex and cross-functional strategic initiatives — and is supported by units within University Services and Finance. As project sponsors for CASIP, we are committed to the success of the program. Information on these reviews and progress to date is provided below.

Streamlining human resources related processes

Throughout their time at the U of A, thousands of employees and students are supported by a set of specialized HR processes. The human resources review seeks to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of key HR processes in order to improve the experience for users requesting services, and those processing requests.

Aligning software to support core business processes

Processes function most efficiently when software is aligned and when data is shared between applications. By reviewing processes and implementing changes within core business applications, we will improve the alignment between software and improve the flow of information across U of A enterprise applications. This will be supported by a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning strategy.

Engagements for the above streams of work began in December 2022 with leaders and subject matter experts in our centres of expertise and faculties to gather information on the U of A’s current state, priorities, challenges and desired future state. Recommended improvements based on this input will be shared later this spring.

Though process improvements will not happen overnight, we are focused on developing and implementing prompt solutions that are visible and will improve how you access and navigate university services. We will be providing regular updates to keep everyone apprised of progress as we move forward.

If you have any questions or feedback to share, contact uio@ualberta.ca.