CASIP Update - July 2024

We would like to provide a quick overview of some progress made with the Continuous Administrative Service Improvement Program (CASIP) and the University Initiatives Office (UIO) since the last update we shared with you in April. 

At the most recent CASIP town hall on May 15, we shared that Research Administration will become an additional stream of work. This program stream will evaluate end-user centric service improvements across the entire research lifecycle. This is a high priority for CASIP and we are in the process of completing a project charter to identify Phase 1 of the program stream including scope, approach and key execution activities. 

The CASIP change advisory committee has been formed and now meets monthly. The diverse perspectives of its membership will help the program understand, better support and sustain process improvements and recognize the impact on people’s work. 

Oracle Recruitment 

The project to implement Oracle as the university's human resource recruitment tool is underway. A statement of work has been agreed upon with the implementation partner, Accenture, and a kickoff meeting with the project team has taken place. The full transition from the Recruitment and Advertising portal (RAD) to Oracle is expected to be complete within 10 months. 

The first stage of this project is an advisory phase to be completed in the next four weeks. Accenture will assess our current state, conduct interviews with business areas (i.e. Human Resources, Health, Safety and Environment, Shared Services, Information Services and Technology) to determine the priorities for the envisioned future state and design a roadmap to support the implementation. End users will be involved in the process with their input and feedback gathered at critical points of the project timeline and opportunities will be made available for them to take part in solution demos, user-acceptance testing, training, and other change management activities.

Medical and General Illness Leave Process

The pilot phase for the updated Medical and General Illness Leave process has been extended with an institution-wide rollout planned for the fall (originally targeted for July 1). Four additional portfolios - Office of the Registrar, Libraries, Information Services and Technology and the Faculty of Native Studies - join Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences, Engineering and (the former) Facilities & Operations as participants in this pilot.  

As a refresher, the new process is an operational change aimed at reducing administrative burden on supervisors. For example, the task of keying in medical and general illness leave requests for specific employee groups into PeopleSoft HCM will shift from supervisors to Shared Services. 

The intent is to improve the overall management of leave entitlements, to ensure better communication between impacted parties, and to review how general illness time is entered and how vacation entitlements are managed during leave.

Forms and Checklists 

A project team is collaborating with Shared Services to improve frequently used HR forms along with a large number of other forms used at peak points throughout the institutional calendar year. This work will enhance the user experience by standardizing forms and making them easier to access, fill out, submit and process. 

For example, the Trustholders Extraordinary Expense Fund (TEEF) and Trust Academic Benefits Stabilization (TABS) claim forms are being consolidated. On the new form, users will choose between TEEF or TABS then only the required questions for the selection will be displayed. As a fillable PDF, the form will also feature “smart fields'' with predetermined selections that will reduce errors and make data entry more efficient.  

The Leave Without Pay Support and the Personal Information Relocation forms have also been enhanced to be more user friendly and less redundant. All of the changes will be communicated widely when the new and improved forms are available which is expected to be at the end of July.  

Intranet Exploration Project 

The intranet exploration project is being delivered through the UIO (a separate project from CASIP) and this work is co-sponsored by the offices of the Vice-President, External Relations, and the Vice-President, University Services, Operations and Finance. 

The project team is conducting a needs assessment exercise to determine the most viable solution for a University of Alberta faculty and staff intranet. Since November 2023, the project team has consulted with representatives from across faculties and departments; at the end of June over 150 engagements with in-scope work areas had been conducted throughout the institution. 

There is sufficient technical and non-technical information gathered at this point to proceed to a Request for Information to find a suitable product or solution available in the market that will meet U of A users’ requirements and be compatible with the other applications currently used. 

Thank You 

Thank you to everyone who has engaged with the work we are doing in CASIP. You may have attended a town hall, taken part in a project engagement session, or are part of the change advisory committee - the feedback we receive is an important contribution to the program. 

We are encouraged by the progress of the project teams and look forward to sharing more updates. In the meantime, if you would like to have a conversation about CASIP or any UIO program, please reach out. Send us an email at uio@ualberta.ca or give us a call. You may also visit the University Initiatives Office webpage to keep apprised of ongoing projects. 

Please distribute this to your teams as appropriate.

Regards,

Matina and Todd 

Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell
College Dean and Vice Provost, College of Natural and Applied Sciences

Todd Gilchrist
Vice-President, University Services, Operations and Finance

July 18, 2024 - This communication has been shared with the following groups: Vice-Provosts, Vice-Presidents, College Deans, Faculty Deans, Chairs, CGMs, FGMs, ADMs, AVPs, CoS, Directors, USOF.