“Administrative Excellence – Shaping our Future” is a key UW-Madison initiative surrounding the engagement of the Huron Consulting Group to identify opportunities for our campus to become more effective, efficient and flexible.

Striving to redefine our administrative future in a challenging economy, we are harnessing expertise from within and outside the campus community. Working together, we will identify efficiencies and savings to help the university manage significant reductions in state funding.

A broad range of stakeholders – faculty, students, administrators and other staff – worked closely with Huron consultants to provide both high level and detailed assistance in recommending and affecting change.

Areas of focus will include the university’s administrative structure, accounting and financial reporting, human resources, facilities, construction management, information technology, internal auditing and budgeting, procurement and other areas.

Five opportunities for budget savings were identified for immediate focus, including consolidating email and calendar systems, streamlining of computer bundling purchasing, data center aggregation, improving space utilization, and coordinating the purchase of commodities such as office, scientific and maintenance supplies.

This initiative will adopt the principles of Administrative Process Redesign (APR) and engage the campus in inclusive and transparent activity. All stakeholders will be involved in recommendations for change and prepared to successfully implement agreed-upon best business practices and recommended models for improved service delivery.

Currently more than 140 staff have been engaged in eight projects undertaken by the Administrative Excellence initiative.

This is about us — our shared history and future. Our work is about leveraging existing continuous improvement efforts and fostering new ideas to create optimal administrative practices.