Reducing bureaucracy: Efforts across campus

The subgroup for academic personnel, which included both faculty and staff, engaged in a robust set of discussions of the issues identified in the survey data. This data, coupled with their own experiences, outreach and informal interviews with colleagues who have engaged with academic personnel actions in recent years, informed their recommendations for the faculty merit and promotion case process.

Simultaneous to the work of the taskforce, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Faculty and the Academic Personnel Office were engaging in their own process improvement efforts — many of which aligned with what the task force lifted up. Especially illuminating was the deep dive that the Office for Faculty Equity and Welfare did through analysis of timelines within AP recruitments to highlight where bottlenecks were and how to address those needs. The ongoing efforts in academic personnel streamlining led by those in the Office of the VPF, APO and OFEW can be found here: https://vpf.berkeley.edu/policies-programs/streamlining. 

Challenges

Recurring themes in feedback included long timelines for regular merit cases and confusion about what should be submitted for favorable review. Decisions delayed beyond the effective date of actions resulting in months to a year of retroactive pay adjustments are not uncommon. Many faculty feel the need to “overachieve” in preparing their merit cases. This leads to duplication of documentation and redundancy of effort on the part of both faculty and staff. 

The faculty review process is extremely personnel-as-a-resource intensive, including the faculty member, department staff, department leadership, college staff, college leadership and campus reviewers. This comes at a significant cost that must be weighed against the benefit, particularly for non-threshold merit reviews. Specifically, the following challenges related to the faculty merit and promotion case process were identified:

• Regular merit reviews take too long and communication of outcomes are delayed without explanation;
• The various memos and documents that make up faculty cases are frequently redundant (e.g., information included on the CV and in other documentation is entered into APBears and vice versa); and
• Guidance and messaging are frequently inconsistent and expectations and terminology seemingly shift regularly, sometimes in the middle of a review cycle.

 Recommended paths forward

The task force commends the Office of the VPF and APO staff who are engaging in streamlining work in support of bureaucracy reduction and better processes. We look forward to the outcomes of their ongoing efforts and encourage regular engagement with key academic department stakeholders (e.g., department chairs, faculty, AP analysts, etc.) to ensure optimal results. In terms of areas to focus on for ongoing improvement, we recommend efforts that:

• Reduce the volume and eliminate duplication of materials submitted by the faculty, the department and the college;
• Reduce the time that cases spend in APO after the Budget Committee processes them: publish service level agreements and/or adopt transparency regarding timelines;
• Provide clear expectations for faculty self-assessments, with respect to both  content and length;
• Streamline AP Bears to eliminate duplication; require only CV upload, publication list and confirmation of teaching and graduate mentorship records;
• Eliminate long letters for non-threshold cases by creating a two-page checksheet (modeled on the Assistant Professor first merit checklist) and by establishing the expectation that the Budget Committee will request additional information from departments when required in their evaluation of the case; and
• Adopt the use of DocuSign for APO forms and signatures. 

The plurality of comments (44.9%) pertained to human resources and personnel actions; 29.3% were specific to staff HR and 15.6% to academic personnel. The subgroup addressing staff HR reviewed the survey feedback and recommendations and then met with leaders in People & Culture and Berkeley Regional Services to discuss the recommendations regarding staff recruitment and hiring. In the meetings with P&C and BRS, efforts and planned improvements by the Hiring Improvement Process task force were shared. There was some overlap between existing plans and presentations and the “pain points” identified by the survey respondents and summarized by the task force; however, a comprehensive and well-defined process improvement strategy to resolve the issues has not yet been laid out. 

The following challenges and recommended paths forward were identified: 

Challenges

• Inadequate degree of transparency and lack of accurate timelines on the full end-to-end staff recruitment and hiring process.
• Lack of clarity on the ownership of and accountability for the efficacy and efficiency of the recruitment and hiring processes since multiple units are involved.
• Insufficient opportunities for users to share feedback on human resource processes and procedures, and insufficient action taken by relevant units in response to feedback they receive.

Recommended paths forward

• P&C and BRS to prioritize improving the process of staff recruitment and hiring. This could be done either through the Hiring Improvement Process task force, if they were empowered to do so, or via other initiatives led by P&C and BRS focused on specific challenges identified in the process. Either way, we strongly encourage greater involvement of campus unit stakeholders in any streamlining efforts to ensure that key pain points are addressed and the end-user experience is improved.
• P&C and BRS are currently addressing some of the recommendations:
  • Update the P&C recruitment website, including clarifying process ownership and realistic timelines for which P&C is accountable to increase transparency around the hiring process;
  • Develop additional resource documents to offer more support to supervisors with onboarding new employees;
  • Publish transparent visa timelines for our campus; and
  • Partner with UCPath to share current efforts and pilots to transfer UCPath entry to locations. 

A separate subgroup worked specifically on the recommendations regarding the Achieve Together program. P&C has led various focus groups and shared communications with campus networks to continue their improvements to the Achieve Together program. It is anticipated that P&C will share improvements to the form and process before the August 2023 Achieve Together cycle commences.

The research administration subgroup, composed of faculty and staff, benefited greatly from interactions with the RA staff in BRS, the Committee on Research of the Academic Senate and the Streamlining Research Pilot work team (as mentioned above in the purchasing and vendoring section). The subgroup reflected upon their conversations and reviewed the survey comments in order to develop these recommendations to improve RA. 

Challenges

The survey comments related to RA expressed displeasure with the following three areas: navigation, grant awards and the institutional review board (IRB). Specifically, the comments highlighted the following challenges: 

• The current RA structure makes it challenging to navigate the various research support and contracting offices, necessitates numerous handoffs, contributes to inconsistent services and creates confusion around roles and responsibilities.
• The process of accepting, finalizing and establishing grant awards and subcontracts places a substantial administrative burden upon faculty and staff. Additionally, the time associated with establishing a grant award can sometimes have drastically negative impacts on the faculty member and their research.
• The federal regulations, inconsistent review comments and length of time associated with IRB create a significant administrative burden for faculty and staff.

 Recommended paths forward

There are some quick wins largely related to managing expectations and better information as to “where to go for something,” but real progress in this landscape is going to require substantive change, possibly in structure and definitely in the funding model.

• Enhance the navigability of the research support offices and structures:
  • Identify ways to reduce the number of contacts needed to activate and manage research. Limit the number of touchpoints for the faculty across the various research support offices.
  • Assess the current organizational structure of the various research administration support offices and perform a SWOT analysis.
  • Initiate a navigator service pilot program to increase support throughout and identify pain points to better understand how to support faculty through the process.
• Provide transparency and guidance to improve the grant awards process from the faculty perspective:
  • Create a standing group that monitors and improves grant awards. Monitoring and improving upon the grants awards process should be a continuous process with an executive sponsor.
  • If funding was available, the number one priority would be adding FTEs to reduce the number of awards per research administrator and contracts and grants officer.
• Improve the Institutional Review Board process, within the constraints and requirements IRB faces, to improve timelines and the complexity of interface.

The subgroup addressing purchasing and vendoring engaged in conversations with UCLA and UCSC, both of whom take a very different approach to risk management and insurance requirements. The recommendations of the subgroup were also aided significantly by conversations with the Streamlining Research Pilot work team spearheaded by the Goldman School of Public Policy, the vice chancellor for research, the campus risk manager and the chief ethics, risk and compliance officer. 

Challenges

• Comments and interviews reflect an extreme degree of perceived and adopted risk aversion with regards to purchasing and vendoring on our campus that is different from some of our sister campuses (e.g., UCLA, UCSC).
• Compliance with the systemwide BFB-BUS-63 Policy requires a certificate of insurance from all suppliers and vendors that work with UC. Currently at Berkeley, the interpretation of this policy does not allow for any flexibility or standard exceptions. This creates an administrative bottleneck for hundreds of staff members involved in the day-to-day purchasing at Berkeley, with about $2 million in staff time spent just tracking insurance certificates. Interpretation and enforcement of BUS-63 lie within the Risk Office at Berkeley.
• Hiring abroad is extremely challenging and convoluted (e.g., enumerators and translators). Individuals in remote regions who may or may not speak English cannot navigate our systems. This hinders the research mission of our university.
• Reimbursing international visitors/service providers is exceptionally complicated and time-consuming. The bureaucratic burden in these transactions is significant and falls on a small, resource-limited staff.

Recommended paths forward

• Insurance certificate collection: At this time, insurance certificates are collected for each transaction. Instead, shift insurance certificate collection to vendoring where it is collected once (instead of each time the same person/company is hired);
• Insurance certificate database: Currently, insurance certificates are frequently collected in hardcopy and must be processed. Instead, create an uploadable database so vendors can upload certificates without a further touchpoint by Berkeley staff. Make the database searchable by anyone on campus;
• Waive insurance certificate requirement for low risk transaction: Establish a list of types of transactions that are low risk for which we will no longer require certificates of insurance. Berkeley Risk Services has proposed a preliminary list including some very limited titles as a starting point;
  • UCLA does this via a general $10,000 exemption threshold for lower value/lower risk services; UCSC has established a $100,000 threshold for goods purchases.
  • Categorically exempt large private and public organizations (e.g. Fortune 500, state and federal agencies) who carry insurance already.
  • Update list monthly based on exception requests to risk services and make the list public and searchable. BRS agrees to review exception requests with no more than a 7-day turnaround.

• Insurance certificate duration: Work with insurance vendors to provide monthly, quarterly and annual options for insurance. Make purchasing more straightforward to address communication challenges with less-technical vendors who might struggle with “insurance speak.” Our complex forms negatively affect smaller and minority-owned businesses disproportionately. Possibly design an auto-upload of insurance certificate mechanism through insurance vendor; and
• Establish a team to study international and community-engaged vendoring/procurement. Proactively work on a technological solution to replace petty cash (which is no longer permitted).