Good progress being made on Operating Plan

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At the Vice-Chancellor’s all staff Town Hall last month, the V-C reflected on the progress being made across the six priority areas set out in the University Operating Plan 2020-2024.

All six streams of the Operating Plan are now well underway with delivery and This Week caught up with the six Program Leads to hear what they are focusing on for the rest of the year.


Dominique Parrish – Students First

dominique-parrish_inset“Work has been moving at pace across a number of our key projects. We’ve developed a Student Employability Framework and are now working to finalise our Institutional Employability Strategy. These resources are essential components in our endeavour to enable more graduates to leave us with heightened employment prospects.

“We’re also making good progress towards mapping activities and services that we provide for students while they are studying with us. This work is the foundation for developing better experiences for students both in how we engage and communicate with them and how we simplify their access to services.

“A key highlight for me would be the development of a Student Learning Analytics Resource which we’ve co-created with students. Exploration of how this resource can be delivered to students is underway and a delivery solution can be expected to be completed shortly.”


Sean Brawley – Curriculum Suite and Transformation

sean-brawley_inset“Our multi-focal program board has been working on a number of workstreams with three major concentrations of effort — product suite futures, microcredentials and quality assurance, enhancement and improvement (QAE&I). Landing the policies and procedures across these three areas has been where most effort has been completed to date. For the rest of the year the focus will be on finalising the systems that deliver these new policy settings.

“The single largest body of work has been around QAE&I. With Academic Senate’s approval of our new approach to course accreditation, monitoring and reaccreditation, this will be where colleagues will most likely engage with the results of this program board on a regular basis.

“Finalising the system and educating colleagues about our new approach to unit monitoring and grade ratification, which commences this session, is a major focus of activity at present.  We also will commence work with the 50 courses that will move through the new reaccreditation process in 2022.”


Dan Johnson – Focused Investment in Research

dan-johnson_inset“A key deliverable has been the refresh of our research strategy, completed in July. Following extensive consultation, we have reaffirmed our roadmap for continued research success and impact while recognising the many challenges we face.

“We are delighted to be working towards the establishment of the Graduate Research Academy, as part of our strategy to deliver an exceptional research training experience for our graduate research students.

“We’re developing an enhanced framework, policy and structure to support researchers to grow and diversify our research income. Elements are already in place, and we are aiming to have it fully operational by the end of the year.

“Our research renown stream has co-created a media and communications strategy focused on our research strengths with colleagues across DVC portfolios and the faculties. This includes a new tool to help individual academics, Departments, Centres and other collectives understand their media footprint. More on that before the end of the year.”


Fiona Reyerink – Ways of Working

fiona-r_inset“The PST program continues to move forward with momentum with IT, Finance, DVC-E and Research Innovation changes all well progressed and the establishment of the Graduate Research Academy underway.

“We’re also well-advanced working together with Faculty General Managers, Executive and Operational leads from across the University on the design of a consistent faculty professional services model and student services and support model. The faculty model is being developed to align with the academic leadership model and design work on student services and support has received guidance from the Students First program board.

“The detailed design and a roadmap for our shared services centre is progressing and this will bring operational and transactional services into a coherent structure.  This will achieve a far greater level of service consistency for students and staff and it will help us to develop improved processes and take better advantage of technology in the long-term.

In July, we established a virtual interactive project room and had more than 400 staff visit the room. The feedback and insights from everyone have proven to be really valuable and we look forward to engaging more on this as the year goes on.”


Nick Crowley – Our People

nick-crowley_inset“We’ve been making steady progress across much of our project work. We’re on track with the next rollout of Workday functionality which will cover PDRs with a lot of work behind the scenes on getting templates ready.

“We’ve also made significant strides on establishing new academic leadership models across the faculties with recruitment commenced for Deputy Dean and other positions.

“We’ve also realigned projects from the Ways of Working Board including the future of work program, which will inform refreshed flexible working arrangements for staff in light of the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re also underway with a program for a new staff intranet to enhance internal communications and simplify our transactional processes.”


Digital Transformation – Tim Hume

tim-hume_inset“Our work to establish a digital vision, strategy and roadmap for the University is now very well progressed. We are currently working through what the next three years of investment in digital services across the University looks like with an aim to submit this to the University’s Finance and Facilities Committee before the end of the year.

“The outcome of that will be a series of strategic investments that the University will make in technology enhancement, which underpins many of the deliverables throughout the other five streams of the Operating Plan.

“There has been a huge amount of work and consultation with colleagues for us to make sure we are recommending where we should invest our precious resources in IT in years to come aligned to our priorities. It’s been very important that we have taken the time to get this right.”


Jonathan Wylie, Vice-President of Strategy Planning and Performance, expressed appreciation for the progress being made on the Operating Plan in the face of significant disruption for staff and students caused by COVID-19.

“The next few months will see work across the Operating Plan continuing to deliver outcomes for staff and students, with planning for 2022 and beyond to ensure progress towards our shared ambition and commitment for the future.”

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