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Quite a few state systems in America are implementing shared services. There’ s a lot to learn from them, good and bad.
As we’ ve gone through the process here at Melbourne – consolidating our IT, our finance and our HR – we’ ve learned a lot from consultants as well.
We found it important to have external partners who could look at what we do and ask,‘ Why would you do it that way?’ If we didn’ t have a good answer, it was obviously a pretty good question.
Have you considered looking at management systems outside of the West, such as China? We haven’ t, and it’ s a fair question why haven’ t we. In part, we are locked in by some of our prior decisions. For example, we locked into having major student systems that have to work in particular ways, and are configured for research-intensive universities working in English. Once you’ ve put those foundations in, it’ s not a simple matter to go to administrative practices drawn from a different tradition and make it work. It’ s a good question though, and one that deserves more thought.
you must run complex IT systems centrally. You can’ t have multiple servers and multiple email systems, you just add immensely to the cost for no gain. Some degree of standardisation and modernisation is what this conversation is about. None of those things are popular. They’ re particularly not popular with the academics, who would prefer to have someone up the corridor who can come and fix their broken computer or make their printer work, rather than have to go to a central IT service, for example.
How do you get academics onside when seeking such broad changes? I think you have to have long conversations. You have to make the case. As with most things in universities, you can’ t order, you have to persuade.
When [ Melbourne ] went through a large management change in 2014, it arose from more than 18 months of careful planning, consultation and deliberation, and then a year of implementation.
Making management changes [ isn’ t quick ]. You’ ve got to show people that you won’ t damage the collegial nature of the institution. That’ s just as important for the professional staff as it is for the academics.
How have other universities modernised their management systems successfully? It’ s been interesting to watch the University of California at Berkeley as an eminent public university quite similar in scale to the University of Melbourne.
We learned a lot from watching what they’ d done. The University of Michigan also implemented some of these changes in the US, and they proved controversial [ internally ]. We learned by looking carefully at what happened there, to understand why that hadn’ t gone as well as they would have hoped.
In your presentation, you mentioned the importance of having the scholarly community engaged with the intellectual challenge of its own management systems. How would this happen? As we went through our changes here, we had a committee of deans and a number of people drawn from faculties that have expertise in management. We called on some of the individuals in the institution who have academic expertise in related areas, and drew them into the design and the conversation.
It can be done, but it’ s not simple. You can’ t assume that just because a particular academic has expertise in finance administration, they can speak for other academics, who are likely to have different views. That’ s the scholarly debate.
Can services be shared between universities? Shared services between universities is the next step. It’ s uncharted territory. Essentially, it’ s based on the assumption that some things we do, we don’ t need to do as an individual university.
[ One example already underway ] is that the universities in Melbourne have a single book repository, which is on the La Trobe University campus. It services all of our libraries.
It’ s a place we can store books that aren’ t in current use, and retrieve them and track them, and make sure a particular book is available in the city, even if there’ s only one copy across multiple universities. That’ s been an effective experiment in a shared service. We also find institutions that provide support to others around IT systems. The next interesting question is,“ Could you have major enterprise systems that support more than one university?” There seems to be no technical constraint. [ The question is ] could you make it work as a matter of practice?
In that case, can shared services cross global boundaries? An even more interesting question. I think, theoretically, yes and certainly with IT systems, they don’ t need to be located in your town. So many companies have services based overseas.
First, you’ ve got to sort out what happens on your own campus, get it into some coherent form, and be sure what you’ re spending on a particular function. Then you can start to ask those questions. ■
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