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For CTAHR Faculty & Staff
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CTAHR College-Wide Conference: Building A Shared Vision

Fiscal Office
Convenor: Keith Suyat-Terauchi

Recorders: Dr. Rachel Novotny and Dr. Brent Sipes (?)

Group Members:

Burning Issue: In what ways can the fiscal office, departments and PI’s have a better working relationship?

Burning Issues Summary:

  1. Communication
  2. Training
  3. Streamline/Simplification (evaluation of our current process0
  4. Clarify each person’s responsibilities

Highest Hopes:

  • Good communication and training among all college with mutual respect
  • A straight forward process
  • Everyone knows their roles and responsibilities

Challenges or Barriers:

  • Some road blocks result from personalities/leadership/supervisors
  • Preaching to the choir
  • Resistance to change
    1. Entrenched – need to change
    2. Some feel they know it all
  • Need leadership from the top
  • People above us make promises to peers which we can not fulfill

Strategies:

  • Leadership sees process from this conference and is willing to make change
  • Common sense
  • Learn new approaches (How to approach higher-ups)
  • Guidelines with responsibilities for PI’s and clerical
  • Training and change from top level down
  • This is the first year everyone is LISTENING to each other – good direction
  • Need follow-up to these issues
  • Need commitment
  • Request college system wide evaluation

Action Items:

  • Training at all levels and communication mechanism
  • Review college system documents and streamline
  • Web page/on-line forms
  • Fiscal person in the department (if funding is available). Nice to have however, there was a lack of agreement

Timeline:

  • 6-month for initial assessment of clarification to see if change has happened
    • Training: some done
    • Web Page: up
    • Quarterly communication to college

Administrator: The Associate Deans and Ruddy Wong
Follow-up person: Allen Shinsato

  • Review to streamline
    • Within the year (May 3rd completed)

Administrator: The Associate Deans and Ruddy Wong
Follow-up person: Drs. Bob Paull and Rachel Novotny
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FOLLOW UP
The summarization of this burning issue proposed that addressing the areas of communication, training, streamlining/simplification, and clarification of responsibilities would create a better working relationship between the fiscal office, departments and PI’s. These areas have been addressed over the past year and their status is described below:

Communication
Quarterly newsletters were proposed for fiscal matters. A personnel newsletter has been in existence since 1989 and continues quarterly depending on the availability of applicable topics. It is not anticipated that fiscal news will be of sufficient quantity to justify a quarterly newsletter. Therefore, electronic emails and FAQ sheets posted on CTAHR’s website will be utilized instead of a quarterly newsletter.

Email is another means of communication used extensively for instructions, procedures, notices, etc. Most of our instructions and notices are now being extended to units by electronic means and very few instructions are sent by hard copies.

FAQ sheets have been posted on the CTAHR website and will be updated as new questions are received.

Guidelines on document processing will soon be posted on the CTAHR website.

Conferences and workshops that can be sources of information for CTAHR faculty and staff will be carefully considered and attended if determined to be beneficial.

Training
Workshops and regular meetings are other means to keep operating units informed of new and pending developments. Workshops were held for procurement card instructions, direct printing of purchase orders, and department imprest checking.

A draft agenda for the orientation of new faculty and staff is completed and must be discussed with other administrative offices to produce a complete orientation package.

Streamline/Simplification
Current processes of purchasing, payment, and contracts & grants are continuously being reviewed. Any process that is not in compliance with UH policies and procedures will be corrected immediately. Any suggestions on streamlining from faculty or staff will be seriously considered. Thus far, we have eliminated the CTAHR Financial Information System and have required units to operate only FMIS and RCUH systems.

Responsibilities
A paper has been drafted outlining the responsibilities of different positions within CTAHR’s organization. The positions include those in Administrative Services, the departments, and the counties.

A paper has also been drafted explaining in detail the responsibilities of the Office of Administrative Services.
Go to Administrative Services Office web site
Return to Burning Issue Report List
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Last updated on 6/17/2003