From the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration
UW–Madison takes seriously our responsibility to our students and Wisconsin taxpayers to ensure good financial stewardship. Building on work done over the last several years to improve our financial transparency and controls, UW–Madison worked with Deloitte this spring and summer to complete an independent assessment of our fiscal and administrative controls. The goal was straightforward: understand what’s working, where we have gaps or inconsistencies, and how we can deliver high-quality, efficient service across a large and complex university.
Deloitte’s report is now complete and provides clear opportunities to continue to improve our processes and our culture of shared stewardship.
Throughout this assessment, Deloitte engaged with over 60 stakeholders across more than 20 of UW–Madison’s schools, colleges, and divisions. Our faculty and staff were instrumental in the completion of this assessment; their input contributed to Deloitte’s findings.
Deloitte reviewed four focus areas where clear roles, consistent processes, and strong service matter most to our day-to-day work:
- Position management, hiring, and compensation
- Travel and expenses reimbursement
- Procurement
- Capital expenditures and planning
Across these areas, the report affirms that many of our policies are sound, yet our highly decentralized environment leads to uneven understanding, inconsistent application, complex and lengthy approvals, and avoidable delays or risks. To address these challenges, Deloitte recommends a series of initiatives designed to foster additional shared accountability, enhanced policies and processes, increased transparency, and balanced roles for central administrative units as well as those located within units, schools and colleges
Some of these recommendations align with work already underway at UW–Madison and will help inform our next steps. For example, UW–Madison has implemented additional controls for compensation adjustments, conducting more frequent budget and financial reviews, adding additional reporting relationships between divisions and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, and limiting carryover balances. These changes, implemented prior to this assessment, ensure appropriate oversight and establish consistent financial processes.
Further, the university is currently in the pilot phase of LinkUW, an initiative moving some human resources and finance work and associated employees from local units into centralized Operation Teams. The initiative aims to increase shared accountability, to ensure more consistent application of policy alongside high service levels and appropriate training, and aims to provide additional opportunities for staff to develop expertise and grow in their roles.
As we complete this initial phase of assessing our financial transparency and controls, we plan to next advance our efforts to address identified challenges and implement some of Deloitte’s recommendations. That work will begin this fall, but as noted in the report, not all of the recommendations can — or should — be implemented at once.
As we act on the findings from the Deloitte assessment, we’ll be guided by four commitments:
- Service excellence: Make it easier and faster to go through appropriate channels and provide a high level of service.
- Shared stewardship: Treat every dollar as a mission dollar.
- Simple and consistent processes: Reduce friction and cycle time where we can, with clear accountability.
- Balance local flexibility and central consistency: Expect consistency in HR processes and core fiscal expectations across units while understanding there cannot be inappropriate one-size-fits-all mandates in an institution as complex as ours. We must care equally about administrative efficiency and about meeting units’ disparate and varied needs appropriately.
We’ll keep engaging shared governance and unit leaders and faculty, staff, and administrators across campus to ensure improvements translate into faster cycle times, fewer hand-offs, and a better experience across campus.
Thank you to the many faculty and staff who informed this work to date, and whose engagement will help us move forward. Thanks as well to President Jay Rothman and Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who engaged Deloitte as a thought partner for this important project. We will continue exploring ways we can more efficiently and effectively deliver our mission and demonstrate the incredible impact of one of America’s leading research universities.
On, Wisconsin,
Robert Cramer, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration
Click to view the Executive Summary report
To request a copy of the full report, please contact vcfa@vc.wisc.edu.