SIS Project: What We’ve Heard (August 2023)

In July, we continued our engagements with the university community by meeting with the School of Physical Sciences, School of Arts and Humanities, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, Rady School of Management, Graduate & Professional Student Association, and School of Global Policy and Strategy. The SIS Project team delivered a presentation that included project context, impact, timeline and a Q&A session. 

All of the groups we met with in July were extremely engaged with the SIS Project presentations, they asked many important questions and gave wonderful feedback. Here are some of the themes we heard and discussed:

• System Access: Concerns about how staff will obtain access to the new systems were raised because it can be time consuming and challenging. Creating an easier pathway for system access would be helpful, such as a role-based access guide to let staff know which systems they need access to and how to obtain access. Additionally, knowing who makes decisions about access and how those decisions are made will help create an easier pathway to obtaining access.
• Reporting: Ad-hoc reporting capabilities are important to stakeholders. We have also heard that creating standard ways of arriving at key numbers would be helpful to report developers and consumers alike and may also help eliminate discrepancies that may be found in current state reports, where units sometimes report differing numbers for the same data point.
• Security: Ensuring the new systems have built-in security to protect sensitive information is especially important to students and staff. 
• Training: The different groups provided feedback that previous training for new campus systems was incomplete and decontextualized, and there is a need for more/different training this time around. For instance, it would be helpful to conduct role-based training that would more closely align with job responsibilities. Campus has been experiencing high staff turnover, so providing ongoing and updated training that accounts for new staff is a necessity that is currently not provided. The need for more staff feedback about training can be addressed by having a couple of divisional representatives in training who communicate challenges and processes. Lastly, sharing training plans in a timely manner to allow staff to dedicate the time needed and block off their calendars in advance is instrumental. 

Thank you to the groups we met with in July. Please know that your voice is being heard and that your engagement is critical to our success. We hope to continue the conversation with the university community quarterly. We’ve already started to schedule follow-up meetings with some groups.

If we have not met with you yet, we are eager to meet with you to better understand your unique needs and concerns for the project. If you’d like to invite the SIS Project team to join a department/team meeting, please email us at esr-student@ucsd.edu.