by SEAN BRAWLEY and RICHARD COOK

Last week we introduced recent work by University of Wollongong (UOW) around portfolio re-alignment and how it resonates with the Australian Universities Accord Discussion Paper and its contemplation of how we might “strengthen the system over time.”

Both processes set out to achieve our aspirations for equipping Australia to address its long-term challenges and opportunities in Higher Education with the Accord process explicitly seeking to “enable these aspirations to be continually developed over time as the needs of our nation change”.

In contemplating Portfolio Re-alignment, we started from a foundational belief that the need for continual improvement requires an unambiguous structure.  Here, we conceived a structure comprising our core mission portfolios (education, research, engagement) and delivery portfolios (our four faculties, UOW College and our global campuses), complemented by enabling portfolios (strategy and assurance, and operations).

To deliver this re-alignment, six core principles were established.  Our new structure had to:

* clarify and prioritise accountability

* facilitate communication and cross-functional collaboration

* establish efficient spans of control

* align and focus capabilities

* enable agility and responsiveness

* reduce single person dependencies.

The newly conceived Strategy and Assurance portfolio (HERE) is crucial to our institution fully realising these principles.  It was designed to draw together subject matter expertise in accountability, standards, compliance, and improvement.  The new portfolio would proactively assist UOW to adapt to a future characterised by continual change.

When it came to its structure, the core principles influenced our design approach which saw us unite functions focused on investigations, quality assurance, strategy implementation and compliance.  The new and existing divisions which had found a home in the new portfolio are strategy, data and analytics, governance and policy, risk and assurance, integrity, general counsel, and academic quality and standards.

The constraint of operating with a lean resourcing model required co-locating functions based on capability, skills and shared processes. This requirement aligns with the enabling mission of the portfolio, and the realisation, very early in the process that we must, where appropriate, deploy the portfolio’s subject-matter expertise to “teach others how to fish, rather than fish for them”.

Locating these functions within an independent portfolio also provides professional distance and procedural fairness.  The result is that core functions are not judging themselves, thus providing assurance to students, staff and other key stakeholders.

Ultimately, the intent is to provide support, assurance and capability building across the organisation to achieve our mission: to be seen as an enabler and not an impediment.

One of the Accord discussion paper’s forty nine questions asks “how could a more coherent and dynamic national governance system for higher education be achieved?” At UOW we suggest the first step should be establishing the underlying principle that the system must enable the higher education sector’s broader mission.

In our next instalment we will share how we went about consulting with our UOW community to realise this vision for the new portfolio.

Sean Brawley is DVC (Strategy and Assurance) and Richard Cook Chief Strategy Officer at the University of Wollongong