President Napolitano provides an update and announces the latest actions that are being implemented by the Efficiency Review Working Group:

Dear Colleagues,

It’s been a busy month for the Efficiency Review and today I want to update you on some new initiatives and also to congratulate two of our colleagues who will be stepping in to lead this essential effort for the next year.

As I described last month, we’re appointing a new Efficiency Review Working Group so we can build on a successful first year by bringing in new energy and fresh thinking. As a first step, I’m pleased to announce that Shirley Bittlingmeier, client services officer in Information Technology Services, and Dan Scannell, conflict of interest and Public Records Act coordinator in the Office of the General Counsel, have been named co-leads of the new Working Group.

In the coming weeks, Dan and Shirley will work with the outgoing Working Group to select its new members. We received many strong applications to take part and I’m confident the new Working Group, with the guidance of the outgoing members in their advisory roles, will provide strong and effective leadership to the Efficiency Review. I plan to announce the new working group membership next month.

Turning to new initiatives, here are three I’ve asked the Working Group to begin implementing this month:

1) Council of Executive Assistants: Back in June, we created a focus group of executive assistants because we believed they would make a valuable contribution to increasing our efficiency. The group was a resounding success and I’ve decided to formalize it as the UCOP Council of Executive Assistants, comprised of assistants to senior managers at OP. These seasoned professionals, who contribute so much to getting things done, will use their experience and creativity to improve processes, boost coordination and facilitate information flows in ways that will benefit all executive assistants at OP. The Council has already launched promising working groups on technology, presidential correspondence and career development and training. I attended the Council’s first meeting and came away impressed by the commitment and energy of its members. I’m looking forward to working with the group and supporting its efforts to make us a more efficient organization.

2) Visitor workstations: It’s something we’ve all been through: The frustration of trying to find an undisturbed place to plug in and get some work done when you’re on the road or in a remote location between meetings. So I’m happy to announce that after an anonymous idea was posted to the Efficiency Review page, we’ve decided to create visitor workstations in each of UCOP’s Oakland locations. We’ll start with one in each building, and we hope to create more in the future. You can sign up for the visitor workstation so that if you’re based at Kaiser, and you find yourself with an hour between meetings at Franklin, you can get some work done. If your department has switched over to Anytime/Anywhere Access, you’ll be able to log on from the computer at the workstation and if you’re a laptop user, you can connect wirelessly or use the workstation’s cable connection. The workstations will be up and running by mid-to-late November and be available for reservation by searching for Visitor Workstation in the Outlook system.

3) Systemwide calendar for meetings of senior UC officials: Here at OP, we convene many meetings a year that involve systemwide participation. People come from all over the UC system for many of these meetings and we need to do a better job coordinating so that we and our campus colleagues can make the best use of our time. Accordingly, and thanks to a suggestion from the members of the 2013 CORO group, we’re launching a shared calendar that will track systemwide meetings of staff at the level of assistant vice chancellor, assistant vice president and above that are convened through OP. As a pilot project to test the calendar, about 75 senior OP staff, their deputies, chiefs of staff and executive assistants will be asked to use the calendar to plan and coordinate their systemwide meetings. I’m confident this calendar will help us be more efficient when it comes to managing these meetings. The calendar pilot will launch in November and be evaluated early next year.

Thanks again for your help improving UCOP’s efficiency. Please keep the ideas coming and I’ll update you on more progress next month.

Yours very truly,

Janet Napolitano
President

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