Welcome to the USER Project

The USER (University Services Renewal) Project started in 1997 with the mission to "transform University of Washington support services, enabling our community to be more effective and efficient in carrying out the institution's educational, research, and public service missions." The University community was more than ready to streamline how it did business. The USER approach was created to engage end users and technical developers in teams that would challenge the old ways of doing business and create new ways, using Web tools. This approach was accompanied by a decision not to go with an Enterprise system but rather to build Web applications that interacted with legacy systems.

The momentum for change within the community and the thinking behind this approach were then weaved into a proposal for funding through the University Initiatives Fund (UIF).* The development of the proposal itself was a collaborative effort with sponsorship from the Executive Vice President and the Vice President for Computing and Communications. Fortunately, the proposal was accepted (http://www.washington.edu/user/history.html), the funding received, and the USER Project was off and running.

The initial USER projects--HR and Payroll and the Grants and Contracts Initiatives--were funded by UIF monies. The USER initiatives that have started up since then have leveraged the investments and learnings from the earlier ones and are funded through a variety of mechanisms. However, the newest member of the USER initiatives, the Financial Desktop, is also being funded by UIF monies.

The project is directed by its guiding principles and by the belief that information should be made readily available to the University community. There is a common commitment to learning the needs of the customers (users) and to creating products to meet those needs. This combined with an understanding of the elements of change and interest in participating in a creative team environment keep the project moving toward its mission to transform how the University provides support services.

Guidance for the project is provided by a steering committee chaired by Executive Vice President, Weldon Ihrig and Vice Provost, Craig Hogan.

* Information about the University's UIF can be found at http://www.washington.edu/uif/.