October 1, 2024
OSP Backlog Reduction Plan
The Office of Research knows that many investigators are rightly concerned about the significant delays in award and subaward set up that we are still experiencing, despite more than a year of hard work on Workday stabilization. This announcement is an update on the status and we assure you that we are working diligently to turn this around.
However, change won’t be immediate, and we know there are cases that are truly urgent. To serve that need, effective October 7th, we are introducing a new subaward escalation process where we allocate a certain number of priority cases every two weeks, allowing dean-level decisions as to which of subrecipient agreements should be prioritized. Priority cases will be allocated proportionally based on the volume of research with subawards in the school or college. More detailed information on the process will be provided to the lead research administrators in all schools and colleges.
It has been important to understand the different factors that have contributed to the backlog in OSP, and we are moving forward with changes on multiple fronts as described below.
During the Workday stabilization period, SAGE enhancements focused on integration of data to Workday. Remediating and enhancing SAGE to functionality that is needed for the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) has not yet been possible. We’ve recently added temp staff in ORIS to accelerate development of productivity tools and SAGE automation which were lost in the Workday transition. We’re also introducing reporting tools that will enable us to better track award/subaward setup time, more easily identify the awards/subawards with extended delays, and report reduction in the average award processing times. We will expand the OSP metrics available on our website.
Workday Finance process changes impact research in many interdependent ways. Over the past year, as new problems came to light, we’ve been progressively restructuring and adding temp staff to OSP. After the large backlog in subawards hit (when the backlog in GCA cleared), we hired two permanent FTE for the subawards team. Recognizing that this has not been enough, we added and recently extended temp FTE in OSP through next spring.
Recent research trends have compounded the impacts on OSP. Driven by the collaborative nature of UW researchers and increased funding opportunities for large multi-site efforts, the volume of external collaborations has doubled in the past few years. New federal regulations and more sponsors/partners introducing requirements increase the complexity of proposals and agreements. These changes bring more opportunities for UW research impact, but also require more contract and compliance expertise and expansion of teams in OSP. We have been restructuring teams and adding expertise, but our resources were limited. To address this need, the Provost recently committed permanent and temporary funds to expand OSP capacity on the Proposals & Awards Team.
We recognize that the changes in Workday processes have also added new burdens to the units, both research administrators and investigators. We’re working to expand SAGE help functions and are prioritizing SAGE help desk requests related to subawards. We’re also developing new job aids, virtual training sessions, and self-paced training modules for researchers and staff. We welcome ideas for improvements anywhere in the award/subaward setup process. Click here to submit your ideas.
The Office of Reseach thanks the research administrators at all levels who have been working hard to serve PIs during these challenging times. A special thanks to those who have been helping OR in prioritizing problems and providing input on solutions. Your input has been critically important to our work towards better serving the researchers.