Research Administration Improvement and Systems Enhancement - Project RAISE

MEMORANDUM

TO: Principals, Deans, Directors & Chairs

FROM: Professor Paul Young, Vice-President, Research

RE: Research Administration Improvement and Systems Enhancement - Project RAISE
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Over the past year, the Research portfolio has undergone significant reorganization and streamlining. We have adopted a new structure based on three pillars:
• Research Services to support and advance the University’s participation and success in competitive research programs;
• Innovations & Partnerships to help advance our institutional objectives in private sector partnerships and knowledge transfer; and
• Research Oversight & Compliance to establish a strong accountability framework for the University’s extensive research activities.
Staff in the three pillars work in close cooperation with each other. Their leaders, along with the small team in my office, constitute a strategic initiatives team that engages with the research leadership of the academic divisions and with other vice-presidential portfolios to advance the University’s research mission.

During the course of the reorganization and streamlining, it became clear that many of our institutional business processes and tools associated with research administration are outdated, cumbersome and unnecessarily time-consuming for faculty and staff alike. For example, each fall, thousands of research proposals are prepared and submitted by our faculty colleagues, involving many hours touring around campus obtaining approval signatures on applications and the required RIS application attachment form.

We are therefore initiating, in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, a project entitled “Research Administration Improvement and Systems Enhancement” (RAISE). This project will result in more effective and efficient business processes and state-of-the-art tools to firmly establish the U of T as the best practice institution in Canada in the administration of research. A Project Charter has been adopted and is available to you at http://www.research.utoronto.ca/for-researchers-administrators/project-raise/ The charter identifies a number of sub-projects – including automation of the internal approval process for the submission of research applications, the process for submitting, approving and monitoring active ethics protocols, administration of sub-grants to other institutions, and improvements to My Research On-Line (MROL) – through which the experience of managing research activities and the quality of that management will be greatly improved.

Undertaking these projects is not something that our portfolio can or should do independently. We share responsibility for research administration with you and the faculty members and administrative staff in your units. For that reason, we will be reaching out to various individuals to participate as business process advisors in Project RAISE. We hope you will encourage your faculty and staff to participate in what ultimately will lead to a stronger, more efficient and more accountable framework for research. Should individuals within your unit wish to signal their interest in participating in the RAISE project, they should contact Nadia Saracoglu (nadia.saracoglu@utoronto.ca; 978-1134).

We hope to have some impressive achievements under our belts before the end of this calendar year and will be keeping you apprised of developments through regular communications and fuller information on the above-noted website.

Should you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me or the VPR members of the Project Leadership Group: Judith Chadwick, Elizabeth DiDonato, Peter Lewis.