This meant a lot of work for the administration staff. The time-critical changeover from the outdated intranet to the modern collaboration software Confluence not only involved bringing together information from different departments and standardizing information statuses. Around 300 editors also had to be trained to keep the new portal up to date.
This meant a lot of analysis in advance, especially for the thematic “self-service pages”, where all the information can be found. “We have to precisely match the individual and very different requirements of the departments and the needs of researchers in the university administration with many laws, regulations, guidelines and contracts,” explains Martina Flickinger-Pflüger from the Human Resources Management department. This is also reflected in the large number of different processes and forms required to organize and document the procedures. For example, the requirements for hiring new employees with third-party funding are completely different to those for appointing professors.
“It was particularly important to us that the information was easy to understand. That's why new pages and topics were tested for usability by decentralized volunteers from the various levels of the university,” explains Lena Zimmer from University Communications. Together with Daniel Epple from the Central Student Advisory Service and Sebastian Jaron from the Digitalization of Administrative Processes programme, she managed the project for around a year before the old intranet had to be shut down.
The portal serves as a guide to the university's services and digital forms. Many departments have used the changeover to launch services at the click of a mouse, to rethink and simplify their own processes, but also to expand services for academics.
This includes the Human Resources Department. “We have developed our services further. One measure was to create an additional access channel for inquiries from researchers and employees, which we achieved through a central telephone number and a central email address. This provides easy access to us for many questions relating to your own employment relationship or HR issues in general and can help you directly as a first step. In the background, we have implemented a ticket system and a direct assignment to the individual clerks and advisors, who can then process the inquiries precisely.”
Around 3,600 tickets were received by the HR department in the first quarter; in addition, there are calls in the double-digit range every day. “It is important for us to ensure that we are easily accessible and stay in touch. For example, the responsible colleagues report back directly to the specialist departments with the ticket inquiry in order to clarify more complex issues and process the processes quickly,” says Flickinger-Pflüger.
Provost Holger Gottschalk sees the service portal as an important contribution by the administration to effective research and teaching at the University of Bonn. “We want to become an excellent administration, because this is the only way we can profitably support our researchers and teaching staff as well as all other employees and give them as much time as possible for their core tasks. With the service portal, which is accessible around the clock, we are fulfilling a promise on the way there.”