Chancellor launches effort to address major budget challenges
On October 1, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau launched Operational Excellence, a UC Berkeley effort to reduce costs and improve campus operations in order to ensure that as large a fraction as possible of our resources are directed to our core mission of teaching and research. In his campus message, Chancellor Birgeneau said:
"We are calling this exercise Operational Excellence to reflect our commitment to an administration that is as effective and as excellent as we are in teaching and research."
The first phase of Operational Excellence is a fact-finding and assessment exercise that includes interviews and briefings with nearly 400 individuals, data gathering and analysis to document our current financial environment, and the preliminary development of options for achieving both financial sustainability and a new level of organizational performance. The data and findings will be presented to the OE Steering Committee, the Chancellor and Cabinet, and the Council of Deans, and updates will be posted on this website in the coming weeks. (November 2009 progress report — PDF)
For more information about the project team and its activities, the timeline for moving ahead with our vision for Operational Excellence, and a new fact sheet that provides basic details about OE, please explore the links on this site. We encourage you to send your suggestions for Operational Excellence to oe@berkeley.edu.