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Tuesday, 27 November 2001. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the Report to the Audit Committee and the Board of Scrutiny, dated 2 November 2001, on CAPSA and its implementation (Reporter, p. 153).
VICE-CHANCELLOR
Because of the significance of the issues raised in the CAPSA report and the implications that they carry for the future governance of the University, I have decided after consultation with the Council, that it is appropriate for me to Chair this Discussion myself.
I am going to open the Discussion by saying a few words about the governance of the University in order to place this Discussion in context.
I shall then read a statement from the University Council about the computer-based financial system that is the topic of this particular Discussion.
Following the reading of the Council's statement, I will call to speak individuals who were named in the reports, and representatives of relevant Committees. I expect this part of the proceedings to last around an hour. We will then move to the general Discussion.
I now come to my remarks about the governance of the University. The University Council is the senior committee of our University. It is specifically defined (by Statute A, IV) as 'the principal executive and policy-making body of the University, with general responsibility for the administration of the University, for the planning of its work, and for the management of its resources'.
The Council is composed of myself as Chairman; four Heads of Colleges; four Professors and Readers; and eight other members of the Regent House. Those sixteen members are elected by the Regent House. In addition there are three student members, elected by the student body.
Although it is the principal executive body of the University, the Council cannot make substantive decisions itself. The final decision-making body of the University is the approximately 3,000 strong Regent House, and proposals by the Council must be approved by the Regent House before they can be implemented. In many cases these proposals are put in the form of resolutions or Graces with an explanatory footnote. In more important instances the Council publishes a fuller statement in the form of a Report, concluding with specific recommendations which must also then be 'Graced'. All Reports are discussed at a meeting such as today's, and these Discussions are themselves part of the process by which the Governing Body deliberates and reaches its decisions.
The Graces or resolutions are subject to approval by the Regent House. The majority are approved without dissent, but any ten members of the Regent house may call for a ballot, in effect a referendum of the Regent House on the particular proposal.
Other procedures of the University, and in particular those relating to financial matters, are monitored by internal and external auditors reporting to the Audit Committee. There is also in Cambridge a Board of Scrutiny with the responsibility to examine the Reports of the Council, the abstract of the accounts of the University, and any Report of the Council proposing allocations from the Chest.
As the University approaches it eight hundredth year it remains amongst the top universities in the world. It has sustained its eminence through a process of continual change. As we enter the a new century we have a collective responsibility once again to consider whether our current procedures are appropriate and durable governance arrangements for one of the world's leading academic centres.
I want now to move on to the Council statement.
1. On behalf of the Council I am introducing the Discussion on the CAPSA reports with the following remarks:
2. In May 2001, the Council, after consultation with the Audit Committee and the Board of Scrutiny, commissioned Professor Finkelstein and Professor Shattock to report on the problems the University faced with the introduction of a new financial information system. This had not gone well and has caused severe disruption and distress. Professor Finkelstein in his report concentrated on processes and decision making, while Professor Shattock undertook a review of university management and governance issues arising out of the CAPSA project. The Council is grateful to Professor Finkelstein and Professor Shattock for the thorough and careful way in which they have conducted their enquiries. The Council notes that the argument of both reports points to systematic failures of management and governance within the University. Quite simply, the University did not allocate the necessary administrative and technical resources to oversee the introduction, to an organization that was extremely federal and diffuse in structure, of a new centralized financial information and accounting system. Serious mistakes were made and they are fully acknowledged.
3. The Council accepts responsibility for the problems that have been encountered. As the principal executive and policy-making body of the University, the Council should, either of itself or through its specialist committees, have ensured the smooth and effective implementation of a new financial system, and it should, over the years, have seen that the University's governance structures were appropriate and that its administrative services were adequately resourced and developed to take on the tasks required by the great expansion and growing complexity of University activity.
4. The Council deeply regrets that it has failed in some respects in these matters and recognizes that this failure has led to strained relationships within Cambridge and a loss of morale amongst long-standing and loyal members of staff.
5. The Council notes that both Professor Finkelstein and Professor Shattock are agreed that the University should stay with the Oracle system and make it work. Professor Finkelstein points out that this will take some time to get wholly right, but he is unambiguous in his advice that it would be wrong to go back on the original decision. In the Michaelmas Term of 2000, when the problems were most acute and the level of distress and dissatisfaction was at its greatest, vigorous efforts were made to improve communication within the University about the need for the new system and about the difficulties in implementing it. The committee chaired by Professor Longair met regularly and frequently to monitor the situation; I discussed the problems with Heads of Departments at my annual meeting with them and I spoke at an open meeting to help explain what was going on; staff were thanked for their forebearance and shown positive appreciation for what they were doing in difficult circumstances. The interim Director of Finance, and then the new Director of Finance, took responsibility for the operation of the system. It is not working perfectly, and much remains to be done, but the University's year-end accounts are now being finalized satisfactorily. It is important that the University build on the improvements of the past twelve months and is not, at this stage, distracted from making the system work.
6. The two reports find that shortcomings in decision-making about CAPSA in Cambridge relate in key ways to inadequacies in both management and government. In particular, Professor Finkelstein and Professor Shattock found a lack of clarity about responsibilities within the administration and lack of effectiveness in accountabilty. The Council accepts this criticism which raises wider issues of governance than those covered in the CAPSA reports. Part of the problem stems from the incomplete implementation of the recommendations of the Wass Report of some twelve years ago. In particular, as Professor Shattock points out, the failure to drive forward the creation of a unified administrative service for the University, and to resource it properly, has proved to be a serious mistake. After considerable discussion, an improved structure for the adminstrative service is now before the Regent House and the Council hopes that it will be approved by ballot before the end of this term.
7. The Council notes that the piecemeal introduction of change over recent years has led to a crippling discrepancy between provisions in the University's Statutes and the operational position on the ground. The Council is aware that this is a complex matter and it will put proposals to the Regent House to deal with the problem. Committees working on governance and on the offices of Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor have been much encouraged by the way in which the two CAPSA reports have reinforced lines of argument that were already being worked up and have put some of the issues into sharper focus. The Council will, early next term, publish for discussion proposals relating to the offices of Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor and the future role of Chairmen of the Councils of the Schools. The Council will also bring forward proposals recommending some wider changes to the constitution. These will be designed to assign to officers and bodies more clearly than at present their respective duties and responsibilites, and the necessary authority to act, combined with better procedures for openness and accountability.
8. In order to keep things moving forward, the Council is sending the recommendations of Professor Finkelstein's and Professor Shattock's reports to a number of bodies for comment. The Council will take careful account of comments made in the Discussion this afternoon. The Council has also determined that Professor Malcolm Grant, whom I will appoint a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and who will take up appointment as Pro-Vice-Chancellor in succession to Professor Mellor on 1 January 2002, should have specific responsibility for seeing that discussion of the recommendations in the reports is conducted in a timely fashion and that whatever actions result from the various consultations are implemented without undue delay.
9. The Council has noted the remarks made by the Board of Scrutiny in its notice published in the Reporter last Wednesday. The Council will consider these alongside other contributions to the debates we are having. The Council wishes to place on record now, however, its belief that the University should recognize that the failures identified in the CAPSA reports are failures of the system as a whole, that is, of our constitutional and management structures. The Council believes that the University must move forward with resolve and dignity to address the problems that have arisen. It sees no benefit in entering into personal recriminations. The Council is confident that the principal officers to the University and other senior staff are committed to taking matters forward and welcome working with them in order to achieve a satisfactory resolution. The Council is deeply appreciative of the continuing support of other staff throughout the University whose life has been made more onerous by the events that have occurred.
10. The Council is very conscious that this has been, and will continue to be, a difficult period for the University. The Council repeats its view that it is ultimately responsible for the mistakes that have been made and assures the University that these are being properly and speedily addressed. The Council reminds the University that though there have been serious CAPSA failures the previous system was unsustainable. There have also been significant improvements in recent years in the way Cambridge is run enabling it to respond creatively to changes, not least to challenges and opportunities pressed on it from outside the academic community. This is clearly reflected in Cambridge's continuing achievements in education, learning, and research, and in the continued dedication and success of its staff and students.
Dr S. LINTOTT
Vice-Chancellor, I am speaking as the Chairman of the Board of Scrutiny, whose members have asked me to make the following comments on its behalf. Since writing the Statement that we published in last week's Reporter, we have been advised that the University did in fact take legal advice on the contract and we were glad to discover that this was so.
The Wass Report, which recommended the establishment of the Board of Scrutiny, envisioned that 'members of the Board would see themselves as representatives of Regent House opinion; at the Discussion they would speak in that spirit, rather than as spokesman for any particular constituency'. Our membership numbers twelve, a traditional number for ensuring impartiality of judgement, and consists of the Proctors and the Pro-Proctors ex officio and the eight representatives of the Regent House, mostly academics and from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
Inevitably analogies suggest themselves. Though it is perilous to try to understand one thing in terms of another, one interpretation of today's event might be that it is similar to a meeting of shareholders, with the Board, the scrutineers appointed by those shareholders. We have come to call the 'principal executive and policy-making body', the Council, to account for the sorry state of the University administration described in the reports by Professors Finkelstein and Shattock.
The Board is obliged under Statute to scrutinize the Reports of the Council, the Abstract of Accounts, and any report of the Council proposing Allocations from the Chest. It has the right to report to the University on any matters arising. Last year, when the University's implementation of CAPSA caused a breakdown in financial control and accounting, the Board saw the need to commission a report from outside our community. The Board of Scrutiny argued that there should be two reports: one that focussed on the technical requirements and one that evaluated the findings of the first report in terms of management, administration, and governance. Our main purpose was to seek an analysis of what happened; to provide a report which would inform University debate; and to encourage the University to learn the lessons necessary for its good conduct. The Board believed that it was essential that external reports were commissioned, because it seemed to us that the relevant authorities and officers had ignored the many warnings of those University bodies charged with monitoring the probity of its financial systems. It is in that context that we make our observations.
Last summer, members of the Board who were interviewed by Professors Finkelstein and Schattock surmised from their comments and questions that the extent of their findings of personal and systemic failings was likely to shock. Once the reports were finished, we read a depressing tale of amateurism in the procurement of both products and people, and ignorance of usual, let alone best, practice. All of this combined with what appears to have been an abandonment of responsibility and oversight by the bodies and officers whom the University might reasonably have expected would control a project of this nature, an Enterprise Resources Planning System which would affect all departments.
Yet nobody doubts that everybody in the story was committed to the University, fully occupied by its business, and working for its good. When commissioning the reports, we made it plain that we were not interested in finding scapegoats, and this is not what we are doing now. However, the turmoil caused in the wake of the implementation of CAPSA and the breakdown of the University's financial integrity has left members of the Regent House wondering whether we have the right people in the right jobs, and we believe that the Council must ask itself this question now. It is not a question of recrimination: it is a question of restoring confidence - both within the University itself, among its widest membership, and with the outside world to which it is ultimately accountable. Indeed, Professor Finkelstein recommends that 'A training audit covering the Principal Officers of the University and those senior academics likely to be engaged in oversight committees should be undertaken. In particular, skills in strategic management of information systems and finance should be carefully examined'. (9(x)).
Following Cadbury, Hampel, and Nolan, there is an increasing expectation on the part of the public that institutions will behave with openness, transparency, and accountability. For the last several years, in a period during which attitudes to governance have changed, the Board has routinely asked about the progress of the University's own Committee on Governance, whose Report was initially promised early in the academic year 1999-2000. Once again, we ask what progress has been made on the Committee on Governance, when it might report, and whether the Council considers the Committee's remit and membership sufficient for the circumstances in which we now find ourselves. Are those who were entrusted with governance during the commissioning and implementation of CAPSA really best placed to preside over reform?
CAPSA has become both the sign and the symbol of the system's disfunctionality. Professor Shattock has commented on 'the difficulty of identifying which body or individual was actually in charge' (3.1). We have also heard the theory advanced that because it was the system that failed, then nobody within the system is responsible. Certainly, the system has put various people in impossible situations. But the Statutes and Ordinances prescribe who has responsibility and if there is any confusion, it is to these Statutes and Ordinances that we must look for guidance.
The Statutes say that 'It is the duty of the Finance Committee … to advise the Council on the management of the University's assets, including … moneys' (Chapter V5(a), p. 9). We have a Finance Committee, however, which, according to Professor Shattock did not appear to think it had responsibility for the accounting system: though it 'received and noted minutes from the CAPSA Steering Committee' … it 'at no time sought to intervene [or] ask questions' (3.6). We have an Audit Committee which is required to 'keep under review the effectiveness of the University's internal systems of financial and other control' (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 896.5(a)). Yet, according to Professor Shattock, the Audit Committee made 'bland' (5.14) reports, was too ready to accept assurances without questioning, and did not respond appropriately to warnings from internal and external auditors. It was 'too much part of the 'system' ', so Professor Shattock says (5.17), and 'not willing to make statements that would be uncomfortable to higher bodies'. Yet the all-important tradition of academic self-governance (10.4) depends on the vigilance of these Committees, as does the Designated Officer under the terms of the Financial Memorandum with the HEFCE.
We have an administration deaf to warnings; a Council that chose to ignore warnings, including one from the Board of Scrutiny in its Fifth Report, choosing instead to delay the publication of that Report, which should have been published in early June 2000, almost two months ahead of 'go live' day, until October 2000, some two months after. Meantime, left in charge of the project was a team of three individuals, two recently appointed, another a consultant, who were apparently permitted to make a decision which threatened the financial integrity of the University, apparently without anyone or any body higher up considering that he, she, or it had a duty to accept responsibility for the actions of subordinate people or committees. The situation is extraordinary.
Those closest to the CAPSA project point to the ambiguity of reporting responsibilities. Surely, Statutes and Ordinances and job contracts should make these clear. If this is not the case, and if there is confusion at the top, then it is up to the Council to sort it out. If there are difficulties in making hard choices because of longstanding relationships, then the Council should remind itself of its responsibility towards the hundreds of members of the Regent House and the employees of the University whose working lives have been affected by this debacle. It should also remind itself of the harm to the reputation of the University.
We look to the Council to take such actions and suggest reforms that will restore confidence in the University among its stakeholders - members, employees, creditors, alumni, and outside funding agencies.
Professor A. BADGER
Vice-chancellor, I have been the chair of the Audit Committee since January 2001 and a member of the Council and the Audit Committee since January 1999. The Audit Committee was charged by the Council following the Discussion of 10 October 2000 with commissioning an independent report into CAPSA and its implementation. My predecessor, David Thomson, set up a working party to draft terms of reference for such a report. That working party collaborated with representatives of the Board of Scrutiny. The terms of reference which we drafted, providing for a Part A technical narrative and a Part B consideration of governance issues, were approved by the Council. That working party, again with representatives of the Board of Scrutiny, interviewed potential investigators and recommended the choice of Professors Finkelstein and Shattock to conduct the review, a recommendation agreed with the Board of Scrutiny and accepted by the Council. I commend this model of co-operation with the Board of Scrutiny for the future.
It is important to stress that the principal officers isolated themselves completely from the consideration and conduct of the review. It was my responsibility, not theirs, to negotiate the services of Professors Shattock and Finkelstein within the budget the Audit Committee had secured and to organize accommodation and administrative support for the reviewers outside the Old Schools. The work of Dr Alan Winter in servicing these reviews was essential to their independence and I believe the University owes him a great debt.
The draft reports were examined by lawyers who had advised Professor Shattock on earlier occasions. They discussed the reports with the authors and satisfied themselves that the reports could withstand legal challenge. They recommended that the reports be sent with notice of intended publication to external organizations mentioned in the report. The reports were then presented to the Audit Committee, the Board of Scrutiny, and the Council. The Audit Committee transmitted the reports to the Council with the recommendation that they be published. At the last minute, demands that the reports be not published were received from one external organization. These demands, which persisted to the night before publication, were robustly resisted by the authors and the lawyers.
I have laid out these procedures to emphasize the independence of the reports. These reports are clean texts which do not have the fingerprints of either the Audit Committee, or the Board of Scrutiny, or the Council on them. The principal officers did not have the opportunity either to comment on the reports or to seek changes.
Professors Finkelstein and Shattock have provided reports that are uncompromising, comprehensive, and unsparing in the criticism. I believe the authors have amply fulfilled the expectations of the Audit Committee and the Board of Scrutiny when those bodies recommended their appointment. I hope they have fulfilled the hopes of the speakers at the 10 October 2000 Discussion.
It is essential that universities show themselves capable of self-regulation, otherwise external control will follow. These critical reports, put in the public domain, are a pre-condition of effective self-regulation. There is no evidence, contrary to press reports, that the NAO is planning to investigate us. The HEFCE will, however, be seeking assurances that the recommendations of the reports are being converted into an action plan with a disciplined programme of recommendations. Their auditors will be looking at the external audit management letter, the internal audit annual report and the annual report of the Audit Committee to confirm that the system of internal controls is operating effectively, despite the CAPSA difficulties. But the chief executive of the HEFCE has also commended Cambridge on 'the vigorous and open way it has sought to analyze the problems around the implementation of CAPSA.'
The reports offer a sobering analysis of a systemic failure that resulted from long-term under-investment in the administrative infrastructure, inadequate decision-making processes, and the lack of a robust system of checks and balances. The authors offer a twin-track approach to enable the University to contemplate undertaking future large projects without losing its tradition of academic self-government. The increase of resource in the central administration has to be accompanied by changes in governance that establish clear lines of responsibility and authority and which make individuals and committees clearly accountable for their actions. The two approaches must go together. A suitably resourced central administration must work with clearly accountable Pro-Vice-Chancellors so that the University's committee structure works and makes clear decisions, instead of merely generating the agenda for the next meeting. The Audit Committee broadly welcomes the reports' recommendations. When it transmitted the reports to the Council it requested that a Pro-Vice-Chancellor or Deputy Vice-Chancellor, not one of the principal officers, be charged with pulling together, prioritizing, and establishing the resource implications of the thirty main recommendations and that that process start immediately. Professor Grant's appointment is the first stage of that process. The Committee will monitor implementation of the reports. The chair of the Board of Scrutiny and I have agreed that we will seek further joint meetings with Professors Shattock and Finkelstein to see how our responses measure up to what they think is necessary and to seek their advice.
Can the University rely on the Audit Committee, rightly criticized along with others in this report, to provide 'the rigorous independent view of the University's affairs that the University needs', can it constitute 'an often uncomfortable bedfellow'?
The report makes clear that the Audit Committee did warn the Council about the inadequacy of management financial information, of the difficulties of staff retention and recruitment in the Finance Division and MISD, and of the likely risks in the implementation of CAPSA. Its external members, in particular, expressed serious concerns in December 1998. But while the Committee, like other Committees and bodies, can point to a paper trail of appropriate warnings, it is also clear that the Committee did not make its concerns known with sufficient urgency to prompt the necessary action by the Council. As a member of the Audit Committee at that time, I accept responsibility for that failure.
Before the Shattock and Finkelstein reports were produced, the Committee had already this year taken its own steps to provide more robust scrutiny of the University's internal controls and to present its concerns to the Council more effectively. It invited the HEFCE Audit Service and the internal and external auditors to conduct a training seminar for the members of the Committee; it has sought more challenging and explicit reports from the Internal Auditors and is conducting a new tendering exercise for external auditors; it has required the Director of Finance, who now has explicit responsibility for CUFS, to provide a detailed action plan to rectify the existing deficiencies in internal controls; it has required the University to set in place the procedures for systematic risk assessment throughout the University that must satisfy the HEFCE by 2003. But these actions apart, from my own experience as a member of the Committee and then as chair, I am convinced that the chair of the Audit Committee, as Professor Shattock recommends, should be a lay person and that there should probably be a lay majority on the Committee. It is essential that such a lay Chair should be on the Council to make the Committee's case directly to the Council, as indeed the HEFCE Code of Practice requires.
I want to make two final points about the context in which decisions on CAPSA were made. First, to meet its obligations to outside bodies, this University has had to make a step change in almost all areas of its operations in the past ten years, financial information was just one of those areas. Health and Safety, personnel policy, promotions, research assessment, estate management and building, teaching quality, all are areas where the University has had dramatically to change its ways to meet the demands of external regulation and oversight. It has taken us the best of part of fifteen years, for example, simply to be able to make our submission for the Research Assessment Exercise in a timely and efficient manner. Important decisions have traditionally been taken on a wing and a prayer, fuelled by an assumption, sometimes justified, that it will all somehow work. Serious risk assessment has, until recently, been notable mainly by its absence. It has taken disasters or near disasters, such as prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive or the late delivery of the 1996 RAE return, to bring about progress. Overstretched administrators have been trying to take the University forward on all these fronts. If Committees and the Council have been insufficiently rigorous in their demands of those administrators, it has perhaps been less the fault of complacency and cosiness, than the recognition of the impossible demands that were being made of beleaguered individuals.
Second, 'The University ['s] accounting system seems to have descended into an abyss of chaos … the system has failed to bed down, … the stresses produced by this situation have led to extremely heavy staff turnover among the administrative staff in the university's central finance function'. This is not a description of CAPSA and Cambridge: it is a report by a senior academic in the summer of 2001 at a university, which introduced the SAP system. It is small consolation that Cambridge is not alone in experiencing difficulties in introducing a university-wide financing system. I hope that the excellent reports by Professors Shattock and Finkelstein enable the University to take advantage of the wake-up call provided by the CAPSA failure to sort out both its administrative infrastructure and its governance structures.
Professor M. LONGAIR
Vice-Chancellor, I welcome the reports by Professors Finkelstein and Shattock in describing the problems associated with the implementation CAPSA. I speak as Chairman of the University's Financial Systems Management Committee, the successor to the CAPSA Steering Committee and the Accounting Policy Working Group. My reason for speaking is to describe briefly the current state of the system and how it will evolve over the next two years.
Let me comment first on three aspects of the reports. To my regret, there is little or no mention of the state of paralysis, which had afflicted the work of the senior officers and the Council during the crucial period when key decisions had to be taken in relation to the CAPSA project. Without understanding the quite intolerable pressures under which the senior officers were attempting to manage the University's affairs and which distracted their attention from many key managerial issues, a fair picture cannot be obtained of the extremely difficult environment in which the managers operated and against which the CAPSA project was implemented.
My second point is that recognition must be made of the enormous efforts which everyone has made to bring the system to its current state. This has been a very great task. It is of little reassurance to note that other universities, which are implementing similar financial packages are having as great, if not greater, problems in bringing these on line. Cambridge is uniquely complex as a university and the attempt to mimic past practices has led to considerable additional complexity in the customization of the Oracle Software for Cambridge.
My third point is that Professor Finkelstein states very clearly that the decision to purchase the Oracle Software and Oracle Financials was, I quote, 'sound', and that we should migrate to the latest version of the software as soon as is feasible. The Management Committee took the decision to recommend that the system migrate to release 11i at its meeting of 15 November 2001.
Let me try to give an assessment of where we are. Much of the software now works and the General Ledger aspects of the University's activities are in reasonable order. The end-of-year accounts have been a cumbersome task, but they are now very close to completion. There is a realistic expectation that next year will be easier.
The Research Grants Module is not functioning as required by the University and its Departments. There continues to be a lack of easily accessible manage-ment information and ad hoc reporting facilities to Departments as originally envisaged. There remain errors in the software, although the number of these is diminishing with time. There is a problem with the way in which the University has implemented the Research Grants Module. This is partly because of the University's requirement for extensive use of sub-ledger security, and partly because of the lack of integration between the Research Grants Module and the other Oracle Financials modules. The latter causes a problem in that investigators cannot 'drill down' through items of grant expenditure in order to understand the current status of grants. The use of sub-ledger security requires further investigation and additional features need to be incorporated into the Grants Module. A detailed review is currently underway involving the Research Services Division and the Research Grants User Group. They have made excellent progress in identifying how the set up of the Grants Module and the policies and procedures introduced by Research Services Division can be improved to provide the information needed by the Centre and investigators.
Another source of distress has been the complexity of the system in dealing with what in the past were simple tasks. Even with staff who are well versed in the new accounting procedures, processes take longer than in the past, simply because modern practices had to be implemented, involving greater accountability and proper approval processes. I do not see that the University can return to its old practices. The solution will be to organize the accounts and finance offices in ways which are more compatible with modern practices and the Director of Finance is actively pursuing ways in which these can be streamlined, without impacting on Departments' decision-making and control.
A number of important procedural improvements and new features will become available with the implementation of Oracle 11i, including the availability of web Requisitions. This will greatly simplify the raising of purchase orders, but there will remain the necessity of obtaining approval of expenditure by an appropriate staff member. A number of the problems with the Grants Module will be resolved with the implementation of the 11i version of the software, since it will fully integrated within 11i.
Let me remark on some aspects of the management of the project. The Management Committee has recommended that the Director of Finance take over ownership of the Financial Systems and be accountable to the Management Committee. The latter body is very much stronger than the CAPSA Steering Committee, containing the survivors (I use that word judiciously) from that Steering Committee, representatives from all the Schools, Professor Leslie, who is a member of the Council and the Finance Committee, the Director of the University Computer Service, and senior members of the Finance, Research Services, and Management Information Services Divisions (MISD). The key decisions have been devolved to the Management Committee for implementation by the Director of Finance and MISD. I believe the Committee is functioning effectively. In addition to the Research Grants User Group, there is a User Group for the Financial System as a whole, chaired by the Director of Finance. He has also recently established a Purchasing User Group.
One of the key problems has been the appointment of personnel to the MISD. Under the direction of Mr John Kenworthy and subsequently Mr Roy Bent, a staffing plan for the Group has been approved by the Management Committee and good progress has been made in filling a number of the support posts. There remain problems in the appointment of a Director of MISD and of certain key posts. These include an Operations Controller, Unix Administrator, and Database Administrator with experience of Oracle. These are very difficult posts to fill at the salaries which have been on offer in the past. On behalf of the Management Committee, I wrote to the Vice-Chancellor recommending that these support posts should be created within MISD at competitive salaries in areas of very high demand. This has been approved by Council. A key aspect of the thinking behind this recommendation is that we need to decrease our reliance upon external consultants so that we can preserve continuity and contain costs. The acting Director of MISD is working closely with the Director of the University Computing Service, to attract the best possible candidates for these posts. This recommendation has important consequences for the management and support of major applications such as the University's Financial System.
The Management Committee and the Information Technology Syndicate have already had preliminary discussions of the recommendation of both reports that the University Computing Service and MISD should be combined. This topic needs very careful consideration, because of the cultural differences between academic and administrative computing. The Committee has recommended that the practices in other universities should be studied in some detail before deciding which model is most appropriate for Cambridge.
The Committee have been advised by Mr Bent about his proposed implementation plan for migrating to Oracle 11i. The plan involves the identification and assessment of the risks involved and how they are to be managed. There will be extensive consultation with users and assessments made of sites which have already implemented Oracle 11i.
Plans are being made to ensure that sufficient personnel are available with the right skills to implement the new system. The Committee is determined to ensure that the project is properly managed and that the correct reporting lines and decision-making processes are maintained.
Advantage will be taken of the fact that approval has been given for the purchase of computer equipment, which is needed to ensure that adequate facilities are provided for Disaster Recovery, for parallel development of Oracle 11i, full System Development and User Acceptance Testing, as well as the provision of improved management information. The present plan would be to transfer over to Oracle 11i on 1 January 2003. It is reasonable to expect that in two years' time we will be well along the way to having resolved those problems, which are currently causing distress to so many dedicated academic and support members of staff, and realizing the real benefits of commitment accounting.
I conclude by noting that in my Welcome Message to the first edition of the CAPSA Project Newsletter in May 1999, I wrote: '(The) consequences (of CAPSA) are quite profound for everyone involved in the management of academic work in the University since they will need to develop new codes of good practice.' I remain convinced that the introduction of the new Financial System represents an important culture change for the University. It requires the University to be seen as a single corporate body. The challenge of the next two years is to understand the need for that requirement, while maintaining the intellectual independence of Departments to develop their own programmes according to the culture of their disciplines.
REGISTRARY
Vice-Chancellor, it is unusual for the Registrary to speak in Discussions but this is an unusual Discussion and I am sure that many members of the University will be expecting me to speak. In any event, I think I have a duty to do so. I want to say three things: firstly, something about the CAPSA implementation from my perspective, secondly something about the recent interim statement published by the Board of Scrutiny, and thirdly I want to discuss the role of the administration in the University.
Firstly, the CAPSA implementation. It is obvious and widely known beyond Cambridge that the CAPSA implementation went badly and that as a result, there has been not only considerable organizational and administrative difficulty for the University, but also much personal inconvenience for many staff in the University. Professors Shattock and Finkelstein rehearsed the reasons for that in their reviews and made many recommendations. It is for the Council to arrange for those recommendations to be considered and for the outcome of that consideration to be implemented. For my part, I shall co-operate fully with that process. Reflecting on the events leading to the go-live decision and on my role in them, it is clear to me that there were things which I could and perhaps should have done differently. I regret that, and I am sorry that it should be so.
Secondly, in their interim statement, the Board of Scrutiny make a number of points. I want to deal with three of them. Firstly and as I explained to Professor Shattock, I signed the CAPSA contracts because the project had been authorized by the Planning and Resources Committee and the contracts were presented to me for signature. Contrary to the impression given in the Board's statement, and I am grateful for their acknowledgement of that earlier this afternoon, legal advice on the contracts had been taken, as it was throughout the process. Secondly one of the matters that I regret in the implementation is that I did not do what I might have done to ensure that the go-live decision was scrutinized more carefully. That having been said, ours is not a culture in which individual officers are encouraged to exercise too much authority. Indeed, in conversations with signatories about the ballot on the disestablishment of the University Centre Syndicate, and in response to the Council's First Report on the Unified Administrative Service, it was said to me explicitly that members of the Regent House were concerned to limit the power of the Registrary and that responsibility should be held by committees. It is not possible or appropriate for any officer to be held accountable unless that officer is first of all given the necessary responsibility and authority. Authority, responsibility, and accountability go together. I agree with Professor Shattock and Professor Finkelstein that the University needs to be clearer about this. Let me say again, so that there can be no mistake, authority, responsibility, and accountability go together and must be exercised together.
Thirdly, the Board of Scrutiny urge the Council to clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of the Treasurer and the Registrary. I agree absolutely with the Board that this clarification needs to be achieved. The Treasurer and I have been working with the Council to bring proposals to the University and some of what is needed is set out in the Council's First and Second Reports on the Unified Administrative Service.
Finally, I feel that I owe it to the University and to my colleagues to comment on what I perceive to be the role of the Administration in this university. Let me make clear at the very beginning that I believe that the University must continue to be academic led. I believe that, not simply because that is the clear wish of the Regent House, but because only academic leadership will ensure that academic quality is maintained. The role of the Unified Administrative Service is to support that academic leadership and to support the continued achievement of high quality research, scholarship, teaching, and learning. When I seek as Registrary, as I do, managerial authority in the Unified Administrative Service, it is in that context. I seek only to be able, with my senior colleagues, to manage the Administration in ways which are necessary to deliver the administrative services that the University needs. The central administration has changed significantly in recent years, in ways that are both necessary and appropriate. The CAPSA reports describe an historical position from which we have moved on. The administration is better resourced and better organized. But there are still urgent needs. The Council's Second Report consolidates what has been achieved organizationally and also provides for the next major elements of change. We are still urgently in need, as are all areas of the University, of better pay, terms, and conditions. We need a renewed focus on staff development. It is perhaps a difficult message for the University, but we still need more resources and we need to reassess how we use our existing resources.
My colleagues and I are professional administrators. By that I mean that we are committed to providing high quality services, that we seek to do so objectively and openly, and that we seek to maintain ourselves as up to date in the practice of our administrative specialities. As professionals, we expect to engage the University in a proper and constructive debate about the services the University needs and how they are to be provided. We expect too to be scrutinized in our practices, in the same way that Faculties and Departments have to submit themselves to both external and internal review of their performance. My colleagues are not down-hearted although we have not so far been as successful in engaging in that debate as we would have hoped. We have not so far been successful in properly representing to the University our view of how its administration needs to develop. Until that debate takes place and until the University recognizes the professionalism of its administrative staff, and puts in place structures that enable the administrative staff to exercise their professionalism, there are likely to be more CAPSAs. I intend to work hard with my colleagues to prevent those things happening and to ensure that the quality of the University's administration matches that of its academic outputs.
TREASURER
Vice-Chancellor, when a project hits such widespread problems as CAPSA has done, there is a desire among many who have suffered, either directly or indirectly, as a result of those problems, to find out what went wrong, not merely so as to learn from mistakes that were made and to try to avoid repeating them, but also so as to apportion blame. Both of these reports lay blame on the Treasurer, and the Board of Scrutiny has subsequently called into question my professional competence. I am therefore grateful for this opportunity to make a statement. The Treasurer is, by virtue of Statute, 'the Council's principal financial officer and adviser on financial matters'. One of her duties is to prepare accounts and estimates for the consideration of the Council and its Finance Committee. The day-to-day performance of that duty has for many years been delegated to other senior officers. As Treasurer, however, I accept responsibility for my own and their contribution to the mismanagement of the design and implementation of the University's financial system.
It is easy with hindsight to see many things which could have been done differently or better. Implementing a major computer system is a difficult task at the best of times, and there are many examples of universities, both in the UK and in America, and of Government Departments, which have had huge problems with their systems. Introducing a business-critical enterprise-wide resource planning system into a devolved, decentralized, fiercely independent, and extremely diversified community was always going to be a huge cultural shock. The implementation continues to be extremely difficult, but I am still convinced that this system was necessary.
I became Treasurer in 1993. At that time there was really no central management information. The Financial Board Office kept the University's books but had little idea of what was in them, particularly in the area of restricted, or non-Chest, income and expenditure, which was already becoming a very significant part of the University's overall turnover. Professor Shattock believes that proper management accounts could have been produced from the Legacy System; I disagree. Legacy had only one ledger, which worked on a cash basis, it had no budgets, no commitments, no unified coding conventions. As a vehicle for providing central University information at regular intervals of less than a year it was useless.
There was already beginning to be external pressure on universities to provide better financial information. We needed to satisfy the HEFCE, Customs and Excise, our sponsors, our donors. We needed to be able to negotiate better deals with suppliers. There was increasing internal pressure, from audit and later from the Board of Scrutiny. I also believed (and I cannot be alone in this) that it was important for the University to be able to think and act strategically, with a proper financial strategy to underpin its academic strategy.
When I refer here to 'the University' I do not mean the Old Schools or, dare I say, the Regent House, or even the Departments. Many Departments had perfectly good local information years ago and managed their own affairs quite happily, keeping the centre at arm's length. I mean the University's principal executive and policy-making body, which is the Council. They, and the General Board, needed and need to have clear, up-to-date, reliable, University-wide financial information so that they can understand the overall financial picture and lead the University strategically. To do this they required a level of information which was over and above the local information required by Departments and individual Principal Investigators. We needed both levels of information, mutually consistent with each other.
Providing this has proved to be an exceptionally complex task. Clearly we needed better IT systems. We also needed to handle information differently, and to do that we needed more staff, with different skills and qualifications, and a much better understanding of the overall processes which were involved. I wish it had been as simple as Professor Shattock suggests: he says we should have appointed a Director of Finance in 1995. It would have been wonderful to have to have somebody like Andrew Reid in post then. But it is hard for those who have come into the University more recently, or who look at it now with the benefit of hindsight or from a perspective of a very differently organized university, to appreciate how impossible such an appointment would have been.
In 1993, the Financial Board Office had only two qualified accountants (neither of whom had any commercial experience) and in the accounts area no graduate staff. There was a fixed establishment. You could only achieve change if a vacancy arose or you could argue for a new need. Grades and pay scales were very rigid. It took fifteen months from writing the first job description to getting one management accountant in post, and then it was done on the cheap - an unestablished two-year post at a relatively junior level. The first candidate withdrew and we had to re-advertise. This was a familiar story in the Old Schools. The New Needs budget for all Council institutions for the year I arrived was £25,000. The culture was that people struggled on, with inadequate help, hearing regularly the message that every pound spent on administration was a pound which could otherwise have gone on research. It wasn't just in finance either: IT was run on a shoestring, industrial liaison had a tiny staff, EMBS struggled to manage an ever-increasing estate with no extra people, the Research Grants and Contracts Section managed with no qualified accounting support. The administration generally was trying to support one of the best universities in Europe with a ludicrously small number of people, often pushed beyond their skill level, with few resources, and little or no training.
When Mr Lang, our very first management accountant, arrived he reported to the Deputy Treasurer. At no time did he report direct to me. But I accept that it would have been better if I had been able to make time, somehow, to keep in closer contact with the commitment accounting project which eventually turned into CAPSA. But the Treasurer's own role was not primarily focused on accounts. I have never had a formal job description, although I have raised that issue on a number of occasions with the Vice-Chancellor and with the Council. When I joined the University in 1993, as Treasurer, I found that I had a very wide range of responsibilities and involvements, both directly under the Statutes and Ordinances and by tradition. These included finance and capital funding, investments, estates, buildings, relations with the Press and UCLES, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the University Centre, the Botanic Garden, the University Farm, the Colleges Fund, and many others. Most of these were fulfilled through the membership of, or attendance at, Committees and Syndicates and their sub-committees. Like my predecessor, Trevor Gardner, I spent 90% of my time on committees, becoming involved in almost anything which had financial implications. And, as time wore on, the complexities of the University's activities drew the Treasurer into more and more areas: West Cambridge, research services, technology transfer, reach-out, CMI, College fee negotiations, Homerton convergence, lots of very major and complex building projects, Year 2000. The list seems endless.
The Treasurer had very little time to spend on Finance Division matters. I had to miss crucial CAPSA meetings in order to carry out other duties. I relied on other senior officers and placed a burden on them which was too heavy. In particular, there was a failure to ensure adequate communication with Departments. Administrators must be willing to listen and respond to the academic communities which they serve. In this case they also needed to be available to guide and support them through difficult transitions.
The committee framework itself was deeply confusing. Proposals for the CAPSA project came up through working groups to the CAPSA Management Committee (which was indeed chaired by the Deputy Treasurer after the Board of Scrutiny asked for a more senior officer to be placed in charge) and from there to the JCAC, the Finance Committee, the Planning and Resources Committee, the General Board, and the Council. We can see now, with hindsight, that one of the crucial errors in CAPSA was the failure to carry out a proper business process review. At three stages there was an attempt to do something, but each was seriously flawed. We should have reviewed the whole way in which the University's finances worked, and standardized existing processes before deciding on a new system. But none of the committees insisted on this, since no single one of them felt responsible.
If most of one's information is obtained from committee papers, there is a danger that it can be misleading. If I may be permitted one example: in October 1998, the JCAC received a report from the CAPSA Management Group which stated that 'the visit to Caltech had … been very instructional' and went on to describe in three paragraphs a visit which bears little or no resemblance to the one, I am sure correctly, described in these reports.
So far as procurement is concerned, although I was not personally involved in the recruitment of either Tate Bramald or Bayles Consultancy. I very much regret that the methods used within the Finance Division were so defective. I am pleased that we have since then moved forward with the creation of a Central Purchasing Office, which can provide advice and guidance throughout the University. And our procedures for procuring capital projects and equipment have been completely overhauled.
Both reports make much of the effect of the Early Retirement Scheme in 1999. I have to say that at the time I regarded the Scheme as an opportunity. The Deputy Treasurer had indicated in 1997 that he wanted to retire at age sixty (in September 1999) and that was what enabled me to get the Finance Committee to agree to appoint a Director of Finance. I wrote a paper arguing that we desperately needed a strong, well-qualified Director of Finance with good business experience. The Principal Assistant Treasurer was very knowledgeable about the Legacy System but had no experience of modern ERP systems. Another individual who is mentioned in both reports, did not in fact take early retirement. I hoped that the various vacancies would be filled with qualified and appropriate staff, to support the new Director of Finance. But our salaries were too low, our processes too slow, and staff just could not be recruited.
With hindsight, the period from March to July 1999 was a mess. It was a mistake to put the Director of MISD in charge, with an external Project Manager reporting to him. There was not enough senior involvement from the Finance Division in crucial matters such as the Chart of Accounts. When the new Director of Finance arrived on 1 July 1999, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, it was foolishly optimistic to do so. But it was very tempting to rely on her to sort out the system while there was so much else going on.
The final issue is the cost of the system. The figure of £9.1m which appears in these reports is higher than the £8.7m described last year in the Treasurer's Report on the Accounts, due to extra costs incurred after 1 August 2000. Part of the total represents the cost of hardware and software licences and things like furniture at the RGO, which would have been spent in any event. The main expense was on consultants. I believe that we need to distinguish here between highly paid consultants with specialist skills who we have to employ from outside and those who were only employed because we lacked suitably qualified staff within the University. It was an Alice in Wonderland world, where in November 1999 the PRC and the Council agreed, without a huge amount of discussion, the Director of Finance's request for an increase in the project cost to £8m, including a figure of £4.6m for implementation (which was mostly fees to consultants), whilst other committees would not agree to fund a much smaller amount to increase the pay of our own staff to enable us to recruit and retain enough staff internally.
If all the staff needs had been properly scoped at an early stage the University might have taken steps to recruit enough properly qualified people, centrally and in Departments, and would have saved a lot of money - and been able then to rely on its own staff, trained in University processes. This would in retrospect have been a much more efficient way to proceed. But I'm not sure there was a willingness to change in such a major way at that time. Unfortunately it was not possible to discuss this sort of issue with the Council, which for four years, from 1996 to 2000, was almost unable to carry out sensible debate.
The positive thing is that there genuinely does now seem to be a willingness on the part of the Council to remedy the defects which these reports have identified and which go much wider than the implementation problems of CAPSA. I hope that bureaucratic procedures will be streamlined and that the Council will agree a clear strategic framework, with goals and objectives arising naturally from the University's strategic aims. Properly qualified individuals, recruited against clear job descriptions and competence requirements and at realistic salaries can then be given clear jobs with the responsibility for carrying them out.
We have made huge efforts to improve. The fact that these reports cover problems with which we have been living for years should not be used to obscure the fact that in my current areas of responsibility, for example, we now have in post very competent and professional Directors of Estates, Finance, Research Services, and Corporate Liaison, all of whom have made and are making great strides forward with excellent staff in key roles. I believe that they have good relationships with most of the academics whom they support. The Director of Finance in particular has been given ownership of the Financial System and will be working closely with the Schools to scope and complete the lengthy process of moving over fully from the old to the new systems. I myself look forward to working with the Council to redefine the role of the Treasurer, which has been unclear for many years, making my job almost impossible. I have been pressing the Council to reach a decision on this for at least eighteen months. I am proud to hand over to the Registrary formal management responsibility for a large number of splendid and dedicated people, who can now see how, with more resource, training and support, they can themselves form part of a five-star department. My deep and abiding regret is that the changes I have just described came too late to avoid the pain and anxiety which the CAPSA project has caused.
Dr G. R. EVANS
Mr Vice-Chancellor, it is a pleasure to be able to welcome you to your first Discussion ever, and to the Vice-Chancellor's traditional seat. It is important that the University's senior servants have a sense of connectedness with the more than three thousand of us who form the University's Governing Body. The press were invited and 'briefed' today by the Press Office whose skills in putting a spin on things you praised in your annual speech. The press know, I am sure, how exceptional in university governance in the UK this forum is, this simple device which allows any member of the University to come here, without notice, and make remarks on a question before the University, which everyone can read later at leisure in the Reporter. The resulting historical record of the life of this University is unmatched anywhere in the world, for both 'civil discourse' (report B, 8, 7), and the sometimes very frank laying of cards on the table.
That 'hard-pressed University administrator' of the report before us (B, 8, 7) has a right to speak out in Discussions. Some, like you, are doing so at last today. Such participation is healthy, and for them to come and join in the debate is surely the best method of resolving the frustrations which have led some of us to name names when representations made in a quiet way have repeatedly been ignored. They have the vote like the rest of us, and I am sure they exercise it as personally as anyone in the privacy of the ballot. Like academics, they can speak here 'officially' or 'personally' as they see fit. In a democracy, they should not feel that they have to ask their line-manager's permission.
My theme today is taking responsibility seriously. I am not here to call for heads to roll. Though a number of individuals are named as putatively responsible, it has been widely observed that the report refrains from identifying all it might. The Treasurer is mentioned a good deal. Vice-Chancellor, you are the principal of our Principal Administrative Officers and Chief Accounting Officer (B, 2) for the University. You get a mention in the report before us, though not in connection with the effectiveness of your Chairmanship of the relevant committees during the period when warning noises were being made about CAPSA. Offers to resign would of course mark the sincerity of the recognition of serious failure in high office.
I will go no further down that road. This is an occasion where it is important to be constructive. Much for the good of the running of universities at large (A 2, 5) could come out of this exposure of the inner sickness of a university now seriously 'at risk' (B, 8, 6).
Good is already coming of the huge disturbance this CAPSA affair has caused among us. Notices from the Board of Scrutiny are appearing in the Reporter. If other serious grounds for concern emerge, the Board of Scrutiny will not now have to wait for the Council to allow its Annual Report to be published a year or more after the event; it can publish a Notice. The Proctors this year have produced their own report (Reporter, pp. 294-96), flagging up, among other things, 'inappropriate pressure by some senior members of the University' which prevented the holding of a seminar by an academic visitor to the University. This increasingly visible vigilance of two of our watchdogs has taken no constitutional change; just an intelligent and purposeful use of an avenue already available. Professor Shattock said in a letter to the Times Higher Education Supplement on 16 November that the role of the academic community in governance 'should be reasserted'. These watchdogs have just quietly done that.
The Board of Scrutiny says important things in its Notice (Reporter, p. 282). I will now try to take them forward, on the presumption that we already have in our constitution most of the mechanisms we need, and that we should be concentrating on changes to the climate of expectation and the standards of performance, not changes to our governance.
A leader without a sense of ownership has power without responsibility. C.P. Snow and Francis Cornford are bang up to date on the way this disjunction leads to dysfunction. 'Leadership' is a word we now scatter about our job advertisements. 'Ownership' is not. At the 'roadshow' which offered only 'a static set of screendumps', 'many commented on the absence of the senior University staff who might have been able to lend credibility to the project'. 'The University lacked ... any sense of ownership of the project amongst the Principal Officers' (B, 4, 7; cf. B, 2, 10; B, 3, 1). Senior administrators and academics on committees should be making 'professionalism' more than a fine but empty word by owning, and owning up to, their actions.
A, 7 ,63 describes expressions of concern about CAPSA as early as 1999. I was there, as a member of the Council, and I tried to get them heeded. No one would listen. B, 8, 2 reveals that the Planning and Resources Committee approved 'four escalations in the cost of the project without challenging the figures'. 'If University committees had asked more questions in the initial stages'(B, 10, 4) we might not be here now, looking into the abyss. Questions asked must in future be questions answered. It should not rest on the shoulders of one or two resilient individuals to do most of the challenging. Let there be an end to the climate of fear which stops people asking awkward questions in case they become 'marked men'. I have had the privilege beyond price of being free to stand up here, Discussion after Discussion, drawing attention to exactly the failings which are now confirmed in this report. Now what I was saying has been 'heard' with a vengeance. But I should not have had to do it almost single-handed until CAPSA 'broke' because others who saw the same things were afraid to join me.
The Council are 'non-executive directors of an organization with a turnover of about £350m'. In law these are heavy responsibilities and they could come expensively home to roost for individuals, as well as for the University. In the case of CAPSA they trustingly allowed consultants to be bought in, and, lacking the knowledge to watch what they were doing and the willingness to listen to those more knowledgeable who tried to warn them, pretty much let them do what they liked. (B, 8, 12). What mechanism could bring us a tightening up of all this? The new Oxford Statutes clarify the process of delegation. It is now possible in Oxford to see how authority has travelled, ultimately from Congregation, to whatever committee is taking a given decision. It would be helpful if we could begin to see that equally clearly in Cambridge. My suggestion (which I have made several times before) is that we tackle the overhaul and clarification of our Statutes and Ordinances.
Then we must insist that those with responsibilities not only understand what those responsibilities are but become truly accountable as 'owners' of what they do on the authority entrusted to them, under those domestic laws. Identifying lines of responsibility will work only if those at the top of the line act, and act effectively. If they have too much to do, can it make sense to give them more?
In Cambridge a blind faith is still surprisingly frequently expressed that those in the Old Schools know what they are doing. Yet one does not need a telephoto lens trained on the building to see that they are performing to standards which are often far from even minimally professional. It is not just about resources. A little efficiency would greatly lighten their loads. There has been far too automatic and frequent a retrospective validation by the Council and the General Board of actions taken ultra vires by the Principal Officers. That must stop. Everyone must get a grip on what he or she can or ought to do, and in what circumstances, and if they get it wrong there must be no more papering over the cracks.
No more empty gestures. Nothing is solved by setting up a provision and then not using it. In the Council's Annual Report published on 16 November we learn (31) that a 'Business Committee' is 'to deal with the details of Reports and Notices for publication'. 'The approval of detailed wording, etc., will be delegated by the Council to their new Committee.' I understand this committee has not yet met, although many Notices and Reports have been published since it was created, and of course the Council will now be told that having 'delegated' the drafting, in reality to an administrative officer, it cannot change the wording. That committee has a duty to call that officer to account.
No more sloppy record-keeping. It is notable throughout the present report that inquiries could not be completed because no one could find the record or the information. (A, 7, 15; 7, 17; 7; 32; 7; 41; 7; 46; 7; 49; 7; 50; 7; 53 ). 'From the fragmentary picture I have been able to piece together' (A, 7, 41). 'It is difficult from the documentation to gain any sense of orderly progress' (A 7,46).
No more of that killer combination of arrogance and complacency. The Council's Annual Report (Reporter, 16 November) (11) 'The Audit Committee reported that, in their opinion ... the University's systems of internal control were operating satisfactorily'.
No more unfinished business and unfulfilled promises. (A, 7, 21; 7, 26; 7, 31; 7, 36; 7, 61; 7, 66; 7, 72; 8, 17; B, 7, 1; 7, 2). I hope the most serious broken promise was admitted to the press before today's Discussion. Commitment accounting is still not 'switched on', although the UFS Accounting Procedures, Purchasing, assert that 'funds checking takes place and the commitment is registered on the system'. I hear stories that little budgets have been rolled up into big budgets without informing those holding them so confusion is worse confounded and there are overspends of thousands. But how would we know, since it is still apparently impossible for anyone to draw up a list of our outgoings and incomings? Is it even now possible for accurate figures to be produced for the continuing internal cost of CAPSA implementation, on extra salaries for extra staff to underpin CAPSA since those cracks appeared and we could no longer ignore the evidence of serious subsidence? Who is 'owner' of all this, even now?
Repentance should surely go with amendment of life?
The next leg of my argument (you will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to make it a millipede), concerns the practicalities. I have suggested to the Registrary many times that much could be achieved by his putting into senior administrative posts a few individuals who are natural movers and shakers but also tactful, who could quietly keep an eye on our various projects and ensure that they are taken forward in a timely and purposeful way. Professor Shattock is right (B, 8, 6) that the Pro-Vice-Chancellors proposal is a loser. It is announced today that our new Pro-Vice-Chancellor, habitué of the coils of the way we live now, is to 'oversee' changes to our governance. He is 'too much part of the system' to quote Dr Lintott. The pragmatic presence of someone to coax things along with tact and persistence at the operational level would be much more likely to cure our bad habits of delay and drifting.
The Council does not have to remain the kind of body, chaotic, confused, careless, hasty, I have so often described in Discussions to cries of outrage, though once more I am now shown to have been only too accurate. The report's 'mixture of bewilderment and unjustified confidence' (A, 7, 71) exactly catches the spirit of the Council in my time. It must expect to have to learn its job.
'Council must now take steps to ensure that its committee structure is more effective in helping it to carry out its responsibilities' (B, 6, 2). What mechanism do we need there? First, the overhaul of appointment to committees. Get rid of the self-appointed Committee on Committees and all its works. Next, we must set about creating committees competent to 'offer ... specialist advice and recommendations' to the Council. We must give people interested and willing to learn the job a fair chance to get onto those committees.
Secondly under this head, 'training'. But proper and effective training. If you search the Reporter (still precariously on the web) for speeches I have made mentioning 'training', you will score many hits. That word falls with a dull thud in a University which prefers to 'educate'. But we have not been doing that very well either in this area of improving practical knowledge and skills. 'The result of the training programme was that mixture of bewilderment and unjustified confidence that generally accompanies poor education' (A, 7, 71). The training provided before CAPSA went live was largely a waste of the time spent by staff at CAPSA-related consultations and receiving that ill-judged training, not to mention the huge sum spent on it.
'Staff development' could be encouraged to focus on teaching the necessary hard skills, not just of assistant and administrative staff, but of academic staff involved in administrative roles by virtue of being on committees. It is easy to make this compulsory. No one should in future be allowed to serve on a committee unless he knows what he is doing and has learned the parts of the job which require specialist knowledge.
I conclude with a note on external audit. It seems I have been right in raising questions again and again about letting the Treasurer accept tenders unsupervised and with no procedures to guide her; and about the general lack of vigilance about conflict of interest and the requirement to ensure that proper competition took place (A, 7, 20; 7, 34; 8, 3; 8, 5; 8, 9; B, 2, 9; 2, 12). A, 7, 33 (and see A, 7, 58) mentions that 'inexplicably, VAT liability had not been correctly determined'. I have spoken on more than one occasion in the Senate-House on the loss of up £8m over an earlier VAT muddle. And we still cannot give any reliable account, it seems, of our VAT liability with reference to the laboratories which are in commercial not academic use.
I hope there will be another visit from the HEFCE Audit team which was so gentle with us a year or two ago. (It is time the regulatory bodies stopped treating Cambridge with respect and kid gloves.) I hope the National Audit Office will not be fobbed off.
We have been reluctant to welcome the full-scale academic and institutional audit we already face, leaving it in the hands of second-string committees such as the Education Committee and their officers. Rot in the counting house hints at rot in the Senate-House, as the QAA will not be slow to observe.
Elizabeth Filkin's parliamentary post has recently been advertised. With the merest twitch to the skirts of the office, we could create our own internal Commissioner for Standards to give us somewhere to go to raise concerns and a means of tackling our pervasive problems of maladministration and mismanagement.
The loss to the University lies not only in this waste of money, but also in the discouragement it must be to anyone to give us any more. 'Benefactors beware' should now be stamped as a warning on all our notepaper. A letter in The Times on 7 November made mock of 'regard for accountancy and form-filling'. Does its author, one of our academics, think the waste of £10m will have no academic consequences? In a letter in the Telegraph the weekend the CAPSA report was published one of our graduate students pointed to the 'prodigal folly of administration', while scientists 'begged in vain for resources to conduct our research properly'.
Vice-Chancellor, the University must now take its academic and administrative 'leadership' by the scruff of its neck. A rigorous stewardship must in future be required of those who hold high office here. Or we shall in the end face a Royal Commission and the loss of our autonomy. And we shall deserve it.
Professor J. SPENCER
Vice-Chancellor, Dr Evans has spoken about responsibility and accountability, and I am glad she has reminded us that the subject is taking responsibility. But I must say I do not think that she is in the strongest position to make that particular point. She told us she was a member of the Council during the time the CAPSA debacle occurred. It seems to me that she must share a measure of collective responsibility for that - as well as, or preferably instead of saying 'I told you so'.
There is another aspect to the matter which has been faintly mentioned by some of the previous speakers which I think has to be said overtly. During this period, Dr Evans has been involved in a long series of law suits against the University and a long series of complaints to the Vice-Chancellor about breaches of the Statutes brought under Statute K, 5, in connection with the failure of the University to promote her. These proceedings have caused a large amount of time to be taken up by the Principal Officers and, I believe, for the Principal Officers a considerable amount of stress. I am the first to say that I think the Principal Officers have committed serious errors in the matter of CAPSA, and that they have to face the fact. In saying that, I feel obliged to say that I think they have that measure of mitigation in their favour.
Professor J. K. M. SANDERS
Vice-Chancellor, I have been an elected member of Council since January 1999 and I fully support the Council statement which you delivered at the beginning of this Discussion. I wish to provide a purely personal perspective, formed through my involvement on a variety of bodies: I was a member of the Planning and Resources Committee, and Chairman of the Allocations Committee, from January 1999 until December 2000; I have been a member of the Audit Committee since January this year; and I was also briefly a member of the Standing Appointments Committee for the United Administrative Service. Finally, I have had substantial responsibilities in the Department of Chemistry for almost ten years as Assistant Head, then Deputy Head and, since October 2000, as Head of Department. Chemistry makes heavy use of the University's financial facilities, so we have long been acutely aware of the need for a proper commitment accounting system which provides useful management information. The flawed design and implementation which have been so clearly brought out by the reports before us - and which many of us warned about beforehand - have created huge problems, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank my administrative staff for their hard work and tolerance through this difficult period. Progress is tangible, but there is still a long way to go. However, my main focus today is the question of why the Council and key individuals did not act more effectively during 1999 and early 2000 when CAPSA implementation was going so badly. The Regent House is entitled to ask what the Council were doing when we should have been thinking about CAPSA. When I joined Council, I discovered that there is an inviolable rule that its meetings are limited to two and half hours: they start at 10.45 a.m. and are guillotined at 1.15 p.m. Under such a regime there is effectively a limit on the number of words that can be spoken at a meeting: one speech inevitably prevents another. I also discovered that one individual intervened twenty, thirty, or more times during each meeting, severely limiting the time available for discussion. It may be that each individual intervention, taken by itself, in isolation, was made with the best of intentions and for the perceived benefit of the whole University. However, the road to hell is paved with good intentions: we all know of iatrogenic diseases where the best efforts of the medical profession can lead to a worse outcome than the original complaint. I believe that the cumulative effect of Dr Evans's innumerable interventions, which were not always made in the most friendly of terms, was to seriously divert Council from a whole host of important matters, of which CAPSA is only one. The effect on the morale of individual members of the Council and senior officers, and the huge time and commitment required to deal with these matters outside meetings, was, I believe seriously detrimental to our collective ability to deal with CAPSA. If that shows us all to be fallible and human, then so be it.
I am emphatically not trying to shift the blame for CAPSA on to one individual; the systemic problems and errors accumulating over many years are there for all to see. Nor am I saying that there was a deliberate attempt to prevent us dealing with CAPSA or any other specific topic: I like to think that we are all trying to do our best for the common good. But I firmly believe that if the time and energies of our administrative and governance systems had been less dominated by Dr Evans's agenda, they would have been better placed to recognize and deal with the situation we faced in the months before go-live. We all, and I include Dr Evans, have to share responsibility for what went wrong over CAPSA. We must now focus on putting it right and on improving our governance and administration to reduce the risks of such failures in the future. We must also ensure that the University has in place good mechanisms which deal fairly with the legitimate concerns of one individual, but we cannot carry on as at present, allowing ourselves to be dominated, diverted, and potentially derailed by such behaviour.
Dr D. R. DE LACEY
Vice-Chancellor, the reports from Professors Finkelstein and Shattock are greatly to be welcomed, however uncomfortable the content. There are, however, places where discomfort is caused by something other than the unpalatable truths revealed therein.
The first is the number of occasions in which statements are phrased in the passive voice, or in such non-specific terms that it quite unclear who is actually responsible for the issue under discussion. We are told for instance that 'it was clear that the position of the Project Manager was untenable' (Finkelstein, 7.52) - clear to whom, and why? - 'approval was given for go-live' (Finkelstein, 7.73) - given by whom? - 'the consultancy' among Departments is described as '... a flawed exercise' (Shattock, 2.18d) - in whose eyes and by what criteria? All these appear almost designed to impute guilt, but without evidence. May we request the reviewers for further specification in those future meetings which I am delighted to hear this afternoon are planned?
It is also most unfortunate that at several points we are told that the paper trail simply runs out, despite the comments that full documentation was offered from the outside. Thus, oddly, Professor Finkelstein comments that 'Details of the appointment of the consultant who was to review Local have proved difficult to obtain ... It has not been possible to track down the formal details of the appointment' (7.15-17). Surely the Consultancy's own archive must have contained the relevant documentation? One commonly-voiced concern of computing personnel throughout the University is that we are still in the dark as to what the actual contracts with Oracle specified, as distinct from our carefully-designed specification. If that is part of the missing documentation can we not approach Oracle for their copy? May we have assurances that, where appropriate, the paper trails will be thoroughly followed in any further investigations by the Board of Scrutiny and the Audit Committee?
A third cause of concern is that in places our reviewers appear to have misunderstood or have been wilfully misled, leading to errors of fact. I take just one instance which seems to me of key concern. The implication is given that everyone simply failed to notice that a new Chart of Accounts would be needed, until so late in the day that the need to create it caused great and unnecessary disruption. The relevant sections, too long to read out seriatim, are in Part A sections 7.47; 7.51; 7.52; 8.7 and in Part B 2.11; 2.13; 2.16 and 3.7. The first of these states 'It had been an assumption, on which the implementation plan was based, that the Chart of Accounts would be unchanged in the new system. This assumption was false, a fact which had severe knock-on consequences, technically, managerially and organisationally.' From my own recollection this is untrue. The Chart of Accounts was a live issue from the start: it was seen as the only way in which legacy data could be transferred to the new system. Early in 1999 Oracle confirmed to us that the current Chart was adequate for the system we were purchasing. It was an active decision, not a passive assumption, to keep it: a decision as definite albeit as disastrous as the subsequent one to change it and abandon all legacy data. I recall the horror with which the then Consultant greeted the subsequent decision, in the middle of that year, to change it. May we encourage the Board of Scrutiny and the Audit Committee to receive these reports with all the critical acumen they would bring to their own researches?
A final if unrelated comment. Both reviewers comment on the under-resourcing of MISD (Finkelstein 6.4; Shattock 2.4). I do not deny this for one moment. But I would remind the University that there are Computer Officers in many of our Departments who were already equally under-resourced before they were called upon to bear the additional burden of CAPSA. I hope they will not be forgotten.
Professor J. P. OSTRIKER
Vice-Chancellor, I am a new Faculty member here in Cambridge, so I am of course, quite ignorant of the history of this issue. I know only what I have read in the Reporter edition on CAPSA and its implementation.
With little knowledge of the past I can make even less pretence to be helpful on making recommendations for the future. However, I do have a good deal of experience with such matters on the other side of the Atlantic, and so I thought that a few remarks from me on the 'US experience' might provide a useful perspective.
After a word or two on my own background, I will touch on three topics: the costs of such implementation of new financial information systems; the travail involved; the longer term view.
For background, I was chair of an academic department at Princeton University for sixteen years, and then Provost of that University for six years before coming to Cambridge; so I have lived on both sides of the academic and administrative fence.
As Provost (essentially chief operating officer), I met with my peers regularly 'The Nine Provosts Group' for the 'Ivy Plus' group of Universities: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., and Stanford, Chicago, and MIT.
For several years, in the late 1990s a chief topic of our group was the implementation of new information systems, so I was aware, in some detail, of what each of the institutes was doing as well as intimately familiar with Princeton's own efforts in this area.
Let me turn to the costs. It has been for this group of relatively knowledgeable and wealthy institutions, an extremely difficult and costly process. Princeton will, by the time the process is complete, have spent many tens of millions of dollars and will finish approximately within budget and on schedule. The financial systems alone: general ledger, purchasing, payables, receivables, will cost more than Cambridge has spent, even though Princeton's turnover is lower, and if we include Human Resources (payroll, etc.) it will be more than twice what Cambridge has spent to date, though Cambridge is clearly not finished with the process.
Such numbers are typical. Usually between 2% and 4% (depending only what is included) of the annual turnover, is spent on modernization of financial systems for the universities I mentioned, Cambridge is now at about the 1H% level.
The cost is not only in financial terms. In addition there is typically a great deal of human cost in terms of time spent, frustration, and career interruptions - with it frequently occurring at these institutions that one or more of the top people from the finance or information technology units leaving the office because they cannot, or do not wish to make the changes required.
Let me next turn to the travail for the institutions, briefly. It is not just at the upper levels that the cost has been high. Change is difficult for all people and often the new systems seem - and in fact are initially less capable than the old ones. Some old functionalities are missing and the newly available ones are not utilized at first. The process is painful.
At least two institutions in the group that I mentioned have had to do it all not once but twice, because the initial investments did not produce workable systems.
Let me now turn to the long term and my concluding remarks. Princeton and some of its peers are now on the other side of this period of turmoil (at least with regard to its financial systems - the student systems are still in process).
Gradually, functionality has improved with subsequent releases of software, and gradually the benefits are becoming apparent to all participants. Let me take but one example: each new student or member of staff will register for many services, and, with the old systems, there would be separate hand entry into many different databases of personal information (name, date of birth, residence, etc.) this for the college, for payroll, for medical plans, for library access, etc.
With many records of the same information, it is inevitable that some data will be inconsistent or incomplete and all will be needing changes when the individual moves residence, etc. After implementation of an integrated system, there need only be one entry - accuracy is higher and privacy is better, and there is much less labour involved.
With regard to costs, even if it is as high as 4% of turnover that is the equivalent of fourteen days of income for the University. Spread out over at least four years, the cost of the transformation is the income equivalent of three or four days a year - and this looks small from the perspective of several years afterwards.
In summary, the experience of Cambridge University as reported in the Reporter is quite typical of its peers, the costs (so far) are at the low end of the spectrum and the pain of the process, while high is, also, quite unfortunately, entirely typical.
It has often been argued in the United States' academic community that the principle benefit flowing from the implementation of new IT systems is that such implementation forces change - modernization and an increase of transparency. It appears, from this meeting, that this would apply to Cambridge as well.
Mr J. MATHESON
Vice-Chancellor, when I spoke at the Discussion on CAPSA a year ago, I focused on the history of the project and my perceptions of why there had been serious problems. Today I would like to look forward commenting, from the perspective of a Computer Officer working in a Department, on two of the areas covered in the reports on CAPSA: the recommendation in both that the University Computing Service and MISD should be merged; and Professor Shattock's comments on our 'lack of respect for the professional and preference for the amateur approach' in both governance and management. I strongly agree with the main conclusions of the reports in both areas, though in addressing the latter we need to be careful that professional management does not lead to loss of overall control by the Regent House. It need not.
The merger of the Computing Service and MISD seems to me to be sensible since both provide computing, or computer-based, services to the University. Computer Officers in Departments support systems which must work both with the infrastructure provided by the Computing Service and the administrative systems provided by MISD; having a single organization supplying both would streamline interaction, especially via the help-desk and training provision. Furthermore, Professor Finkelstein proposes that we set up a major IT project office, an essential addition in the light of the project management problems highlighted by CAPSA. To limit the scope of this office by associating it with just the Computing Service or just MISD would be a mistake.
There are of course objections, of which several have already been voiced since the reports came out. Firstly, there are objections of detail - many of which are answered if only that part of MISD which provides University-wide services like CAPSA merges with the Computing Service, leaving a 'departmental' computing service to support computing in the Central Administration. Secondly, there are concerns that already scarce manpower within the Computing Service would be diverted from academic to administrative computing. This of course is only an issue if the merged service is understaffed. The reports recognize the problem of understaffing in the Central Administration but when we come to remedy this we must note that it is at least as great a problem in the Departments as in the centre and address this as well. Thirdly, there is concern that a merged service might exhibit the worst rather than the best qualities of its constituent parts. This is a risk but a risk which good management and effective recruitment should be able to address successfully. Fourthly, the proposal in Professor Shattock's report that the Head of the Unified Computing Service report to the Registrary does not seem to fit naturally with their role supporting academic computing. The motivation for this proposal is presumably that the Registrary is line manager to senior staff providing services within the Central Administration, but here I do agree that there is a problem. The proposal stretches this model too far and alternatives should be sought. These could include the Head of the Unified Computing Service reporting directly to the Vice-Chancellor, or a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, or attending General Board and Council meetings along with the senior administrative officers.
A merger thus raises issues of management and wider issues of governance of computing in the University. The present structure based on the IT Syndicate does not seem to me to be an effective one, a view shared by an overwhelming majority of departmental Computer Officers from across the University who attended a meeting a week ago to discuss the reports; informal minutes of this meeting are on the web (http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~jmrm/DCOmeet.html/). Pro-fessor Finkelstein's comments about the CAPSA Steering Committee in paragraph 8.11 of his report have some resonance when discussing the IT Syndicate. That its purpose is not now particularly clear may not be all that surprising as its Ordinances have not changed greatly since 1970 - whereas computing has changed significantly in the last 30 years! The main changes in Ordinances, compared to those of its predecessor, the Computer Syndicate, in 1970, are that: the IT Syndicate does not have responsibility for Computer Science teaching and research; IT policy is now explicitly mentioned; and so are the needs of the Colleges. The change in membership is, if anything, even less radical, simply reflecting the use of computers outside the sciences, the involvement of the Colleges, plus the addition of a student member. Two Computer Officers from the Computing Service are members in place of the two teaching staff from the Computer Laboratory but their role is primarily seen as representing their colleagues in the context of the Syndicate's role as their management committee; and management by committee is rightly no longer a popular concept.
From my perspective, one of the most damaging consequences of this lack of recognition of change is that Computer Officers working outside the Computing Service, now a large group of the University's computing professionals, have no official involvement in the development of IT policy in the University. I understand that this was discussed in a recent IT Syndicate meeting and the view expressed that this is not a problem as these officers are represented on the IT Syndicate's Technical Committee. This is not a reasonable argument given that the Syndicate has previously quite sensibly made it clear that the purpose of its Technical Committee is to give specific technical advice not to initiate policy. It is essentially an argument founded on a 'lack of respect for the professional and preference for the amateur approach'.
The consequence of the University not listening to the professional advice of its Computer Officers can be seen in the CAPSA project: several of these officers predicted, well before 1 August 2000, the problems which would arise. Since they had no official channel through which to communicate these warnings, they went unheeded. It might of course be argued that membership of the IT Syndicate would have made little difference since it has decided that its remit extends only to academic computing, not administrative. This though is an odd decision given that the Ordinances make no such distinction when specifying IT policy as the first of its duties. The practical experience of departmental Computer Officers, had they been on the Syndicate, would almost certainly have identified this as no longer an appropriate distinction to be making. A merger of the Computing Service and MISD will necessitate this being addressed and will almost certainly require a significantly different structure of computing committees. Consideration of the committee structure and the merger are inextricably linked.
Another consequence of the lack of respect for the professional, potentially very serious since it affects recruitment and retention, is, as Professor Shattock observes, a loss of morale amongst the professionals.
It was very apparent at last week's meeting that many Computer Officers feel very strongly that they unfairly lack status within the University, despite in many cases being very highly qualified. In fact there are many parallels between the difficulties experienced by Computer Officers throughout the University and those which Professor Shattock's report highlights for administrators. I hope that the University will bear this in mind when looking at the recommendations of the reports.
Professor T. D. LAMB
Vice-Chancellor, I warmly applaud the fact that you have both made your own statement and read the Council's statement to us today, and that the Registrary and the Treasurer have similarly made their statements.
Professors Finkelstein and Shattock must be congratulated for presenting such incisive reports, not only on this one sad episode, but also on the underlying problems. The critical test now will be to see how rapidly, and how completely, the University implements these sensible recommendations.
Professors Finkelstein and Shattock have identified numerous failings of management and of governance. I do not wish to revisit their findings, but I do wish to place a different emphasis in some areas, and to mention certain failures of attitude. I shall enumerate eight points:
1. Perhaps the first problem was the attitude, at senior management level, that CAPSA was a matter for officers further down the chain. Thus, it seems that the Vice-Chancellor felt that CAPSA was the responsibility of the Registrary, who in turn felt it was the responsibility of the Treasurer, who in turn felt it was the responsibility of a Director. We need to know where the buck stops, in regard to major financial decisions by the University.
2. In the committee system that was (and remains) in operation, the important decisions with respect to CAPSA were taken by the Resources and Planning Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Council. One cannot escape the observation that the chairman of each of these bodies was the Vice-Chancellor, and that the principal officers were in attendance. Our most senior officers were fully apprised of the CAPSA situation and its shortcomings, yet the University still went down the path that it did.
3. Vice-Chancellor, you referred to the steady shift that there has been in recent years towards the appointment of 'Directors' of various services, without properly incorporating these new offices into the formal university hierarchy. The present 'establishment list' of officers in the Old Schools fails to provide a fair description of the way in which the chain of command operates (or is intended to operate). Furthermore, the transition to this half-way house with unestablished Directors has been piecemeal, and has been poorly communicated, so that there is little understanding out in the Departments as to how these new posts are meant to operate.
As Dr Lintott remarked, the unsatisfactory nature of these administrative changes was raised by the Board of Scrutiny in their Fifth Report, dated June 2000. In the Discussion, the changes were accurately described by Dr Cowley as 'stealth re-organization'. In their Notice of 29 January, the Council stated that they were already considering a draft Report on unestablished Directorships, and that they expected to publish it in due course. But that was ten months ago. Where is the Report that the Council have been considering for such a length of time? [Note added in proof: I apologize for my error in not noticing the Council's Second Report, dated 24 September 2001.]
4. Professor Shattock has rightly drawn attention to 'rubber stamping' by the Council. But such a situation seems almost inevitable now that the frequency of meetings of the central bodies has been cut in half. In your address to the Regent House on 1 October, Vice-Chancellor, you said that you 'now find it easier to get through the agenda than it was when we met with twice the frequency'. But may I venture that there is more to the business of the central bodies than getting through the agenda easily. Surely the central bodies would be better able to provide proper evaluation and proper scrutiny of University business by returning to their previous schedules that had adequate numbers of meetings. The device of having an Executive Committee meet during the intervening month is most definitely not an adequate substitute. In the present instance it seems incredible that the Council have apparently not even convened a meeting at which to agree their statement that you read out to us today.
5. A recurring theme is that the central bodies have proved unwilling (or unable) to act upon criticism. Indeed, constructive criticism, of the kind offered by the Board of Scrutiny, appears to be regarded by certain members of the central bodies and administration as an act of treachery. In the immediate future, the central bodies will need to implement the numerous changes recommended by Professors Finkelstein and Shattock, but in the longer term they must be willing to act more fully on recommendations originating internally. It ought not to require external reports to get this University's senior officers to acknowledge, and to act upon, shortcomings.
6. A major problem in the University is that many ordinary academics (and it is academics who make up the bulk of our committees) feel a genuine sense of fear about criticizing the system. It is quite unacceptable in a University environment to countenance an atmosphere where bodies and individuals are (in the words of Professor Shattock) 'not willing to make statements that would be uncomfortable to higher bodies' (§5.17). Similarly, it is also quite unacceptable to suppress unpalatable information, and to concentrate instead on the publication of glossy images and rose-tinted views.
7. An important factor in this particular episode, not mentioned in the reports, but alluded to by previous speakers, appears to have been the decision of the University's two most senior officers to devote a considerable proportion of their time to dealing with a complicated individual case, at the expense of other University business. Let me emphasize that I deplore the way in which that individual conducted her case, and I deplore the intolerable load that she put on the administration. I realize that, as we've been told today, a substantial part of the reason for the administration's inability to function properly during the relevant period was that individual's presence on the Council, and her attempts to dominate Council business. But surely it would have been more productive for the University's most senior officers to have delegated the day-to-day handling of that individual case, so that they could have spent a greater proportion of their time at the helm.
8. I regret that I need to refer to what I see as a failure of the most senior officers and the central bodies to deal with certain potentially embarrassing problems. For example, for several years now the University has had the functions of the Secretary General performed by the Deputy Secretary General. For all I know, it is now conceivable that a comparable situation might arise in the Finance Division. It is critical that our leaders show the courage to grasp these nettles.
Vice-Chancellor, I have a very high regard for the sterling work done by the staff of the Old Schools, and indeed I have been amazed at the quality of what is done in an organization that is so chronically under-funded. But, sadly, the efforts of those staff, and the expectations of the University, are not matched by the performance of the bodies and the individuals at the top of the chain of command. Let us implement all the recommendations of these reports speedily. But let us also look further, at our other shortcomings.
Finally, Vice-Chancellor, who is going to implement these changes? And how? In their Annual Report for 1999-2000 the Council informed us that they had set up a Standing Committee on Governance back in the Lent Term of 2000. What has that committee actually done in the last two years? Why is the Committee not listed in the Officer's number of the Reporter? Why has it not consulted widely in the University, on such an important issue as governance? And why does the Council's Annual Report for 2000-01 provide us with no more than two sentences on the subject, telling us that the Council 'expect to publish a consultative paper' at some unspecified time in the coming academic year?
Vice-Chancellor, given the recent track record, it is a bit much to expect the Regent House to have faith that the existing internal machinery (whether or not with a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor) will be able to extract us from the present morass.
Dr D. SECHER
Vice-Chancellor, I have been Director of Research Services since the Research Services Division was created in March 2000. It is as Director of Research Services that I am contributing to the Discussion today, but not as Director of Research Services that I am eligible to attend the Discussion. Thanks to the generosity of Gonville and Caius College, I have been a member of the Regent House since 1974. For twenty-six of those twenty-seven and a half years, I have had an academic perspective on matters such as those we are discussing today and only for the past eighteen months an administrative perspective. I have had first-hand experience of biomedical research and biomedical research management in an academic environment, in small and large companies and in the charity sector. The small number of staff in the University administration who have enjoyed both a successful academic career and broad experience of management in the outside world may have contributed to the destructive polarization between administrative and academic staff in Cambridge.
The Research Services Division welcomes the CAPSA reports, which will accelerate the changes that are needed and which are now taking place. Much has already changed since the events described in the reports of fifteen months (and more) ago. A detailed project plan for the implementation of the recommendations needs to be published soon - after consultation - and its progress must be regularly monitored and publicized.
The issue of staff morale has been much discussed. There is diversity within the administration and best practice must constantly be shared. We have been supported by all parts of the Unified Administrative Service in developing the Research Services Division. My division has asked me to report that morale within the Research Services Division is high. Good internal communication, a positive and pro-active approach to problems, a radical re-organization, the introduction of annual appraisals for all staff, the formulation of service standards, the development of a Divisional Mission, and an active programme of staff development have all contributed to the creation of a sense of purpose within the Division. So too have the messages of support from academic colleagues who have noticed and benefited from the changes in the Division. In most organizations these measures would be regarded as basic good management, but the University seems to have had an aversion to this 'M- word'. It goes without saying that the administration should not manage the academics or the University. This would be as stupid as allowing the legal department to run an industrial company or the civil service to manage the government. However, the administration does need to be trusted - and adequately resourced - to manage the projects that implement academically determined policy. To develop this trust, the administration must ensure that the services we provide, support - and are seen to support - the academic community, with regular, transparent reviews of the effectiveness of the divisions of the Unified Administrative Service. Only then can we hope to show that the administration is an integral part of the business of the University, adding value to the core activities of teaching and research.
The staff of the Research Services Division - particularly those in the post-award group - are major users of the CAPSA Grants Module. Along with grant holders and departmental administrators, they have suffered and continue to suffer from the faults in the module. We have strategies in place, both for coping with the current system's limitations and for moving forward. The problems are still considerable and we do not know all the answers yet. Simon Jones, the Head of Research Grants and Contracts within the Research Services Division, is working closely with the Director of Finance and the CUFS operations group to identify and implement the best solution. He will be writing to all Departments later this week with a more detailed update than I can give you today.
This discussion is about CAPSA, but there are other areas where the University's effectiveness is jeopardized by the lack of trust between the academics and their administrators. An example in my area is the management of the relationship between companies and the University. We must develop and implement policy in an open and collaborative environment, learning from the experience of the past, rather than perpetuating the 'blame culture' that we see all around us in the University today.
A weakness of Discussions of the Regent House, is that personal remarks are allowed to cloud general issues. I hesitate, therefore, to make a personal comment, but I do want to reassure the Regent House on one point. Over the past thirty years, I have observed and experienced management - good and bad - in academia, in industry, and in the charity sector. I accepted my present position in the University, (after having turned down two earlier offers, one academic and one administrative), because I was impressed with the vision and commitment of the University - and in particular that of the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrary, and the Treasurer - both to reform the administration and to maintain the leading international position of the University. Since my appointment, I have worked with and been guided by the Treasurer. Whatever the Research Services Division has been able to achieve so far, would not have happened without her deep knowledge of the University and her skilful strategic thinking. Every business seeks to have advice of such calibre on its board of directors and the University will be the loser, if it fails to recognize and benefit from her talents.
If the Regent House votes placet next month, the Research Services Division will transfer to reporting to the Registrary. I look forward to working more closely with him to continue to bring about the necessary reforms in our administration.
Dr M. D. SAYERS
Vice-Chancellor, I speak as Director of the University Computing Service and Secretary of the Information Technology Syndicate. Both Professors Finkelstein and Shattock recommend the merger of MISD with the Computing Service. Finkelstein thinks this would make it easier to recruit and retain staff because they would be part of a larger unit with a better career structure and Shattock cites his own university of Warwick where a merger was beneficial. There is very little further justification for the recommendation in either report. Nor is there any clear preference amongst the Russell Group of universities. Of the eleven who responded to my recent enquiry, four are merged, two are merged but keep a separate SAP financial systems team and five are separate. I hope that we will look very carefully to see if any real benefits can be obtained before we embark on a merger in Cambridge.
In the short term, I believe we must concentrate on recruiting a suitable person to lead MISD and on recruiting sufficient staff to make the team viable. It cannot be right, in my view, for Cambridge to rely for ever on external contractors in order to develop and maintain systems which are so vital to the University. If we carry on doing things this way, we will continue to be vulnerable to many of the problems we have suffered with CAPSA.
For the longer term, we must examine whether there are benefits to be gained by sharing some support functions between MISD and the Computing Service and whether there would be any advantage in having a common management structure. For the present, I would suggest that what looks superficially attractive may not remain so when examined in detail. As an example, consider the support of Unix systems on which CAPSA and most of the University's large IT systems run. The Computing Service does not actually have a team supporting our Unix boxes. Our large applications, like the electronic mail service and the web services run on Unix boxes but the operating system is heavily optimized for the particular application and the support is provided by the mail team and the web team respectively. I believe this to be the case with CAPSA also; the Unix operating system is heavily configured to deliver the best performance for the Oracle database and support is provided for the combination of Oracle plus Unix. There may be a need for a University Oracle support team but we do not have one at present in the Computing Service.
There is of necessity a different style of operation between the Computing Service and MISD. The Computing Service's role is to provide the facilities which are needed to support research and teaching in the University. To do this effectively, we need to operate on the leading edge of technology, we need to upgrade services frequently and we accept a higher level of innovation and hence of risk. This is not appropriate for MISD where stability and the lowest possible level of risk are the priorities. There may, notwithstanding the different styles, be areas where staff from the Computing Service and MISD can work together at the grass roots level more than they do at present. This would be greatly facilitated if they were accommodated in the same area and may be impossible to achieve otherwise.
Turning to the suggestions about recruitment, it is true that the Computing Service has had some success in recruiting very able people in junior grades and bringing them on rapidly to become essential members of our team. To some extent, association with the teaching and research work of the University is an attraction to set against the poor salaries. Merging with MISD would only transfer this success to the recruitment and retention of Oracle data base administrators if they were persuaded that the University offered an equally attractive career progression for them. I doubt very much that this is the case because the natural career path for them is in commerce, industry and consultancy. I hope we will, however, press on urgently to remove the impediments to recruitment imposed by our appointments procedures and that we will address the problems of salaries as recommended in the reports.
I would like to close, Vice-Chancellor, with some remarks on the recommendations in the reports about committee structures. I think it would be worthwhile investigating whether benefit could be obtained by having one committee dealing with IT strategy in the University which would include academic, administrative, and College interests. As our new Management Information Systems are designed to deliver function through the University network into Departments and Colleges like our academic systems, the case for having one body to examine and develop strategy seems stronger. Perhaps such an IT Committee should merge the interests of the Information Technology Syndicate and the IS Group and report to the Council. Perhaps we should also consider, when we examine how line management is to be strengthened in the University, whether we need a Director of IT responsible for strategy who would be a member of the new set of Directors and to whom the heads of academic and administrative computing should report. I am not clear in my own mind of the benefits to be gained from this but I think it should be examined. May I sum up with the hope that the Council will examine all the recommendations closely, consult with those involved, and consider whether real benefits can be obtained before attempting to act on them.
[Notice by the Editor: additional remarks on the Report to the Audit Committee and the Board of Scrutiny on CAPSA and its implementation will be offered at the 4 December Discussion, and will be published in the 12 December edition of the Reporter.]
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Cambridge University Reporter, 5 December 2001
Copyright © 2001 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.