I could probably list ten examples, but I will limit myself to two easy (or not) to explain examples.
1. To take my research group to dinner, e.g., if a visitor comes to town, requires that I submit a form with about ten fields. We have to name all attendees, date and time of dinner. When the form is submitted, some admin will call the restaurant to organize that the bill is sent to the university. But before all this, I have to call the restaurant to make a reservation. (One time I forgot this and it caused a lot of confusion… I thought the whole idea was to get approval before booking.) Then if the admin approve, it goes to my department head who also has to approve. Actually, before the whole process I have to get an informal approval from my HoD. All this requires a lot of careful planning with all attendees and so forth… it may not sound so bad, but I didn’t mention that the admins require that we submit the form at least five work days in advance to be guaranteed processing in time for the dinner… that’s a lot of hassle pre-dinner… compared to the previous approach; ask HoD if ok, go to dinner, pay with CC, submit receipt and get reimbursed.
(Sorry the explanation became more complicated than necessary because I couldn’t remember the ordering of the steps off the top of my head… goes without saying — we spend a lot less funds on dinners after this system was introduced, which is why I keep forgetting the steps…)
2. Our travel reimbursement system is based on the infamous SAP platform… last time I traveled I spent four hours filling the form. We need to provide loads of unnecessary details. And every minor change to a form field requires a save to the database, which typically takes about a second or two in the best case. The system is broken.
They keep hiring more admins that are supposed to help. The result is more admin tasks being pushed down to the faculty…
1. To take my research group to dinner, e.g., if a visitor comes to town, requires that I submit a form with about ten fields. We have to name all attendees, date and time of dinner. When the form is submitted, some admin will call the restaurant to organize that the bill is sent to the university. But before all this, I have to call the restaurant to make a reservation. (One time I forgot this and it caused a lot of confusion… I thought the whole idea was to get approval before booking.) Then if the admin approve, it goes to my department head who also has to approve. Actually, before the whole process I have to get an informal approval from my HoD. All this requires a lot of careful planning with all attendees and so forth… it may not sound so bad, but I didn’t mention that the admins require that we submit the form at least five work days in advance to be guaranteed processing in time for the dinner… that’s a lot of hassle pre-dinner… compared to the previous approach; ask HoD if ok, go to dinner, pay with CC, submit receipt and get reimbursed.
(Sorry the explanation became more complicated than necessary because I couldn’t remember the ordering of the steps off the top of my head… goes without saying — we spend a lot less funds on dinners after this system was introduced, which is why I keep forgetting the steps…)
2. Our travel reimbursement system is based on the infamous SAP platform… last time I traveled I spent four hours filling the form. We need to provide loads of unnecessary details. And every minor change to a form field requires a save to the database, which typically takes about a second or two in the best case. The system is broken.
They keep hiring more admins that are supposed to help. The result is more admin tasks being pushed down to the faculty…