October 24, 2002
New Web site created to encourage good ideas
Got a hot idea for improving some UW system? Looking for a hot idea to solve some problem you face at work? In either case, you might be interested in logging on to a new Web site, the UW Forum for Change.
The Forum for Change is an idea-sharing Web site created by the President’s Staff Forum, a group convened to advise the president on staff issues.
“An earlier Web site had been created by the staff forum, called idea.net, to allow people to submit good ideas for consideration,” says Tasha Taylor, administrative assistant in the Faculty Senate Office and a third-year member of the staff forum. “But it wasn’t having the effect it was designed to have because more staffing would have been needed to make it work.”
The staff forum pondered how the idea behind the site could be realized. “We wanted an environment that would encourage change without a structure — something where people wouldn’t have to submit an idea to be approved or not,” Taylor says.
The Forum for Change, therefore, is designed to allow people to log on and interact with each other. Participants can go online to share a good idea or to ask for help in addressing a problem. Their fellow participants can then respond. It’s also possible for participants to have messages from the forum sent directly to their e-mail.
Two members of the staff forum will be monitoring the site, not to moderate the discussion, but to troll for good ideas to take to the president.
The site takes its cue from real life experience. For example, a new process that was established to eliminate the need to set up purchase orders online in PAS for certain kinds of payments and reimbursements under $3,000 was the result of an idea submitted to Payables Administration from an outside source. Called Check Request, the process was then developed in a collaborative way, by including both people who would administer it and people who would use it.
That’s exactly what the staff forum has in mind for its Forum for Change. They hope a network of individuals who are implementing change on campus will develop through interaction on the Web site.
To log onto the UW Forum for Change, look for the link on the MyUW page. Or go directly to the Web page, http://www.washington.edu/president/staff-forum/FFC/. For more information about the site, contact Taylor at 206-543-2637 or tktaylor@u.washington.edu.
The Staff Forum meets with President McCormick every two months to discuss a variety of UW policy issues, such as the evaluation of University task force reports, priorities for the University’s legislative agenda and how best to achieve those priorities, and sharing the skills of University staff most effectively in the local community and in University planning activities. For more information log on to http://www.washington.edu/president/staff-forum/
