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Category: OPB News and Announcements

UW Profiles Receives Industry’s Most Prestigious Honor

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UW Profiles – a set of dynamic, web-based data dashboards – recently received The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) Best Practices Award.  This award is widely considered to be the business intelligence industry’s most prestigious honor.

OPB’s Institutional Data & Analysis team developed UW Profiles, in collaboration with UW IT’s Enterprise Information, Integration & Analytics team, and formally launched the site in fall 2013.  UW Profiles allows users to explore core UW data through 21 visual dashboards that display summary, comparison and trend data.

Campus Technology Innovators also honored UW Profiles, calling it “an intuitive, user-friendly portal that provides a single point of access to data and visualizations for faculty and staff.”

Congratulations to Institutional Analysis and to all those who worked hard to make UW Profiles a reality!

The OPB website has been reorganized!

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Thanks for your patience!  We’ve completed our reorganization of the OPB website.

We hope that the new website structure is more user-friendly and intuitive.  However, if you have questions or if you notice that any bookmarks or hyperlinks no longer work, please let me (Becka Johnson Poppe) know.

Please note, due to space restrictions, we did not end up creating a separate “Compensation” tab.  Instead, a “Compensation” drop-down menu item is available under the “UW Budget” tab.

OPB Website Undergoing Reorganization 5/6-5/8

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From Wednesday, May 6, through Friday, May 8, the OPB website will be undergoing reorganization. Changes will include:

  • Reconfiguring the “UW Budget” tab;
  • Adding a new “Compensation” tab;
  • Disaggregating the “Policy Analysis” tab into new tabs for “State Operations,” OPB briefs and the OPBlog; and
  • Deleting the “Campus & Capital Planning” tab (information previously accessed through this tab will continue to be available via the OUA website).

The “Tuition & Fees” and “UW Data” tabs will remain relatively unchanged for the time being.

After the reorganization is complete, we will post a sitemap to the OPB home page and we will post a notice to OPBlog.  If you have saved bookmarks or hyperlinks that no longer work after May 8, please contact Becka Johnson Poppe.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your patience!

UW’s Annual Economic Impact on Washington State

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In May 2014, Tripp Umbach, a national leader in economic impact analysis, was retained by the UW to update its 2010 analysis of the economic, employment and government revenue impacts of operations and research of all of its campuses.  The updated Economic Impact Report reveals that University of Washington’s annual economic impact on the state of Washington is now $12.5 billion an increase from $9.1 billion just five years ago.

An article regarding this is posted on Seattle Times as well.

UW Plans To Create Startup Hub in Condon Hall

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The University of Washington (UW) plans to convert a small section of the UDistrict into a “startup hub” that will help connect UW research activity with the entrepreneurial talent who can help commercialize it. The effort will begin with just one floor of Condon Hall – the old law school, which currently houses departments displaced by other campus construction – but will expand if there is demand. The ground floor will be transformed into an open meeting area, or “mixing chamber,” where University-based entrepreneurs can connect and collaborate with the startup community, including startups that don’t necessarily have a connection to the UW. The third floor may eventually be converted into space for startups. So far, TechStars, Founder’s Co-op, and UP Global (formerly Startup Weekend) are considering taking space on the second floor starting next July.

The Office of Planning & Budgeting and the Office of the University Architect are working on this and other UDistrict planning efforts. To read more about this project, see the article by GeekWire. For more information about UDistrict planning as a whole, see the recent Seattle Times article and visit the U District Livability Partnership website.

Governor Releases 2014 Supplemental Budgets

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Governor Jay Inslee released 2014 supplemental budgets, making changes to the current 2013-15 (FY14 & FY15) biennial operating and capital budgets. As a reminder, both chambers of the Legislature will propose their own supplemental budgets throughout this short 60-day session as they work towards compromise budgets.

The supplemental operating budget would provide an additional $1 million for the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design and $500,000 for an Advanced Materials Manufacturing Facility plan, associated with the ongoing attempt to keep Boeing’s production of the 777x and its carbon fiber wing in Washington.

Additionally, the Governor’s supplemental operating budget appropriated new funds for the College Bound program and the Entrepreneurs-In-Residence program.

The budget also contains some changes to the UW’s state appropriation related to unanticipated positive claim activity for health insurance. The change appears to be a reduction in funding available to the UW during FY15. More information will follow as details are available.

The Governor did not provide additional capital funding for the UW in his supplemental capital budget.

A full budget briefing is available on OPB’s website. As usual, please post any comments or questions you may have.

Special Session Concluded

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Governor Inslee signed two bills into law Monday, November 11th, to encourage Boeing to build 777X planes in the Pacific Northwest. Both bills remained largely unchanged from their original form and neither included provisions for the University of Washington. Bill summaries are available in this linked PDF and also this House bill report.

While Boeing stands to benefit most from this bill activity, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges would receive $8 million in supplemental operating appropriations for 1,000 additional student FTE in aerospace worker education and training.

Update: Special Legislative Session

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Governor Jay Inslee called the Washington State Legislature back to Olympia beginning today, Thursday, November 7, 2013 to introduce and ultimately approve several bills aimed at Boeing production of a 777x plane and its carbon fiber wing. The Governor’s press conference is available on line, but a cursory read of the initial bills introduced today indicate that the package will not directly affect the University of Washington.

Stay tuned!

Legislature Adjourns, Special Session Starts May 13

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The 105-day state legislative session officially ended this Sunday, April 28th. Unfortunately, the state legislature was unable to reach a compromise on the budget by the end of the session. A significant cause of the impasse is the Washington State Supreme Court ruling that requires the legislature to fully fund K-12 education.  The House budget proposal repeals eleven tax exemptions and extends several other taxes, diverting $1.17 billion into education, while the Senate version cuts several social programs to fund education with $1 billion. Governor Inslee has called a special session, to begin May 13th, in order to pass a compromise budget and to pass legislation on other issues such as universal background checks for gun purchases, the state DREAM act, tougher DUI laws, and the Reproductive Parity Act. When special session begins, all bills that have passed out of the house of origin will be reintroduced in that house and placed on third reading.  Budget writers will stay in Olympia to try to work on a compromise in the next two weeks. As always, we will post any updates on their progress to this blog. Be sure to monitor the UW State Relations blog for updates as well.