The ITM management team has for a while discussed the importance of strengthening the links and communication between the line organization and the education dimension. A working group with representation of the PA:s, directors of study, education administrators and line managers has during 2016 worked out a draft basis for new Rules of procedure for how to operate our educational programs. Based on this, a new organisation structure has been decided upon. This decision was recently communicated via our intranet, just as we always we do with important news within the School. The draft of the rules of procedure will now be further elaborated in the new GU (Grundutbildningsutskott) which replaces the former UN (Utbildningsnämnd). The time line is that new Rules of procedure should be decided upon and in operation before the fall semester 2017.
Our new president, Sigbritt Karlsson, has announced that the KTH Board has initiated the work towards a new KTH Development plan. It is preliminary said that the plan should cover the period 2018-2023 and that a close to final version should be available for the board meeting in October. Ideas on structure and content have not yet been communicated but a likely focus might be on three pillars; equality, internationalization and sustainable development which Sigbritt already has communicated.
As was mentioned in my last blog the annual ITM leaders’ conference took place on January 11-12 and was focused two things:
- Some first creative discussions as a basis for the next ITM development plan. A few keywords from all the group-work are: Utilizing school synergy; efficiency in support functions; impact strategies; ITM common technical or non-technical cores in research; digitalization; big data; facilities, environment and space for better synergy; culture, operations and activities for better synergy.
- Half a day with professional external expertise to learn and discuss how we can improve our working environment in order to reduce negative stress among all personnel.
Finally, two new tentative policies which might be introduced within ITM:
- All employees should use the Outlook calendar for planning time, and the calendar should be open (for time slots, but not content) within ITM.
- The default configuration for internet browsers will be the ITM intranet.
Let’s see if we get some reactions to these tentative policies!
All the best,
Jan Wikander, Dean of School
I know for sure that some of my colleagues will be very happy about a outlook calender policy saying that everyone should use it. I also know that there are one or two that will say that they will leave KTH if that is so… I am not a user of it for my own schedule, I blame having to jobs, bad overview and hating to be connected to my phone or computer all the time. But of course I realize to positive outcomes of it for my surrounding.
A change in procedures or tools will always be associated with pros and cons, and those will be different from person to person. A change where the pros outnumbers the cons to a large enough extent should still be exercised, and this I believe is the case here. About the two jobs, they are easily managed with two calendars which very conveniently can we viewed separately or combined. About being connected, I think most of us carry the phone with us at least as much time as the paper calendar is carried (for those who have one).
You are probably right about this… I won’t take a fight about it. I am just a very slow technology adopter 😉