Shared Service Center - Davis

The UC Davis Shared Services Center (website) is a campus unit that consolidates varied administrative services, including payroll, HR, and accounts payable in a single operating unit. The concept behind shared services is to be more efficient and save cost by handling common transactions in one place. The Shared Services Center launched in February 2012.

Several administrative units are participating in shared services, including Administrative and Resource Management, Information and Educational Technology, Offices of the Chancellor and Provost, Office of Research vice chancellor's office, Student Affairs, Development and Alumni Relations and External Relations. An initiative to implement shared services among academic units is in the planning stages.

Utilization of shared services has raised questions for some participating campus units, and represents an existential threat to others. According to the California Aggie, ASUCD be required to use the SSC and that it pay $384,249 a year—approximately 40% of the ASUCD annual fee— for the privilege. This seems reasonable until you realize that that ASUCD's in-house bureaucracy currently does the same thing the SSC will do for approximately $150,000 a year.

"Mark Champagne, in an Aggie editorial, states that, "We have a situation where the University administration mandates that ASUCD pay a $235,560 fee for which they receive NOTHING." If the tax is implemented, in the words of former UC Regent Arnold Schwarzenegger, there will be "armaggeddon cuts and fiscal chaos" in ASUCD.

On April 5, 2012, ASUCD President Rebecca Sterling announced that ASUCD would be temporarily exempted from the Shared Services Center for the 2012-13 fiscal year.¹

The formation of a shared service center was a key concept of the Organizational Excellence Initiative, which was introduced in 2010 by Chancellor Linda Katehi to "improve the efficiency and effectiveness of [UC Davis] administrative processes." The shared service center is now an autonomous operating unit, and the Organizational Excellence Initiative continues, with a focus on other issues and streamlining opportunities.

Campus news announcement of Shared Service Center Opening