Administrative Excellence Initiative and Procurement Initiative

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community:

In these times of tight funding, we need your help.

Last Thursday, you received a message from Daniel Ennis, senior vice president for finance and administration, announcing the start of the Administrative Excellence Initiative and its first phase: the Johns Hopkins University Procurement Initiative.

With the assistance of Deloitte Consulting, we have begun an 18-week examination of the university's purchasing activity. The idea is to identify the best opportunities for us to save you money and improve the service you receive, while maintaining flexibility and responsiveness. Guiding this process will be the Procurement Advisory Committee, a carefully selected group of faculty members and administrators who will make sure that the people who are most affected by this work are heard.

Evaluating how and from whom we buy everything from lab equipment to office supplies is a first step toward finding meaningful ways to save money and improve service levels in a relatively short period of time. The opportunities we identify together will help principal investigators make the most of their grant funding, and will help all offices and departments stretch their budgets, freeing the university community to focus its resources on mission-critical work.

To do this, we need your help, both during this exploratory phase and as we begin to move beyond analysis to make real changes. Together, we will learn about how we spend our money and what opportunities exist to buy smarter. We will work to understand what is important to you, examine the trade-offs, and move forward with a realistic plan to achieving economically meaningful savings that will help us all.

How can you help?

1. Complete the JHU Procurement Survey, online at https://deloittesurvey.deloitte.com/Community/se.ashx?s=3FC11B260E2F2A33. Follow this link and complete a short survey seeking your feedback on current purchasing practices and potential areas of opportunity.
2. Serve, if asked. As we begin looking for ways to save, we will need people to confirm our findings so we fully understand each opportunity, and support the development and implementation of the plan.
3. Stay engaged. Share your ideas. Make suggestions. Follow our progress.

We have attached a list of the members of the Procurement Advisory Committee. Please feel free to contact us directly or at JHUProcureProject@jhu.edu with your questions, comments or concerns.

Sincerely,
Jerry Hart
Professor and Chairman, Department of Biological Chemistry
School of Medicine 

Dan Cronin
Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration
Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Committee Members
Norma Berry, administrator, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Lisa Campbell, assistant administrator, Finance and Research Operations, The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins

Geof Corb, deputy CIO, IT@Johns Hopkins, Enterprise Applications, University Administration

Ken Grant, vice president, General Services, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Supply Chain Management, Johns Hopkins Health System

Vince Hilser, professor, Department of Biology, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Pablo Iglesias, professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Whiting School of Engineering

Nick Langhauser, chief financial officer, Business Services Department, Applied Physics Laboratory

Jonathan Links, professor and chief risk officer, Division of Molecular and Translational Toxicology, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Bloomberg School of Public Health

Scott McGhee, senior administrative manager, Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, Whiting School of Engineering

Mary-Lisa Price, administrator, Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine

Valerie Provenza, administrator, Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine

Jane Schlegel, senior associate dean for finance and administration, Business Office, Bloomberg School of Public Health

Alan Scott, associate professor, Genetic Resources Core Facility, School of Medicine

Erika Wagner, administrative manager, Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health

Keith West, professor and director, Center for Human Nutrition, Bloomberg School of Public Health