The effective presentation of a university the size of Cornell requires a communications model based on collaboration and the delivery of unified messages with one voice, Vice President for University Communications Tommy Bruce said Feb. 22 during a presentation on his division's role in the university's Administrative Streamlining Program (ASP). Since 2009 Cornell has been assessing its administrative services through the ASP, with the goal of saving up to $85 million annually by 2015.

"We want to connect the communicators, create a collaborative team, bringing together the communications operations around campus with University Communications in such a way that we all meet our responsibilities and tasks but we're working together," Bruce said.

He covered progress in five areas: streamlining administrative communications, creating more partnerships among the division and communications staff in academic units, aggregating and tracking total university spending on communications, shifting to a cost-allocation method for services from a cost-recovery model and redefining the communications job family.

"If we get through these in short order, we'll be in a very advantageous place and even more effective than we already are, in the process showing the way to our colleagues across the country," he said.

To streamline administrative communications, the division has been taking greater responsibility for communicating the breadth of Cornell's universitywide educational, research and outreach programs and managing the university's brand. The division now handles communications for the alumni affairs and development and human resources divisions.

At the same time, academic units are best positioned to develop content about the depth of Cornell -- that is, content about their faculty's expertise and their students' experiences. "That lends a dynamism to the presentation; it projects a deeper truth about what we do," Bruce said.

The breadth/depth model has led to greater collaboration -- and savings. "Duplication is one of the biggest spending drivers in communications," he said. Efforts to reduce redundancy include a digital repository, dubbed the "digital well," that allows communicators to share content that can then be repurposed across campus.

Other savings goals are to consolidate content production and dissemination, cluster common products or tasks, reduce spending on freelancers, instill branding discipline and distribute more information electronically. That should save $500,000 annually by fiscal year 2012.

Developing a job family and revising job descriptions for communicators also is essential, Bruce said, because some were written eras ago, and roles and responsibilities are no longer clearly defined with terms that translate in today's world. The division is also clarifying the training and resources communicators need for professional development.

During the question period, Bruce said there are no plans for layoffs, but as positions become vacant, they will be assessed as to whether they are necessary. He also noted that freelancers and their infusion of new ideas can be useful when staff members are saturated with work, but will be used less often than in the past.

The next steps, Bruce said, include his collaboration on budgetary issues with Vice President for Planning and Budget Elmira Mangum. Discussions are underway to integrate communications for the Division of Student and Academic Services, and service-level agreements and memoranda of understanding are in the works to clarify the services that University Communications will provide to administrative divisions, colleges and schools.

Most of the initiatives should be completed by June 30. The redefinition of the communications job family should be finished by early 2012, he said.