Melissa Ludwig, San Antonio Express News, Was Contacted with a Concern from an Employee
Melissa Ludwig, San Antonio Express News, was contacted with a concern from an Employee that they no longer have access to comparative budget information at Dean/Dept level within the College. The concern was a lack of transparency of how resources are allocated.
We committed to provide a follow-up answer to Ms. Ludwig on the following questions:
- What level of comparative Dean/Department Budget reporting is available at each College?
- Has there been any change to the information available?
What has changed?
1.When the District switched Finance systems from Advantage to Banner in 2006, screen access controls were implemented by job title per strong recommendation of Alamo Colleges Internal Audit. Previously system access was available for everyone.
2.A full-time Information Security Officer was hired to implement and manage data security at all levels, and to develop policies on the access to and use of Student, Financial and Employee data.
3.Access to view financial activity directly in the Banner System (operational budgets) is granted to those individuals possessing initiator and approver rights for the departments he or she supports or directs. Those rights are retained as long as their respective role and responsibilities remain intact.
4.SAS reporting tool was implemented to provide any management reporting of budgets and/or actual activity; however is not as robust as the new Argos reporting tool being implemented over the next year with Banner. See below for level of comparative Dean/Department Budget reporting and budget allocation processes followed at each College. There has been no change in the frequency and/ or level of sharing of this information.
Budget Department Allocation and Reporting - Common to all Colleges: The college budget is allocated to divisions through a joint process of each College’s administrative team. Division deans or vice presidents are responsible for allocating to departments and units. Department and unit budgets are available to the budget managers and to the division deans or vice-presidents (approvers) through banner or in comparative statements in Self-Serve and E-Print.
The Campus Budget Officer is responsible for providing the campus’ collective financial information, both revenue and expenses, to the President and the leadership team. Comparative analysis is provided regularly and on an ad hoc basis. There has been no change in the frequency and/ or level of sharing of this information.
This is in addition to the District-provided Budget Books (printed and electronic) available on the Alamo Colleges website and distributed to each college president, VPCS, College Budget Officers, Faculty Senate, Staff Council, & College Libraries and one to The Ranger – this is in addition to the printed documents made available to the Board members, Board Liaison, Chancellor, Vice Chancellors, & their Executive Assistants and numerous Department Directors.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS – SOME OF THE COLLEGES:
Northwest Vista College: General budget town-hall sessions with college-level reporting are held annually around the summer and open to campus (students and community members are not restricted from attending). Expense reports by organization and pool are presented to executive team annually, each semester, and as needed/requested. Any other reports are promptly provided on as an-needed basis and by request (informal). The Campus Budget Officer also pulls monthly revenue and expense reports for the purpose of monitoring the budgets, but these are not distributed to any specific group (but are available for viewing by anyone with general access to the internal network…i.e. NVC employees). We are not aware of any such college-level budget reporting requests made or referred to the Budget Office at NVC within the past year or more, so no request has ever been denied. No change has been made to information available.
San Antonio College:. Budget reports are developed by the Vice President of College Services and shared with the administrative team monthly.
Palo Alto College: PAC begins planning & budgeting every September. Every unit proposes goals (with requests for resources), & must link those to Alamo Colleges’ goals.We collect all of those requests via our online system & then prioritize in early Spring. The total requests and those funded are disseminated at meetings and posted on the web (IR site).