At the beginning of this year, the UT called in the external consultancy firm Improfin. 'With the financial challenges we are currently facing, the functioning of our financial management is important,' says Executive Board spokesperson Laurens van der Velde. 'That's why, earlier this year, we asked an external party to take a fresh look at how it currently functions and how we can make improvements. We wanted to hold up that mirror to ourselves and improve our organisation.'
The report of that external party, which is not public, is in the hands of Tubantia. On the basis of the report, the newspaper paints the picture that the UT has too little financial control and mandate to financially adjust the UT at all levels. 'People mainly focus on the interests of their own faculty, department, service or department. That is undesirable', is the conclusion.
This conclusion does not come out of the blue. For example, it recently became clear from several management reports that the UT is having the greatest possible difficulty in making the austerity measures effective. Moreover, a bitter conclusion in the latest management report is that 'the structure of the financial administration and the budget formats makes it difficult to manage the cuts'. The University Council also repeatedly pointed out the lack of direction and leadership to the Executive Board.
Spokesperson Van der Velde cannot yet say whether the UT will make the already leaked report public in the short term. The report will soon be discussed with those involved. 'To draw up a joint plan of action. We are using this external analysis to further strengthen the finance function, currently prioritizing which recommendations we want to address first. This is in addition to the initiatives already underway to ensure that our financial structure fuctions as well as possible. We know there is room for improvement and are working on it,' says Van der Velde.
