Mainz University of Applied Sciences is receiving state funding for the digital switchover of its internal university administrative processes. Dr. Denis Alt, State Secretary at the Ministry of Science and Health, presented the €117,007 grant to Vice President Professor Dr. Anett Mehler-Bicher and Chancellor Jens Egler on April 13th. The state funds from the Program to Increase Digitalization at Universities of Applied Sciences will be used to ensure process development by increasing staffing levels in addition to project coordination.
“The changeover to digital processes is a huge task for all university administrations in the state in the years ahead. The state is pleased to provide support in meeting this challenge with its Program to Strengthen Digitalization at Universities of Applied Sciences in the amount of 50 million Euro,” said State Secretary Alt. He added that the state government will closely support the universities in this endeavor, particularly in the area of administrative digitalization, which involves a large number of administrative processes on very different levels and in different areas.
“The corona situation has highlighted the need for the digitalization of administrative processes and structures in the long term. We now need to press ahead with digitalizing a large number of specialized processes, so I am very pleased to be receiving this funding and support,” remarked Jens Egler, Chancellor of Mainz University of Applied Sciences.
“Mainz University of Applied Sciences will use the funds provided by the Ministry in a focused approach, enabling us to significantly move forward with digitalization. The solutions we have already achieved in the past 24 months demonstrate clear potential and point the way forward for the next steps in digitalization at Mainz University of Applied Sciences,” emphasized Professor Dr. Anett Mehler-Bicher, Vice President of Digitalization and Research at Mainz University of Applied Sciences.
The university intends to establish a project management team to manage and coordinate the digitalization process. Moreover, consolidation of coordination and fine-tuning roles will help achieve standardization in terms of process development, documentation, and description. This will lay key foundations to support the pandemic-related shift of activities to the respective home offices of staff members and significantly accelerate its implementation.
With the aim of further separating administrative services from the physical presence of students and staff at the university while ensuring access to university services, in the spring of 2021 the universities of applied sciences decided to work with each other and in close collaboration with the Center for University IT Rhineland-Palatinate (ZIT-RLP) to advance the digitalization of their administrative processes. The new project management team will make an important contribution to implementing these digitalization measures at Mainz University of Applied Sciences as quickly as possible.