Principles and Guidelines to Govern UCSF Budget Reductions

1. The cause of and the case for budget reductions will be communicated clearly and systematically. 2. The engagement and decision processes and criteria for choosing reductions will be transparent; outcomes and their reasons will be reported. 3. The process will be sensitive to key aspects of the best of UCSF's culture. 4. Core academic capabilities will be least impacted. 5. Reductions and potential reallocations will also be judged on the basis of alignment with UCSF's Strategic Plan. 6. Administrative costs, defined very broadly – from central to departmental administration – will be a key focus of the budget adjustments. 7. Recognizing that good administrative support is critical to leveraging faculty members' core activities of teaching, research and patient care, administrative costs should not "automatically" bear the full brunt of cost reductions; non-core programs will be a focus as well. 8. Revenue options, where feasible, will be invoked to reduce the size of expense reductions. 9. Reductions will not be made across the board. 10. Proposals for budget reductions, retention of current levels of funding, or potential revenue options will require business cases exploring the full impact (all externalities) of proposed actions. 11. Reductions in staff will be achieved as much as possible through attrition; critical vacancies will be filled with internal candidates where possible. 12. Strategic investments will be made if they reduce future continuing costs sufficiently and preserve or enhance service. 13. Use of reserves will be justified only to ease transitions to well-defined, permanent budget-reduction solutions. Source: Resource Management, Planning and Allocation: An Updated Budget Overview, FY 2008-09