Achieving KI's vision through prioritised focus areas

Purpose: The mission aims to strengthen the leadership culture and promote the organisation's ability to address complex challenges.

Goal: The goal is to equip our leaders to increase the organisation's ability to solve complex challenges. This ambition requires us to train and develop the ability to engage in dialogue. A dialogue-based approach also creates the conditions for increased cohesion across organisational, hierarchical and professional boundaries and strengthens the ability to integrate a trust-based work culture.

Process and timetable:

HT 2024, Phase 1, implemented: pilot with the dean of the Solna group of departments, heads of department and AC. Dialogue training linked to central processes and complex challenges across departmental boundaries and professions.

HT 2024, Phase 2 runs during the autumn semester 2024. Pilot 1: concept for management team development is tested and evaluated together with the President's management team and the PS management team. Pilot 2: New concept of dialogue training for the new manager programme. Pilot 3: MTC dialogue training linked to the department's strategic processes and identified challenges/opportunities linked to KI's overall development work.

VT 2025, Phase 3: Evaluation of Phase 1 and 2 and offer of extended support for dialogue training and management team development.

Responsible: Johanna Bäckström, HR Director

Contact person: Ulrika Ekblad

Representatives from core operations: Anders Gustafsson

Responsible: Peter Andréasson, Communications Director

Contact person: Anna Broberg

Representative from KI's core operations: Anders Gustafsson

About the assignment: The assignment focuses on improving internal communication at KI by increasing the clarity, coordination and prioritization of the communication work.

The work is divided into three main phases:

• Phase 1 involves ongoing work to improve management's strategic internal communication, including clarifying communication channels and strengthening employee and manager communication.
• Phase 2 aims to further deepen the work by improving the coordination and efficiency of internal communication channels and strengthening collaboration within the organization.
• Phase 3 focuses on the long-term management and development of strategic communication, with the aim of maintaining and continuously improving a communicative culture within KI.

Purpose: The project aims to clarify the division of responsibilities between line and collegial bodies within the management organisation. It is mainly about defining issues for collegial decision-making and line decisions.

Goal: Increased collegial influence in matters requiring scientific and pedagogical competence, and clarifying the areas of responsibility where line decisions are necessary. The project strives for clarity and transparency within the KI management structure.

Process and timetable:

VT 2024, Phase 1, completed: Amended delegation from president to deans and departmental groups

HT 2024, Phase 2 will take place during the autumn of 2024, with the President's decision and execution of delegations as of January 2025. This includes deepening and further clarifications to the delegation decision that applies from July 1, 2024.

Responsible: Veronika Sundström, University Director

Contact person: Björn Forslöw

Representatives from KI's core operations: KI's deans

Anchoring: Dialogue takes place at head of department meetings, AC meetings and with the Faculty Board. Collaboration with student representatives and inter-agency collaboration is also included, as well as on the Staff Portal.

Responsible: Marie-Louice Isacson, Head of Faculty Office and International Relations

Contact person: Gustaf Cars, coordinator

Summary: The assignment is to conduct a review of KI's councils and boards to increase clarity and transparency. The aim is to create a more appropriate and transparent structure with clear mandates and reporting lines. The working group will meet four times during the autumn of 2024 to develop a proposal for a new structure for the collegial bodies, with a focus on the faculty board and its sub-bodies. Once finalised, this proposal will be widely communicated to gather input from different parts of the organisation.

The B2 remit does not cover the organisation of programme boards in undergraduate and postgraduate education, the electoral organisation, steering/advisory groups to university-wide functions, or departmental groupings.

Representatives from the core activities:
Convener/Chair: Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren
Student representative: Arvid Hultgård
KI North: Marie Hasselberg, Head of Department
KI Solna: Susanne Nylén, Head of Department
KI South: Maria Ankarkrona, Head of Department
The Committee for Higher Education: Johanna Zilliacus
The Committee for Doctoral Education: Andreas Lundquist
The Committee for Research: Caroline Graff
The Faculty Board: Anna Norrby-Teglund
The Faculty Council: Bengt Fadeel
Adjunct member: Ninib Baryawno, Chairman Junior Faculty

The assignment is dependent on work underway in other areas and will be updated with names of responsible and contact persons in 2025.

Purpose: The aim of the assignment is to improve KI's strategic skills supply by creating a long-term and systematic model for recruiting and sizing staff.

Goal: The goal is to ensure that KI has the right skills to meet future needs in both research and education, while also managing challenges such as retirements and continuing to be an attractive employer for teachers and researchers. An overall strategy for the supply of expertise for teaching and research staff will be developed and the competence requirements for teaching positions will be reviewed. The strategy will be based on the needs of both education and research and will be adapted to the university's resources and resource allocation, as well as the target for the desired dimensioning.

C1 also includes developing rules for employment after reaching LAS age, to both enable senior employees to remain if necessary and clarify the work on skills supply and transfer.

Process and timetable:

VT 2024 - Develop/decide on rules for employment after reaching LAS age (completed).

HT 2024

• Establish the group for strategic skills supply and develop decisions and rules of delegation for the group
• Start work to develop a skills supply strategy linked to Strategy 2030 (regarding teacher recruitment)
• Start work on reviewing the merit requirements for teachers at KI (teaching positions)
• Evaluate the ‘career ladder’ (ready January 2025)
• Enable continuous access to a demographic overview of KI's teachers and researchers

Responsible: Johanna Bäckström, HR Director

Contact person: Marie Sandström Akram, Head of Unit Recruitment of Professors and Lecturers

Representatives from core activities: Ewa Ehrenborg, Academic Vice President for Higher Education, Sten Linnarsson, Dean and Elin Törnqvist, Chair of the Medical Association

Anchoring: Anchoring is customised to each part. Examples of groups for anchoring in addition to the operational representatives are heads of department, AC, deans, boards, committees, GUA, PD, junior faculty, student representatives and inter-authority collaboration.

Purpose: The aim of the assignment is to streamline and quality-assure the process for recruiting professors and senior lecturers.

Objective: The objective is to shorten the processing time while maintaining quality and legal certainty. In common with the objectives of the assignment for strategic skills supply (C1), the assignment here is to align calls and appointments with the university's overall needs, dimensioning and plan for strategic skills supply through a strategic recruitment group.

Process and timetable:

VT 2024 - Map the process (steps involved in the preparation, time for each step, etc.) for the recruitment of professors and lecturers (completed)

HT 2024 - The work will be done in two tracks where proposals for streamlining that do not affect the process as a whole will be developed during HT 2024 and the work of reviewing the process as a whole will start in HT 2024.

Responsible: Johanna Bäckström, HR Director

Contact person: Marie Sandström Akram, Head of Unit Recruitment of Professors and Lecturers

Representatives from core activities: Jesper Lagergren, professor and Carl Johan Sundberg, dean

Anchoring: Anchoring will take place with heads of department, deans, AC, relevant boards, committees, GUA, PD, junior faculty, student representatives and inter-agency collaboration.

Responsible and contact persons: Gunnar Gustafsson Wiss, Director of Planning and Eva Tegelberg, Director of Finance.

Representatives from KI's core operations: Deans at KI

About the assignment: The assignment aims to develop a resource allocation model for the research grant that is well anchored in the organization. The model should help ensure that allocated government grants are used on an ongoing basis and do not accumulate as agency capital. It should be possible to apply the model from 2025 onwards. The timetable extends beyond 2024 with the development of various possible basic models that are discussed within KI's various management bodies and then result in a main model that is anchored in the management organization.

Responsible and contact person: Rikard Becker

Representatives from KI's core operations: Sten Linnarsson and Rune Brautaset

About the assignment: The aim of the assignment is to reduce KI's leased space and thereby reduce premises costs by rationalising and restructuring existing premises. The aim is for KI to have the right, cost-effective and flexible premises with a high utilisation rate and to increase knowledge of how operations can influence premises costs.

Two major projects have been initiated: vacating the ANA10 building and modernising the working methods and workplace for employees of the Professional Services (PS). The process also includes a continuous evaluation of rental agreements to ensure reasonable costs and flexibility. In addition, KI will increase transparency regarding the utilisation of premises by other principals, and investigate premises issues within the SciLifeLab collaboration.

The timetable for leaving ANA10 and modernising working methods and workplaces of PS extends until 2026. A premises supply plan is updated and decided on annually, describing KI's premises needs three to five years ahead.
Separate projects to formalise the use of premises by other principals and to investigate SciLifeLab premises issues are ongoing.

Responsible: Karin Dahlman-Wright, Professor; Martin Bergö, Vice President and Gunnar Gustafsson Wiss, Director of Planning

Contact person: Karin Dahlman-Wright

Representative from KI's core operations: Matti Sällberg

About the assignment: The assignment aims to consolidate and optimize the research infrastructure at KI to increase quality and efficiency.It involves an inventory and review of existing research infrastructures, with the aim of creating an attractive and competent organization that optimally supports KI's research. This includes ensuring operational and information security and efficient use of resources.The process includes preparation of discussion documents, broad anchoring within the organization, and development of concrete proposals with associated resource requirements for implementation, with a timetable extending to spring 2025.

Note: The focus area originally included the separate task E3: Coordinate sustainable animal activities with the region. It is now integrated with E2.

Responsible: Veronika Sundström, Univerisity Director

Contact person: Marie-Louice Isacson

Representative from KI's core operations: Deans at KI

About the assignment: The assignment runs as a project over 2024-2025. The project page contains more information on the objectives and purpose, organisation and timeline of the project.

Responsible: Helén Törnqvist, Head of the Legal Office and Björn Kull, Head of the Research Support Office (RSO)

Contact person: Richard Cowburn

Representative from KI's core operations: a working group with broad representation from the departments.

About the assignment: The assignment aims to streamline KI's contract process. The initiative includes strengthened competence and support for contract preparation, negotiations, and risk assessments. The goal is to establish a clear division of responsibilities, improve competence transfer to the institutions, and implement a new case management system to facilitate contract management. Proposed measures include the creation of a contract coordinator function in the institutions and the reinforcement of central support functions. The introduction of a common case management system is an important step in this process.

Responsible and contact person: Tomas Högberg

About the assignment: The assignment aims to increase coordination on security issues at KI by creating a more integrated and efficient security organisation. The aim is to improve analysis, scenario planning and proactive security work, as well as to strengthen cooperation between security functions and other departments, such as HR and the International Office. 

The work will include interviews with managers of current security functions, identification of management needs, and a review of the institutions' internal security organisations. An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different organisational solutions will be carried out.

The timetable is for the preparatory work to take place before summer 2024, for a decision to be taken in early autumn 2024, and for the implementation of a more coordinated security function to take place at the end of 2024/beginning of 2025.

Responsible: Helén Törnqvist, Head of the Legal Office

Contact persons: Stefan Larsson

Representative from KI's core operations: a working group with broad representation from the departments.

About the assignment: The assignment aims to strengthen KI's information security work. This work is part of KI's commitment to comply with national security regulations and support KI's strategic goals. By developing and following a three-year goal and strategy document and annual business plans, the work aims to involve all institutions in an improved and coherent information security work, where regular dialogues, training and risk analysis play key roles. The goal is to achieve a high level of awareness and competence in information security at KI, and to ensure a coherent situational picture for management. The work is ongoing and aims to be fully implemented by the end of 2026, with continuous follow-up and reporting to KI's management and consistory.

Responsible and contact person: Mattias Nordström, Head of Information Technology Office

Representative from KI's core operations: continuous dialog with core operations and other stakeholders in ongoing work. 

About the assignment: The assignment aims to improve the secure and correct handling of data at KI by increasing users' awareness and knowledge of the Information Technology Office's solutions for storing and sharing data, which include different types of central storage, OneDrive, Teams and various server solutions. The work emphasizes the importance of adapting data storage to different needs and security requirements. The work includes regular follow-up, dialog with users and updating information on the employee portal to counteract risks such as incorrect data storage and the use of non-secure solutions.

Responsible: Veronika Sundström, University Director

About the assignment: The assignment will be handled as a subproject within the framework of F1. Review of administrative organisation and procedures.

The aim of the assignment is to improve and streamline cooperation with the health service. This is done by creating a more resourced and coordinated operational support where responsibilities and mandates in different parts of the organisation are clarified. The project is divided into two parts:

• The first focuses on reviewing the management, staffing and organisation of support to KI's management and the decision-making forum of the collaboration organisation.
• The second part aims to identify and address needs in all areas of operational support in order to identify development needs and create a coherent structure for development work.

Responsible: Peter Andréasson, Director of Communications and Marie-Louice Isacson, Head of Faculty Office and International Relations

Contact person: Peter Andréasson

Representative from KI's core operations: Carl Johan Sundberg

About the assignment: The assignment focuses on developing a process for assessing and prioritizing areas for collaboration with and impact on the surrounding society. The goal is to create a long-term and strategic direction for KI's management regarding relevant external issues and actors, but also to create a readiness for the management to be able to act quickly on urgent issues. The process aims to provide support for collaboration with society, identify priority areas and actors for increased activity and systematically update these priorities. The work process includes drafts, proposals for priorities, workshops with management, and final delivery of process proposals and priorities.

Responsible: Ulrika Widegren, Head of Unit, Sustainable development and equal opportunities office at FIR

Contact person: Anna Zorzet

Representative from KI's core operations: Centre for Health Crises

About the assignment: The assignment is aimed at strengthening KI's preparations and collaboration with other universities and authorities for future health crises. The work process includes exploring interest, conducting dialog meetings to explore expectations on the role of universities during health crises, and planning for next steps based on these discussions. The project also includes establishing clear lines of contact and collaboration with authorities and establishing a national health crisis network to promote collaboration and effective communication. KI's Centre for Health Crises plays a central role as coordinator of the network, which builds on previous dialogues and mapping of competencies at Swedish universities.

Note: The assignment is already ongoing within the framework of the work already carried out by KI's Centre for Health Crises. It is thus completed within the framework of strategic focus areas.