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Dartmouth Daily Updates Streamline Administrative Communication

A new administrative communications tool is debuting Feb. 18, with a goal of enhancing and streamlining communications to Dartmouth’s faculty, staff, and students.

Dartmouth Daily Updates, also known as D2U, is aimed at centralizing and making more readily available administrative announcements and communication. The system, which utilizes e-mail and a Web site, comes in response to the 2006 McKinsey & Co. study of administrative operations at the College and McKinsey’s recommendations. President James Wright convened three Administrative Working Groups following the McKinsey report; D2U responds to recommendations made by the Administrative Communications and Culture Working Group in fall 2006.

“Staff want and need easily accessible and more information as they seek to understand and implement priorities, decisions, and policies,” the Communications and Culture group wrote in its report. “We need to encourage a culture where information is shared appropriately.”

The Communications and Culture group specifically recommended the establishment of a  “daily briefing” section of the Dartmouth home page, devoted to employees that features administrative notices, announcements, and other information—internal and external—of interest or import to employees. That’s where D2U comes in.

“The McKinsey study and the subsequent Administrative Working Groups told us a lot about the need to communicate more efficiently and effectively,” says Interim Vice President for Communications Sheila Culbert. “Dartmouth Daily Updates is one tool that we believe can help us address those needs and move us toward a goal of creating new and enhanced mechanisms for administrative communication.”

Dartmouth communicates internally in a number of ways: BlitzMail bulletins, paper mailings, bulk e-mails, or specialized e-mail lists. But all of these systems have some downside: Blitz Bulletins are not accessible by e-mail clients other than BlitzMail, bulk e-mails are often discarded as spam, and paper mailings have costs for printing and distribution. D2U is seen as a more accessible way of communicating across the campus.

Based on a system developed at the University of Richmond and refined at Brown University, D2U is made up of two components: a daily e-mail digest of administrative information to all staff, faculty, and students, and a Web site where the full text of information in the digest is posted and viewed. The daily e-mail digest is scheduled to begin distribution on Monday, Feb. 18.

“D2U will provide the campus with an easy and streamlined method to share important information,” says Vice President for Information Technology Ellen Waite-Franzen. “And it won’t clog e-mail inboxes because each individual will get only one message that will have all of the relevant information in the digest format.”

D2U will be accessible, without need for special posting privileges, to submitters in administrative and academic offices across the campus. A D2U editor will review submissions each afternoon and approve postings to be sent daily. The system is designed primarily for announcements and administrative news; events postings are discouraged and posters will be referred to the online Dartmouth Events Calendar for posting of events.

D2U will be managed by the Office of Public Affairs, with e-mails sent Monday through Friday. To see the prototype, visit the site or via e-mail.

By RICK ADAMS

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