Awards Improvement and Development Effort (AIDE)

Executive Summary

7.25.2026

Since its launch in February 2025, the Award Improvement & Development Effort (AIDE) has served as the University’s coordinated initiative to address challenges that emerged specific to the research enterprise following the Workday Finance implementation and to strengthen the research administration ecosystem supporting UW’s sponsored programs portfolio. In FY26 Q2, AIDE transitioned from a time-bound project led by Huron Consulting Group into an ongoing operational program, reflecting both the progress achieved and the need for continued cross-functional partnership to stabilize research administration processes, systems, reporting, and user support.

During FY26, AIDE delivered meaningful improvements across the research lifecycle. Key accomplishments included automation between SAGE and Workday for award modifications, enhancements that reduced manual award setup effort and improved data quality, significant remediation of financial and compliance-related data issues, expanded reporting and dashboard capabilities for campus and executive leaders, improvements to sponsor invoicing and integrations, and continued reduction of backlogs affecting award administration. AIDE also established a governance and prioritization framework that brings together the Office of Research, UWIT, Finance Planning and Budgeting, and campus stakeholders to coordinate improvements across interconnected business processes and systems.

In addition to technical and operational improvements, AIDE invested in foundational capabilities needed for long-term success. These efforts included creation of a web-based landing hub concept for research administration activities, development of standardized process guides and information architecture, user research with principal investigators and research administrators, and expansion of stakeholder engagement through RAPIT and other campus partnerships. Together, these efforts are helping improve transparency, consistency, and user experience across the research administration ecosystem.

Looking ahead to FY27, AIDE’s focus centers on foundational stabilization. Our three priority areas are 1) expanding automation between SAGE and Workday, implementing recommendations from the Award Setup, Award Modification, and Advance Setup (AMAS) Task Force; 2) connecting interdependent workstreams to support effort management (i.e., Huron ECC data set, payroll-related reporting, cost share, and salary cap management); and 3) expanding self-service reporting and analytics through the Sponsored Programs Cube. Progress in these three areas will allow AIDE to meaningfully launch the next phase of the centralized “front door” research administration website and process guide initiative. These priorities are in service of reducing administrative burden, improving compliance and data quality, strengthening decision support, and providing a more reliable and transparent experience for researchers, administrators, and institutional leaders.

Takeaways from FY26

Why This Work Must Continue

Feedback collected through the Faculty Senate’s Faculty Council on Research survey in spring 2026 reinforces the importance of continuing this work. While some progress was acknowledged, PIs and research administrators continue to experience challenges in award setup and processing timelines, reporting usability, data visibility, process complexity, system navigation, and access to consistent training and support. Survey responses also highlighted ongoing reliance on shadow systems, difficulty obtaining end-to-end visibility into research administration processes, and concerns regarding workload impacts on both departmental and central office staff.

The findings closely align with issues identified through AIDE’s original assessment and underscore the need for continued investments in process simplification, automation, reporting modernization, documentation, training, and cross-functional governance. The FY27 AIDE priorities in progress (award set up improvements, effort management, reporting enhancements, and the research administration website) directly address concerns raised by PIs and their teams.

Lessons Learned

Complex institutional problems require sustained collaboration and expertise. Many of the opportunities identified through AIDE span multiple systems, organizations, and business processes. Progress requires technical expertise with scarce availability, operational subject matter knowledge, and significant coordination among teams whose primary responsibility remains supporting ongoing research operations. As a result, improvements often take longer than stakeholders would prefer, despite agreement on priorities.

End-to-end process ownership remains one of the University’s greatest opportunities for improvement. Research administration activities frequently cross organizational boundaries, with responsibility for different portions of a process distributed across multiple offices. This can make it difficult to understand downstream impacts, align priorities, and optimize the overall user experience. AIDE’s governance model, workstream structure, and cross-functional planning processes were developed specifically to address these challenges and create greater visibility into institutional dependencies.

Delivered FY26

AIDE Governance and Operationalization Framework

Transitioned AIDE from a Huron-led initiative to an operational UW program with documented workstreams, governance processes, sponsor oversight, and roadmap planning. This improved cross-organizational coordination, reduced siloed decision-making, and increased visibility into research administration improvement efforts.

Cross-Functional Governance and Portfolio Management Framework

Established coordinated planning across ORIS, GCA, Reporting, Integrations, Finance, and Training/Communications and created a shared framework for organizing recommendations, operational backlogs, and enhancement requests into strategic workstreams. This improved transparency, dependency management, prioritization, and shared accountability while enabling cross-functional work to be managed as projects with measurable business outcomes rather than isolated enhancements.

Research Administration Ecosystem Visibility Improvements

Established constellation mapping, roadmap reporting, workstream dependency reviews, and cross-functional planning processes to improve understanding of how systems, teams, and initiatives interact across the grants lifecycle.

PI Eligibility Cleanup Oversight

Coordinated and monitored large-scale remediation efforts to address missing Principal Investigator and Eligible Investigator records, improving compliance, data quality, and institutional risk management.

F&A Encumbrance Remediation Oversight

Coordinated tracking, communications, prioritization, and remediation planning related to F&A encumbrance cleanup activities across multiple teams, resulting in improved financial accuracy and reduced downstream correction work.

Pending / In Progress

Cross-Functional Portfolio Prioritization and Roadmap Planning

Continuing to organize work into strategic themes (award management, reporting, effort management, invoicing, subawards, cost share, salary over the cap, award activity, and SAGE/Workday integrations) to align resources and prioritize future improvements across the research enterprise.

Award Management and Award Setup Improvements Task Force (AMAS)

Reviewing long-term process redesign opportunities, automation recommendations, centralized support models, and operational improvements arising from the AMAS task force recommendations.

Effort Management Modernization Initiative

Coordinating reporting, integration, process, compliance, and training activities to improve payroll visibility, ECC reporting, retro-pay management, and overall user experience.

Foundational Reporting and Decision Support Review

Evaluating report inventories, report utilization, training needs, and reporting optimization opportunities to improve adoption, reduce complexity, and strengthen data-informed decision making.

Audit and Compliance Readiness Activities

Ongoing coordination of grant cost share, PI eligibility, ECC, reporting, and financial compliance initiatives in preparation for future audit and compliance reviews.

Delivered FY26

SAGE Modification → Workday Integration

Integration of SAGE modification requests with Workday for renewal-type modifications. This reduces duplicate data entry between SAGE and Workday, decreasing manual award setup work in GCA to speed processing of renewals and extensions, reduce reconciliation errors, and reduce the award setup backlog (one of GCA’s highest-volume manual processes).

Award List Enhancements

These updates provided SAGE users with at-a-glance information to highlight requests on hold, returned items, and retaining filters.

Award Setup Request Defaults

Automatic population of selected fields from the SAGE eGC1 into award setup requests to reduce manual entry for campus users, improve data quality, and create more consistent award setup information.

Budget Rounding Mitigations

Addresses sponsor-to-SAGE budget rounding discrepancies and reduces manual budget corrections, allowing users a more efficient way to reconcile SAGE Budgets with the Sponsor award amounts.

Pending / In Progress

Renewal MOD Integration Stabilization

GCA and ORIS jointly reviewed the renewal modification integration failures and created internal job aids for GCA to increase the probability of successful automated integrations and reduce manual corrections. ORIS is planning to deliver incremental updates monthly that stabilize and expand the MOD integration capabilities to increase success rates.

Entity Risk Initiative

Provides sponsor risk information on the eGC1 to inform campus of compliance unit involvement and to guide on any actions needed at time of award.

SAGE-to-Workday Integration Expansion

Expands automation of information captured in SAGE to auto-populate fields in Workday to reduce GCA’s manual data entry.

Delivered in FY26

Negative F&A Encumbrance Cleanup

Corrected negative F&A encumbrance issues and associated financial inaccuracies. This improved the accuracy of grant financial data, reduced reconciliation challenges, and strengthened financial stewardship of sponsored awards.

Student Database Integration

Added student-identifying information to grant-related tuition transactions and sponsor invoicing. This improved transparency for PIs, research administrators, and GCA by strengthening reporting accuracy and simplifying reconciliation of tuition expenses charged to sponsored projects.

Plan/Budget Information on Sponsor Invoices

Resolved missing plan and budget information on sponsor invoices. This improved the completeness and accuracy of sponsor billing and reduced follow-up questions from sponsors and campus stakeholders.

Pending / In Progress

Award Journal Line Spend with Payroll Details Report

We are waiting on Workday bug fix that will provide research administrators (with security roles of grant manager and grant financial analyst) with worker-level retroactive payroll detail. This will improve visibility into payroll activity charged to grants and support financial review and compliance monitoring. In the interim, we created a new BI portal report for individuals with Grant Manager and Grant Financial Analyst security roles to access retro period information.

Effort Certification

This effort to strengthen University-wide compliance by supporting more timely completion of effort certifications by PIs and departments will also improve visibility into retroactive payroll activity, salary over the cap transactions, and cost share (see Discovery for FY27 below).

Discovery for FY27

Retro Costing (nested within Effort Management project)

Addresses payroll recalculation issues that can result in salary cap grants being over- or under-charged. This work is intended to improve payroll accuracy and compliance for campus departments and GCA. HRFAB approved a discovery project for this in June 2026.

Salary Over the Cap (nested within Effort Management project)

Addresses situations where sponsor charges and/or department charges exceed allowable salary cap limits. This work is focused on improving financial accuracy for payroll and sponsor compliance, benefiting departments, PAFC, GCA, and central payroll.

Cost Share (nested within Effort Management project)

Intended to improve the recording, tracking, and reporting of cost share funding and reduce the manual processes currently required to establish and monitor cost share activity. Discovery is just beginning for this effort to determine scope, level of effort, and impact.

Additional Grant Hierarchy Level

This item is under review and requirements assessment with GCA, the reporting teams (OR, GCA, and UWIT), and campus. The proposed solution adds another level to the grant reporting hierarchy to improve organizational reporting and support more accurate review of grant activity.

Delivered in FY26

Executive Dashboard reports

Reports built provide executive leadership with improved visibility into grants operations, backlog trends, sponsored programs activity, and research administration performance to support data-informed decision making.

Campus Dashboard reports

Delivered operational reports that provide schools, colleges, and departments with visibility into awards and award lines that remain active, including awards nearing expiration, budget and expenditure activity, remaining balances, subawards, participant support funding, fabrication activity, and cost share commitments. These reports improve transparency, support proactive award management, and reduce reliance on manual tracking processes.

Award Setup Tool – Plan and SAGE Budget Worksheet Comparison

Tool built provides a comparison between award planning data and SAGE budget information to improve award setup accuracy and identify discrepancies earlier in the award lifecycle.

Find Salary Journal Lines with Worker Details report

Report built in BI Portal based on information provided in Workday report R1269.1 that has challenges based on security roles. This BI Portal report provides enhanced payroll transaction visibility, including worker-level detail and retro-pay information to improve grant financial management and reconciliation.

Award Plan Amount Reconciliation (R1536)

Report built supports award setup reconciliation activities and helps identify inconsistencies between award plans and award setup data, improving financial accuracy.

Award Activity BI Portal Reports

Report “Award Activity by Cost Center” built to provide visibility into in-progress requests (MODs, subawards, applications, etc.) via BI Portal to allow departments, OSP, and GCA can monitor outstanding work. This is an interim solution while a broader Award Activity Details History project progresses (see description under “Pending / In Progress” section below).

Sponsored Programs Reporting Enhancements

Multiple reporting improvements (award setup metrics, payroll reporting enhancements, and sponsored programs reporting tools) were implemented to improve transparency, operational monitoring, and visibility into sponsored research activities.

Grant Manager and PI Reporting Assessment

Conducted user feedback sessions, usability analysis, and reporting inventory reviews to better understand reporting adoption, identify unmet business needs, and inform future reporting investments.

Pending / In Progress

Sponsored Programs Cube

This data cube will provide campus users with a new enterprise reporting tool that allows users to analyze grants, awards, and related financial data through flexible self-service reporting capabilities and ad hoc analysis.

GCA Workstreams Dashboard

Intended to improve workload management, process monitoring, and operational efficiency within Grant and Contract Accounting.

R1234 and R1626 Report Enhancements

Ongoing enhancements to improve financial reporting functionality, usability, and data transparency for GCA and campus users.

Award Activity Details History

Interim reporting solution is available (BI Portal award activity reports), but the comprehensive SAGE history view remains deferred.

Reporting Inventory and Optimization Initiative

Reviewing report usage, effectiveness, reporting gaps, and user needs to identify opportunities to streamline, consolidate, and improve the research reporting ecosystem.

Grant Manager Reporting Experience Project

Working with grant managers and campus stakeholders to identify reporting burdens, prioritize business requirements, and reduce manual reporting work through improved tools and reporting solutions.

Effort Management Enhancements

Evaluating Effort Management related reporting requirements, retro-pay visibility, payroll allocation reporting, and compliance reporting needs to improve effort management processes and reduce manual work.

On Hold

Subaward Reconciliation Report

Intended to support reconciliation, monitoring, and visibility of subaward activity. Work remains on hold pending prioritization and resource availability.

Delivered in FY26

Sponsor Invoice Signature Fix

Corrected an issue causing signatures to disappear on multi-page sponsor invoices. This improved invoice completeness and reduced compliance and audit risk.

Washington State Vendor Number Update

Updated sponsor invoice processing to ensure accurate vendor identification and billing information. This improved invoice accuracy and downstream reporting.

Huron ECC Payroll Data Fix

Corrected missing payroll transaction data for faculty who transitioned positions. This improved the integrity of faculty effort reporting and audit compliance.

ECC Stipend/Fellowship Data Cleanup

Removed stipend and fellowship payments from payroll feeds where they should not be included in effort certification reporting. This improved data quality and compliance reporting accuracy.

Huron Mission Advance Award Integration

Supports the School of Medicine’s Huron Mission Advance implementation for faculty effort tracking and labor planning. This provides better alignment between faculty effort, research funding, and resource planning.

Pending / In Progress

Huron Mission Advance Employee and Department Integrations

Supports School of Medicine effort planning and resource allocation by providing employee and organizational data feeds to Huron Mission Advance.

Awaiting Prioritization

ECC Category Type Change

Proposed update to categorize selected grants as non-sponsored program activity for ECC purposes, reducing unnecessary certification activity. Work has not yet been prioritized.

Delivered in FY26

Supplier Invoice F&A Cleanup

Corrected F&A issues affecting approximately 434 grants. This improved financial accuracy and reduced downstream correction work.

Rescinded ISD F&A Cleanup

Corrected F&A issues affecting Internal Service Deliveries (ISDs), which were tied to 114 grants. This cleanup improved the integrity of grant financial records.

Cancel/Reverse Orphan F&A Fix Tasks

Corrected orphaned F&A transactions and aligned financial records through manual journal corrections where necessary. This improved reporting and compliance.

Missing PI / Eligible Investigator Cleanup

Added missing Eligible Investigator records to our portfolio of sponsored grants. This strengthened compliance, reduced risk, improved accountability for sponsored awards, and improved reporting accuracy. With respect to reporting, the eligible investigator updates tied ~$600M Life to Date Budget to Actual results back to the associated award record and related principal investigator.

Renewal MOD Integration Review

GCA and ORIS jointly reviewed renewal modification integration failures and adjusted processes to increase successful automated integrations and reduce manual corrections.

Pending / In Progress

Aborted Reprocess Award Cost Issue: Corrective work is underway for an aborted reprocess award cost issue that impacted approximately 4,400 grants. The Grants Financial Applications Management Team, Controller’s Office, and GCA are actively engaged with Workday to create and deliver a fix that will correct the erroneous transactions caused by the 5/27/2026 aborted process. The fix will be made available on Saturday, 7/11/2026. Following completion of testing and validation activities, the fix is expected to be deployed to Workday Production on or before July 14, 2026, ensuring that affected transactions are recorded in June FY2026.

ECC Data Feed from Huron

Establishing regular ECC data transfers from Huron to support faculty effort reporting and compliance activities.

Award Setup, Modification, and Advance Improvement Task Force

Recommendations have been developed to improve grant setup and modification processing efficiency and reduce backlogs.

Delivered in FY26

Research Administration Hub Concept

Developed and validated a prototype centralized “front door” experience to improve information discovery, navigation, and access to research administration resources.

Process Guide Framework

Standardized template developed for research administration process guides, with Community of Practice workgroups drafting guides for topics including Award Setup & Award Management, Budget Monitoring, Salary Charge Monitoring, Effort Certification, Payroll Accounting Adjustments, Cost Share, Salary Over the Cap, Proposal Preparation, Subrecipient Monitoring, Sponsor Financial Reporting, Expense Transactions, Award Closeout, and Records Retention.

Taxonomy and Information Architecture Framework

Created a structured taxonomy and content strategy to improve findability, consistency, search functionality, and future AI-enabled knowledge delivery.

Extensive User Research

Conducted UX interviews and feedback sessions with research administrators and principal investigators to identify information-seeking behaviors, reporting challenges, and training needs.

Pending / In Progress

Research Administration Hub Implementation: Continuing refinement of hub design, governance model, content standards, process guide integration, and resource catalog development.

PI-Focused Communications and Training Strategy: Developing simplified onboarding, quick-start guidance, reporting education resources, and communication channels tailored to Principal Investigators.

Single Source of Truth Documentation Initiative: Expanding process guides and governance approaches to create consistent, authoritative documentation across the research administration lifecycle.

In Development

AI Knowledge and Support Tools: Exploring Purple AI agents, process-specific AI assistants, and AI-enabled search capabilities to improve access to research administration information and guidance.

Delivered in FY26

Campus Feedback and Validation Model

RAPIT became the primary stakeholder forum for validating AIDE recommendations, obtaining campus input, reviewing designs, and evaluating proposed process improvements.

Research Administration Hub User Reviews

RAPIT participants provided feedback on hub concepts, process guide priorities, navigation approaches, and resource organization strategies.

Reporting User Engagement Sessions

RAPIT members participated in dashboard demonstrations, reporting reviews, usability discussions, and reporting requirements validation activities.

Award Setup and Subaward Feedback Activities

RAPIT feedback informed the design and prioritization of award setup, subaward processing, automated closeout activities, and budget reconciliation tools.

Pending / In Progress

Campus Validation of Priority Initiatives

Continued review of Awards Mods Advances Setup Task Force recommendations, reporting enhancements, effort certification improvements, and user experience initiatives before broader deployment.

Research Administration Hub Validation

Additional stakeholder feedback and refinement planned for process guides, AI support capabilities, search functionality, and information architecture.

Reporting Adoption and User Experience Feedback

RAPIT continues to serve as the primary forum for evaluating reporting usability, identifying reporting gaps, and informing future reporting priorities.