Transparent powers, clear scope of responsibilities

Barbara Bíró has been working as the legal counsel of Corvinus University of Budapest since November 2016, and as a registered legal counsel and deputy administrative director since 2018. She has held the head of legal affairs position since will take up the position of legal leader from 1 January 2020. He is currently 1st January 2020. Currently she is working with her team to ensure that the decision points and scopes of powers that arise during the university administrative process are perfectly transparent, that it is clear in each case who the responsible decision-maker is, and that the necessary decisions can be made more smoothly and quickly.

“Defining the scopes of power is a rather sensitive issue, I think this is one of the biggest challenges of the project,” said Barbara Bíró, adding that there is some lack of trust from colleagues, as this issue is ultimately about scrutinising the various departments, their decision-making process, as well as mapping out how effective the decision-making system is now. 

“It is an almost complete horizontal and vertical review, so we can get a real picture of the operation and see where and how the transfer of decision-making rights can improve efficiency, where and how powers and responsibilities can be delegated,” noted the expert, adding, there are plenty of internal policies and other regulatory documents, and it is often difficult to find the answer to an urgent question. 

“The tasks related to a given functions are relatively well defined, and are clear, however, the same cannot be said about the processes. Whenever a question arises, it takes time and energy to review multiple documents to find out who is competent, ”said Barbara Bíró, adding that coherent regulation would make everyday life much easier and bring about an immediate change for university citizens.

Of course, for this to happen, it is necessary to get to know the current decision map and day-to-day operations, which is aided by the decision point competence matrices of the different organisational units.

“In practice, we now examine who has the decision-making power in the case of different processes, what issues and matters they deal with, and who has to be consulted in specific cases. Once the whole picture is outlined, it will become visible how the system can be made more efficient and simpler, which will make everyone’s lives easier ”.