Did you know that the University's Wentworth Medal was established in 1854 with a 200-pound gift from William Charles Wentworth as a reward for the best essay in English prose?

Many scholarships, including the Wentworth Medal, are managed by the Scholarships and Prizes Office (SPO). The Research Office (RO) manages postgraduate research scholarships. Several hundred others are looked after elsewhere in the University.

Until recently, there was no central facility that would let admin staff track awards and recipients.

"We found that there were over 500 scholarships (and other awards) being run by dozens of different parts of the University," recalls Simon French, senior policy officer at the SPO. "They include faculties, departments, schools, the Financial Assistance Office, the International Office, the Koori Centre, as well as the various centres and foundations.

"But there was no central recording." There had been none since 1996, the year of the last full edition of the Calendar. Details of individual scholarships were hidden from the vast majority of students and University staff, including SPO and RO managers. "How many scholarships were there? Since they stopped printing them all in the Calendar, we had no record," says Simon.

"I could not even begin to guess how many students were receiving scholarships or the total amount of money spent, but it must run into tens of millions." The value of the prize that supplements the Wentworth Medal alone is now $6250.

Scholarship activity is set to rise as the University strengthens its commitment to supporting academic excellence and access to tertiary education.

Carmen Ng, manager of research scholarships at the RO, agrees that administration was a concern. She says that there wasn't a central database that could accurately record all scholarships.

Payment processing was also a major issue. While research students are paid by the PeopleSoft HR system, there was no mechanism for making payments to coursework students. Simon remembers how time-consuming requesting cheques used to be.

Senior managers decided to improve IT capabilities. A working party first met in April 2005. Several business drivers were articulated.

Fulfilling legal obligations was critical. Under the State Records Act 1998 the University must keep a record of all award recipients in perpetuity.

Beyond this basic need, the University wanted uniform record-keeping and management across all organisational units. It further sought to minimise administrative work, and allow analysis and auditing.

Because they wanted to retain responsibility for scholarships in their areas, faculties determined the complexity of the project from the word go. "Unlike some other universities," says Simon, "the responsibility for scholarships at Sydney University is devolved.

"The advantage of local administration is that different schemes can reflect the needs and strategic goals of different parts of the University. The challenge was to enable a broad spectrum of users to record scholarship information that would be widely accessible, while allowing them to maintain local control."

With this in mind, the new functionality was designed to encourage consistent, accountable practice. Business analysis was followed by FlexSIS development, resulting in two major software releases.

The first, in July 2006, included tools to maintain most scholarship and recipient data, produce payment schedules, and generate reports.

In November further functionality emerged that allowed faculties to establish a new scholarship by copying an existing one (a time-saving device). It also allowed them to maintain and enquire on data that varies annually. There is also a powerful exception enquiry tool.

The dean of each faculty is the delegated authority under the policy Delegations of Authority: Academic Functions. The faculty office administers schemes that run across the whole unit. Schools are responsible for the award, administration, and recording of school-based awards.

Each scholarship has one owner unit, responsible for its administration. While all FlexSIS users can view all scholarships, editing them is restricted to staff in the owner unit. They establish and maintain scholarships, make awards, review recipients, and report on scholarship activity.

By the end of March, 60 staff members from faculties and other organisational units will have attended training. After they attend training, they are given access to the new functionality.

To establish a new scholarship, a staff member enters its details into FlexSIS, which automatically generates an email requesting confirmation by the SPO or RO. The staff member then receives another automatic email and obtains the dean's signature.

Jenny Nicholls, a project officer in the Faculty of Medicine says that functions in the Scholarships Maintenance module facilitate establishment. "That whole process has been working pretty well, I've found," she says. "You still have to negotiate with people about the terms and conditions. But the actual getting it approved — the data entry process and approval and all the rest of it — is very efficient. There have been pretty good turn-around times."

For coursework awards staff must then add recipients. This should take about as long as an enrolment variation, Simon says. As in the past, the RO continues to manage research recipients.

Jenny is responsible for adding recipients at the Faculty of Medicine. She says that the speed of data entry is satisfactory. "As long as all the data is correct and the scholarship is active, adding on recipients is not very difficult, even backdating. I've put on recipients from previous years and backdated their start date. It was pretty easy too."

The recipients screen was designed for rapid addition of students and it appears to meet expectations. "If you're just doing twenty for one year," says Jenny, "it's obviously much easier because basically all you have to do is click in the SID field and choose the degree. And adding the payment method is automatic."

The FlexSIS scholarships modules represent a huge improvement for staff in faculties, schools, departments and other administrative units of the University, says the RO's Carmen. She thinks that despite the additional administrative load introduced with the new modules, they will ultimately save time and effort.

"Research Office staff are doing extra in terms of maintaining the data but the advantages outweigh the effort. We are happy to do the extra maintenance in order to achieve a better goal at the end." And these benefits are not restricted to the RO. "Now that the data is available on FlexSIS, the faculty people can actually run their own lists, without having to come to us," Carmen says.

Medicine's Jenny concurs: "Before, we had to ask the Research Office for details. Now we can do it immediately. And we can get lists and download them easily, which we have never been able to do before."

According to Faculty of Science administration manager (operations) Suzanne Winch, "staff have already found the Scholarships module in FlexSIS very helpful. For the first time, we are able easily to get a list of students in receipt of postgraduate research scholarships."

"The data is there for them to see," adds Carmen. "It assists them if they are doing any enrolment changes for scholarship students. Because such a change will prompt them to say, 'OK, this is a research student and I want to withdraw him', and then they can see that it is a scholarship holder."

The new FlexSIS modules also accelerate the processing of payments to students, says Jenny. "Accounts payable have not said 'we want to see letters proving these students are on scholarships' which they used to do. So it does mean less work, and less photocopying as well because you just attach the schedule and it gets paid. That's great."

"Some of our scholarships, the ones that Simon does, we actually fund," says Stephen Stokes, finance manager at the International Office. "So it will be good for me to go in and see what students there are and how much is involved and I can pick up their payment schedule from there."

The RO and SPO look forward to the time when the University can move scholarship data to a database searchable via the internet.

"A parent wants to know if their son or daughter will be able to get a scholarship from the University of Sydney," says Carmen. "And first of all they need to know what's available."

"That's the next step. Before that can happen, we now have a central repository of the data, that everyone can go to. This is the official record."

Science's Suzanne Winch concurs. "We are really looking forward to using the module to store scholarship recipient data, and being able to place historical data into FlexSIS so that the information is readily retrievable by FlexSIS users throughout the University."