Today@Dal

In fall of 2022, the Vice-President Finance & Administration and the Provost & Vice-President Academic launched an initiative to redesign Dalhousie’s budget model.

This process meets a key commitment outlined in Dal’s Third Century Promise strategic plan, with the aim of ensuring effective resource management and sustained financial stability to support our institutional goals and the continued success of our academic mission.

Dalhousie’s current budget model is an incremental one, with unit budgets based on previous year’s allocations plus or minus an annual adjustment. With this sort of model, it can be challenging to adapt to changing circumstances or to fund strategic and capital priorities. We are looking to transition to a more strategic, data-informed model which will create incentives to help Dal achieve enrolment growth and research targets while encouraging administrative efficiencies.

The Budget Model Task Force that is leading this process is chaired by Cheryl Earle, Chief Financial Officer and AVP Finance. Its membership includes representatives from six Dal Faculties alongside the Vice-Provost Planning & Analytics and the Senior Director of Budgets and Financial Analysis. Its principles include:

• Strategic alignment
• Accountability
• Sustainability
• Transparency
• Flexibility
• Collaboration
• Inclusivity
• Data-Driven

We have concluded the initial discovery and diagnostic phases of this process and are now undertaking the work of designing the new budget model. The goal is to begin the transition to a new budget model for Dalhousie for fiscal 2025-26.

You can learn more about the budget model task force and process on the Financial Services myDal website.