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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The ORP Core Facilities are committed to financial and operational transparency. The majority of our cores have a faculty oversight committee (FRAC - Faculty Research Advisory Committees)1 that meets at least annually. These committees are kept updated on the status of the core that they oversee.

The Core Facilities leadership, in collaboration with the core managers and directors, have developed a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the cores. KPIs are metrics used to evaluate the ongoing success of an individual core. Our KPIs follow indicators that demonstrate how well the cores support the University’s research and educational missions. These metrics provide an opportunity for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most.2 Our KPIs were developed using the SMART methodology, that the metrics needed to be; specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.3

To be more transparent to the University as a whole, our future goal is to make our core facility KPIs available on this website using dashboards that combine data from multiple sources in a straight-forward way. Because the data for the dashboards must be combined from information found on a number of different University information systems, this is still a work in progress. In addition, some data (e.g., publications or grants that reference the core) is more difficult to collect.4

What gets measured gets done.5

Currently, our planned Key Performance Indicators for core facilities fall into these categories:

  • Financial metrics – Core facilities that charge federal grants are not allowed to operate as profit centers. Because of this rule, the University invests (financial subsidy) in supporting the cores to keep them operational and to reduce the overall cost to the researcher. If a core facility is doing well financially, then the University’s budget for supporting the core’s operations could be used in other ways, such as being used to purchase additional equipment, hire more staff, or directed towards opening other needed cores. ORP recognizes that some equipment/cores will always require a substantial investment (subsidy) to keep the cost of use to the researcher from becoming unaffordable. These metrics will be in dollars or percentages, and most will have a fiscal year time frame.
  • Usage metrics – iLab is not perfect, but it has allowed the cores that use it to track usage metrics in a much more standardized way than ever before. This metric will show the user base (colleges & departments, external users) as well as the different types of users (undergrad, graduate, postdoc, staff, faculty). This should demonstrate our support of the University’s research and educational missions. The metrics may be presented as the number of hours an instrument is used, the number of services performed, or the quantity of products sold. These metrics could be updated on a monthly basis.
  • Grants supported metrics – iLab collects fund account numbers and principal investigator information, which can be mapped to a funding source. Integrating data from several University information systems, we should be able to show which funding agencies are being supported by the cores. This will demonstrate our support of the University’s research mission. These metrics will be in dollars or percentages and will most likely have a fiscal year time frame.
  • Publication metrics – Historically, this information has been very labor-intensive to collect, as core facilities are referenced in publications in non-standard ways (making database queries difficult) and often cores are not acknowledged at all. We plan to implement unique Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs)6 to make it easier for researchers to acknowledge the core facilities and for us to find those acknowledgements. We also plan to note thesis and dissertations that used the cores. This should demonstrate our support of the University’s research and educational missions. This data will most likely be presented as a bibliography.
  • Event-related metrics – This is somewhat of a catch-all category that would include workshops, teaching, and outreach activities. This should demonstrate our engagement with the University’s research and educational missions, as well as the core supporting & educating the surrounding community. This data will most likely be presented as a list.
  1. ORP Core Facility governance documents can be found here: https://research.arizona.edu/facilities/search
  2. Key Performance Indicators - https://kpi.org/KPI-Basics
  3. S.M.A.R.T.- https://monday.com/blog/project-management/smart-goals/
  4. Measuring imaging core facility impact (Global BioImaging) https://globalbioimaging.org/documents
  5. Quote attributed to management consultant and author Peter Drucker
  6. RRID https://scicrunch.org/resources