Austin, UT-Austin Streamline Research Partnership

AUSTIN, TX — The city has streamlined its relationship with the University of Texas at Austin in the school's providing of research, including eliminating the need for city council approval prior to each individual project, officials revealed on Monday.

Some background: On Aug. 27, Austin City Council unanimously approved a five-year interlocal agreement between the City of Austin and UT-Austin designed to streamline and coordinate research efforts between the two organizations — with an aim of saving time and money while enabling staff to more easily meet the needs of city residents, officials said in an advisory.

Prior to the adoption of the interlocal agreemtnt, city officials said, the process to identify research partners and secure funding was time consuming and decentralized. Now, the agreement streamlines city research projects by establishing pre-negotiated terms and conditions, removing administrative barriers and pre-approving $7.5 million for research, consulting and technical assistance from UT-Austin faculty and researchers, according to a municipal advisory.

The agreement allows the city to commission research with UT-Austin without approval from the city council on each individual project, officials stressed. Austin Mayor Steve Adler said the more streamlined agreement will help the city “...better serve as a laboratory for University of Texas faculty," he said in a prepared statment.

The mayor added: “With the university as a partner, the city has a powerful resource for addressing our most challenging civic issues. The interlocal agreement is the right move to set the city up for long-term success in collaborative research and data-driven decision making.”

Officials noted that research partnerships between the city and UT-Austin create opportunities across academic disciplines to address complex civic challenges, such as affordable housing and mobility. While UT-Austin and the city have often partnered on projects — including research papers centered on gentrification or the “downtown puzzle” — there had not been a streamlined process for connecting researchers to city project managers until now, officials said.

"UT and the City of Austin have many shared goals,” the university's Deputy Vice President for Research Jennifer Lyon Gardner said in a prepared statement. “We wish to showcase the City of Austin as a vibrant and innovative community that is incorporating the latest, best available knowledge to address issues facing all major metropolitan areas. The new ILA facilitates much more rapid collaboration between UT experts and City staff, while collecting tracking information and progress on these collaborations in one location, which should help to ensure closer coordination across projects to improve accountability and to reduce duplicative efforts and costs.”

City staffers from the Communications and Technology Management division coordinated the efforts to establish the ILA after noting the administrative hurdles impeding city work and making the case for a stronger more formalized partnership.

“A master agreement makes it possible to do the work and to do the work in a timely manner,” Charles Purma, the city's IT manager who, along with Ted Lehr, a City of Austin data architect, spearheaded the effort. “Our team saw the duplicative efforts of standing up individual agreements and took on the challenge of streamlining the work across both organizations. The ILA eases administrative burdens significantly, allowing our teams to quickly execute strategic partnerships and get to work serving Austin residents.”