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Systems Roadmap

Background: The Kuali project began in 2004, when a group of US universities and colleges got together to build software that was a better fit for their needs than what traditional software vendors had to offer. Supported by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), and a grant from the Mellon Foundation, the consortium of universities formed a non-profit organization called the Kuali Foundation. The Foundation’s mission was to build better software to serve higher education’s unique needs. Kuali software was free and open source - but technically demanding to bring on-board. 

In 2014 the Foundation decided to launch a for-profit company in order to move into the growing world of Software as a Service (SaaS), now known more commonly as 'cloud software'. Kuali has expanded from University financial and research software to also offer products for curriculum and student management, business continuity, and a general purpose forms and workflow system. 

SFU's Software: After carefully reviewing the market, SFU chose Kuali Ptotocols to replace end-of-life software managing the Human Research Ethics process , and later Kuali Research to replace the also end-of-life homegrown software that solely managed back-office data for Research Services and Research Accounting. We also brought in Kuali Build, a forms and workflow engine, to replace PDF and other forms for research processes. 

Timeline:
2022: Launched Kuali Protocols for Human Research Ethics reviews
2024: Launched Kuali Research to manage grant proposal and contract submissions and reviews
2024: Launched Kuali Build - initially to manage the COI process, but gradually expanding to include many other forms
2026: Moved the Animal Care Review process of the University Animal Care Committee to the Kuali platform
2026: Upgraded Kuali Research, moving to a common platform with Build.

Planned:
Late 2026: Work with Faculties to update data management on the new platform.
Early 2027: Upgrade Kuali Protocols to the same platform as Research, Animal Care and other forms