Planning for Impact: What Alberta's PSI Plans Reveal About Strategy, Alignment, and Opportunity
Part 4 in the Planning for Impact series
To understand how strategic planning is being approached across Alberta’s public post-secondary sector, I invested eight months reviewing more than 350 inputs, all sourced from the public domain. This included approximately 81 formally published plans spanning multiple planning cycles, drawn from all 26 publicly funded post-secondary institutions (PSIs). These materials included current institutional strategic plans, legacy business and comprehensive institutional plans (CIPs), annual reports, LERS data, academic strategies, and a growing range of specialized or adjunct strategies reflecting both core mandates and emerging priorities.
The institutions reviewed span Alberta’s full six-sector model:
Broader open datasets and planning-related documentation were also gathered from agencies such as Alberta Advanced Education, ALIS, APAS (ApplyAlberta), Transfer Alberta, Labour Market Information (LMI) tools, Statistics Canada (PSIS), and CICIC. A parallel literature review examined strategic leadership and governance practices, planning methodologies, and the growing potential for AI to support more efficient and responsive planning processes. Insights from this work now inform the planning workflow and toolset currently being prototyped and tested by Innogist.
At Innogist, our journey through this vast body of data also helped strengthen our business capabilities in AI-assisted deep data analysis and shaped several key architectural decisions for the platform. When the review began, agentic technologies and advanced summarization tools were not yet widely accessible. By the time it concluded, the AI landscape had evolved dramatically, influencing not only the speed and efficiency of analysis, but also the depth of insight and the design choices that followed. What began as a structured environmental scan became a powerful learning experience, reinforcing Innogist’s commitment to enabling data-informed planning at scale.
While future articles will explore plan types, planning levels, regulatory influence, and planning horizons in more depth, I will just cover several key high-level observations in this post.
Institutional Approaches Reflect both Scale and Context
One clear pattern is how an institution’s planning style aligns with its size, complexity, and mandate.
Larger institutions tend to publish multiple, detailed plans covering areas such as academic programming, research, infrastructure, and technology. These documents are typically aligned with long-term goals, shaped through structured consultation, and in some cases - embedded within broader transformation initiatives supported by dedicated planning offices or cross-functional working groups.
Smaller institutions more often adopt a consolidated approach. Their strategic plans frequently blend operational and strategic elements into a single, integrated document. These plans are no less thoughtful, and certainly not less engaged, but their structure often reflects the realities of scale (i.e., leaner teams, tighter resources, and closer integration between planning and day-to-day operations).
The structure and cadence of planning documents can act as a useful proxy for planning maturity, rather than just institutional size. This is not a critique - maturity is shaped by factors such as size, mandate, leadership continuity, and capacity. Notably, there were examples of smaller institutions that demonstrated a high degree of clarity and alignment, and examples among larger institutions where coherence was more difficult to discern. Well-connected, regularly updated plans aligned to clear goals often indicate deeper strategic capability, regardless of institutional size.
The focus is therefore not on judging who is doing it right or wrong, but on recognising that planning maturity can always be strengthened, paving the way for more coordinated, data-informed strategy across the system.
Adjunct Strategies Offer Insight into Evolving Priorities
Many institutions have developed adjunct strategies focused on themes such as EDI, student wellness, sustainability, Indigenous engagement, and increasingly, technology renewal. These plans often reinforce institutional values while advancing targeted initiatives or community-facing priorities.
However, timing and alignment varied considerably. In some institutions, the core institutional strategy set the direction, with academic, research, or IT strategies following in sequence. In others, these functional strategies emerged independently or, in the case of academic planning in particular, appeared to lead. In a few cases, the linkage to a broader institutional vision was unclear. The order of development was not consistent, and at times, the connections between plans were difficult to trace. Some adjunct strategies - particularly those related to Indigenous engagement, EDI, or sustainability, tended to adopt a broader, more universal lens, both in terms of temporal scope and strategic positioning. While a few were tightly linked to institutional priorities, others appeared significantly later with limited cross-reference.
Smaller institutions generally published fewer adjunct plans, which can reflect capacity constraints and scope rather than a lack of engagement. It is also important to emphasize that the absence of a publicly available document does not imply that planning is not taking place behind the scenes.
Improving the integration between core and adjunct strategies could help translate high-level vision into more coordinated, cross-cutting action. It would also better support collaboration across institutions on shared priorities that span the sector.
Accountability Documents Provide Rich but Disconnected Context
Annual Reports and Investment Management Agreements (IMAs) reveal how institutional strategies align with government priorities such as Alberta 2030. Yet cross-referencing IMAs, plans, reports, and LERS data to surface patterns can be a complex, manual and time-consuming exercise.
This fragmentation highlights a missed connection but also points to a promising path forward. A coordinated approach could lay the foundation for a provincial strategic enrolment intelligence system - shared infrastructure enabling institutions and government partners to understand learner journeys, identify duplication, and target investment. Such insight would support resource alignment, program planning, seamless learner transitions, and reduced administrative burden.
It would also allow services like APAS, ALIS, and Transfer Alberta to refine program search tools, pathway data, and labour-market information, positioning these platforms as central hubs for coordinated system planning and learner support.
The Sector Is Moving Forward and Facing a Rare Moment of Potential
Institutions across Alberta are making progress toward integrated, performance-informed planning, supported by instruments like the IMA. Planning efforts, however, can still be fragmented when timelines differ or teams work in isolation.
This gap presents a chance to evolve toward a more collaborative and data-informed future. With AI and automation reshaping workforce expectations and institutional operations, system-wide coordination is becoming essential. A shared, integrated planning infrastructure could enable
As roles evolve and technology transforms learning, Alberta and its PSIs will very likely revisit mandates, program structures, and system design. Coordinated planning can support discussions on specialisation, consolidation, and shared services in ways that proactively enhance relevance, sustainability, and long-term impact.
While the original focus of my research was on streamlining planning within organizations, using Alberta's PSIs as a case study, it became clear that the greater potential lies in redefining how planning is approached across the entire sector - not merely to improve efficiency, but to enable meaningful transformation.
This scan overview provides a foundation for more discussion. Future posts will explore plan types, planning levels, regulatory structures, and design choices that can foster a more coordinated, data-informed planning environment across the system.
What planning practices or insights are emerging in your institution? Join me on this journey of learning and share your thoughts in the comments.
Missed earlier posts? Here's a link to the previous article. Want more? Continue on.
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