With the increasingly diverse student population at universities, their varied ways of participating in higher education, rapidly changing processes - technology-based and other - for delivering academic programs and support/administrative services, and the multiple challenges faced by faculties, university central support services must be increasingly responsive to faculty needs and accountable for the quality of the services they deliver. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are becoming an increasingly popular way to manage and improve the delivery of internal services, in universities and other institutions. Monash has chosen to develop SLAs between central support services and faculties, giving the Centre for Higher Education Quality the responsibility for introducing and developing processes to manage them, and for integrating them with the Monash quality framework. When the project is fully implemented, faculties will have an increased decision making ability regarding the central services and service levels they wish to purchase. Support services will need to agree those services and service levels with each faculty and then work to deliver them as promised. Support services and faculties will work collaboratively to deliver services to the end users, principally staff and students. These goals need to be pursued in a way that is consistent with Monash values and principles, and that will contribute to the quality assurance and improvement processes of the university.This paper outlines the experience so far in introducing Service Level Agreements to Monash University, and indicates their role in supporting the quality framework of the university.

Keywords: Service Level Agreements, customer service