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To realize and be consistent with the UCI IT Principle - "Data are critical institutional assets" ( http://www.oit.uci.edu/consolidation/committee/uci-it-principles.php ), a road map for campus data management and governance are needed. While non existent today, an incremental improvement can be achieved by leveraging the IT consolidation to look at data more comprehensively than previously possible. Data Warehousing and Decision Support will become most effective once data management improvement is implemented and in reality will be difficult to achieve without it. Moreover, the replacement of core administrative and research systems such as the legacy financial ledger and purchasing systems with Kuali FS, Kuali Coeus Research Administration, the UCPath replacement of PPS, and the planned new Student Information System offer a unique and timely opportunity for starting a much needed campus data management program.
Why Establish a Data Management, is a data management program needed? Why an Enterprise Data Warehousing and Decision Support Initiative?
Business units across UCI are primarily concerned with entering and tracking data to meet their specific needs. Consequently, enterprise data is frequently held in disparate applications across multiple departments within the university. Often, data is copied from location to location due to the need to integrate this data to be more meaningful. For example, student, financial, and employee data are downloaded and used in many shadow systems across UCI for local business needs. One of the outcomes for the campus An undesired outcome is a buildup of redundant, inconsistent, and often contradictory data, housed in isolated departmental applications from one end of the organization to another.
The confusion caused by this disjointed network of applications leads to poor customer service, redundant effort, occassionally inaccurate reporting, and ultimately, a higher cost of doing business.
To address the spread of data – and eliminate silos of university information – some universities have implemented enterprisewide data governance and data management programs, which attempt to codify and enforce best practices for data management across the organization.
- Data management would help consolidate and integrate data from multiple sources, including student data, teaching/course load, grants, facilities/space, financials, purchasing, and payroll in support of campus wide decision making and related information needs such as reporting, analysis, data drill-down, data visualization, and planning.
- Data management would provide information that is well-organized, easy to obtain, secure, accurate, timely, consistent, integrated, and appropriately detailed so that people throughout the campus -- staff, faculty, researchers, and executive-level administrators -- will be better able to assess their needs, set priorities, understand the impact of change, and fulfill their program responsibilities more efficiently.
- Data governance would provide a source of data for the campus that represents an agreed upon "truth", using a pre-agreed upon common interpretation of the data and setting minimum data quality standards; thereby reducing misinterpretation or misunderstanding of data and potential errors.
- A data management program would allow the university to utilize the existing people, business policies and technology to achieve more effective data quality policies across multiple departments. It would reduce the redundant project and programming effort taking place across the UCI campus today to identify, catalog, organize, scrub/clean, and document data that is of common interest; leveraging FTE resources in a more effective manner and achieving synergies between units that are otherwise fragmented across UCI but working towards similar goals.
In order to start this process, the following road map or steps are suggested:
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