Managing data at a digitally-driven university
Over the course of a regular workday, most of us will interact multiple times with one of the world’s hottest resources: data.
Each of us creates, uses, and owns data, but in the digital age this has only grown exponentially.
As with any valuable resource it’s important to not only have plans in place to keep it safe, but also to ensure its quality, usability, and availability to those who need it.
“Data governance is the strategic approach to maximizing the value of an organization’s data,” says Mario Lebar, UM’s Chief Information Officer. “Through data governance, everyone can know what data the institution has, where data is held, who has access to it, and whether it is of high quality. The governance framework provides the foundation for trust and the routine use of data analytics for evidence-based decision-making.”
Establishing a new governance model is part of UM’s broader digital strategy, which is led by the Office of the Provost and Vice-President (Academic).
“UM data is an institutional asset maintained to support the university’s central mission of teaching, research, and service. To support effective and innovative strategies and operations, university data must be accessible, must correctly represent the information intended, and must easily integrate across university information systems,” says Diane Hiebert-Murphy, Provost and Vice-President (Academic). “The management, curation, and use of institutional data and institutional information are a shared responsibility, involving and affecting academic, research, and administrative stakeholders across the university.”
A new governance model will also benefit these same stakeholders, giving faculty and staff better quality data, more cohesive processes for collecting data (with less duplication) and a greater ability to make data-informed decisions to enhance teaching, learning and working at UM.
Some of the biggest challenges in managing data is its sheer volume, combined with its complexity and the multiple systems that exist to use, create and contain it.
When created, UM’s new governance model will address all these factors. It will establish “the principles, roles, and responsibilities for a collaborative data governance program at the university,” says Hiebert-Murphy. “It will establish a governance structure to support UM in fulfilling our responsibility for ensuring the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of all our institutional data and institutional information, whether managed and residing on university information technology resources, stored on personal devices, managed by a third party or partner, or outsourced to a service provider.”
Lebar, who is supporting the new model’s creation, says the current focus is on administrative data such as that found in human resources, finance and student information systems. In the future, it could also involve data from systems in facilities management, admissions and more.
A thorough governance model will ensure the following elements are met:
- Data Quality & Standards: to help bring about data accuracy, completeness, and consistency.
- Roles & Responsibilities: to help manage the data including data trustees, data stewards and data guardians. This also includes the structure of the data governance committees that set direction and provide a clear accountability structure and support training and awareness programs.
- Policies & Procedures: for data lifecycle management, documentation requirements, change management processes and retention and archival policies.
- Metadata Management: including developing a data dictionary, data lineage tracking, business glossary and technical metadata.
- Data Architecture: which includes development of an institutional data model, data storage, data integration and data warehousing.
- Compliance & Risk: including regulatory compliance, risk assessment, audit trails and reporting requirements.
To fulfill the requirements of a new data governance model, UM has created a Data Governance Steering Committee which will begin meeting in late November 2024 and will share future updates on policies and procedures with the UM community.
This article is part of the university’s ongoing efforts to develop our shared UM digital future, as part of the university’s digital strategy. Those interested in learning more about digital technology in the education environment can check out the following resources:
LOD Courses: practical, hands-on training for M365, accessibility tools and more.
Digital Community of Practice: a forum to promote best practices and build common capabilities across UM in digital technology.
Power Platform Community of Practice: a place for citizen developers using Microsoft’s Power Platform suite of tools to come together and share ideas, projects, and best practices.
Digital Content Maintenance Training: for users responsible for managing content on University of Manitoba digital properties.
Office Hours website help: regular access to expert guidance on digital work, specifically for umanitoba.ca, UM Today and UM Intranet.