Gone are the days of actual paper trails. We have lived and worked in a digital environment for years, with technology that enables professionals to be faster and more efficient. But as we have adopted more technological tools to solve problems on campus, data creep has set in. Between vendors, students, administrators, and faculty, housing data in a single location is becoming the exception rather than the rule.
In their Annual Meeting presentation "Data Democracy," Joe Santivasci and Autumn Walden from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and Emily Shandley of Yale University suggested, based on their own research, that many IT departments are increasingly favoring commercial solutions over locally-developed. This preference means data potentially leaves the control of whomever is the traditional data steward. For example, the admission department produces and maintains their own data set, along with IR and IT--does that information get passed on the SIS?
To add another wrinkle, technically-talented students are developing their own tools to manage their learning environment, with or without the support of administrative campus staff. In many cases these student solutions are shared with other students. Is the data they are using reliable? Do you openly share it, or are they scraping the data without your knowledge? As one audience member pointed out, these student applications are being developed regardless of whether the administration knows about or condones the development.
Key: Good stewardship. How do you manage all of the data? Providing data at the right time to the right people in the right format – that’s one encompassing definition of data democracy, the process of governing and stewarding data across all applicable constituents. If you’re lucky, your institution has developed and maintains a data warehouse that can provide reports in a useful format as required to any number of constituents. Or maybe you can count on your students to make outstanding improvements to course scheduling software, for example, through the use of API hooks that the administration makes available.
Whatever the case may be, it's necessary that institutions find ways to govern this release of information.
Key: Create and maintain a data map. If you don’t know where your data is stored at any given point, and where that data can or does go on a regular or ad hoc basis, then you need to start there. With vendors, this can be particularly tricky, especially when the contract period is up. Review the contract to ensure that the means are available for you to access data in full and on demand, and that the data is scrubbed from their servers once all business needs have been met. (The audience also noted that no technological solution can fix a broken process, so it's important to start with clear policies and procedures, and good training.)
Key: Determine access points. Once you have your data mapped, you need to figure out how and why you are releasing information, and to whom, and then figure out how you can use technology to accomplish your goals in that arena. Some session participants had data warehouses to make access easier for any given constituent – they were the envy of those who did not. While this doesn’t necessarily change the stewardship of data – certain information still must be restricted to certain parties – these centralized data storage solutions make the creation of a data map much easier.
The presenters indicated they would try and collaborate with interested parties to try and explore more specific areas of data governance in particular for future sessions, so look for even more discussion on this topic via another session at AACRAO.
Download handouts from the two-part Monday 10:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. session here.