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Data Futures in the Data Present: a planner’s perspective

Guest blogger Dr Garrick Fincham offers a planner's perspective on the challenges facing providers in the Data Futures programme.

Early summer 2016 I had a sleepless night, staring at the ceiling at 3am. I was worrying about the vast swell of change: New DLHE, revised NSS, TEF metrics and, of course, Data Futures. Being a planner, that meant I had to write a list: what had to be done; when; what the dependencies were…you know the sort of thing. That led to something we nicknamed ‘The Big Timeline’, and, of course, a Gantt chart. Although that list and chart have been updated many times since that night, I haven’t felt quite so worried.

What followed was a few months of ‘lock-ins’. A handful of people in a room, all of the Data Futures documentation and a whiteboard, working out implications that seemed to reach across much of our institution. What that exercise made me realise, though, was if the challenge is big, the potential gains are equally so – data quality, governance, process improvements and efficiencies, a basis for learner analytics. Data Futures is happening, so how do we make it work for us?

...if the challenge is big, the potential gains are equally so

The only real answer we had was: start now. We have regular project meetings, have assembled a project team, and we are now recruiting a specific project assistant. ‘Okay’, you may well be thinking, ‘what are they actually doing?’

The details of Data Futures aren’t finalised, let alone what the software suppliers are going to do - but the principles are well enough established. In 2016/17 we are applying those principles to our current HESA return, improving our basic structures, governance and processes. We’re improving quality control, scoping new error checks we might need, building reports to track the runtimes/completeness of critical ‘business events’. We’re also mapping all relevant activity onto the new segments – to identify ways of working that are okay now but won’t be in 2019.

2017/18 is ‘mock running’ - we’re going to try creating a version of the segments as we go through the year, flushing out process issues at the same time. The year after (2018/19) data will be building up for real, whilst we run the last old-style return. October 2019… Well, it’ll all be over by Christmas. I don’t doubt there will be a few more sleepless nights, and as a sector, let’s face it, 2019/20 will be a year of tension, fears of reduced data quality, and more than a little pain.

But then? I suspect we’ll look back at 2017 and think of it as data pre-history.

Many thanks to Dr Garrick Fincham, Head of Planning, University of East Anglia for his blog.

Upcoming Event:

Data Futures and your organisation: Making data work for you, 5 July 2017, Birmingham Conference Centre. A one-day conference to provide delegates with insight into the Data Futures programme and equip organisations to respond to programme requirements. Find out more

 

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This is a guest blogpost. The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views of HESA.