by SEAN BRAWLEY, RICHARD COOK and BRADLEY DIXON

During the disruptions of the pandemic, Uni Wollongong, like the sector more broadly, became acutely aware of the importance of trusted data in an environment where decisions were being required in higher volume, frequency, and risk.

Our institutional lived experience around data and analytics included taking pride in being a sector leader in the past. However this capability was taken for granted and by increments, often imperceptible, a strength gradually became a weakness. The message from staff and internal reviews was clear: the level of business as usual demand, when added to our strategic needs, exceeded the university’s capacity and presented a risk.

To get data and analytics back on track and achieve our BAU and strategic requirements, it was resolved to elevate data and analytics functions within the organisation. We did this by elevating it from a unit to a new division led by a chief data and analytics officer. After a competitive national search, Bradley Dixon returned to UOW to assume this important role.

The new division was drawn from colleagues in the former information management unit. Like many institutions in the sector, this unit had sat within IT in the COO portfolio, however it was moved to the strategy and assurance portfolio, alongside the other enabling divisions

The division became responsible for centralising, visualising, and embedding shared data insights across the university to achieve institutional goals. It was recognised that to (re)build a culture of data informed decision making, in a complex university environment, a refreshed data strategy and roadmap was required. To do this the university developed an organisational information management framework, which clearly defines Uni Wollongong’s data and information vision, principles, governance processes, requirements and metrics, as well as necessary capabilities.

It was important that the university looked at this as an holistic programme across data quality, metadata, data architecture, reference and master data, data warehousing and business intelligence, and other data management aspects defined by the international DAMA Data Management Body of Knowledge.

Developing the strategy involved understanding the organisation’s current and future state, defined by maturity across these key data management aspects. A gap analysis was then conducted for all key aspects resulting in clearly defined goals, deliverables, and action plans to improve capabilities and maturity across the university.

For this uplift in strategy to succeed, each project needed to consider not only how data would be used, but also other key success factors such as people, process, and technology. A functional analysis identified the need to take a different approach from the traditional data warehousing and business intelligence programmes of work, to uplift the utilisation of data and information across the organisation. This resulted in the establishment of four key functional areas: data insights and analytics, data products and automation, data culture and transformation, and data leadership and governance.

The largest shift in focus for the university was a recognition to invest in a data culture and transformation capability. The data culture and transformation function focuses on business engagement and requirements analysis, process integration and change management, education and data literacy, as well as data architecture. Once the foundational building blocks are established it will pave the way for future capabilities such as predictive modelling through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Successful implementation of this capability should deliver an organisational uplift in data maturity by embedding data and information into our everyday practices, processes and decision making. As the higher education sector continues to change and evolve, our staff will be empowered to make informed strategic decisions with the assurances of data and insights they can trust.

Sean Brawley is DVC (Strategy and Assurance), Richard Cook is Chief Strategy Officer, and Bradley Dixon is Chief Data and Analytics Officer at the University of Wollongong