You can have the best dashboard, the clearest definitions, and the most carefully governed dataset — but if your data setup only works as long as a specific person is around, or a specific tool behaves as expected, then it isn’t future-proof. Things change. People leave. Systems evolve. If we want our data to stay…
Mention “data governance” in a meeting and you’ll usually see people brace for impact. It’s not the most exciting phrase, and it often sounds like something for big teams with formal committees and glossy PDFs. But governance isn’t about paperwork. It’s about making sure the effort you’ve put into improving your data doesn’t quietly fall…
Once you’ve started making your data more usable and understandable, the next step is knowing whether you’re making progress. That’s where metrics come in. We’re used to measuring performance in higher education. But we rarely measure the quality of the data behind those performance measures – and that’s often where things go wrong. Good data…
It’s easy to forget that the dashboard is only the end of the journey. If you want meaningful insight, you have to start much earlier – with the raw data. Refining data doesn’t mean building the perfect model or learning a new tool. Often, it’s about getting a solid grasp of what your data actually…
“Fit for purpose” is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot in data conversations. It sounds sensible. It feels right. But when you stop and ask, fit for whose purpose, and how do we know it’s fit?, the answers can get surprisingly vague. In higher education, we’re often good at making data…
