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by Barbara Hope

When most people think of storage, they picture a vast, cavernous warehouse filled with shelving and boxes full of goods. At the University of Maryland, however, storage doesn’t just apply to the Terp inventory waiting to be displayed and sold at the campus bookstore but also to valuable intangibles: the university’s data assets.

Because the university maintains tremendous amounts of data not only through applications like the Student Information System but also via operational data stores and a data warehouse, the Office of Data Administration (ODA) and the Data Policy Advisory Committee (DPAC) developed an innovative new policy and a set of guidelines regarding institutional data.

“Essentially, institutional data is any information vital in carrying out administrative tasks. For example, any data that are used in planning, operating, managing, or auditing the administrative functions of an academic or administrative department would be considered institutional,” said Marla Bonner of the ODA. “Without this kind of information assembled logically and securely, the university would have difficulty functioning in the smooth manner it does now.”

The Institutional Data Management Policy is a blueprint for establishing and maintaining orderly collections of institutional data that are both stable and reliable. Such collections will maximize the data’s value by increasing individuals’ comprehension and use. For example, authorized users can access data in source applications, download data from data stores like Degree Navigator, receive management reports from the Warehouse on the Web (WOW), and even utilize the UM Data Warehouse to create their own reports. They will also gain a more holistic view of how the university functions. Finally, the policy also seeks to protect this data through compliance with both university policies and state and federal laws.

“This policy also dovetails nicely with the university’s commitment to utilize technology to become more competitive, deliver services more efficiently, and increase decision-making capabilities,” said Steve Edwards, Director of OIT-Administrative & Enterprise Applications. “I believe we’ll really see some great changes because of it.”

Additionally, the Data Management Structure and Procedures assign five levels of responsibility for managing institutional data. The Data Owner is the University of Maryland. Data Trustees are individual University of Maryland vice presidents responsible for the collection of data subsets within their respective divisions. Data Stewards, designated senior UM officials, have overall responsibility for subsets of institutional data managed by their reporting units while also ensuring the data quality of these subsets, identifying access types, creating authorization procedures, and approving requests for access to the data. Data Managers, UM officials and members of their staff, have operational responsibility for data subsets managed by their units, including implementing security access controls and ensuring compliance, assisting with data interpretation, and providing data definitions. Data Users are any UM employees or students who have lawful and appropriate authority to obtain the information they seek.

To read the policy and guidelines in their entirety, visit http://inform.umd.edu/PRES/policies/vi2200a.html (Institutional Data Management Policy) and http://inform.umd.edu/PRES/policies/vi2300a.html (Data Management Structure & Procedures).

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