The wind of change.....

Next session is from Alison Allden
Chief exec of HESA

Exploring the HE Information Landscape. We don't know a lot about it.
Only discovered last year that there are over 500 demands for data made by over 90 organisations to our institutions.
HESA data collected in July after a student has arrived, and released to us in following January, 15 months later.
Liken HESA to a dinosaur, becoming extinct?
So, has to change.

HEDIIP, information landscape project.
Introducing unique learner number. Will enable us to track students and link data.
About to report, and will produce a blueprint for a different information landscape.




In the centre, HESA transformed.
HESA must change its approach to the collection of HE data.
HESA cached.

Aim is to:
Enable timely data collection and reporting
Reduce the burden on data providers
Drive improved value for money
Deliver data that is fit for purpose
Support changes to data governance

Developing a business case at the moment.
Website for cached programme coming up.

Value of information, why do we have it and why are we collecting it?
University guides, helping students choose
League tables
Supporting students choice, KIS is open data.

Sector is changing, collecting data from a wider range of stakeholders.
Dramatic increase in requests for data.
Mainly market research data.
HESA now publish subject benchmarking reports to explore students, qualification outcome, employment. Can be used to look at your portfolio.

Can be used to look at strategic issues.
Interesting pic about proportion of women in education, women are pink, obviously




Or look at trends in education. Showed a slide showing that Computer science is the only science subject where number of graduates has declined in last 10 years.

Trying to make the data more accessible. There is a HESA app.
And building a next generation HEIDI, working with JISC, enabling us to build dashboards etc. Will be a licence to use it with tableau.

In conclusion, HESA has to change, but so do we. We will have to work together to take this forward


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HEDIIP

Next up at RUGIT was Andy Youell talking to us about HEDIIP, redesigning the information landscape. We all submit data to various bodies, including HESA. There's been a massive lack of coordination amongst data collectors with duplication and no standardisation. This has therefore driven uncoordinated responses from HEIs.

There's also data capability issues with data management and governance issues starting to come up. Of course, there's a desire to drive value from data, and therefore you need good data which requires data governance.

HEDIIP is a programme to drive change across the UK. The intention is to redesign the information landscape, not tweak it.
So far they have done an inventory of data collections from us. They found 523 separate HE data collections and 93 organisations collect student data every year. Many have them use different data definitions. Lots of scope for standardisation and rationalisation.

Lots of good work done so far on things like the adoption of the Unique Learner Number, Subject Coding, and data management. Lots of examples of Universities with hundreds of pockets of student data, often in spreadsheets (fun fact, you can get 1.7bn pieces of data in an excel spreadsheet). Also, different parts of the university will be sending data off to different bodies. Often with no-one else knowing about it.

If we are to redesign the landscape, there needs to be a standard data set with a standard set of definitions. For example, what is a course, what is a student? There will need to be a governance body to implement this. Will probably be built on current HESA return.

Really interesting topic, and I was seriously surprised how many bodies are collecting student data, and how many pockets of student data there are in an institution. One of the discussion topics was, how much is this costing us as a sector. The answer isn't really known, but a rough estimate is many millions of ponds.



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Thank you...

Thursday I spent in London at a UCISA executive committee meeting, As well as the normal business, especially looking at what the many UCISA groups have been up to, we had a visit from the Chief Executive of HESA.  HESA is the body that collects and collates data from Universities in many areas - from the student record on how many and what sort of students we have from finance on what we spend our money on, and on HR.  This data is then sent to various agencies - including our funding bodies.  At the moment HESA is undergoing a transformation programme - looking at all of its processes and how it collects this data, and as we are are heavily involved in this, it will affect us. so we will be watching with interest, and taking part in the consultations.

Friday saw our annual thank you party for staff - some drinks and food and what has become a bit of a tradition, the annual charity raffle. Over 130 prizes donated by our staff and our suppliers,

and we raised about £1,000 for two charities - Diabetes UK and Roundabout, a local charity which helps homeless teens in Sheffield. Many thanks to everyone, for your hard work throughout the year, for donating prizes, buying raffle tickets or helping on the day. Much appreciated.

Just say no...

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in a consultative workshop on the HE Information Landscape Project being run by HESA.  The project is looking at data which is collected and returned to various statutory  bodies by Universities, with the specific aims of reducing the current burden, improving the quality and timeliness of data and ensuring that data meets the needs of all users. There's been a lot of engagement with the community already, and a number of key issues are starting to emerge, and yesterday was an opportunity to test them out and get feedback. The participants were mainly planners  - I think I was the token IT Director :-)  - as it was generally felt that the technology is not the issue.

We spent quite a lot of time discussing what the "burden" around data actually is. My aim would be that we should be collecting, storing and providing data only once. Staff currently involved in providing data in multiple different formats to many organisations, and writing the systems to do so, would be better employed actually doing stuff that benefits students.  There's many areas of duplication, and a suspicion that data is asked for on a "wants to know" basis, not "needs to know".  A lively discussion took place on the KIS (Key Information Set),  with the general view that although the principles behind it (giving students comparator information) has to be welcomed, it has been imposed too quickly, the data being provided has not been thought through from the prospective students' perspective, and there has been little consideration of how meaningful the data will actually be.

So, an interesting day and I did find it very useful being in a large group  of people involved in planning. My own, personal view is that as a sector we should just start saying no occasionally when asked for data, especially as our reliance on some of these bodies for funding is decreasing rapidly. Not sure whether that will catch on though....

HESA, JANET, UCISA and other acronyms

Yesterday I spent the day chairing the UCISA Executive meeting in London. Two interesting discussions, the first on the proposed changes to the way JANET delivers our network services at the regional level. I've blogged about this before, and it is still rumbling on. There is still a lot of concern in the community about the proposals, especially around how some of the additional services provided by the current MANs will continue. I took part in a meeting some weeks ago with the Chief Executive of JANET where we outlined some of the communities concerns - I felt it was a positive and productive meeting, and we did get a response - both the concerns and the reply are here. Since then JANET has produced a white paper which provides a lot more information on the rationale behind the proposed changes and the intial outcomes of the consultation. We agreed at the UCISA meeting yesterday that we need to look forward, and make sure that we get the best possible service for our members, whilst protecting our costs.

The other major discussion was with the recently appointed Chief Executive of HESA. Alison Allden. As a former IT Director and a Director of Information Services, Alison is one of us, and it's great to have her in this post. She outlined her vision and some of the issues facing the sector in the area of information collection and management, and we had some questions for her. Many of the issues which Alison had identified were the same as we had, so there's a lot of common thinking. We covered HESA's relationship with our institutions as well as its relationship with its statutory customers - the funding councils. Interestingly when I asked people here what issues they wanted raising, most were around amount of data being collected, the detail of the data and some of the data definitions - all of which are actually set by the funding councils, not HESA. There was a concern on both sides of the amount of returns we have to do, and why HESA can't collect it all, to a common set of standards and then reuse it. A very useful discussion and I'm optimistic that UCISA and HESA will be able to work together to iron out some of the issues to benefit us both.

The other major topic was our Annual Conference - the place to be next March. Bookings have just opened, the programme is looking good, and it's in Harrogate. What more could you want?