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What is Campus Data?

Campus Data (https://data.uiowa.edu) will act as a data clearinghouse / portal for the University of Iowa. It will allow data stewards to publish information about their reports and other data items. This information can be searched and filtered by end users allowing them to quickly find reports and data that they are looking for. Today, campus users have to navigate various applications, data stewards, and technologies to pull together information they need to do their job. The ultimate goal of Campus Data is to greatly simplify that task and in the process move us towards a data-driven university.

Reports and other data items will continue to be created and hosted through tools that data stewards are familiar with. Campus Data will simply link off to those data items when the user clicks on them. By consolidating information about all types of data items published throughout campus, we make them easier to find from a single place. By offering a consistent way to describe and document data items, we hope to improve the experience working with data as well. Spend less time finding data and understand what it is telling you more quickly as well.

Where is that report? I remember looking at it 3 months ago. Was it in MAUI, the Provost's website, or did someone email it to me? Who do I even ask where it might be? Now that I have the report, what is the data telling me? This report has a GPA column, but which type of GPA is it? Who can tell me? When was this data generated, is it still valid?

These are the questions that we want to eliminate. Regardless of where the actual data is stored or reported from, if people think of Campus Data as the starting point for all things data related, then we think this will be a useful tool for both publishers and consumers of data around campus.

Features

Finding Data

  • Fast keyword search that allows you to search through titles, descriptions, and categories of reports and other data items.
  • Browse the complete set of data items that are available and filter them by attributes such as Topic, Data Steward, Data Format, Tags, and Keywords.
  • Mark data items as a favorite and quickly access those items from the home page.
  • View reports and data items that are popular, both long term and short term.
  • A simple user interface that allows you to sort items by title, data steward, popularity, and other attributes.

Publishing Data

  • Describe reports and other data items through easy-to-use interfaces.
  • Publish data to all of campus or a restricted group of people through simple security settings.
  • Assign security based on roles or groups that you create and control.
  • Link reports and data to other similar items.
  • Organize data through teams, control who has rights to publish data on that team's behalf.

Requesting Data or Access to Data

  • Fill out a simple form to describe the data you need, track the request through completion.
  • Publishers can use the form to collect more information, and tie the request to the published data item.
  • Request access to existing data through the same process, collect approvals through Universal Workflow.

History

Campus Data started as an internal tool for collecting and reporting metrics data in a consistent and simple way. Recognizing that this goal was similar to a broad campus need to improve how everyone finds, publishes, and requests data, we shifted our focus to consider what a campus data portal might look like. We researched similar projects and tools, including - but not limited to, the following:

Government Data Portals- - -University Data Portals- - -Data Portal Products
US Gov Data PortalIndiana UniversityDomo - Business Management Platform
Iowa Data PortalUW - BI PortalJunar - Open Data Platform

  • In the Spring of 2015, we developed a prototype for Campus Data. This was a simple HTML mock-up that could be shown various groups to see if our ideas were consistent with their needs and pain points. At this point, Campus Data was still a small internal project with limited resources devoted to it. We continued to refine the prototype from April through June.

  • During the Summer of 2015, we started sharing the prototype with a wider group of users, data stewards, and stakeholders around campus. Discussions included leadership from IT, Finance and Operations, and the Provost Office. Those discussions helped to affirm our general direction and raised some issues that we will continue to discuss and react to.

  • We will continue to meet with others as we can. Use our feedback form if you would like to schedule a demo of Campus Data and share your feedback with us.

RoadMap

Short Term Plan

At first, we expect to load the system with information about reports from a limited number of data stewards. We have not yet identified which groups or reports to load, but we expect to target frequently used reports and our goal is to populate the system with enough information to make it a compelling destination for users. We will focus on internal campus users first. Functionality for publishing public information will be planned for future versions. Initial functionality will include:

  • Adding a Portal Concept
  • Including Healthcare IDs in team groups

Long Term Plan

Our long term plans include:

  • Inclusion of Data Governance and Data Literacy resources
  • Enhanced support for data dictionary features
  • Including SQL Roles in the Data Warehouse section

If you have suggestions, please reach out to the Campus Data team.