Fred Rocha:
The art of reporting is equal parts, understanding your data, but also knowing where that data resides. And you find that no institution creates the reports in the same, in the same way, or the same manner. There tends to be silos of data that exist outside of where people traditionally think that that information resides, which is usually the student information system. And there’s this huge reliance on that bespoke knowledge that an individual has who’s crafting these reports. And although it is very important to capture all the data needed and necessary for accurate reporting, to do that in a way in which it can be performed absent an individual, absent the person who may have been the designer of that initial report, becomes critical for the success of that institution. And all of these manual efforts that are engaged in order to develop this report usually don’t transfer to an automated practice or an automated process that really is needed in in a modern environment.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Fred Rocha, who has served public education institutions in technical instructional and advisory leadership positions for 39 years. Most recently as CIO of Coast Community College District in California. And now as a senior consultant with Higher Digital. Fred and I talked about the essential role of business data reports in the context of higher ed, and how the process of inventorying, understanding, modernizing and sustaining them can serve as a pathway to data governance. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb:
Welcome to TRANSFORMED a higher digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new whats, and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I am joined by Fred Rocha, retired CIO of Coast Community College District here in California, active member of our consulting team here at Higher Digital. And repeat guest here on the podcast. Fred, welcome back to TRANSFORMED.
Fred Rocha:
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. What would you like to talk about?
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I’m really glad you asked. I want to talk about your thoughts on transforming business reports as a pathway to data governance, but first, let’s set the context with some examples that you’ve encountered recently in our work with customers.
Fred Rocha:
Wow, that’s a, that’s, that’s a great topic, Joe. And, you know, it’s, it’s one that certainly has been at my, the, the forefront of my thinking and, and a lot of the experience I’ve been having working with our clients right now. Boy, one institution that certainly comes to top of mind was one that was really challenged with their enrollment reports. And those reports are absolutely essential for their funding information in order to get reimbursed by the state and to be able to accurately capture the information about the students that they’re serving. In one case in particular, that really jumps out. They were struggling with having a focus on the, the peer numbers. And with that they were missing a lot of the other nuanced data that’s really essential to the characteristics of their student population.
Fred Rocha:
Because funding isn’t just about the peer numbers of people in a class, there’s much more that goes into it in terms of the population that’s being served. So, you know, there’s one that that comes to mind. And the, another one, boy, the, the other one that that really kind of hit home was an institution that was challenged purely because of an unfortunate incident. They had a staff member who was who suddenly passed away due to an accident. And with that, they found that they had lost their way of reporting information about student services, specifically tutoring services that were being provided because that information was residing within a process that was very much tied to that individual. Later figured out that it had been residing on a spreadsheet that had been password protected, that had been on, on a thumb drive and wasn’t part of an inventory of data that was used in that department. And it gave them great challenges to figure out how they would recreate that and how they would then be able to use that data in order to get the, again, the funding that was needed in order to provide those services for students. So those are just two examples that come to mind.
Joe Gottlieb:
Wow, those are great. I think they’ll help us to really frame this conversation, which as you know, gets into a lot of nooks and crannies because business reports are everywhere, and they’re really critical and essential to many aspects of operational delivery, of teaching and learning, along with all the administrative functions that are in support of that. And, and thus, they, we also find that they’re in a broad variety of conditions and, and, and origin. So, care to elaborate on that, just as we continue to set the scene for this, this conversation.
Fred Rocha:
Yeah, I, and I, I think you’re spot on in the way you’re describing business reports. You know, the art of reporting is equal parts, understanding your data, but also knowing where that data resides. And you find that no institution creates the reports in the same, in the same way or the same manner. There tends to be silos of data that exist outside of where people traditionally think that that information resides, which is usually the student information system. And there’s this huge reliance on that bespoke knowledge that an individual has who’s crafting these reports. And although it is very important to capture all the data needed and necessary for accurate reporting to do that in a way in which it can be performed absent an individual, absent the person who may have been the designer of that initial report becomes critical for the success of that institution.
Fred Rocha:
And all of these manual efforts that are engaged in order to develop this report usually don’t transfer to an automated practice or an automated process that really is needed in in a modern environment. I, I find that the other challenge is the lack of documentation that surrounds both the reports or as well any calculated processes that are engaged in, in and crafting that report. And heaven forbid when somebody leaves or somebody’s absent, if your data is held hostage to that absence or that loss of the individual because you can no longer access it, then it’s as if the data really doesn’t even exist. And it doesn’t matter how accurately it might have been entered or how diligently it was captured, we need to make sure that it is repe repeatable and sustainable in terms of our business reporting practices.
Joe Gottlieb:
Hmm. Well, you talk about spreadsheets, you talk about various forms of software that might be in various conditions. What about sas? Doesn’t that make everything easy for me? Doesn’t data governance come for free with sas,
Fred Rocha:
<Laugh> <laugh>? Oh, if I had a dime every time I’ve heard that recently, Joe, you know, know, it’s, it’s funny, I think many vendors have really tried to focus on removing customizations from folks and environment. And, and, and, and it’s true that that is an important part of the process. But, you know, data governance is much more than simply having guardrails around the way in which data is entered or where data is stored. It becomes really important for the individual to realize that there is a responsibility that lies with the actual users, the people who are doing the, the data entry, as well as the people who are designing the business processes. You know, I think in terms of the idea, does data governance come for free? It would be nice if that was the case, but unfortunately, data governance is going to be a case again, where the individuals who is responsible for that environment in the case, I mean, the use of that environment, whether it’s something that is a SaaS structure or something that is other than SaaS, you know another type of environment, it’s still critical for them to understand that all of these sources of information, especially in in a SaaS world have to be governed.
Fred Rocha:
They have to be moderated, they have to be examined. And that it’s so easy in a SaaS world to think about this loss of ownership because now you’re not responsible, if you will, for the main maintenance of that database. It’s residing with somebody else. It’s easy to tie that, I think, to the mindset that, oh, that means I’ve, in essence, relieved myself of the responsibility of that data governance and data gov data management process. You don’t want to be passive. You still need to be actively engaged in that and understand that SaaS, while it does many things for the for the institution, it does many things for the user. Alle alleviating yourself of the responsibility of data governance is not one of them.
Joe Gottlieb:
Hmm. I think that’s a really important distinction. And I like the way you phrased it. It’s, it’s a mindset that could cause one to presume that they no longer need to be concerned about data governance because they’re no longer responsible, let’s say, for managing the system that’s holds the data, managing the servers that hold the systems, managing the data, you know, storage services that are trying to give them some economies of scale for their consumption of storage capacity, all these things, right? And actually different from SaaS. If we’re in a private cloud scenario, we might have already begun the walk along the continuum whereby we’re less involved in managing this infrastructure, but we’re still perhaps halfway there. It’s really important to call out that data governance is still it’s still indeed a responsibility that an organization needs to maintain regardless of how their technology’s being delivered.
Joe Gottlieb:
And I know we’ll, we’ll touch on on more of that. So, alright, enough of the doom and the gloom. Painting the scenery with all kinds of challenge. Let’s talk about how we fight back with good approaches. And I think it’ll be helpful to start with, you mentioned art and science. Perhaps we start on the science side ’cause it’s a little bit easier to grasp. And then we’ll, and then we’ll hit the, the art side. But on the science side, what are a couple of the technical approaches that we can take or at least think about when it comes to, to data governance?
Fred Rocha:
Well, you know, in, in thinking about SaaS for a moment, because I think that is, it’s not new to institutions or, or to the, the staff that are working there, but what is new is the direct access or the loss of direct access to that database. You know, that is why I think in people’s minds, that translates to, if I don’t have direct access to the database, that means in essence I’m outsourcing my data governance practice. And when we think about the actual architecture, yeah, it is important to realize that there are some safeguards that have been put in place. As we take a look though about what are the technical aspects of this, there, there’s a whole business process realignment that takes place with that new approach to sas. And I think part of the challenge that people really struggle with is understanding that it is a very transactional state in which they’re moving to.
Fred Rocha:
In other words, as they’re having inner interactions with that SaaS application, they’re equally providing data to that system doing their, their data entry. Perhaps they’re generating output from that system as well. But what they haven’t really thought about is what, what does that new world look like for them moving forward? What do they have to do with their technical alignment to make sure that they’ve identified all the places in which data resides that they have contemplated how the integrations are going to play a very important component and what are their sources of truth for the work that they’re doing? Because now that you’re living in a SaaS world, you could have multiple sources of truth and it becomes incredibly important to document exactly what each application, what SaaS is being used for, whether it’s the authoritative source for certain data, and then how does that data get updated, say from one SaaS system to another or how do you coalesce all of that various SaaS data into the reporting need that you have. So really beginning to think in that transactional manner that, that, that process I think becomes really important for people to, not only to contemplate, but to really understand what is taking place in their new environment.
Joe Gottlieb:
So, lemme see if I heard you correctly here. So sticking with this lens of business reports as this, in a way, we’re thinking about a pathway to data governance, whether it’s SaaS or not, I would say we’re often thinking about how to keep the data being the data working for us, the reports that we need to run an institution as being a way to harvest data from these transactional systems that are the system of record, be they, the S-I-S-E-R-P, et cetera, et cetera. C-R-M-L-M-S. You know, I’ve, I’ve used all acronyms here, but, you know, learning management systems, enterprise, enterprise resource planning systems, student information systems, customer relationship management systems. Okay? So now I’ve defined them. But the point is, is that these are all systems that, that allow you to automate workflows and those respective domains, they end up being very transactional in nature. IE they, they take in data, they compute data, they allow you to publish information, they of course allow reporting. A lot of reporting has been built in those systems and across these systems to be able to run the institution. And those systems exist in premise software, private hosted SaaS, software, all the above. Right. Okay. So let’s talk a bit about in this first, you know, approach, which is more of the well, one of two on the science side. How might we think about business reports evolving through a set of circumstances as these systems change provided that we’re thinking about this from a, from a systems oriented view?
Fred Rocha:
Well, and I think that’s an an excellent lens to, to apply here because business reporting generally will surface this, this need because, and I’ll, I’ll, another example that sort of comes to mind is for students who have on campus housing, there’s a whole lot of moving pieces that go in to, first of all, identifying that that student is registered and entitled or eligible for student housing. So there’s gonna be one set of data that’s gonna reside in the system. There, there’s another system, usually a finance system that is going to be responsible for capturing the billing that’s involved with that. You have perhaps another system for financial aid which says, oh, this student actually has funds that are set aside in order to help pay for this. And if you have on-campus housing, you probably have an on-campus food program. So now you have to provide a manner in which you’re going to feed that student.
Fred Rocha:
So all of these, these complexities of both reporting as well as the the capturing of that data within these environments is highly integrated in order to make sure that all the needs of that student are met. So if you begin to break down where all that data is stored and where that data is going to be utilized in different manners, it really helps understand, if you will, the technical landscape in which you’re, you’re dealing with documenting that is that first step, if you will, to really ensuring that your data governance practices are going to allow you to ensure that the accurate data not only is entered, but it flows in a manner in order to achieve all of these workflow processes that get that student served in a timely manner. Because let’s face it, if you had a student coming to your campus and you couldn’t get them into their housing or you couldn’t get them fed, you’re not going to have a very happy student. And you’re in essence failing in part of your mission of the overall student service as well as the overall you know satisfaction of which that student’s going to have in, in working with your institution. So making sure that you understand not just where the data resides, how it’s being used, and having it set up so that it can be automated I think become critical parts of that process, that transformation mindset of how data is, is not only captured but used and flows throughout the environment.
Joe Gottlieb:
And would you agree then that having inventory is an important starting point and but, but, and then having this, this, this set set of rules that allow you to think proactively about how the data is being, being used and updated, really important too. But then as this portfolio of systems continues to evolve through changes, maybe you’re swapping out, you know, one finance system for another as an example, now you’ve gotta think about how the, your inventory shifts, how you’re delivering all the student services and how that can, you know, how you can avoid not being, you know, being in a situation where you would fail to deliver those services because you’d lack the data to be able to do so. And then of course, governing that together overall with the change as it is incorporated, becomes really important. What about customization? What if the report was based upon a customization that you implemented in a premise piece of software and you’re now moving, let’s say to SaaS and that report is broken because the customization no longer exists. I imagine that’s part of what you’re trying to catch here as well, right?
Fred Rocha:
Absolutely. I, you know, and I think of how many times I had somebody call from a particular business office area over to IT to say, Hey we just made this change in our process and now we need you to go in and actually do this, you know, manual change to the report in order to make sure that the output is going to be displayed or is going to be usable. And it usually took multiple iterations of that. You know, someone would say, well, okay, based on what you described, I think this is what will allow that outcome that you’re expecting. And what should have been a relatively seamless update becomes a very arduous and inaccurate process because it has too much dependency on individuals making changes as opposed to being able to see how the ingest of that data would actually be impacted through the flow.
Fred Rocha:
And, and being able to map that for the new system that’s being brought in, or an update to that system that was being applied to really understand where that change was having impact. You know, it’s, it, business reporting to me is always a canary in a coal mine. You’re always having the opportunity to examine if the report does not appear to be correct, why is that the case? And, and use those as opportunities to really ask yourself, is it because I’m not using my my application stack correctly, or I’m doing something that is a one-off and a business process change that isn’t known, isn’t documented, or heaven forbid isn’t standard or worse isn’t supported and you’re requiring these other manual processes. All of that leads to system failure down the line and certainly something we wanna avoid.
Joe Gottlieb:
And since we’re talking about customization, as you point out that manual example that was using a spreadsheet to account for all the delivery of tutoring services as part of a student services reporting effort, classic case in point, right? Where it manual efforts, particularly those on spreadsheets is, is a form of customization, right? We’re, we’re, we’re building a unique thing that our vendors aren’t going to maintain for us to address the needs of the business. And that as our vendors change what they’re offering us with their systems, those things could easily break. So in this case, the example you’re the tragic case of someone passing made that whole report come down, obviously, but what could have happened even before that and probably did happen multiple times, is a system change forced that individual to adapt how they were manually delivering the data within that set of systems that was being, that was changing underneath, right?
Fred Rocha:
Absolutely. And, and I think the other part is this was being done with the best of intention, right? Yeah. It isn’t as if this person created this, this setup and this and this environment because they wanted to have some eventual catastrophic failure of their reporting abilities. What it was is they just didn’t understand that although they were able to produce the outcome for that report, if it wasn’t a sustainable practice, it was going to do more harm than good eventually. And, and silos of data that reside in these one-offs, or, you know, we use the phrase shadow it where somebody is doing something that you don’t know about. That’s what will really hurt. Because again, that was an extreme case where somebody unexpectedly passed away and now you didn’t have access to it. But there’s just as many cases of, you know, somebody leaves a position, somebody retires, some, you no longer have access to that individual’s knowledge. And without documentation, without any thought for the sustainable practice, the, the way in which that data was actually guaranteed to be quality data, meaning that it was accurate, that it was totaled, meaning that it captured all of the students that were being served in that particular case, none of those safety rails were around that process. And it really speaks to the need to have that mindset going forward when any new system or process is brought into an environment. I,
Joe Gottlieb:
Interesting. So we’ve, we’ve talked a bit about systems, these usual suspects that we’ve relied upon for systems of record in all the different domains, but is there a better way to do this? Is there a better way to get at this data that would like simultaneously better serve our data analysis and data decision making needs and maybe also make it easier to wrap data governance practices around use of the data?
Fred Rocha:
Well, I think that’s a great question because so much of what we see transforming in the higher educational landscape is the inclusion of data lakes. And I’d say the proper use of data lakes, the ability to bring in multiple sources of information to be able to then aggregate that data as needed and necessary. But equally as important is for the institution to retain ownership of that data. Because by owning the data lake, having the ability to have all of this wealth of information not only begins to give them a platform that is going to allow them to complete their reporting environment, but it’s going to allow them to engage with their data in, in the most meaningful ways possible. That it’s going to give them the ability to manage permissions to who has access to ensure that there are standards that are applied so that things like HIPAA or FERPA or GBLA or any of this sort of, you know data privacy rules that we must and should adhere to are actually followed in the way in which we’re interacting with that data. So I, I’m really pleased to see that sort of change that’s taking place in higher ed. I, I think the tools that are becoming available are, are excellent and are, are really getting to the idea that if you are looking at where your responsibility lies, especially from, I’ll say from the IT perspective, you are to be the custodian of that data to do and to make sure that it is safely stored and is available to those who need access to it. And these tools are really helping institutions to do that.
Joe Gottlieb:
Okay. So it sounds like a couple key benefits to this new approach. IE data Lakes one, you in effect sort of reclaim in aggregate ownership of your data by pulling it out into a place that probably isn’t gonna be on your premise, but will be in a private cloud, that, that you’re able to, to manage with a, with a, a, a solution that works in this way. Two, it it not only helps you reclaim ownership of the data, but now probably having a more straightforward way to apply good data governance practices to this large set of data with fewer of the complexities that you might encounter by doing it one system at a time. And so getting back to that one system at a time, if we, if we’re, as we’ve been talking about up until this point before introducing a data lake concept, there’s still some responsibility of course to do data governance inside those systems, which will continue to be reliant upon for their transactional workflow capabilities pertinent to the domain in question.
Joe Gottlieb:
And that is making sure we are assigning proper permissions to individuals who have access to those workflows, who can enter data according to their role in the system, and can only see data in those systems according to their role. But that effort becomes more focusable on the workflow as opposed to all the business reporting that on average, more people have access to where data governance really becomes more important by virtue of the number of use cases being served. Not any more important than those other use cases that we have to still lock down. But more important, just by virtue of wow, this is where a lot of the duty cycle of data use is happening, right?
Fred Rocha:
Absolutely. And the, the whole human side of data governance really is where I think an institution wants to live. When we’re thinking about th their practices, we know that there needs to be a foundation of policies, that there needs to be groups who review and understand the roles of, of, of things like data stewardship. And, and that there’s an enfor, an enforcement pro process that goes along with that. That we have ways of making sure that our policies and our procedures are applied and that those standards are adhered to. But that’s the, if you will, the, the table stake where we need to be just to ensure that our data is safe, that it is accessible and that it remains confidential where appropriate. The other value added part of this discussion though, becomes now helping those individuals at the institution to really understand why that data is important, not just to their role, the, the, the role that they have at the institution, but why others depend upon it, and what can be gathered by the use of accurate information in order to have data influenced decision making to be able to utilize things like accurate business reporting but to also then apply other tools such as AI to the environment, which is really dependent upon the accuracy of the data and to be able to have rules around what remains confidential so that you don’t accidentally expose content that, that that shouldn’t be.
Fred Rocha:
So the roles of data mentorship, the, the roles of data coaching of really getting individuals as well as the institution to understand that they will be most successful with their data governance practices. If individuals understand that it really resides at their fingertips as their doing that data entry or as they’re reading reports or as they’re generating output from the systems. Meaning that, you know, parking passes campus housing assignments class registrations, all of those things are dependent upon many individuals doing and fulfilling their roles and really understanding that, although they might be concerned with say, one aspect of a transaction you know, the faculty member is concerned about the number of students in their class, but the student services office may be very concerned about the characteristics of that student that they’re serving because there may be services that that student is eligible for.
Fred Rocha:
There may be other technologies that could be brought into the classroom to assist with instruction depending upon the makeup of, of, of that class. And the overall institution has a, a population that they are serving, that it may have other resources that become available based on who is going there. So all of that is so very important and all ties back to that idea that data governance is much more than just the mechanisms that reside within SaaS, for example. It’s all the people who are going to make up the data entry as well as the data usage for that system.
Joe Gottlieb:
I like the way you’ve called that the human side. So we earlier alluded to the science versus the art of data governance. This would fall into the art side, but more aptly name the human side because it reflects again, if you subdivide what you just said, just i, I wrap some words around it. The both the posture, which might be the controls and the performance, which are these value added services that help help all the members of the institution become successful with data governance. So, you know, knowing how that our data’s being used, knowing how to be careful and exert some stewardship over it, knowing how not to break certain rules that we’ve set for ourselves that are related back to the posture, this now becomes all right, if we can get help more people to be successful using that structure, then we’re gonna be very well served and not just remain compliant, but also achieve success with using data as an important delivery mechanism for teaching and learning and, and the administrative support that institutions need to have. Alright, let’s bring this thing to a close. So in summary, what three takeaways will you offer our listeners on the topic of transforming business reports as a pathway to data governance?
Fred Rocha:
Well, I think first and foremost for me, it’s remembering that data management and data governance will always reside with the people who own the business processes and who are associated with the way in which that data is going to be entered and consumed. You cannot abdicate that responsibility. I think the second point becomes really understanding that business process owners tend to have the power to change those business processes, and they need to be equipped with the discipline of data governance as they make those changes. It’s very easy to think of something being a one-off that won’t have any impact, but we all know that that’s a really bad data governance practice to engage in. So really understanding and equipping them with that knowledge, I think becomes essential. Last but not least is that errors that surface especially in business reporting, at least from my experience, need to be tracked and need to be resolved.
Fred Rocha:
And there are great opportunities to balance that, you know, the need for innovation, the need for change a desired increase in performance and certainly compliance. So if we are seeing something come up and we are concerned about why that’s occurring, dig in, find out, and use that as an opportunity to ensure that your practices are in alignment with the process of and the the data governance process and management that your institution has in place and that you’re adhering to it. I think if there’s one other thing I’d say though, I would love to invite any of our folks who are listening to the podcast to, to join us in a webinar to discuss, join the challenges that they’re facing how they’ve brought successful outcomes for their institution and the lessons that they’ve learned so that we don’t have to have others learn them the hard way. I think that’d be a great opportunity for us to, to, to share all of those things that we’ve learned along the way and have a great, I think it’d make a great panel discussion, Joe.
Joe Gottlieb:
I totally agree. We’ll have to make that happen. So if, if any of you are interested, please do reach out to us here at Higher Digital. Great summary, Fred, and as always, thanks for joining us here on the podcast.
Fred Rocha:
Absolutely. My pleasure, Joe. It’s always a great time to have these sort of discussions and, and know that what we’re kicking around is certainly what are challenges for others to face.
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. Have a great day and look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of Transformed.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital and if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.
