Areas of Focus for Technical Assistance
Provided below are excerpts from our letter of interest, and additional information requested.
 From Letter of Interest Dated April 2, 2015:
Areas of Interest for Technical Assistance Team Visits
Our areas of interest are focused at the intersection of institutional research (IR), management
information systems, institutional reporting, and institutional effectiveness. Ensuring data
integrity and validity, and making data available and accessible to the college for analysis,
reporting, decision making and policy making have presented challenges to the institution for
several years, if not longer. We continue to experience issues with data definition and validity,
do not have a data dictionary for users, and are planning to transition to a new enterprise data
warehouse (EDW), through which we expect to fulfill long-range and pent-up needs for
business intelligence reporting (we currently use Cognos), visual displays (we’re looking at the
potential of Tableau), scorecards, dashboards, and related software applications. And we desire
to continue to move toward greater utilization of self-reporting tools.
Rationale & Context for Areas of Interest
Institutional Planning & Effectiveness (IPE) is partnering with Information Technology Systems
(ITS) on an initiative that deals directly with the areas of interest [described above]; previous
exchanges between staff in the two offices have largely been limited to troubleshooting
transactions. Working with ITS presents an opportunity now that an ITS director is firmly in
place, though the area remains challenged by the existing workload relative to available
programmer analysts. The college has been relying on the good work of an experienced
consultant for building Cognos reports, as no programmer analyst is able to focus on data
modeling and business intelligence reporting. IT is phasing out an executive information system
(EIS), building an operational data store (ODS) based on Colleague, and developing an EDW.
 Additional Information:
Questions for PRT to Consider – How to:
 Determine what to develop as standard business intelligence reporting versus self-service
reporting tools? It seems that some institutions have spent many years developing both, yet
resulting in less than optimal usage of either.
 Borrow from and apply best practices, such as standard reports and data dictionaries with
definitions commonly used across the California community college system?
 Build databases and tools that are adaptable to user needs yet not high maintenance?
 Ensure that data and data reporting align with vendor software systems?
 Plan for training of college employees, and which employees to train – faculty, staff and
administrators – on the various databases and tools?
 Cultivate an appreciation for, and desire to access and use, research and data across the
institution?
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Definition of the Institution’s Needs
The overarching issue concerns how to develop a data infrastructure that will serve the
college’s long-term needs for analytics and reporting. Some sub-issues include the types of
reporting to be developed along a continuum of completely standardized reports to self-service
reporting, and data analysis and reporting for diverse purposes (such as enrollment
management planning). A related issue is the desire to increase utilization of research and data
at the college.
Status of Recent Efforts
 The Data, Analytics & Reporting Team (DART) has been working with a consultant over the
past few months on the initial stages of data vetting/validation and data warehouse
development.
 IPE’s institutional data analyst and research analyst recently completed a two day workshop
on SQL fundamentals for Colleague.
 We are currently recruiting for a director of institutional research, expecting to screen and
hire in October or thereabouts if the search is successful.
 We will be recruiting a programmer analyst to help with the IT workload.
Additional Documentation
Please find the following documents:
1. Strategic Plan – This plan provides information concerning the institution’s 6 priorities and
11 goals for the 2013-2018 period. It is important to keep these priorities and goals in mind
as this initiative proceeds.
2. Organizational Transition to Central IR Function – This charts important features associated
with the transition to a central institutional research function under the purview of the
Office of Institutional Planning & Effectiveness.
3. Database & Data Path Map – This provides a visual of current and proposed databases and
data paths.
4. Agreement with Consultant – The college has been working with a consultant in recent
years. This year’s contract concerns the development and implementation of an educational
data warehouse.
5. EDW Project Timeline – This displays the consultant’s original intended timeline for
development of the educational data warehouse.
6. DART Purpose & Membership – The Data, Analytics & Reporting Team was formed across
IPE and IT for the purpose of working jointly on data vetting, validity, and related issues
toward the rollout of business intelligence and self-service analytics and reporting.
7. IE Council Purpose & Rationale – This documents the reasoning for establishing a new
council within the established governance system.
8. IE Council Handbook - Proposed to be implemented in early fall 2015, the Institutional
Effectiveness Council will fulfill multiple purposes intersecting research, data, mandated
reporting, and other institutional needs.
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