Archive for the ‘Announcement’ Category

We are delighted to announce Stanford’s new Data Stewardship Coordinator, Kathleen Warmoth.

Kathleen has been with Stanford for 10 years, most recently serving as the Academic Data Manager in the School of Medicine. She has a great deal of experience with data structures, definitions and the appropriate application of various data types. She has implemented consistent nomenclature associated with faculty data across the school, and established best practices for using this data. She has also worked closely with the school’s Data Governance Board, MedIRT, Office of Institutional Planning, and various other Dean’s Office units as a subject matter expert to ensure that faculty data correctly syncs to downstream systems in order to provide accurate reporting and look-up tools across the school. She has also been an active participant in the university’s Faculty Data Stewardship group.

We are very pleased to welcome Kathleen as the coordinator of Stanford’s data stewardship and data governance efforts. Please feel free to contact her at kwarmoth@stanford.edu.

Stanford is looking for our next data stewardship coordinator.

The position description can be found at https://stanford.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=65904

A major recent focus of our data governance and stewardship efforts has been the development of standards, best practices, and especially documentation — metadata about metadata. These materials are compiled into an annotated index of resources, Getting Started with Stanford Data Governance (metadata about metadata about metadata?).

This document is intended as a quick reference for users from a variety of perspectives, compiling information on themes including:

• The SUDS Dictionary (the basics)
• Goals and principles
• Field inventory and usage
• Running a Data Stewardship Group
• Creating Content in the SUDS Dictionary
  • Developing definitions
  • Creating new term names
  • Statuses
  • Policy references
  • Reporting definitions
• Using Collibra
• Further Reading: Data Governance and Data Stewardship at Stanford
  • Data Governance and Data Stewardship at Stanford
  • The Stanford Data Governance Maturity Model
  • Miscellaneous

The document will be updated as materials evolve, with updates announced here (RSS this page to easily watch for updates) as well as circulated to core participants in Stanford’s DG/DS efforts.

As of June 3, our SUDS Data Dictionary has migrated from Confluence to Stanford’s new Collibra-based Data Governance Center.

Initial users are extremely enthusiastic about the extremely powerful content management capabilities that this tool provides.

User resources include the ‘SUDS-ZOO Dictionary‘ sandbox, where users can experiment freely with the tool, without editing live content, as well as documentation compiled in our Collibra Resources community.

A detailed set of naming standards for data elements in BICC-sponsored reporting projects has been approved by the data stewardship steering committee (SUDS-SC) and the BICC steering committee.

These standards support the use of official names that serve as unambiguous identifiers of specific entities and data elements. Official names are intended for broad audiences who may not be familiar with each element, and for contexts where precise identification and definition of elements is critical. For users who aren’t already familiar with an element, the official name should be informative about its nature.

The naming standards include both structural principles (eg, names should include standard identifiers of the element’s entity, attribute, and data class) and controlled vocabularies (eg, restricted sets of defined class words, approved abbreviations). Approved terms in the SUDS data dictionary should be fully compliant with these standards, and the use of reporting aliases should follow standard principles around usage and documentation.

Related materials:

• Overview: https://stanford.box.com/BICC-standards-pres
• Basic principles; why we need standards: https://stanford.box.com/naming-principles
• Controlled vocabulary (class words, etc): https://stanford.box.com/BICC-naming-stds-cntrl-vocab
• Detailed standards explanation and documentation: https://stanford.box.com/BICC-naming-stds

In response to user requests, a subgroup of SUDS-SPO has collaborated with the reporting environment development team to provide user support via mouseover text for folders in the OBI research ad hoc query environment. These provide key details about data definitions and usage. For example:

• The Fact folder contains “Amounts (dollars, etc.) associated with SeRA transactions. Data are transaction total amounts which take any changes to date into consideration.”
• The Sponsored Project Dimension folder contains “Current SPO number, title, and status of all sponsored proposals regardless of proposal status, plus additional attributes in subfolders. See ‘Dim – Time’ for start/end dates and ‘Fact – Research’ for amounts.”

Definitions for the entities underlying each folder are available in the data dictionary; test users also recommended directing new users to this central resource for orientation. If the audience for this reporting environment broadens beyond the current small number of high-level analysts, the group recommends including these entity definitions in mouseovers as well for quick reference.

Developing and approving definitions for all entities referenced in this reporting environment, and then for all associated data elements, is the initial scope of the SUDS-SPO group.

Stanford Data Governance supports the Business Intelligence Comptency Center and the development of Stanford’s BI dashboards. Many of Stanford’s current Data Governance activities fall under the umbrella of Stanford University Data Stewardship (SUDS), which focuses primarily on the development of definitions and other metadata for data elements used in BI reporting projects.

Stanford’s Data Governance Center, which houses the SUDS Data Dictionary and other metadata resources, can be found at https://dgcenter.stanford.edu/.

An annotated index of Stanford’s Data Governance resources is available at https://stanford.box.com/GetStartedDataGovernance.

In keeping with Stanford University’s educational mission and commitment to openness, our Data Governance materials are made freely available wherever possible. We welcome ongoing discussions around these, and appreciate hearing about downstream uses of Stanford’s Data Governance resources, especially in conference presentations, white papers, or other public contexts.

If you have any questions, would like to discuss ways that you or your team could become involved, would like to request access to any of our resources, or believe that you’ve identified a Data Governance, Data Quality or Data Stewardship opportunity at Stanford, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Kathleen Warmoth
Data Stewardship Coordinator
kwarmoth@stanford.edu

We are delighted to announce that Stanford will soon begin using Collibra to manage our business glossary, metadata, and other data governance activities. This will be a significant upgrade from our current metadata repository, supporting our active ongoing metadata development activities and allowing rapid expansion into new areas. Stay tuned for further updates.

An updated version of Stanford’s “faculty map” (Stanford University Faculty and Related Staff Groupings) was released on December 18:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/cgi-bin/dg/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/StanfordFacultyGroupings-titles.pdf

Further information, and other versions of this document, are available at http://irds.stanford.edu/facmap/.

The faculty map illustrates relationships and properties of Stanford’s Professoriate Faculty, Academic Staff, and Other Teaching Staff, synthesizing information from PeopleSoft, Stanford’s Faculty Handbook, and other sources. The purpose of the faculty map is to facilitate a consistent understanding of these populations in communication and reporting within Stanford as well as externally.

The faculty map is intended as a reference for administrative use only. This document was developed by IR&DS in collaboration with Faculty Affairs, Office of the Provost, University Human Resources, the School of Medicine Office of Academic Affairs, and other Stanford stakeholders.

The data stewardship steering committee met on October 22 to update the Stanford Data Governance Maturity Model, reflecting developments and accomplishments over the past two years. The updated version can be found here: StanfordDataGovernanceMaturityModel-2013-overview.pdf