UNSW Data Strategy

Vision

UNSW is building capability towards becoming a data-driven organisation and needs to build an integrated, seamless and user-friendly data environment that empowers data-driven decision making to support the effective management of the University.

Why this is important

Data-driven decision making can help UNSW in the following ways:

  • limit risk and assist with making evidence-based decisions;
  • enable the organisation to set realistic, achievable and strategic goals based upon sound data;
  • access to good data enables the organisation to know how it is tracking against goals and targets;
  • access to timely and accurate data in easy-to-digest formats enables the organisation to respond quickly to changes in the external environment.

With the ongoing uncertainty regarding Commonwealth Government higher education policy and increasing changes in the local and international higher education landscape, the need for sound data upon which to make informed decisions has never been higher.

Purpose

The purpose of this data strategy is to set out a realistic and appropriate plan to improve the availability, quality, management and use of data for the purposes of business intelligence, analytics and insights supporting the management of UNSW as a business.

This data strategy incorporates enterprise, operational and management reporting and dashboards for all Divisions and Faculties within UNSW. This data strategy excludes other areas, such as Learning & Teaching analytics, Finance analytics and reporting, and Research analytics, since they are managed separately by the relevant business areas. However, this data strategy will provide an architectural blueprint and operational models for other analytics areas within the University that may wish to adopt similar cloud platforms and techniques.

A key part of this data strategy is to improve the availability, quality, governance, management and use of data within UNSW to support operational decision making and management.