A Strategic Central Approach to Data Collection and Integration: A Case of a Research-Intensive University

Large organisations, such as universities or financial institutions, generally have access to substantial volumes of data from various "transactional" sources, such as customer service records, email, or student management systems. There is an ever-increasing demand on these large organisations to make rapid, relevant and efficient decisions. Given this growing demand, there are at least three key principles that aid decision-making in such large organisations: (a) the need for decisions to be supported by facts rather than perceptions, (b) the general expectation for organisations to be accountable and transparent in their decision-making and (c) the access to data and conduct of time-series analyses to enable an organisation to be competitive. The aim of this article is to give an insight into how a large research-intensive Australian tertiary institution has approached the collection of data to allow effective and efficient institutional decision-making about improvements to teaching and learning by creating a central data management system that brought together existing dispersed university databases and repositories.