Collaboration - List of Pending Data Management Issues
Data Management Issues considered Pending have already been assigned an Owning Data Steward, and a Community of Interest. Data stewards have sufficient knowledge, and the mission to work across organizational boundaries, and hence they will determine the best group to work together on a problem (these are the folks who comprise a community of interest - that is the group of people who have an investment in the solution.)
Although the Data Governance Council is listed as the place where these responsibilities are determined, in most cases when an issue is circulated to the DGCouncil mail list, the data steward whose area included that issues will speak up, and essentially volunteer to take responsibility for a given issue. The "Owner" will recommend a community of interest.
To be an owner of an issue means that data steward will facilitate a resolution to the issue, and take responsibility for seeing that it moves through the process.
Owner
The Data Governance Council designates the “owner” of the issue. The person who submitted the request could be the “owner”, but often the person who is most appropriate to lead the team to resolve an issue is not the one bothered by it (see above.)
In one example, the Provost's office has a problem reporting trends in research space utilization because every time a room is designated as a "tech" room, meaning that it has internet access, video projection equipment, etc, the field that designates it as a lab or classroom is being eliminated. This issue is a problem for the space utilization reporting crew. However it is really not their problem. Since IT builds out the tech rooms, and the Registrar updates the room data base, either IT or Registrar could be designated as the "owner" since they are in the best position to make a change that will resolve the issue.
Community of Interest
Next Data Governance Council designates the “Community of Interest”. This is the team who will work on that particular issue - varies according to the issue-- has a vested interest in its resolution, which hopefully coincides with an institutional perspective. It may well be the case that the person submitting an issue knows up front who the team should be, and will be able to propose them.
You work together in these smaller subgroups (community of interest) when possible, and in the larger group only as needed. It is important that you as data stewards identify who should be involved peripherally or not at all. It is not always apparent how the data issues impact others, and that is why all data stewards will be alerted to the issue and identify the group to work on the resolution. For example, the fact that building codes are not the same across all systems is problematic at many points in the university. Because of inconsistent building data between the facilities system and the SIS system, facilities is prevented from knowing when classrooms are empty so they can raise temperatures and thus save energy costs . The SIS users, however, are fine since their need to schedule courses is being met with the codes they have--however an attempt to change their codes to make them consistent with all campus systems would create a lot of initial work. Similarly, HR might not care whether the codes are integrated, until they understand the impact on their data system. In this case, Facilities might lead the effort to resolve the inconsistent data, with representative from everyone involved as needed.
Return to Data Management Issue Resolution Process Map