{"id":13332,"date":"2019-04-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/?p=13332&preview=true&preview_id=13332"},"modified":"2024-07-08T06:05:28","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T10:05:28","slug":"how-a-simple-question-grew-into-a-vision-for-a-data-informed-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2019\/04\/29\/how-a-simple-question-grew-into-a-vision-for-a-data-informed-future\/","title":{"rendered":"How a simple question grew into a vision for a data-informed future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Arek Socha<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of you may have heard folks from ITS talking about the \u201cWhere\u2019s Our Data?\u201d effort that spun up around seven months ago and probably wondered: What exactly does that mean?
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When our new VPIT-CIO Ravi Pendse arrived on campus last August, he spent several months listening to the U-M community about IT needs and asking questions. With an eye toward enabling campus to leverage enterprise data to support making data-informed decisions, Pendse asked ITS leaders a simple question: Where\u2019s our data?
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A simple question with a complex answer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It might seem easy, but the answer to this question is actually very complex. ITS enterprise systems house a tremendous amount of data, but what data is available, who can access it, where it goes, and how it is used, is anything but simple.
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From this question sprung a \u201cWhere\u2019s Our Data?\u201d project to inventory the data currently housed in each of ITS\u2019s enterprise systems and the integrations that exist between ITS systems and other campus systems managed outside of ITS. The effort also documented the sensitivity classification of the information. The project team analyzed and diagrammed the integrations among the enterprise systems listed below and presented the results to ITS staff and other groups on campus:
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