Learning from data integration experiences in Higher Education

Phase 1 of the Data Integration project is to develop a strong and robust business case. In this phase, the project aims to understand the current situation, and propose a roadmap to unify data usage within the University. 

In researching our current state we have engaged with a number of Australian universities who have undertaken the journey of data integration. Many of these universities have employed the use of a centralised integration solution to link their applications together.

Here are some of the benefits other universities have reported:

• improved student data quality across administrative systems
• real-time data, eliminating delays associated with distribution of data from one system to another
• the ability to expose a single view of all services for students and staff, where previously the data was stored across multiple systems, at varying levels of detail
• accelerated innovation in teaching by exposing public data sets that can be used by students to develop their own applications
• improved user confidence in the data stored in systems  
• new applications take less time and resources to integrate and coexist with existing systems
• reduced maintenance of integrations between systems and remediation of inconsistent data
• reuse of integrations for other projects which means applications are being developed faster and more efficiently
• the ability to scale, secure and modernise legacy systems with minimal investment.

Work continues on the Data Integration Business Case in consultation with the Project Steering Committee and aims to be finalised in June.