Michael Dieckmann's UWF CIO Weblog

Observations from the Winter Data Governance Conference

mdieckmann — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:49:18 +0000

For the past few days I have been attending the Winter Data Governance Conference in Orlando. I registered for this conference because I received an email offering the $3K+ registration fee for free, and because this seemed very related to our upcoming data warehouse project.

On one level, I felt like a geek returned home. Suddenly I was once again surrounded by people who talk constantly of entity relationship diagrams and data dictionaries, master data management, data analysis and data stewards, etc. On the other hand, I realized how far the issue of data (separate from systems and processes) has matured as it has become a major business issue for organizations who thrive on gigabytes of business data. And I realized that at UWF we have yet to mature to this new level of treating data (separate from systems) as a strategic resource, although we have been feeling pressures that put us on the cusp of this. So while we have yet to put in place even a robust database inventory or comprehensive institutional data dictionary, many corporations are dealing with “data profiling” and data cleansing and data quality and data transformation tracking. To these folks a data warehouse is a 90s thing that is now a fact of life everywhere. And they’re dealing with their own data and also data that they collect from very complicated supply and distribution business chains.

So this was an eye-opener, and I’m left with a sense of “where do we even start?” I’ve felt on the outside of most of the discussions, yet this has raised my awareness quite a bit regarding this strategic area in which ITS and UWF must mature.

Call for Proposals for the EDUCAUSE 2008 Southeast Regional Conference (SERC)

mdieckmann — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:55:58 +0000

I wish to draw everyone’s attention to the EDUCAUSE 2008 Southeast Regional Conference (SERC), which will be held June 2-4 in Jacksonville, Florida. It is my privilege to serve as chair of the program committee for this conference. Recently the call for proposals went out. UWF and ITS has had a strong presence in this conference since the original conference in Orlando, and I especially encourage everyone to submit proposals for presentations this year. Collaboration between IT and other units (e.g., IT and faculty, IT and libraries, IT and teaching/learning technology centers) is a special focus of this conference.

Beginning

mdieckmann — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:57:51 +0000

Hello!

My name is Michael Dieckmann. I am the Senior Associate Vice President for University Affairs and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida.

This weblog replaces the “ITS Briefs” electronic newsletter that was previously used to communicate with the members of the Information Technology Services department (ITS) at UWF.

Any comments that I make here are my own, and are not those of the University of West Florida. In this weblog I speak only for myself, and not for my employer, groups with which I am affiliated, family members, or anyone else.