Data maturity assessment helps the University of Manitoba turn governance aspirations into action

The challenge

Over the last few years, the University of Manitoba have made a concerted effort to elevate how data is understood, managed, and used across the university. What prompted this was a relatively simple request from an external body; “How many staff do you have and how many of them are managers?” What became apparent was departments across the university could not produce a consistent answer. It quickly became clear this wasn’t a knowledge or technology shortfall but a data governance challenge: definitions of a manager varied. Other symptoms were also identified; material data changes were being made without considering downstream effects, and more generally, data was not consistently treated as an institutional asset. Combined with increasing requests for reports and analytics, the university realised action was needed.

Recognising this was a people and process problem, not purely a technical one, the university looked to engage colleagues across departments to collaborate better. Led by the Provost’s office, a peer data governance committee was created in 2020. This initiative focused on pragmatic process improvements and shared best practice. As the conversation developed, topics evolved from “what is the right definition of X?” to “what does this mean for the end to end student journey?” and how governance should enable that view.

By 2025, the concept of data maturity had become a recurring theme in conversations. As part of Canada’s U15 group of research-intensive universities, the team at Manitoba were confident of their growing strengths in this space. But the university wanted evidence: a structured, repeatable way to benchmark its current state and set priorities.

Solution

Having previously worked with us on the digital leaders programme, the University of Manitoba approached us to explore how the data maturity framework and discovery assessment could help them. The then chief information officer, Mario Lebar, had assessed a number of data maturity frameworks but felt most were designed for commercial settings and did not reflect the realities of tertiary education. At the same time, the discovery assessment was still in its infancy and we at Jisc were keen to test its application beyond its UK member base. We worked with the incoming CIO, Terry Bunio, on ensuring that the assessment met the needs of the university. This included adapting the domain and job role options along with providing an “N/A” response option so participants who lacked sufficient information on a particular area could say so without skewing results. An optional comments field was also included so respondents could provide context to their answers.

In August 2025, 30 colleagues from across administration, research, faculties, IST, and the Provost’s office completed the discovery assessment. Instead of the traditional method of disseminating links to the assessment via email, everyone came together in person (with plenty of coffee and donuts) and completed the assessment in real time together. This format proved highly effective: participants could ask quick, clarifying questions (especially where UK terminology needed translation) while still submitting their own independent responses. It also encouraged richer comments, producing far more actionable insights than initially anticipated. Feedback was positive, particularly for the straightforward and user-friendly online surveys platform.

Results

The university was provided with a Power BI dashboard showcasing the results which:

• Confirmed priorities and surfaced blind spots - the results validated known development areas (notably systems, processes and reporting) while revealing additional gaps that were not previously visible
• Validated governance direction - findings reinforced that the university’s transition toward a more formal data policy and stronger governance model was the right move
• Highlighted perceived differences across departments - responses indicated differing perspectives between executive, academic, administrative and IST groups. Rather than a problem this became a conversation starter, improved training and encouraged best practice sharing
• Increased engagement resulting in better data - the in-person setting produced high participation and a notably rich set of qualitative comments
• Emphasised a technology and process agnostic lens - the assessment examines underlying capabilities and behaviours rather than specific tools. It supported the university’s principle that maturity is not a technology problem

With Jisc, the University of Manitoba is looking to repeat the assessment annually to track progress and maintain momentum.

Crucially, the assessment has helped shape a clear roadmap through confirming focus areas, provided evidence to support investments, and established a baseline to measure year on year progress.

“We’ve found the discovery assessment really valuable as it has helped confirm where we think we need to go and identified new focuses and priorities. We plan on it now being an annual process as we move forward with our data analytics program.”

– Terry Bunio, chief information officer, University of Manitoba

Want to know more?

• Explore the data maturity framework
• Check out our data consultancy services including the data maturity discovery assessment
• Complete the free eLearning module, an introduction to data maturity
• Join our data community on Linkedin to share ideas and best practice