Gaining broader insights through data maturity

The challenge

The OU wanted to improve their internal data maturity survey process to gain broader data and insights. They wanted to identify actionable steps towards their data maturity goals and prioritise the improvements that will help them meet the operational and strategic challenges common in the sector.

Since 2021, the OU has carried out an annual data maturity assessment to measure their activities and benchmark them against other providers. They wanted to create more proactive data management with better data governance that would enable more advanced reporting and analytics.

To embed this as a priority, the OU set a target to achieve data maturity level four by 2027. This level means an institution is working towards a more integrated landscape, has visibility of its operations and its culture, and has an enterprise approach to removing silos. It also means that a roadmap is in place for priority areas which focuses on ensuring compliant data management, automation where this delivers benefit, evident governance and quality control, and the availability of analytics that delivers value and impact.

Solution

Reaching level four is an ambitious goal given the data challenges common across higher education. For this target to be meaningful, the data governance team at the OU wanted to ensure the metric reflected a comprehensive picture of activity at the institution. However, they felt their existing survey was too focused on specific governance activity and were looking for a broader question set to reflect the wider data journey and provide insight into how confident people are in working with data and data processes.

Kunal Badami, head of data governance and quality at the OU, says they found out about the Jisc pilot for a HE and FE specific data maturity assessment, as part of Jisc’s data maturity framework. The framework focuses on the five elements of data strategy, data governance, systems and processes, reporting and decision making, a remit that the OU felt would better reflect their needs and allow them to raise the profile of data maturity issues with senior leaders. They also felt it would be impactful to adopt a survey from Jisc as a trusted sector body:

“The Jisc survey is providing us with evidence to gain support and traction from the vice-chancellor’s executive (VCE) in terms of any funding or approach we might need to take the data maturity plan forward.”

The OU started the pilot in November 2024, with a ‘pulse’ survey of 15 questions. They invited data owners across the university to complete it and sent a series of emails explaining what to do and what improvements the results would drive.

Following the ‘pulse survey’, the team tested the full discovery assessment, a more detailed process with 5 separate surveys of 18 questions each.

Results

The data maturity assessment and survey results are sparking conversations about where the university is on its data maturity journey. People are asking “what are we doing well?”,  “what do we need to do better?” and “how do we get the wider sector involved?”

Survey responses are visualised on an interactive dashboard, enabling the OU to present findings to senior management. They have already provoked managers to ask deeper questions about why certain departments hold a particular view, and why certain business areas are more data mature than others.

What next?

Feedback from this process has helped us to enhance the survey format and questions. Meanwhile, the OU have been taking steps to address some of the issues the assessment highlights.

In the months ahead, the OU will be working with us to run the assessment process again in late 2025. This time, they are keen to involve a broader range of people who use data – including academics, and those who work with research data. They are also simplifying their data domain structure, streamlining it with the eight domains in the our framework to make this easier.

That decision, they say, has been a big benefit from the survey as it will help to make data governance and management more efficient. They also plan to launch a comprehensive communications programme, with messaging from senior managers to add weight. Getting greater and wider input will provide richer, fuller results. They are also keen to encourage more providers to take part in our new shorter survey which aims to provide sector benchmarking – and to undertake the fuller discovery assessment:

“I’m hoping a lot more people get involved because of Jisc’s reputation. It’ll enable real benchmarking for organisations on the path to data maturity.

- Tom Cleary, senior data governance manager, Open University.

With Jisc, the OU are armed with the survey solutions that garner the detailed insights they need to to achieve their data maturity goals by 2027.

Find out more

We also support providers with discovery work, data strategy and data roadmaps. Contact your relationship manager to find out how we can support you.