NACUBO 2015 Innovation Award
Oregon State University was the recipient of the 2015 National Association of Colleges & Universities Business Officers' (NACUBO) Innovation Award. The awards program presentation was July 19, 2015, during the 2015 NACUBO Annual Conference in Nashville, TN. Below is the excerpt from the NACUBO 2015 Awards Presentation & Reception booklet.
Oregon State University undertook a three-year, provost-sponsored information initiative to improve access to and ensure the accuracy of institutional data. This multiyear effort has shifted institutional culture to become a data-driven enterprise and has helped to ensure support for the initiative.
The Cooperative Open Reporting Environment (CORE) started in 2013 with the principle goals of changing the historic norms to: 1) provide university-wide tools and data for immediate access to information; 2) promote an environment of open access to data and information while ensuring security; 3) encourage cross-unit solutions, partnerships, and tools connecting disparate data sources across campus; and 4) eliminate multiple versions of data to drive the university toward a single version.
Just 18 months after the university launched its CORE initiative, more than 350 reports and dashboards were available university-wide, with information spanning areas essential to operations and decision making, including students, courses, faculty, staff, enrollments and finances.
Since its inception, CORE has promoted a collaborative environment across the university and stilled numerous operational improvements. For instance, academic and business units regularly team up with central IT on projects.
In fact, CORE has changed how IT manages projects. Previously, projects were "thrown over the wall" to IT and then handled as a secondary function of IT maintenance. With CORE, IT teams are smaller and rotate from project to project as they work with business and academic colleagues.
The CORE interface revealed a new level of data visibility, which then highlighted the need for a formal data governance structure. The new governance model classifies and establishes campus-wide data standards and definitions.