Data Quality Issues at SPS

Overview

While the data landscape has improved in many ways, there are still a number of cases where the quality of data causes issues across the organization. The purpose of this document is to point out the cases where data quality issues have been observed, along with the impact that the occurrences has had on the business.

The committee is responsible for oversight and guidance in the covered systems, but all examples of data quality issues should be included regardless of source system given the highly interconnected nature of our digital landscape. There is a section for each covered system, and a catch-all grouping for anything that falls outside of the direct purview of the committee.

Covered Systems

Slate+Admissions

Conflicting Reports

Issue: Admissions reports that are maintained by the department do not match centralized Power BI reporting

Impact: Different numbers are being reported in different meetings causing confusion. An example of this is the pre-college application pipeline where the admits and commits do not match what PowerBI is reporting. Another example is programs keeping their own records for enrollment that do not match what PowerBI is reporting. 

Departments: Program Teams and Analytics

Admissions Pipeline Definitions

Issue: Key indicators need to be consistently defined throughout the admissions pipeline.

Impact: Different definitions of pipeline indicators are currently being used by departments leading to different metrics being reported throughout SPS. There needs to be alignment across departments on what defines a submit, admit, decline, commit and deferral. 

Departments: Admissions and Analytics

Slate+Advising

Issue: Nothing reported at the moment.

Student Information System (SIS)

Conflicting Deferral Processes

Issue: There are different approaches to coding deferred applications across programs.

Impact: Centralized reports, such as the Admissions Summary Report, depend on consistent coding of data in SIS to produce results that align from year to year. When there are multiple ways to handle cases such as deferrals, the reports will not show accurate counts. Most recently it was discovered that ALP has a completely different methodology for handling deferrals, which includes creating applications solely within SIS and outside Slate. 

Course Management (CM)

Course Section Codes

Issue: Section codes for course management are not standardized across platforms.

Impact: The course sections in SIS do not align with the course sections in the CPS and SSOL. This makes it difficult and labor intensive to clean the data anytime there needs to be a merge. An example of the difference in section codes is using 001 vs. 1. A use case of this is reporting on registrations and waitlists for courses, the section codes need to be cleaned in both files before any of the course identifiers can be matched.

Departments: Academic Affairs and Program Teams.

Academic Department Names

Issue: Academic department names for course management are not standardized across platforms.

Impact: The program department names in SIS do not align with the academic department in the CPS and SSOL. This makes it difficult and labor intensive to clean the data anytime there needs to be a merge. An example of the difference in naming is Information and Knowledge Strategy vs. Information & Knowledge Strat. A use case of this is reporting on registrations with matching program departments and academic departments.

Departments: Academic Affairs and Program Teams.

Accounting and Reporting at Columbia (ARC)

Issue: Nothing reported at the moment.

Other Systems / Tools

CPS

Faculty Naming Convention

Issue: Faculty name standardization, using a system of record for identifying faculty so faculty names can be easily identified across reports

Impact: Aligning the CPS faculty teaching courses with SIS and finance records requires manual clean up of data so all faculty names are reported consistently. An example of this is including the middle initial when reporting the faculty name.

Departments: Academic Affairs-Program Teams, Finance, Faculty Affairs

SIS + ARC 

Program Description Consistency Across Systems

Issue: Program name standardization, using a system of record for identifying program name so names can be easily identified across reports

Impact: Aligning ARC and SIS so all program names can be consistent across reports eliminating the need for manual adjustments. An example of this is Enterprise Risk Management and Risk Management.

Departments: Analytics and Finance