HE data doesn’t need another taskforce, it needs good governance

David Kernohan recently reflected on the myriad of inadequacies that the HE sectors data landscape continues to face: the frustrations of slow and poor-quality information, the relentless burden of data collections and an on-going sense of this pain being inflicted on a sector by a roster of rogue data collection bodies – many of whom sit under the auspices of the Department for Education (DfE).

This summer marked a decade since the end of the Higher Education Data & Information Improvement Programme (HEDIIP), a UK-wide programme that I led to try and bring some sense to this mess.

The HEDIIP journey grew out of the 2011 HE White Paper, which asked that…

…work be undertaken to redesign the information landscape for higher education in order to arrive at a new system that: Meets the needs of a wider group of users; Reduces the duplication that currently exists; and Results in timelier and more relevant data.

HEDIIP was the most significant effort to date to make this landscape less chaotic and burdensome and deliver more value to the myriad of stakeholders across HE who need data to understand, develop, fund and regulate the sector.

What HEDIIP did

HEDIIP delivered a lot of good projects, including the HECoS/CAH subject coding system and the first significant development of data management and governance capabilities across the sector.

But the most significant thing to come out of HEDIIP was a design for the HE information landscape that would achieve the core aims of HEDIIP. The design was based on the principles of standardisation and rationalisation of data collections and a model of governance for the landscape that would ensure data collections adhered to these principles.

Governance is something of a hot topic in HE at the moment with a swirling narrative about the extent to which the current state of institutional finances is a failure of governance. Government and regulators are increasingly vocal on the issue of institutional governance and the new Committee of University Chairs (CUC) code provides a greater level of clarity around the role and expectations of governance in HE providers.

But governance is hard and the model of governance that came out of the HEDIIP programme attempted to oversee and steer data collection operations across a range of government departments and autonomous arms-length bodies. The sort of hard authority that a university governing body has – as defined in its governing documents – could not be replicated across the HE information landscape. The model of governance that was attempted – described as collective and consensual governance soon hit upon the hard realities of data collectors whose best intentions for the information landscape swiftly crumbled when they hit up against the demands of policy delivery.

Time for a taskforce?

The next significant move around the issue of data burden in HE was the HE Data Taskforce. This was launched in 2022 by Michelle Donelan in response to a rather grumpy blog about the trumpeting of burden reduction by Office for Students while a range of other data collectors were continuing to duplicate vast swathes of data collection across the sector. The minister demanded solutions and a task force – involving sector representatives and all the DfE arms-length bodies - was convened. Six meetings were arranged and the task force were told to come up with answers.

After the third meeting the remaining meetings were cancelled and nothing else happened.

Not a peep.

Where are we now?

The issues of data burden are no less painful in 2026 than they were in 2016. Demands for data continue to increase as expectations about the value that can be derived from data show no sign of abating. The launch of Data Futures was a painful experience for all involved and the re-introduction of an in-year HESA collection appears to be phenomenally heavy weather across the sector. Meanwhile almost every university in England makes an individualised student return to the DfE every month for its apprenticeship students and the data requirements for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement continue to be mired in questions and uncertainty.

Ten years after HEDIIP I am older and, perhaps, a little wiser. I’ve seen the data collection burden from the perspective of institutions and technology suppliers and I’ve joined the governing body of a university, giving me a very different perspective on what governance means and what it takes to work effectively.

HEDIIP was fundamentally right. Data burden can be reduced and the value of data can be increased if the data landscape pursues an agenda of standardisation and rationalisation. But that will take a type of oversight and leadership that does not currently exist.

The ongoing chaos, burden and duplication in the information landscape is not the result of a failure of governance; it is the result of an absence of governance.

Good governance for the information landscape

Many HE providers are building and operating governance frameworks for their data and systems. This is no longer new or groundbreaking activity; it simply recognises the extent to which we critically depend on data and the risks of data activities developing without the requisite strategy and controls.

While this domain may be shrouded in technical jargon, the foundational principle of good governance is both simple and universal. The new CUC Guide sets it out perfectly:

Effective governance is a continuing process of support, scrutiny, challenge and improvement, undertaken by the Board in partnership with the Executive.

A governance framework for the HE information landscape should have the power to set strategic direction, determine high-level policies, and hold the executive bodies to account.

The HE sector is responding positively to the criticism of poor institutional governance; it is time for the government to address the absence of governance across the data and information landscape.