Data Futures still far from perfect

A spectacularly unimpressed letter from OfS’ David Smy to accountable officers is scathing about the progress of the ill-starred Data Futures (DF) initiative.

Delivered by Jisc at the instigation of the Office for Students, DF was supposed to be a modernised approach to collecting provider data used in regulation, allowing for more rapid (and eventually, in year) updates. Alas, it hasn’t quite turned out that way – we were talking about delays back in 2019 if that gives you any idea, and we covered further changes based on a sector consultation last year.

Now we are told that new submission deadline has been moved from an already extended (a previous deadline was today!) from 3 November to 22 November, with concurrent impact on the deadlines for contact details for Graduate Outcomes (10 November to 24 November) and NSS (24 November to 1 December).

And according to Smy, at least, it is all Jisc’s fault:

We’re disappointed that there continue to be delays in Jisc’s deployment of the new Data Futures platform and data model and we will want to understand from Jisc in due course why firm commitments about delivery have not been met in practice. This is of particular concern to the OfS as the majority funder of the programme (£12.7 million since 2016) and because we continue to devote significant staff time to deal with the consequences of late delivery.

I’ve heard from multiple sources that the current version of the DF data collection system is neither stable nor routinely returning correct outputs. For a data model substantially more complicated than the old HESA Student return, specialist staff at providers have needed to make substantial changes to processes and systems in order to meet these new requirements. It seems that there are still significant issues with quality rules and error reporting – resolution of these is underway, but this means the rules themselves are being updated frequently, much to the chagrin of providers trying to make submissions.

Data and strategy teams at universities and other registered providers have been making representations about institutional struggle to have systems ready in time, though it seems that the systems on the other side are far from ready either. With around five weeks to go (and the promise, once again, of no further extensions) the Jisc team must feel up against it. Which makes it a great time, and a huge confidence boost at a critical moment, to slag them off in public.

The Office for Students has had a representative on the DF programme board since inception, and recently it has been observing the Data Futures Delivery Group. A look at the recent crop of board papers suggests that, until at least July of this year and probably longer, there were no concerns about progress being raised. If there are questions to be raised about delivery, we very much need to start with governance (and for that matter, specification).

Right now my sympathy is with the team at Jisc and staff at providers around the sector.