Data gold october 2013

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

Data gold The importance of management systems data for colleges

by Russell Pearson and Steve Ormrod

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Contents The authors

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Foreword

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1 Introduction

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2 The MIS department

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3 Financial investment

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4 Developments in how data is managed

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5 Culture and ethos

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6 Conclusion

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7 Good practice guides

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8 Top 10 tips for a strong ‘data gold’ culture and ethos

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9 AMiE afterword

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The authors Steve Ormrod Steve has worked in FE for around 30 years along with stints at an examination board (Joint Matriculation Board), a school and a local authority (LA). He started in FE at Abraham Moss College in North Manchester as an exams officer before the concept of management information systems (MIS) existed. In 1987 the National Audit Office published a paper called Managing Colleges Efficiently, which advised all colleges to institute MIS systems. The principal at the college on reading the paper called Steve into his office and said, “It says here we should have something called MIS. Go away and do it.� Since then Steve has worked in eight different FE colleges (some more than once), from the very small to the very large, and he still thinks that the best funding methodology was when budgets were devolved from the LA directly to colleges.

Russell Pearson Russell entered the education sector as a lecturer in electronics and computing in Manchester in 1988 and via various internal promotions became director of resources in 1995. He then became the dean of performance and information management at an FE/HE mixed economy college, and finally vice principal resources at a north west college where he was also acting principal for a few months. Following a career spanning 22 years working in FE/HE and longing for an elusive work-life balance, he become an educational consultant utilising his fairly rare skills set as a result of managing both the curriculum and the finance/ resources remits at senior level. He was involved at the inception of the AoC (Association of Colleges) Sector Management College FE Managers’ Training Programme, both writing and delivering the information and finance modules and has worked as an interim manager in the sector with responsibilities for reshaping MIS and information and communications technology departments, as well as timetabling and resources etc. He also runs various national MIS conferences and has delivered bespoke training on a range of topics including funding, timetabling, developing new provision, operational planning and finance for non-financial managers. He is currently developing national accreditation qualifications for business support managers (including MIS) in FE.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Foreword AMiE is a very modern trade union that offers an extensive range of services aimed at enabling its members to improve their skills and knowledge, and to develop the capacities required to fulfil their career aspirations.

We are therefore pleased to bring you this latest publication, the first in our Outstanding performance series.

Our publications offer practical assistance to members aiming to improve specific skill areas. However, Data gold is not a technical book for computer nerds. Many colleges that have got the systems-side of MIS right still do not get the best from it because they have not secured the necessary credibility for their system. Data gold describes how managers and other college staff can get the people systems right in their colleges so that their institutions can get the most out of good MIS data. All those with a vested interest in making MIS work in their college – and that’s everyone, but especially managers – will find the perspective and ideas in this booklet invaluable. MIS works best when there is wide organisational ownership of data; this publication is therefore also useful for teachers, lecturers and governors who are keen to develop an understanding of the vital role they play in ensuring that data is accurate, robust and, ultimately, a useful tool for protecting jobs as well as improving performance!

MIS deserves a status in-keeping with its important role in ensuring that colleges are as efficient and effective as possible, not least due to the current funding challenges. Also, given the data driven nature of the current inspection regime it is vital that a college achieves a strong grasp of its data narrative – there are instances of colleges dropping Ofsted categories due to poor data, and this is entirely avoidable. Although voiced principally at FE colleges much of the information in this booklet will be equally relevant to academies given they are structured along similar lines to the FE model.

Foreword

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This booklet updates the MIS for Managers guide published in 2004, which was written by two stalwarts of the then nascent MIS scene, John Rockett and Dave Hull. A well-received document, it was originally described as, “a collection of ideas about how managers can get the relevant people systems right in their colleges so that their institutions can reap the great benefits of MIS.” Fast-forward to today, and much of the culture and ethos of the original publication still rings true (and are included in this edition).

Clearly, a whole raft of new requirements have been made by government that need to be addressed and these days MIS must involve a broader spectrum of staff, rather than just remain the preserve of the MIS department.

We hope that this publication will therefore be read widely beyond just the corridors of the MIS department.

The purpose of this publication has therefore been to ‘refresh and rejuvenate.’

To take account of the huge online presence that now dominates the sectors’ information gathering, we have concentrated on important aspects of the culture and ethos and supplemented them with a series of online good practice guides to various key topics within MIS, such as reporting, audit and timetabling. Although facilitated by AMiE, the leadership section of ATL, these initial online guides have been written by the sector for the sector and will hopefully be followed by further guides on different emerging topics.

These guides are can be downloaded from the Data gold pages at www.felinks.co.uk.

We think you will agree that its accessible style and recognisable examples make this booklet an easy read. AMiE is delighted to bring you Data gold; we hope you find it valuable.

Mark Wright National official (leadership and management), AMiE

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

1. Introduction This booklet is directly relevant to everyone with an interest in ensuring that their organisation is as efficient and effective as possible, ie hopefully everyone. Good data needs to be treated as gold dust in an era where performance, funding and therefore jobs depend so keenly upon it. For this reason we encourage you to read on and transform the way in which you view the way data is generated, processed and communicated.

This task was originally entrusted to a MIS function, often in a resources department within the college. MIS have advanced dramatically since they became widely available in the 1980s and the next step change will come via the recognition that everyone is a data stakeholder, it’s not simply the responsibility of the MIS department.

So, MIS is not just the preserve of managers and it is better viewed as an information ecosystem – good data is harvested, processed and interpreted through the interaction of a community of stakeholders in close touch with the college environment.

We (the authors) have collectively spent around 50 years engaged in this topic, from a variety of perspectives, as educational consultants, finance director, MIS managers, curriculum director, assistant principal for funding and planning and vice principal resources. From long experience it became clear that most major software systems are competent (although some are much better than others). The real challenge for colleges is getting the people systems right: organisational culture and ethos, knowing principles and putting them into practice, management approach, organisational structure, historical precedent and organisational policies.

The implementation of any good system, not just MIS, is really about setting up and managing people systems. The ability to do so has become absolutely vital to every current or aspiring manager in the sector – it cannot simply be left to one department.

Introduction

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This booklet has been purposely written in an easy going non-academic style to help ensure that it reaches a wide audience within colleges. We hope it provides a compendium of proven ideas for managers and anyone else with an interest in college performance. It is designed to give you a learning journey by following the logic of the issues raised when considering the formation of an MIS function designed to generate MIS data gold. By the end of this journey you’ll hopefully have gained a valuable insight into how data needs to be treated across the organisation.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

2. The MIS department This section looks at the composition, staffing and location of the MIS resource within the college.

Size and composition of the MIS department The size and composition of the MIS department is always a vexed question for senior managers, since the question invariably becomes ‘how long is a piece of string?’ In other words, it very much depends on what responsibilities and functions are ascribed to the MIS department and on the resultant expectations. In some institutions managers use it only to provide external agency data, which obviously keeps the costs down. In the best institutions there is an efficient people system and managers consult MIS at every opportunity – but, of course, this costs more.

The best organisational structures integrate the traditional areas of data input, individualised learner record (ILR) management, reporting, exams, registry, timetabling and funding into one central department. In very large organisations there can be successful satellites of the central department and, provided they are wedded to the culture and procedures of the central department, they can be very successful. This is discussed in detail later in this booklet.

MIS team staffing principles Attitudes and approaches are more important than skills. An effective MIS depends on prompt, rapid and accurate data capture. We always recommend that colleges review the number of staff at the Scale 2 end of data capture teams. If MIS takes off then a bifurcation occurs: data volumes rise significantly and source documents (eg registers and enrolment forms) become cleaner. In such circumstances you will need dedicated employees to input the data correctly.

The MIS department

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Where MIS is marginal then data is lower volume and much dirtier (“Let admin sort it out, I’m not paid to fill in forms”). Higher grade admin staff are then needed to pore over dirty source material and clean it up using skill, knowledge, judgement and a lot of time.

We would encourage managers recruiting to their MIS department to pay particular attention to applicants’ people skills as well as their technical skills as the strategy of engagement is necessarily people-oriented. Anything to do with people is time consuming. Telling someone to do something takes minutes, repeatedly; winning their hearts and minds takes much longer, but then takes no time at all thereafter.

After many years of trying different ways to minimise the impact of allowing individuals to develop monopolies on skills which threatens the robustness of any system, we recommend introducing a multi-skilling approach to various sizeable MIS tasks such as data input, enrolment and timetabling - if your college has not already done so. If possible then step this up to include ILR production, data cleansing and other key technical roles. This broadens the role of many individuals within the department ensuring the major seasonal activities of the department are fully covered and often generates new opportunities for the staff involved.

MIS staff need to be responsible for adding as much value as possible.

From the conversations they have with managers, lecturers, and hopefully even governors, they can help to make the data more accessible and to derive from it the information that will be the basis of good decision-making across the organisation.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Centralised or dispersed?

A recurrent debate concerns whether MIS should be centralised or dispersed.

We suggest the optimum is some form of dispersed data handling always under central direction. The rock is a remote central department populated by ‘them’; the hard place is administrators in department offices running incompatible systems to serve their local masters. The optimum pattern cannot be achieved overnight, but we suggest it be built into plans and implemented in evolved stages.

The acid test is the task of enrolment form data onto a computer.

We suggest very large (multi-large site) organisations consider dispersing the task to registry offices (still under the MIS auspices) located on those sites.

The advantages of a central team are: • resilience – if someone is sick, others can easily take over • consistency – all work to one master plan and one set of rules • flexibility – if rules or procedures change it is easy to tell them all • efficient use of kit – temporary and part-time staff can usually infill easily.

The advantages of a dispersed team are: • immediacy – registry clerks can discuss a problem there and then • ownership – the task is seen as ‘ours’, not ‘theirs’ • cooperation – registry clerks operate as close colleagues, not as

remote ‘others.’

Our experience suggests that the latter advantages out weigh the former.

Enlisting the active cooperation of the silent majority brings huge benefits.

Some may disagree with the above, not least where there are examples of discrepancies between data entered by department staff rather than MIS staff. Not least in the college where the departments entered their own results onto the exams system!

Just as leadership is distributed in the healthiest organisations this is also the case with data. Responsibility for data needs to be distributed across the college and a dispersed MIS team is one step in this evolution. It needs to be part of the senior leadership’s acknowledgement of the importance of data and the responsibility for all staff to treat it with the respect it deserves.

The MIS department

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3. Financial investment This section looks at the financial considerations of setting up an effective MIS function.

MIS structures, costs and salary scales MIS teams have significantly grown in size since the 1980s, 10 years ago MIS was perhaps still seen as something of a luxury, forever having to justify its own existence. These days a typical MIS staffing function may run to over a million pounds in costs (the biggest can be £2M+). The case of the (not so) average MIS manager’s salary over the last nine years or so is an interesting one. I can think of one co-author of this booklet who single-handedly drove up the amount in the north west by at least £25K in that period by having the (still) fairly rare combination of excellent communication skills coupled with a gargantuan knowledge of funding far in excess of anyone from the Further Education Funding Agency (FEFC), Learning and Skills Council, Skills Funding Agency or Young Persons’ Learning Agency (Education Funding Agency).

A typical MIS structure (with salary scales) might today look like Figure 1 on page 7.

The total salary budget for the above 18.62 full-time equivalent (FTEs) would be around £650K, with a consumables budget of £90K, giving £740K in total which equates nicely to the annual spend on awarding body costs which adds up to about £1.5M in total. This typical medium-sized college has an income of around £30M which equates to about £1 support costs for every £5 earnt or £1.6M income per FTE MIS, which sounds quite reasonable.

Note, the college with a £2M+ MIS salary budget also had around 73 FTEs in MIS (including dispersed registry teams, only faculty owned) producing an average of £822K income per MIS FTE, which is twice as inefficient as the above example college.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

VP corporate planning

Director of information systems

1.0 FTE, scale SO2

Systems development officer

Course setup and timetable administrator

1.0 FTE, scale SO2

Reports and returns officer

Student records assistants

1.0 FTE, scale SO3

Student records team leader

Exams administrator

1.0 FTE, scale SO3

Exams team leader

1.0 FTE, scale 5

MIS and subcontracting administrator

1.0 FTE, scale SO2

Work-based reports and returns officer

1.0 FTE, scale SO2

Business and contracts

0.4 FTE, scale SO2

Funding and planning officer

1.0 FTE, ELT scale

Systems development assistant

1.0 FTE, scale 4

Exams assistants

3.5 FTE, scale 3

Student records administrator

4.22 FTE, scale 3

2.0 FTE, scale 5

0.9 FTE, scale 4

0.6 FTE, scale 3

Figure 1.

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Financial investment

MIS value for money These days it is not uncommon for business support areas like MIS to be expected to generate some form of income directly themselves. Whilst this might not be as obvious as say the IT department who might well run an IT support service for a local school, there are many ways MIS can support the college in becoming more efficient. The main one, fortunately, is to maximise on the raison d’etre for MIS; which is to add value to the organisation by ensuring that data leads to organisational improvement.

The following are some of the key factors which can enable MIS to provide innate value for money. Good data can be gold if handled and shared appropriately – so how is it best spent to good effect? Always consider how maximum value can be extracted from it (including sharing with partners): • Providing accurate and timely data for senior management enabling them

to be responsive to project funding deadlines.

• Providing governors with simplified but accurate data on

organisational performance.

• Ensuring all learners are correctly entered into the ILR. • Ensuring all course delivery guided learning hours do not exceed the

Learning Aim Reference Service recommended value.

• Facilitating operational planning to ensure that lecturers are planned

to be 100% utilised.

• Ensuring unnecessary part-time staffing spend is reduced by having a

pro-active staff utilisation monitoring process.

• Facilitating curriculum planning and modelling funding for new

curriculum ideas.

• Ensuring accurate and timely withdrawals recording to ensure an accurate

funding prognosis is retained throughout the year.

• Stringently manage the exams budget to ensure that late fees are not

a problem.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

4. Developments in how data is managed This section provides a potted history of how colleges have sought to deal with their data in the past and arrangements today. This serves as a useful backdrop to indications of how it needs to be managed in future.

The past In 1993, as FE colleges slowly began to get used to the concept of incorporation which included the requirement to set up your own human resources, finance and information management departments, most found that securing a manager for the first two was quite easy as the roles of HR and finance directors were well established, easily recognisable and readily available, the latter appointment proved rather challenging as a) nobody knew what it meant or b) it wasn’t clear what skills were needed for the role.

A basic understanding of data processing/computing skills or anybody who may have had anything to do with the LAs were deemed to be the key elements required when recruiting for the post of MIS team leader, which was a fairly junior post at the time.

This person, who would usually report to the finance director in the college management hierarchy, was charged with setting up an MIS system to be able to process the data required to make funding claims and produce very rudimentary reports for the LAs on student numbers. Invariably they would be appointed to lead a couple of clerks drafted in from other college departments (or sometimes TUPEd in from the LA) to fulfil the above tasks.

As time progressed, in response to the increasing demands from the LAs, the MIS department began to grow in size and then when incorporation and the FEFC happened MIS needed to increase capacity and has grown exponentially since then. Post-FEFC, whenever funding bodies or the government began to talk about ‘simplification’ or ‘bureaucracy busting’ then this meant an increase in the MIS department’s workload as the simplification (or job losses) would happen in the government agencies which would in turn make extra work for the sector.

Developments in how data is managed

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The present These days MIS departments are usually one of the biggest business support areas in colleges and now cover a variety of roles such as exams, report writing, funding, registers, timetables etc. The manager of the area can either be directly line managed by the principal (ie as a member of the senior management team [SMT]) or a vice principle resources who usually has the challenging task of managing MIS, IT services, estates and finance together.

Managing the MIS team is usually an interesting role in FE as the MIS director will either: • have the ear of the principal and governors who will hang onto their every

word as gospel, (although could be viewed with suspicion by the other members of the SMT); or • work for the vice principal who may well treat you in the same way as if you

were on SMT or will view you with suspicion like the rest of SMT! Some view becoming the director of MIS as the pinnacle of their career (mainly because there is nowhere else to go – only two previous MIS directors have become principals) or they will have to take on board IT services (they’re both computing aren’t they?) or, worse still, estates to further your career. There are examples of estates directors who managed MIS as well and soon either retired or were ‘retired’ as SMT realised that this was a cost saving too far.

There are examples of colleges, such as Exeter College, which have really understood the importance of data and set about structuring its MIS function to be centred on leading the drive to improve performance. This heralds the future for data in colleges – it is no longer simply about investing in staff and software and letting them get on with the task of handling the college’s data. Now it is about a shift in culture and ethos to ensure that the responsibility for data is shared. Value is added by extending the expectation that staff throughout the college are data savvy. Not least MIS can be put to use in setting up stress management data for the specific purpose of understanding performance and stressors, as well as providing an evidence base for management and trade union dialogue. A motivated workforce tends to be a more effective workforce.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

5. Culture and ethos This section explores the critical to success factors in ensuring that data is robust and well used, as well as some of the pitfalls to hopefully avoid.

The MIS director role is clearly a critical one in most colleges as the importance and significance of managing the college data and deciding how others see and use it is a powerful one. This role needs to help set the culture of ‘data is gold’ within the team and across the college where possible, although this work also needs the assistance of a powerful steer from the principal and SMT to reinforce the sanctity of data – that it is as vital to the college as the learners.

As mentioned earlier once the basics are in place in terms of information systems and staff compliance the key to success is then a culture of extracting maximum value from that data through building relationships across the organisation and presenting the information in an accessible manner.

Developing good working relationships with SMT and the curriculum is of paramount importance for the MIS director but the job of communication, as data champion, needs to reach, via the MIS team, into the sinews of college life.

As an MIS manager, being part of a good supportive business support manager’s team can often be very useful. Getting help and sharing good practice regarding service level agreements (SLAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), staff management problems, inspection requirements, management training etc from this team can be invaluable.

The following are key approaches to adopt if a college is to build a strong supportive culture around data. Not least is the recommendation of a policy of ‘MIS is always right,’ along with the strategy of ‘use MIS data’. All further policies stem from these two! This is essential for corralling an authoritative dataset that is then applied in the process of managing and improving college performance.

Culture and ethos

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MIS is always right (even if it’s wrong) This is the key to embedding MIS data into organisational culture. Its effect is pervasive, profound and far-reaching. The consequences are: • blaming is by-passed • excuses are exposed • evasions are evicted • additional and rogue sub-systems are made redundant • wasteful duplication withers away • good energies are focused • destructive energies are either turned or destroyed.

In every organisation with a weak or struggling MIS, people and departmental administrators invent their own systems – a few to evade the truth, but most to try to discover it. In a ‘MIS is always right’ regime, when MIS produces a report which a curriculum area believes to be incorrect then managers do not choose between the curriculum area’s data and MIS data. Instead, give the curriculum area and MIS time to work together to put MIS right or put the curriculum area right (as the case may be).

Do this: • to refine the system so MIS really is right, now and the next time • for MIS to produce the report again • for the curriculum area and MIS to jointly report back on how things have

been fixed on the central system.

The end result is that: • MIS is right • MIS is sustainably right • MIS is seen to be right • MIS is credible to the curriculum teams.

The part which requires some management resolve is to back the MIS version (even if it hurts) as agreeing with the curriculum team may well usually be more comfortable.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Be transparent and open with information This is the key to breaking down protectionism, nervousness and hoarding.

Staff who are organisation players will welcome this approach. Every day examples are: • staff utilisation reports • the prospectus • retention rates • room utilisation reports.

Another critical example of this is sharing cross-college funding reports.

How much friction this causes will depend on the spirit in which it is used.

Needless, unproductive debate can occur about confidentiality. Open information is: • not about putting student addresses on the internet • not about putting staffs’ personal troubles in the staff news • not about giving commercially sensitive data to competitors.

In our estimation, there are probably still 50% of colleges who do not operate in this way, so there is plenty of room for efficiency and effectiveness improvements.

Culture and ethos

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Your institution only offers good courses This is the key to improving publicity, turning the course file from a liability into an asset, and making a pervasive improvement to MIS data. The course file is to educational MIS as an engine is to a car. If it is poor, everything connected to it is poor. As a consequence of this policy only data from the course file can be used for publicity purposes as, by definition, the course file is the only true source of course information. (Note, the course file is always right – by policy – see above.)

As a bonus, it can be passed from the course file to the prospectus and then onto marketing electronically with the following results: • one less job for course managers • one less job for marketing • publicity exactly matches provision • eyes, ears and energies are harnessed to getting one thing right • skilled staff work efficiently and effectively • the whole institution gains a clean course file for use in many contexts.

We only employ teachers who behave professionally This is a key to tapping the goldmine of register data. Professional teachers will promptly complete registers, as they always have. If they do not we cannot demonstrate that: • they fulfil or exceed contractual obligations • they contact students to promote learning • they make all due efforts to retain students.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Good communication is crucial Being a good communicator means seizing every opportunity on crosscollege communication forums to constantly get key messages across to those that need to know – be the mouthpiece for the data. This will reduce the likelihood of the ‘we didn’t know’ response and will raise awareness of the importance of MIS. The ethos for all data users should be act like a good learner and ask if you don’t know something. This really is particularly crucial for future improvement gains; there often needs to be a culture change in this respect. College staff need to become more data savvy so that they are clear about what the data is saying, and MIS staff need to become more adept at translating the data for different audiences so that the message is clear for all, from SMT, to governors, to teaching staff.

In fact, difficult decisions and even strategic ones can become clouded and lost in politics if the data is not right. Too often what SMT or governors are led to believe as fact is unpicked lower down the chain of information and important change can be delayed or simply lost because of a lack of agreement over basic facts. Of course, there are always complications around interpretations of data but contextualised data will always be open to interpretation. What should not be open to interpretation are the facts themselves, which is why everyone needs to work towards a system where ‘MIS is always right’.

Information is a vital institutional resource The ethos must be ‘it’s either exactly right or it is no use at all.’ This sets the institution’s face against the ‘it’s only figures’ mentality. It puts information on a par with furniture, finances and fine art – worth protecting. It confirms information as a proper subject for care, concern and effort. It should be backed with examples such as: • exam results and local credibility • ILR and funding • retention and respect.

If data is treated as gold then it will be handled, protected and used with much greater care than it sometimes is at present.

Culture and ethos

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Implement tripwire policies to support established performance indicators Good clear data can help a college maintain a tight control of scarce resources and prevent scope creep on the basis of flimsy evidence The following are examples of tripwires designed to help reinforce a strong performance culture: • no manager can recruit staff if his or her staff utilisation is less than optimal • all rooms should be controlled centrally, some of which should be

designated as being for ‘predominant’ users allocation • no course with an empty field may be put in the prospectus or website.

(We also urge including course codes in the prospectus, another win-win.)

The only source of these figures is, of course, MIS. See good practice guide 6, Timetabling and Registers at www.felinks.co.uk for more information on timetabling.

Make data values default-painful What follows (although rather comical) is an example of the lengths college MIS departments sometimes have had to go to, to ensure compliance from the curriculum. For example: • if a room has no capacity information supplied, set it to100 • if a lecturer has no annual contracted hours supplied, set them to 1,000 • if a course has no target enrolment supplied, set it to 50 • if a full-cost programme has no fee data supplied, set it to zero.

The aim is to engage users by making their failure to supply full data bounce back on them, not go unnoticed or even help them. A room with a high capacity will produce embarrassingly low utilisation figures; a lecturer on 1,000 hours per annum will always appear below target and a full-cost programme with no fee will invite accountant interest!

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

MIS teams may well now engage in more sophisticated (some might say Machiavellian) ways of achieving some of the above, as application of this particular approach today would lead to the closure of many construction and engineering departments in the sector!

Not knowing the first two items is actually an MIS shortcoming as this is data that is readily available through estates and HR, which should have been procured by MIS anyway.

Put simply - never use the ‘not known’ option anywhere in MIS data systems.

Invest to make MIS data output accessible to all staff MIS reporting should really just fall into two categories: standard and ad hoc or bespoke reports.

The former should be available on college staff’s desktops either via some sort of reports repository or a dashboard and the latter be made available through a pre-defined request process detailed in the MIS SLA. Most MIS teams these days have a designated report writer whose skill set should always be: • fully understanding FE data and the processes they are reporting on • being able to write reports.

Never, ever have it the other way around, as a technical report writer who has no idea of how FE works, ie what a learner number or FTE is, will not be able to interpret or sense check requests and will often provide meaningless rubbish if they do not understand the context. (Newly appointed, I once asked a new report writer to very quickly provide me with an ethnicity report for a reinspection which was duly emailed off to the inspector later that day. Rather worryingly the next day I was told by the deputy principal that the inspector had advised that the data was rubbish! On checking I found that the report indicated that 33% of college learners in a town located equidistant between Liverpool and Manchester were in fact of Chinese origin. Closer inspection revealed that the figure should have been 0.33%).

Culture and ethos

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Providing some sort of reports repository or dashboard is the best way to ensure that standard reports are always accessible via the martini principle – anytime, anywhere and anyplace. However, when building up a data library it is important to cap the number of reports available, eg by removing an old one every time a new one is added. There is little worse than providing a data library whereby staff have to trawl through hundreds of reports trying to find the one they want.

Clearly label the reports with their actual purpose, not Report 1, Report 2 etc as some colleges have done. (A separate Word document found elsewhere was provided which said what data each of the reports contained). Many colleges are using software like Sharepoint or Moodle to store the reports which are updated overnight or in some cases are live entities, which is good practice.

Dashboards have been around for some time now, but are proving to be quite costly. The concept is a good one though. To be able to provide reports specific to a person’s job role is the Holy Grail of MIS and can actually be achieved quite easily as long as the active directory details are up to date.

For example, I once commissioned such a system using Moodle as a front end which provided a variety of data on staff desktops that was differentiated to four levels: SMT, curriculum managers, business support managers and lecturers (actually five levels, as we latterly included students as well). Not only was it role-specific in the data it provided but also seasonal depending on the time of year. It had a simple traffic light system on the front page which alerted the user to problems and also benefitted from the ability to drill down from the associated top level graphical representation of, say, enrolments to where the enrolments sat, what department, their ages, class lists etc. The specific focus on data relevant to the time of year was a critical device which meant that there were never more than six or so items on show on the front page. This focussed SMT, managers and lecturing staff on the issues they had to deal with, which resulted in significant improvement in performance as problems were spotted much earlier than usual and in most cases whilst they were still recoverable. You can find more on reporting systems in good practice guide 5, Reporting for download at www.felinks.co.uk.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Connect as many data items together as possible This exposes problems and builds on solutions. Every link between files entails links between interested users. What one set of eyes misses another spots, so one person’s expertise cleans another’s weak spots, and whole institution views are developed. Colleges are recommended to establish as many connections as possible between diverse parts of the various information systems used. Ideally they will be of immediate perceived benefit to data users, for example, library staff who no longer have to enter students’ personal data when it is passed electronically from the student database.

Establishing such links always treads on toes in the short term, as the links inevitably pass some errors and/or cut across established practices or ‘fixes.’

The trick is to ensure the people being linked are pulling with you to make it work, rather than expecting100%-gain-for-zero-effort miracles. Vital linkages have already been mentioned, notably: • course file to prospectus • enrolment to exam entry • enrolment to register • room to register • payroll to staff • staff to register.

This process is strengthened if it is coupled with the following strategy.

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Capture once, use many times One of the hardest tasks in any computer-assisted MIS is to capture data onto the computer in the first place. By and large, once it is in there you can do anything with it. For example, sometimes enquirers’ details are keyed in, then copied onto a list, by hand – students fill manual exam entry forms, and enrolling staff write course details on enrolment forms. We are sure many others of this kind occur. These suggest a fragmented service where computers are a task not a tool. Psychological obstacles stand in the way of moving forward in such areas ‘not invented here’ – so other ways of working must be wrong. Obstacles can be: • lack of vision – do we reward innovation?

• conservatism – we’ve always done it like that • parochialism – we don’t need course codes.

This is not helped by the near certainty that changes cost effort at least. We have repeatedly found that staff who prefer pens can be turned if their worst chores can be made easier and their expectations are managed very carefully.

They must be made to feel that the things they have protected are at least as safe. They will then twig that computers are best at things humans hate, notably: listing, copying, adding rows, adding columns, searching and sorting.

They will eventually feel safe that removing chores frees them up to do interesting things. They can then spend their time dealing with the exceptions, not the rules.

Like many things in life, it is difficult to recall how things worked before PCs/ Macs. The above, taken from 2004, is still worth noting, if only to remind ourselves that the advent of computers would free up staff to do more ‘interesting things.’

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Use real-time processes wherever possible The classic case is real-time enrolment. The strength of real-time processes is that they harness the energies and skills of all parties to the operation. Other real-time examples could be: • enquiry – have you phoned a firm and been asked for your postcode?

• application – as per enquiry, then post pre-printed enrolment form • exam entry – students wipes his/her card, out pops pre-printed entry form.

Use as many refresh points as possible A refresh point is an occasion where someone confirms data. If this is done as a specific exercise it is a burden. The trick is to do it naturally and incidentally, for example: • pre-printed exam entry form – student updates address • library book issue – student confirms name • grant cheque issue – student confirms date of birth etc.

The more we harness our data, the more opportunities occur to refresh it.

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Consult users on developments How data is processed and presented will evolve over time and it is important that this isn’t simply left to the MIS department to sort alone. Review points are needed where all key stakeholders come together to ask ‘is the present system meeting our needs? What changes could be made to improve the serving up of relevant data?’

However, college staff are often unclear about what is possible or what is desirable. Three strategies doomed to failure in such circumstances are: • ‘Like it or lump it’ – MIS is simply set up and imposed on people • ‘Waddaya want?’ – everyone is given a clean sheet of paper • ‘What do you think of it so far?’ – which merely invites derision.

The first fails to engage people and risks alienating them, while the second raises expectations that are almost impossible to fulfil – the worst of all worlds. A far better pattern to adopt is: • draft then consult friends • redraft then consult all • publish.

This mixes leadership with engagement. ‘Friends’ must be true friends, ie they will tell you about your body odour if needed. At operational implementation stages it is vital that the people most closely affected be given a role in devising procedures. Heads of department meetings and enrolment task group meetings should be approached regularly.

It is vital for the MIS function to manage expectations well. Simple rules apply but are easily forgotten: • promise only what you can deliver • then deliver it • get the recipient to acknowledge successful delivery • if in doubt, say ‘no’ (you can always deliver after all).

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Coping with fear Data is information gold these days and as such MIS teams need to be its careful guardians. This can present its own challenges given that various stakeholders might well wish to have a strong say in what happens to it.

For example, sometimes pressure can be exerted on the MIS team from above to not carry out work in a particular fashion, for example, being asked/ told to delay entering withdrawals onto the system to prevent a negative impact on figures. This will often result in short-term gain for someone else causing long-term pain for others, not least those seeking to keep the college’s data clean. Again, MIS directors may be tested on this but this is where as a leader they need to have a strong sense of moral purpose and be brave enough to do the ‘right thing.’

There can be many dilemmas in this respect, for example, instances of principals asking their MIS directors to lose their principles and ‘modify’ or polish the data for inspection or funding income gains. Success rate polishing as it became known was probably one of the biggest ethical challenges put before MIS directors in the past 10 years or so. Some other dilemmas faced over the years include: • Do you as an individual knowingly falsify the data to enable the college to

hit its funding and or quality targets and keep the principal happy? If so, how liable are you? How happy are you to commit fraud etc?

• Do you only comply on the understanding that you can say ‘the principal

made me do it’ to the auditors/police?

Note, discussions about ethics in some SMT meetings can at times become solely related to the distance/time it takes to get there and how far away it is from London!

MIS directors sometimes need to stand their ground when necessary as others’ failings can be placed squarely at his or her door, rather than the individuals concerned.

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Form mutually beneficial relationships with MIS bodies Data gold can soon tarnish and even turn to lead unless effort is made to stay on top of change. The landscape moves fast and to continue to interpret the data and turn it into useful and rich information it makes sense for the college to network with other data experts beyond the college. What follows can well be critical to the success (or not) of your college.

There are networks of MIS professionals out there. Examples are: • regional CMIS groups eg north west CMIS • various software system user groups.

External conferences, for example, Sector Training, AoC, Learning and Skills Events Consultancy and Training are good in themselves and offer the opportunity to meet fellow sufferers. These days the SFA goes out of its way to be helpful given the chance and, rather annoyingly, auditors are often a source of great expertise.

It would appear to be noticeable that colleges who still do not avail themselves of the help and support available through the above groups do appear to be very insular (on some occasions even driven by the idea that they already know better) and are usually identifiable by the ‘schoolboy errors’ they have committed regarding their lack of knowledge of the myriad funding nuances that are readily available from attending such groups which often can have significant impact.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

Should you automatically form an MIS steering group?

For Such a group channels and manages energies. It must include people at different levels from different areas of the college, with at least one member of the SMT. The trick is to steer a path between a grumble group and a damp squib. Meetings should be regular, perhaps termly, with task groups formed as and when necessary.

Against Such a group shouldn’t need to exist because the MIS team is regularly attending curriculum team meetings, meeting with the managers and SMT once a week in the college managers’ meeting and have staff identified as curriculum ‘buddies’ who support the curriculum at critical times of the year such as during operational planning.

Doing the latter prevents you having to do the former.

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Service level agreements A business support area SLA can be a very useful document and usually takes the form of a written statement of performance targets, clarifying things for both the user and the provider. The process itself will highlight strengths and weaknesses, and more importantly engage the user in the system. The MIS team needs to ask users to help devise the agreement, perhaps as part of a working group and get them to agree on KPIs before it’s published. This can certainly be an effective way of embedding a culture that respects the need for strong MIS data across the college.

Learning from awkward customers While MIS has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, unfortunately the challenges that internal customers can sometimes create are still evident. This is an area where college teams can improve their understanding of their key role in delivering good clean college data.

Producing good information is only half the battle – credibility is the other.

Good information is down to the MIS team, street credibility is down to others. MIS’s best advertisers are its enemies, detractors and congenital whingers. Here are some field-proven approaches to managing the outcries of possible dissenters: ‘My job is teaching, not filling forms’ Make filling one form, eg register or enrolment form, do the job of at least two others.

‘MIS data is rubbish’ Get specific examples. Investigate them promptly. Suss the causes. Fix them.

Report back to, and thank the critic. Ask them to report future examples.

Follow it up if you hear nothing; silence may be golden!

‘This is wrong again’ Did they tell us last time? If so, go out of your way to pay particular attention, perhaps at the expense of bigger fish. If not, welcome them to the circle as per the previous example.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

‘I’m too busy’ Use compulsory training, paying particular attention to current practice. These may well fall into two camps (chasing minutiae – in which case, you can help; doing little – in which case, steer clear).

‘That’s not our job’ (supplying some data) Inform their manager immediately.

‘That’s no use to me’ (regarding a report or facility) Find a peer who uses it.

‘I need more detail’ Show how MIS can get this person near, but the last step is up to this person.

Or refine practices to incorporate the detail (thank and credit this person).

‘What about refinement X?’ (a wrecking question) Refine practices to incorporate the detail (thank and credit this person), or point out the implications of collecting it.

‘I hate computers’ Expend extra effort to allay real fears. Ensure things are as simple as possible (they should be anyway, even if your users are techno-freaks or propellerheads). Show them the medium is irrelevant; the message is what matters.

‘I don’t understand’ Latch onto these people. If someone says this then there are probably lots more out there who don’t understand; your routines may need refining, your messages may need explaining more clearly your report headings may need improving.

‘I keep my own records’ Find out how they differ from yours. Learn from them. Bang the one institution, only one set of data, drum. Their records are for them; the MIS team concern is the college records which are for all.

Another fruitful set of people are ‘local experts.’ These people usually come to colleges already data savvy. They can be the MIS team’s Trojan horse. They ‘sell’ MIS to their colleagues because they speak their language, they are non-threatening and they are close at hand. The flipside is that they demand time and attention and sometimes come up with hare-brained schemes. This is a price well worth paying.

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6. Conclusion The way in which colleges collect, interpret and communicate data has come a long way in the past 10 years. This booklet’s tour of management information from the viewpoint of a college’s data guardian, the MIS department, will hopefully have provided useful insight for those who work with or depend on good data from across your college. This booklet, along with the accompanying web-based resources, should also prove useful to MIS teams in particular, not least in acting as a repository of good practice during a time of significant churn within college MIS staff.

To continue to drive forward the benefits of data gold we recommend all institutions adopt the policy of ‘MIS is always right’ and the strategy of ‘use MIS.’ This means supporting a collaborative approach to the collection and dissemination of data but with a firm centralised lead in this from the college’s MIS team, who need staff from across the college to join them as data champions.

Adopting what’s outlined in this publication or seeing your college’s own good practice reflected in it should give you some confidence that your college is moving in the right direction. Reaching the zenith is an almost impossible task – how can you measure it? But it is good to know what ‘good’ looks like and help your organisation move towards it if it isn’t already there.

For example, this might consist of: • having excellent systems used by all • having clean, accurate and timely data recognised as such by your users,

the agencies and inspectors • having governors who clearly fully comprehend the data laid before them • producing 100% clean audits every year • coming top in the annual best ‘business support team’ or

manager competition!

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

7. Good practice guides As mentioned throughout this booklet there is also an online presence for this document and the associated good practice guides, which can be found on the Data gold pages at www.felinks.co.uk.

This site is managed by Jerome Wittersheim (in his spare time) who is the director of MIS at a north west college. His site builds on the premise that the various agencies who govern what we do in MIS all have their own websites and portals and do not provide the plethora of documents, updates and information we need in a particularly uniform or even obvious way. So his site collects those key documents together in one place to help prevent MIS managers up and down the country wasting a significant amount of time each week looking for them.

The following good practice guides are currently available: • GPG1. The ILR and Data Processing • GPG2. Exams, Assessment and Qualifications • GPG3. Operational Planning • GPG4. Audit • GPG5. Reporting • GPG6. Timetabling and Registers • GPG7. Quality and Inspection • GPG8. Software Systems • GPG9. Funding and Fees • GPG10. Performance Monitoring and KPIs • GPG11. The Learner Journey • GPG12. New in Post – Getting the Basics Right

Please contact the authors via mwright@amie.atl.org.uk if you wish to either nominate a topic for a new guide or write one yourself for inclusion on the site.

Good practice guides

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8. Top 10 tips for a strong ‘data gold’ culture and ethos 1. Accuracy is the principal thing; therefore first get accurate data.

Accurate reports are always better than beautifully laid out reports.

2. Always ensure the MIS team has an open door policy and welcomes colleagues into the office – communication is key to achieving and maintaining robust data.

3. Ensure an ethos of customer service is embedded into everything the MIS team does.

4. Have MIS staff regularly go out into the curriculum areas and be worried about the people from whom they never hear.

5. Empower college staff to offer critical challenge where they lack understanding of data needs or its meaning. Communication should always be clear and transparent. Ensure good communication skills are a part of every MIS job description.

6. Have MIS take advantage of external MIS networks and always attend MIS conferences to find out what’s really going on. Don’t be insular.

7. Ensure key members of the MIS team develop good working relationships with the curriculum heads of department.

8. If the MIS department has to resort to punitive measures with the curriculum then there is a serious problem with MIS. 9. Be open to new ways of collecting data. Is there a new technologically easy way of digitising the data, or can it be simply transferred from another collection source? And if it isn’t used usefully challenge the very need to collect it in the first place.

10. Avoid having an MIS department which is proud to be hated and wears unpopularity as a badge of honour! MIS data is crucial to the efficiency and effectiveness of colleges. Data needs to be cleanly collected, overcoming grumbles, and used until every inch of value is squeezed from it.

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Data gold: The importance of management systems data for college managers

9. AMiE afterword We hope that you have found this publication useful. The foreword noted the significant changes to the function and perception of MIS over the past 10 years or so and it is no bad thing to envision where MIS needs to look next over the forthcoming years if it is to help the sector own its destiny more than it is able to at present. This is the challenge for the sector. It needs to encourage and support greater lateral collaboration between colleges so that the sector can grow and promote itself by having sectorwide statistics to hand, much in the same way that the schools system does to good effect by using the Collect system. It is the challenge to realise the benefits of partnership working within the sector as a prelude to becoming more effective at partnership working beyond the sector as sector lines become ever more blurred over the coming years. And having a strong understanding of the application of data will need to be a key driver for this to happen effectively. There are significant benefits to be derived from greater cooperation in this area alone for both colleges as well as the sector as a whole. The sector seriously needs to better utilise its collective data both as a means for a performance enhancing benchmark tool but also to provide a rich performance narrative to counter voices who have sought to malign the impact that the sector makes.

This joining up should be made easier by the government’s drive for better information and data, as outlined in its Rigour and Responsiveness in Skills strategy, which paves the way for partnerships with developers who can take the core statistics and fashion them in to user friendly means by which students, parents, and employers can make effective choices. Making available FE choices and learner data such as attendance, assignment grades, ILPS and other learner journey type information to parents and learners is absolutely the way to go.

Using robust data to help better manage the resources of the sector provides an environment favourable to improvements in performance, narratives to celebrate success and hopefully helps protect jobs within the sector.

AMiE afterword

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AMiE produces a range of resources – all free to members – that can be used either towards your CPD or as an aid to your working practice.

Listed below is a selection; for full details visit AMiE’s website at www.amie.atl.org.uk.

How to Survive at the Top Volume 1: Understanding Leadership

How to Survive at the Top Volume 2: Management and L§eadership

How to Survive at the Top Volume 3: Leadership and Performance

A Guide to Best Practice: Disciplinary Problems and Grievances

Finished with your copy? Pass it on to other colleagues who might find it useful.

© AMiE 2013. All rights reserved. Extracts from this document may be reproduced for non-commercial education or training purposes on condition that the source is acknowledged. Otherwise, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

The Outstanding performance series seeks to help leaders and managers raise the performance bar by optimising the effectiveness of their staff and resources. AMiE offers help and guidance to enable leaders and managers drive the performance agenda rather than feel driven by the process of inspection.

35 The Point, Market Harborough, Leicestershire LE16 7QU www.amie.atl.org.uk T: 01858 461 110 F: 01858 461 366 E: info@amie.uk.com Helpline: 01858 464 171 Product code: ATL/PE41 Date: October 2013 Edition: First ISBN: 1902 466 713 Price: ÂŁ10 (non-members)/free (members) www.twitter.com/atl_amie