“Reporting is hard work and a heavy burden on us. By implementing the data warehouse we aim to reduce the workload and free up time for more important things”, says Information Systems Manager Juho Rautamäki, who is participating in the project.

He finds allocation of the costs to be another significant benefit from the project to the parties involved. Employee resources come from several players, and the Ministry of Education participates in funding.

Open access to information

The idea of information being shared between universities and polytechnics is praised by Rautamäki. Especially comparable data would be useful.

“With the right statistics available, we can benchmark the University of Oulu against other universities, say, in the performance of corresponding disciplines. For development work this type of information will be valuable”, he predicts.

The idea is that all participants will enter data into the shared data warehouse. The institutions should not protect their data too tightly, for open access brings with it benefits for all.

Promptly into use

The data warehouse would have been good to have had in place by this autumn, especially when the annual operational plan and the budget were being prepared. This work requires extensive knowledge about the quantity objectives relating to study, personnel and finance administration and the realization of the indicators at the institution level.

“The data warehouse would have been useful, although at the moment we seem to be well on schedule for this project”, says Rautamäki.

“We have waited for a system like the data warehouse for so long that one year before or after makes no difference. We are now working to get the system into production use during next year.”