Using data for improved planning and decision-making is most effective when access is coordinated and shared across the institution. Building a Data-Centric Culture Across the Institution is issue #4 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
There's data gold in our institutional mines, but we're all digging separate tunnels and using different tools to get to it.
With access to rich stores of data, more leaders and campus stakeholders are realizing the potential of data for improved planning and decision-making. Indeed, nearly every department within the institution—from academic departments to advancement to facilities to HR—can uniquely benefit from more thoughtful engagement with data for planning and programmatic purposes. But our use of these data is most effective when access is coordinated and shared across the institution. Achieving this kind of coordination requires clear vision and commitment from institutional leaders.
Indeed, an institution-wide culture around the use of data begins with leadership. The 2024 EDUCAUSE Analytics Landscape Study found that while leaders largely understand the value of data and regularly request it, few data and analytics professionals reported that their leadership is fully committed to, and actively investing in, analytics across the institution.Footnote1 A lack of investment and support among senior leadership can contribute to uneven engagement with analytics across functional units at the institution, as well as neglect of centralized policies and standards needed for consistent institution-wide engagement with data.
Building an institution-wide data culture will also require a continued focus on integrated systems and unified data, bringing together disparate data sources to give users a more consistent and complete institutional picture for decision-making.Footnote2 Siloed data sources and data management practices can contribute to fragmented, and even misguided, planning and decision-making, greater data privacy and security risks, and inconsistent data definitions and understanding.
Integrated data sources and institution-wide access will place a higher premium on strong data governance and management practices, along with enhanced monitoring and access controls. With the rapid emergence of new AI capabilities and data needs, such as staff and student access to APIs for workflow automation, institutions, now more than ever, need to establish clear and consistent approaches to organizing and accessing their data. Mature data governance and management can help ensure institution-wide data quality and safety while also providing users with a comprehensive view of the institutional data they need.
Campus Spotlight: Tailoring Data Insights to Unique Data Needs at Vanderbilt University
Through its Office of Data and Strategic Analytics, Vanderbilt University has spent the past several years building a data-centric culture across the institution. According to Chief Data Officer Olivia Kew-Fickus, as stakeholders across the institution have become more interested in having data, their data interests have become more disparate.
"There's huge demand for data in many different areas," she said. "Student success is an obvious one, but also things like how do we use our dining and other facilities better? How do we engage with our alumni better? How do we engage with our fans better? And we're finding that every time we talk to a new leader, they want data. Trying to figure out how to bring it all together and have it make sense has been a real challenge."
With such a diverse range of data interests and data questions across the institution, Kew-Fickus' team found that close collaboration with leaders is essential. Working with leaders to understand the value they seek from the data and to educate them on how to interpret and use it helps to maximize the impact of data on decision-making.
"You need people who have enough familiarity with what data is, where it comes from, how to know what it can tell them and not tell them," she explained. "And a lot of data literacy is really just starting with where is this data coming from? Why can I trust it, or what can it tell me and not tell me? Once those things are in place, you have the pieces that will enable you to start moving toward a data culture."
Ways to Get Started
Through our panelist interviews and community survey, technology leaders noted some ways institutions might establish a data-centric culture across their institution:
- Institution-wide engagement with data demands technology leaders who are adept at listening and responding to the unique data needs of a wide range of institutional leaders, functional units, and discrete program- and project-based use cases. Begin by seeking to understand the questions stakeholders across the institution need answered, where institutional data may be able to help, and the resources that are needed to get those data to those stakeholders.
- Establish the centralized data governance structures and policies needed to buttress institution-wide engagement with data. User trust in the relevance and quality of institutional data is paramount to getting buy-in and support for using those data, and relevance and quality start with sound governance and management. If you don't have a data governance program in place, establishing one is a clear first step for your institution. The 2023 EDUCAUSE Data Governance Action Plan can help you identify where to begin.
Notes
- Nicole Muscanell, 2024 EDUCAUSE Analytics Landscape Study, (EDUCAUSE, September 2024). Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.
- Jenay Robert, 2024 EDUCAUSE Horizon Action Plan: Unified Data Models, (EDUCAUSE, March 2024). Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.
Sean Brown is Director of Strategy and Operations for Campus Reimagined at Florida State University.
Jennifer Burns is Associate VP Information Technology at The University of British Columbia.
Daniel Ewart is Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at University of Idaho.
Olivia Kew-Fickus is Chief Data Officer at Vanderbilt University.
Diego Leal is Executive Lead of the Digital Educational Laboratory at Universidad de Los Andes.
Helen Norris is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Chapman University.
© 2025 EDUCAUSE and the 2025–2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.