Posts Tagged ‘Sponsored Research’

Attendees:  Sonia Barragan (RMG), Matt Hoying (Data Governance), Colleen James (RMG), Angel Mayorga (RMG), Kathleen Thompson (RMG)

Deliverables:

1. List major terms that will be considered to be in the scope of the project (all)
2. Create wiki pages for known terms (Matt): https://asconfluence.stanford.edu/confluence/display/~mhoying/Home
3. Schedule weekly meetings (Kathleen)
4. Send PDF of 2001 definitions to team (Matt): http://dg.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Research_Data_Definitions_Summary.pdf
5. Research composition of 2001 UMG Working Group on Data (Matt)
6. Draft information flow diagram (Matt)

This meeting focused on developing the scope, effort duration and deliverables to be produced as part of this effort.  The discussion began with specific examples of the impact of inconsistent/unclear data definitions and other data quality issues.  As data definitions are developed and data quality risks and errors are identified, this group will make a significant effort to document the associated business impact or operational risk.

The definitions developed in the course of this activity will not be considered “Approved” or “Institutional Definitions” until they receive formal sign-off from all necessary business and technical stakeholders.  A formal approval process and executive data stewardship council in this domain will be developed shortly.

An additional key activity will be the communication of these definitions to a broader set of stakeholders.  This training will improve institution-wide understanding of this information, reduce operational risk, and increase trust in the underlying data while providing a valuable source of feedback for the definitions produced by this group.

The focus of the definitions (https://asconfluence.stanford.edu/confluence/display/~mhoying/Metadata-Definition) will be on the major data entities associated with the lifecycle of a proposal and award.  Using the sample lifecycle (http://dg.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SAMPLE-LIFECYCLE.docx) produced by RMG two weeks ago, the team will work on listing the concepts and terms that will be defined as part of this effort.  In this phase we will not be focusing on defining all of the attributes of these entities or fully describing the details/derivations of the entity subtypes.  The aim will be to make this an eight to ten week effort with weekly meetings of an hour and a half.  Kathleen will schedule the next meeting, most likely, next Thursday, June 14^th in the early afternoon.

In addition to this list of terms, the team will work to develop a graphical timeline of the proposal and award process, pointing out significant state changes and key dates.

The final deliverable of this short project will be a high-level information flow and CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) matrix that displays where key types of data reside and the activities at those locations.  Matt will be sending out a draft diagram to the team shortly to use as a starting point.

Finally, at the end of the meeting, the team developed a draft definition for the term “Proposal.”  This has been posted on the Data Governance Wiki and all team members are encouraged to further refine the definition on the wiki or make comments regarding the fitness of the definition.  Please also feel free to share the draft definition (on the wiki) with other subject matter experts and get their perspective.

Defined Terms:

Proposal: A proposal is a formal funding request on behalf of the University for external funding to support a scope of work defined as a Sponsored Project. https://asconfluence.stanford.edu/confluence/display/~mhoying/Proposal

In the course of daily activities, if any of the team members come across data quality issues, opportunities or develop out-of-scope definitions, please forward them to Matt for compilation.  Please reach out to Matt with any questions, corrections or additional information about this subject.

April 2, 2012
Attendees: Russell Brewer (OSR), Kathleen Thompson (RMG), Colleen James (RMG), Angel Mayorga (RMG) and Matt Hoying (UDG)

On February 2^nd, 2012, Vijay Gandra, Russell Brewer, Kathleen Thompson and Matt Hoying met to discuss an issue related to different methods of calculating proposals.  In the course of the conversation, all parties agreed that a data dictionary for Research Administration could provide value and reduce the risk of future data issues.

The April 2^nd meeting focused on the details related to creating a team to lead the development of this data dictionary and scoping that team’s responsibilities.  We began by reviewing the recent work done by the HR Metrics Data Group and some of the types of information (metadata) that we could plan on developing.

The Research Administration Metadata Team (the team) would limit the initial effort on documenting major Lifecycle Event terms in the Research Administration data subject area.   OSR and RMG will work together to provide an initial list of in-scope terms and gather any currently known data definitions or supporting documents on those terms.

It was agreed that, on the first pass, the team would primarily focus on:

• Business definitions of major terms
• (All) Technical derivations (not necessarily deciding which one was best at this point)
• Which systems and reports create, store, modify or report on the data

Although not the primary focus of the first pass, the team would also document the following when necessary and would focus on documenting the following in a second pass:

• Business rules
• Attribute definition/data domain definition
• System of record

Additionally, in parallel, RMG would take responsibility for the development data quality (DQ) metrics and thresholds.  The details of this process, the approval of these metrics and their technical implementation are outside the scope of the Research Administration Metadata Team at this point.

The team would initially consist of representatives from OSR, RMG, Dean of Research (DOR) and Research Financial Compliance and Services (RFCS).

• OSR will be represented by Michiko Pane and Pushpa Iyengar.
• RMG will be represented by Colleen James and Angel Mayorga
• Russell will talk with both DOR and RFCS regarding their representation.

Meetings will be held once every two weeks, starting in the end of April or beginning of May.

Please reach out to Matt with any questions, corrections or additional information about this subject.