| | October 20159Drive an effective business with productive dataData analysis is changing the face of our world by touching and impacting almost every facet of our lives either directly or indirectly. Higher education has a legacy of decentralized data collections, storage and maintenance to deal with before full utilization can be achieved. Data is a strategic asset and this fact must be clear to the entire institutions through inclusion in decision making, strategic planning and leadership. Everyone must understand the importance of the data and the direct benefits that result from sharing and standardizing information.When dealing with a distributed model, there are also the additional difficulties with the reliability of the data and the normal or standard form of the data is unclear. In response, investments must be made in master data man agent (MDM). Business and IT work together to ensure uniformity, accuracy, consistency and accountability of the enterprise's shared master data assets, leading to essential business intelligence and analytics. Processes common to MDM are source identification, data collection, data transformation, normalization, rule administration, error detection and correction, data consolidation, data storage, data distribution, data classification, taxonomy services, item master creation, schema mapping, product codification, data enrichment, and data governance. Reliable and appropriate data can provide analyses for prediction, structure discovery, relationship mining, model validation, knowledge inference and data visualization. The implications of well-structured and level-correct data allow timely intervention and improvement directly influencing student success, institutional efficiency and assessment of desired outcomes at all levels of the organization.Infrastructure investmentUFIT has chosen to integrate BYOE into its strategic planning and governance to educate and get buy-in for investments and activities from the institution. First, an investment in wireless networking to ensure a more robust service. Paramount is an investment and commitment in a robust wireless service, and mobilization and wireless connectivity have been identified as a strategic mission of UF. As part of this wireless upgrade, UF upgraded the infrastructure so authenticated and secure access is available campus wide without the need to repeatedly signing in when moving geographically across campus.UF faces the same issues as many institutions of higher education with a mixed environment consisting of centralized networking and security, and decentralized devices and support. Faculty have the flexibility to bring their own devices to do their jobs as they see fit. UFIT looks to coordinate and facilitate the ability of faculty to use any device they choose, which also gives them the ability to be creative in their teaching, interaction with students and research. Concurrently, as BYOE spread rapidly, UF data mined student information, financial and human resources to discover what services were being utilized by mobile devices most often, and worked quickly to mobilize these services in priority of use.Of monumental importance in mobilization and BYOE is information security. As a result, UF developed security policies and standards as well as explored network technologies to improve network security. Part of the standards adopted included minimum requirements regarding data encryption, authentication, disposal and physical security that all mobile computing devices must meet before gaining access to UF resources. The mobile computing and device policy states all devices accessing UF resources and/or storing UF restricted data be compliant with Information Security policies and standards. Mobilization, individually owned devices and the multiplicity of devices requires more than investment and structural upgrades but a cultural change. Organizations must focus less on the device and more on the enabling services, regardless of the device used. This is not just a technology issue, but an impact felt throughout the institution, and as such requires institutional participation to undertake and meet the attendant challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. Mobilization, individually owned devices and the multiplicity of devices requires more than investment and structural upgrades but a cultural changeElias G. Eldayrie
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