iRK’d - Tech Mutiny

A school simply cannot rely on computers to coordinate people or offices. If the school is Balkanized into offices that do not regularly talk, and do not share calendars or updates, there will be miscommunication, dropped balls, and left hand/right hand scenarios that are all too obvious to parents and students. A united, coordinated public presence is the result of a fluid, flexible sharing of information between cooperative colleagues. There is no digital “magic bullet.”

Part of that cooperative coordination is a regular meeting with all the relevant offices. If the school has a person tasked with the database coordinator role, he or she may organize and run the meetings. This would be the typical agenda for such a meeting.

1. Review of a print-out of any/all data changes that have come in since the last meeting.

• Hopefully most of these come in digitally, and are sync’ed across many of the databases, but that will never be perfect.
• A review of policies about how to gather information that comes to coaches, nurses, and others rather than digitally on the website.

2. A sharing of “community news” across all offices. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, job losses, moving, graduations, scholarships, awards, expulsions, etc.

• What needs to be done here will vary depending on the relevance to each office.
• Care must be taken here to assure confidentiality where appropriate.
• Example - One enrolled sibling, the nephew of a trustee, is being dismissed for a disciplinary infraction. Each office will need to be very sensitive to how to process this information in terms of how to interact with the family in the coming days, months and years.

3. An exchange of “coming events” for each office.

• Example - Alumni/development is holding an event to honor a donor who has given for a new gallery space. The registrar could easily provide a list of current art students and their families. The admission office may realize that it is the same night that they are holding the first revisit program and they may want to coordinate with prospective art students.
• Example - Admissions is expanding their receptions to new areas. Development may have some input into who to reach out to, as well as have interest in the gathering of information about people who come to such events. It would be helpful to plan together.

4. A planning of data exchanges between offices or the discussion of standards or practices.

• Discussion about how standards such as Street vs. St., Road vs. Rd.
• Discussion about who should enter new info and how that gets passed to others and checked.
• A “heads up” to offices that new data is coming their way, at the beginning of a semester or start/end of school.
• A “heads up” that one office is getting an upgrade or is migrating to something new and they may be down for a period or may welcome some friendly guidance or additional leeway as they get organized again.

The goal is that, while each office is separate and ultimately needs to show its own productivity, by working together they can collectively offer a united front. That makes everyone look good, be more effective and better serves the greater community.

One of the most important tools at your disposal is your own data. If you can’t analyze, search, view, list and manipulate your own data, its value is lost to you.

Wandering through your own data, performing ad hoc searches, is called “noodling.” You need to be able to ask questions and get answers instantly. Not the staff, not a consultant—the Director. Instantly.

Noodling is not reporting. With reporting, a summary set of data is presented in a standard form. Noodling is free form. There might be 5 or 10 standard reports. Reports are periodic summaries for the Board or the admin meeting. Noodling lets you ask any question and get an instant answer. Noodling provides daily directions to your journey.

• How many people have applied so far this month/year/week?
• How many people who have applied asked for financial aid info? Last year?
• Which feeder schools provide the best candidates?
• How many people who came to that fair did we accept?
• How many students from the Middle East were admitted in the last 3 years? Should we do that trip again?
• What is our success with consultant X recently?
• What school did we lose the most candidates to last year? The last 5 years?

Noodling makes you more aware of your situation. Noodling lets you do your homework. Noodling lets you support your hunches with real data.

If either you don’t know how to search your own data, or your current database solution is too complex for you to learn, you can’t noodle. If you can’t noodle, you can’t be as prepared as you need to be.

If you don’t noodle in your data every day, you need to ask—is it our database, or is it me? If you don’t noodle, to some degree you are flying blind, you are going through the season on auto-pilot. If you don’t know that, someone else might.

If the goal of a school is data coordination, there must be a layer ABOVE the individual offices that actually manages the coordination. This layer need not be complex, but it must exist. This is the role of the database coordinator. Schools can easily establish this job for little additional cost, if it does not already exist.

An assortment of offices will not self-coordinate. No software package in the world can be counted on to coordinate equivalent offices either. Integrated systems can be implemented that limit access so that it is difficult, or impossible, to make changes—but that hinders, not aids in coordination. Making it so difficult to edit data will negatively affect the productivity of each office.

Each office should be as autonomous as possible, within reason, and then their collective efforts coordinated.

There are nine IT jobs at a school, and this is one. (See Nine Jobs). If one of these jobs is not staffed, then the school suffers to that extent. The database coordinator job does not need to be a full time position. Potentially the network administrator could also assume this role, depending on temperament and expertise. At the same time, if the school has only one IT person, or only contracts with an outside IT service, this job is probably going to be either poorly done or not done at all. The secret to success is regular communication between offices, rather than emergency cleanup or frantic damage control.

Database Coordinator Job Description

• Understands basic data structure and functions of all the systems
• Understands how to import and export data from all systems
• Documents and schedules movement of data between systems
• Chairs the regular data coordination meetings
• Serves as source of information for all offices

This person needs to be mostly a mediator, with a touch of technician. This is a people job as much as a tech job. This person sees the school as a whole. She does not dictate to the offices, she advises each and coordinates all.

One of the main reasons offered for total database integration at a school is the elimination of double data entry: it is wasteful, and a potential source of mismatched records. If there was only one set of data, then all that duplication cost could be eliminated—an enormous savings to the school.

But maybe the cure is worse than the disease. Let’s ignore for now the issues of using a single set of data, such as multiple office user error, conflicting data permissions, training needs, and flexibility limitations, and do some calculations on the costs of data entry.

1. Admissions admits 150 students each school year. This information needs to go into:

Business accounting system, Student Information System, Development Office system, Library system, Web Portals

2. It takes a temp typist 5 minutes to type each record. Total of 750 minutes = 12.5 hours. Allowing for breaks, errors, interruptions, this is 2 days. (16 hours)

3. At $15/hr, this job would cost $240.

4. For 5 offices, that would be $1200.

5. Let’s assume that it takes twice as long - a total cost of $2,400 per year.

6. Replacing out and migrating all databases, with training, conversion, yearly fees etc could run between 80K and 200K.

Math Problem: How many years does this school need to do this typing before this migration is cost effective?

In the pursuit of efficient data management across campus, schools go through four phases, completing a cycle about every 4-5 years. I call this the “integration merry-go-round.”

Phase 1: Our school is a mess
Numerous school leaders point out, with barely restrained disgust, the lamentable state of affairs across the campus.

“Our data gets entered over and over in each separate office.” “We solicited a dead person! The Development office needs to be better connected!” “Obviously the answer is one integrated system.” “We need to get rid of all the separate systems.” “Some people may just have to change for the overall progress of the school.”

Phase 2: This time we do it right
Some takes on the task of convening a school-wide study that grows with a life of its own.

“A committee will be formed to collate all the different office needs.” “We are going to put out an RFP and look at all the available companies.” “We are only going to look at completely integrated systems.” “We are going to pick one vendor by March and have everything installed by July 1.”

Phase 3: The data emperor’s new clothes
No one wants to point out the obvious to an assembled group, or to make a stand.

“We all agreed.” “I didn’t agree but wanted to be a team player.” “We just need more training.” “We can’t ask for more money because we just bought this.”

Phase 4: Mutiny
One by one, either with or without central approval, offices chart their own course.

“They are never going to decide anything so I need to just move my office alone.” “I am doing most of my work outside the system anyway.” “I have a mandate from the Board to improve XXX, and that means I need a better database.”

Which phase is your school in?

How do you support people with an open solution?

We believe that we do this well, and badly…at different times for different reasons.

How do we set expectations, and meet expectations?

To me, this is the same problem that a school has. A parent says “I paid 20K/29K/38K to this school and I expect X.”

X can be - teachers give my child endless extra help, my child should be able to get any class he wants, my child should not get cut from the team that he/she has wanted all his life, the lockers should not be so smelly, my child’s teacher needs to grade assignments faster, the Headmaster should answer my calls, the department head should answer my phone calls more promptly, my child should not get the “boring” teachers, etc.

Let’s take that to iR. “We pay XXX per year in support, and I expect…”

How do we have a partnership with our clients, in which everyone understands the boundaries, and feels that they are getting good value?

I have some thoughts here, of course, but I welcome feedback from the community, in a public forum. People tell us from time to time that they are not getting what they paid for or deserve.

My questions:
1. Given that we are open, what can we be expected to “support”?
2. What is our role if you crash your server with/without a backup?
3. What is our helping with “a problem you caused”?
4. What is our helping you with your customizations?
5. What is our role in training your new person?
6. What is our role in prioritizing custom work/change requests for you?

I would love to hear your thoughts…

Onward
Kevin