Forgotten FE

Further Education (FE) institutions are often overlooked when it comes to data management and preservation. They’re not research intensive, they tend not to be collection oriented, and there’s little tradition of institutional legacy management. However, they do have a major preservation problem, a ticking time bomb that is going to erupt in the not too distant future. What’s more, this is a problem that appears to have been overlooked my much of the Data and Preservation establishment. At the core of this? Electronic Records Management.

FE institutions need to keep a LOT of data…   And they need to keep it for a long time. That in itself would be a problem. However, it is exacerbated by the systems and infrastructure in use in the sector.

Historically FE systems have evolved organically. As statutory requirements have been added, so systems have been procured to provide immediate, un-integrated, short term solutions—point solutions. This on its own is bad enough, but it has been exacerbated through a recent flurry of mergers and acquisitions. Most system suppliers appear to have not given much thought (if any) to the possibility of two (or more) Student Information Management System(s) from different institutions being merged.

Pain points experienced by FE include:

• Multiple systems
• Obsolescence
• Little or no interconnection between systems
• Little or no data back-up or export facilities
• Mergers have caused a data export/import/merge nightmare
• Exponentially increasing storage requirements
• Arduous retention obligations
• Ambiguous data standards (where they exist)

In this lightning talk I intend to explore the landscape of FE data management and preservation—highlighting the pain points, exposing the areas of concern—and present an action plan for addressing those concerns.