Data Management Program
Technology and Applications Inventory
The Technology and Applications Inventory continues an ongoing effort to understand and track the applications and software used system-wide.
Today, WSU uses a variety of methods to store, share, secure, and analyze our data across the system.
In the future, our goal is to create efficiencies, eliminate duplicative efforts, and streamline our analysis process to provide leadership with accurate, timely data.
To achieve our strategic goal of data-informed decisions, the Technology and Applications Inventory will identify the data applications each area currently uses.
The Data Management Program will identify opportunities to streamline current systems and processes to create efficiencies and save resources system-wide.
The Data Management Program will identify opportunities to streamline current systems and processes to create efficiencies and save resources system-wide.
The results are in
In the fall of 2021, we conducted an initial survey of technology and applications used across the system. This provided a starting point for a more robust inventory process in fall 2022, when we asked Area Technology Officers and Area Finance Officers to review and add additional detail and any new applications to their previously collected data.
From the extensive results of nearly 950 supporting technology applications, we analyzed the types and uses of applications to start to identify future efficiencies. Use your WSU Network ID and password to access the PowerPoint presentation, PDF summary and analysis, or Excel spreadsheet of inventory data. Learn more about the results in this blog post.
What we mean by “data”
This program focuses on business data, which is data that directly impacts daily WSU operations. It does not cover research data, which is data collected from observational and experimental studies for the purpose of scholarly exploration and publication. For example, if your lab is measuring heart rates of mice, we are interested in knowing which software you use to store and analyze the data, but we don’t need to know the heart rates of the mice.
