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Decision Support Services (DSS)

Mission

Decision Support Services provides timely and accurate data, analytics, and insights to support the University’s strategy and decision-making processes. We are responsible for the development of a centralized, integrated decision support system termed the University DataCommons. The DataCommons provides strategic and operational insights to managers and decision makers throughout the university community.

More specifically, Decision Support Services:

  • Develops data products and solutions that provide insightful analysis and analytics to support decision making
  • Collaborates with academic and administrative departments across the university to: identify data sources, identify data quality issues, improve data quality and management, build a data catalog, standardize data definitions, identify and acquire new datasets, develop a centralized data depository using a “data lake” approach, and develop integrated data platforms and information sharing tools
  • Promotes and advances a culture of data usage, data literacy, data transparency, data integrity, data management, and data access and sharing aligned with user roles and data needs
  • Identifies and acquires new technologies and tools to support and further the University’s academic data and analytic needs
  • Provides end user training to the university community on the decision support tools and solutions provided

Decision Support Services offers the following services:

Academic Data

  • University-wide Data Strategy
  • Data Collection, Aggregation, and Analysis
  • Data Architecture
  • Advocate Data Quality and Integrity
  • Data Knowledge base
  • External Data Acquisition
  • Best Practice & Knowledge Management
  • Thought Leadership
  • Analytic Infrastructure and Tool sets

Academic Data Platforms and Solutions

  • Decision Support Applications and Processes
  • Descriptive/Diagnostic/Predictive/Prescriptive Analytics
  • Data Visualization Solutions
  • Dashboard and Reporting – Internal
  • Data - Continuous Process Improvement
  • Budget Process Support