Case study · Education
Data Governance for Higher Education
Enterprise data governance program with classification, lineage, and stewardship.
Key results
- FERPA compliance clear
- Report request SLA -50%
- Data duplication -38%
Context
A private university operated a data estate that had grown organically across academic, student affairs, advancement, and administrative functions. FERPA compliance was treated on a per-request basis rather than as a continuous posture; report requests often took weeks because data ownership was unclear.
Challenge
University governance politics are distinct — academic freedom, departmental autonomy, and shared governance structures made heavy-handed centralized governance impractical. The program had to respect institutional culture while still delivering compliance and operational improvement.
Approach
Thoughtwave delivered a 6-month federated data-governance program: data classification tied to FERPA scope, lineage tooling, department-level stewardship with central coordination, and a data-request workflow that routed through stewards rather than IT tickets. The program respected department autonomy while producing institutional coherence.
Outcomes
FERPA compliance clarity established — classified data meets defined protection standards, unclassified data is in the classification backlog; report request SLA dropped 50% as stewards rather than IT handled data access; data duplication measurably reduced as stewards consolidated duplicative sources.
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