EA modelling of information management processes in institutions

1. SMUDIE: Planning The Student Information Management System 'To Be'
Model
1. Introduction
Phase one of the JISC Smudie project completed a wide range of stakeholder
interviews which explored the ‘as is’ status of student information management
processes and procedures at Swansea Metropolitan. A series of reports were
produced that described the outcomes of this process1,2,3. These reports detail the
different stakeholder viewpoints on the information management system and the
extent and nature of their engagement with it.
The second phase of the project will take the phase one outcomes, which represent
the ‘as is’ model of the system, and will use the lessons learned to develop a ‘to be’
model of the same system that incorporates a range of proposed improvements. The
resulting model will not be an implementation plan: rather, it will be an aspirational
blueprint for implementation planning. Given the current merger processes taking
place between the institutions in the region, the model will be designed to assist
conversations about future student information management systems in the newly
merged University.
The modelling process will use Enterprise Architecture modelling techniques
together with some elements from Soft Systems and Viable Systems modelling as
outlined below. It will also draw from lessons and techniques delivered by other JISC
projects and services.
The Smudie project deliverables required by JISC are a detailed case study outlining
the project achievements, together with a project blog that provides a narrative of the
project activities. The case study will be drawn from the ‘as is’ reports as well as from
this ‘to be’ modelling report. The project blog is already in place and is up to date. It
will continue to report on project activities and outcomes as they occur. It can be
viewed here4.
2. Context
To provide a context for this planning document, some examples from the first phase
of existing good practice and identified areas for improvement are presented.
2.1 Good Practice:
Student information management at Swansea Metropolitan was found to operate
well overall with a number of good features. Two aspects of the existing information
management system emerged from the evaluation exercise as evidence of
particularly effective practice: the first was strategic, the other operational.
The strategic approach was to provide the data owners with data input and
maintenance responsibility. The students self-enrol on the system and the academic
staff enter assessment and attendance data. In this way the data owners have
control over the information the system records, are accountable for the accuracy of
1
http://www.slideshare.net/ttoole/jisc-smudie-project-report-1
2
http://www.slideshare.net/ttoole/jisc-smudie-project-report-2
3
http://www.slideshare.net/ttoole/smudie-project-report-3
4
http://smudieprojectblog.blogspot.co.uk/

2. that data, and contribute to an efficient process of direct data entry and
management.
The IS Team at the University were responsible for the design and implementation of
the technical infrastructure that enabled this approach. The strategy separated the
technical systems from the data management processes, thus allowing the
stakeholders on each side to concentrate on their own areas of expertise and
responsibility.
The operational good practice, which may well be unique in UK Higher Education,
was in the establishment of the role of a Management Information Officer (MIO).
Each Faculty has an MIO who provides an interface between the Faculty and the
Academic Registry. The information management responsibilities and processes of
these two key parts of the organisation are different, but are based on the same sets
of data. The MIOs ensure that the needs of both are satisfied and they contribute
significantly to the quality assurance of the information management process.
The stakeholder interviews identified the MIO role as being the single most valued
component of the current student information management system. It was seen as
central to the maintenance of data quality, consistency and completeness. The MIOs
also had an important staff support role, helping academic staff successfully
negotiate the information management software systems and acting as a central
information help desk in the Faculties.
An additional feature of note is the regular weekly meeting between the MIOs
managed by the Head of Academic Services. This enables the development and
sharing of good practice and ensures quality and consistency across the institution.
2.2 Areas for Improvement
The student information management system at Swansea Metropolitan is complex
with many stakeholders inputting and retrieving data. There are several areas where
improvements can be made and a programme of continuous improvement would be
expected in any institution. However, where significant problems exist, remedial
action needs to be prioritised. Two key problem areas that emerged from the
stakeholder interviews, for example, were the usability of the information
management software systems and the consistency and accuracy of the student
attendance monitoring system.
A migration is currently underway between the original institutional FQS student
information system to the commercial Agresso QLS system. There have been
usability issues with the new software which have meant that FQS has been retained
to deliver certain levels of functionality that are not provided by the new system.
Beyond that issue, many staff have reported the QLS system to be non-intuitive and,
with data entry and editing, slow and non-user friendly.
Those staff that use the system every day find usability less of a problem (though
there are a number of areas for improvement). However, academic staff who use the
V4 interface only at set times in the year to enter assessment data and prepare for
exam boards, need an interface that is intuitive to use. They are also confused by
the fact that there is more than one student information management system in use,
particularly those who have experience of other institutions where a single system is
in place.

3. The recording and management of student attendance information is not
institutionally managed at Swansea Metropolitan. All programmes and Faculties
monitor student attendance, but they all have different systems of doing so; some
more consistent and reliable than others. The requirements of UKBA for international
students and, increasingly, the SLC for attendance information has highlighted this
as an issue. The fact that attendance monitoring is also central to the student
support system as an indicator of problems, shows the importance of consistency in
both monitoring and subsequent remedial procedures.
The ‘as is’ models reported in the first phase of the Smudie project show the
variations in the attendance monitoring processes and give a clear indication of how
some fairly straightforward changes in procedure and practice can deliver
improvements.
3. A Records Management Checklist
One of the primary goals of the student information management system in any
institution is to facilitate the creation of auditable records. Records have been
described by JIS Infonet5 as: information created, received, and maintained as
evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal
obligations or in the transaction of business.
For that purpose the records must possess:
Content (information or data)
Context (purpose, ownership and intended users)
Structure (consistent, intuitive, interpretable)
They must also be:
Authentic (evidence of provenance, authorship and authorisation)
Reliable (accurate and validated information)
Managed (planned and monitored process of completion)
Records are either in active use, archived or deleted depending on their purpose and
the point in their lifecycle.
When records are active, processes must be in place to:
Manage version control and the master copy
Maintain the audit trail
Ensure document security and backup
This is, of course, largely self-evident. However, it is appropriate to articulate the
definition as it provides a checklist of essential features against which the
completeness of any revised information management process or plan can be
assessed.
4. The Modelling Approach
The modelling approach will be to identify the major information management
subsystems within the organisation and to use Enterprise Architecture mapping tools
5
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/records-management/creation/what-is-a-record

4. to create a visual representation of an aspirational to be model for each. The aim will
be to deliver the potential process improvements identified during the evaluation of
the present (as is) information management systems.
Key features of this approach would include:
The development of a high level, lightweight model of a student information
management system to advance conversations about improvements and
changing key processes6;
The creation of a business case for change based on time-efficiency and
costing metrics. Such a requirement emphasises the need to have convincing
assessments of the existing and planned workflows;
Enhancement of the student experience through efficient student records
management and communications; improvements in the efficiency of staff
workflows that reduce effort and cost; and a reduction in process variety
across the newly merged multi-campus institution to ensure consistency and
accuracy of information management and reporting;
The intention would be that the model should aim for technology
independence so that it can be applied regardless of the IT system(s)
employed. The expectation is that the information management system
processes would determine the IT system functionality required rather than
the other way round;
It also intends to avoid process silos where changes in one part of the system
delivers the benefits there, but have unintended and detrimental effects
elsewhere;
The final key feature will be an assessment of process governance7. The
current changes in the University structure mean that the redesign of formal
mechanisms to deliver consistency and collaboration may be easier to
negotiate and agree in this change environment.
The basic objectives are to:
Introduce business process improvements to identify and remove any
duplicate, inconsistent and non-value-added information management
processes. Key deliverables would include: increased consistency, reliability
and accuracy of student information management, communications and
reporting; a better defined IM business model leading to greater cost-
effectiveness and a positive impact on institutional finances;
Improve both the student and staff experience by making interaction with the
information management system as efficient, intuitive and user friendly as
possible. Key deliverables would include: qualitative measures of the system
usability and user friendliness derived from semi-structured interviews; a
quantitative assessment of the time overheads of system based processes
and their variability across the institution; and an optimisation plan based on
these assessments;
6
https://jiscinfonetcasestudies.pbworks.com/w/page/47395241/Lightweight Enterprise Architecture
7
https://jiscinfonetcasestudies.pbworks.com/w/page/46434437/EA - Staffordshire University

5. Identify, agree and apply established good practice in all areas where there
are reported delays, bottlenecks and acknowledged process inefficiencies.
Key deliverables would include: a good practice guide for information
management in each of the main information processing areas and in the use
of the information system applications; the continuation of the established
operational level information management working group and a re-
examination of its remit and modus operandi.
5. The Practicalities of Management Modelling:
Enterprise Architecture modelling of management processes8 has a similar overall
purpose to other modelling systems such as Checkland's Soft Systems
Methodology9 and Beer's Viable Systems Model10,11. They use their own (typically)
visual languages to map and describe management systems and processes with the
common purpose of aiding conversations about improvement and optimisation.
A brief examination of the similarities and differences between these three Human
Activity modelling systems is worthwhile as it sets the context for the use of
Enterprise Architecture in this particular exercise and indicates how EA modelling
can be enriched by drawing in features from the SSM and VSM approaches.
The fundamental commonality is the recognition that they are all attempting to model
human activity systems and that they will be fuzzy descriptors as a result. There is
no attempt by any to eliminate the human variability factor, only to accommodate it
and to exploit its strengths.
The relationships between each of the institutional information management
subsystems can be examined using some of the principles of Viable Systems
Modelling to explore issues of control and communications capacity. VSM directly
addresses the system inadequacies that lead to undesirable outcomes such as
process bottlenecks.
A further feature that VSM brings to the consideration of management systems is
their recursive nature: smaller systems exist within larger systems, but each has a
similar control and communications profile. All institutions are agglomerations of self
managing units within units.
The Soft Systems Methodology encourages constant reflection on how things
happen in real world situations. It doesn’t so much describe how the information
management system actually works, but how the stakeholders think it works, how
they think it should work and how they would personally like it to work. This exactly
describes the nature of the qualitative messages that came from the stakeholder
interviews carried out in the first phase of the Smudie project.
What SSM and VSM both bring to EA is what Checkland calls the world view and
Beer calls the environment. It is easy with EA to concentrate just on the enterprise
and its systems and miss the impact of the outside world when planning.
It is also important to recognise that the fact that de-facto self managing systems will
emerge to fill gaps in the management infrastructure that institutional senior
8
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/ea/index_html
9
Checkland, Peter B. & Poulter, J. (2006) Learning for Action: A short definitive account of Soft Systems
Methodology and its use for Practitioners, teachers and Students, Wiley, Chichester.
10
1972, Stafford Beer, Brain of the Firm; Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, Herder and Herder, USA.
11
1989, Ed. Espejo and Harnden The Viable System Model; John Wiley, London and New York.

6. management are likely to have no knowledge of. The current student attendance
monitoring processes at the University provide several examples of such invisible
localised management arrangements.
6. The Modelling Plan
The key features of a To Be Enterprise Architecture model design include:
A top level representation of the business processes needed to optimally
achieve the organisational information management goals. At this level,
achievability is assumed, both in terms of management change and, where
appropriate, technical capacity;
A business process level representation of each information management
workflow. The goal would be a high level of business process integration but
with variable levels of business process standardisation to reflect the different
needs and operational cultures across the institution;
An application layer that provides the services to support the information
management workflows. The to be model is aspirational and specifies the
service levels that the applications chosen will be required to deliver;
A technical layer that hosts the applications and supports the data capture,
communications, information processing and user interface requirements of
the planned system.
In its first iteration, the model will be predominantly aspirational and, though based
on existing practice, will present idealised information management systems,
processes and workflows. The objective at this stage is to stimulate and inform
discussions that will lead to further iterations with the ultimate goal of developing
systems that are optimal within the constraints of the environment in which they
operate.
It is not difficult to see how the key features listed above can be applied at different
management levels within the institution. The top level representation, for example,
could refer to academic information systems at institutional, faculty, programme or
course level. It could also refer to functional systems in registry, IS, finance and
elsewhere. This illustrates the recursive nature of the approach and indicates how
consistency in information management at each level would naturally contribute to
overall institutional consistency.
The conversations between stakeholders in this iterative process will include the soft
systems considerations outlined above and will ensure that a healthy dose of realism
underpins the final solution(s). The communications and control evaluation
contributed by VSM will also add to the operational viability of the systems design.
The JISC-Cetis developed Archi application12 will be used to develop the EA
representations of the ‘to be’ models and will be adapted to include the SSM and
VSM components. The outcomes will be used in the case study deliverable from the
Smudie project and presented in the project blog.
Tony Toole
November 2012
12
http://archi.cetis.ac.uk/