Evidence-based decision-making requires access to good and reliable data. In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase of data available to institutions, from internal as well as external sources. With this increase in data and its analytics, new challenges and questions arise. One of the most pertinent of which is the ethics and best…

Over the past 20 years, many colleges and universities have made significant progress in building data warehouses and implementing business intelligence tools to provide better access to administrative data that were previously locked away in enterprise systems. However, the data architectures from the 1990s and 2000s are aging as new technologies…

The effective communication of desired information between the generator and the user requires one to accommodate variances in decision-making style, behavior, and context. The premise that decision making in organizations follows the classic rational model is discussed. (Author/MLW)

The M.I.T. INSITE (INstitutional Space Inventory TEchniques) system, a management information system developed specifically to provide facilities management information for decision making in the planning stages, is described. Since 1973, M.I.T. has shared the INSITE technology with a consortium of users from academic, health care, corporate and…

An important part of strategic or long-range planning is assessing the environment external to the institution. Many statistics are already compiled by external agencies. Some sources of information are identified, an assessment classification procedures is presented, and a sample of excerpts of the results of an assessment is provided. (MLW)

The space analysis process, designed by facilities planners at the University of Toronto to address the gap between macro standards and the way they are used at the micro level, is described. Institutional space policies and guidelines, space inventory, and procedures for collecting space utilization data from users are discussed. (MLW)

Examines common assumptions about the rationality or irrationality of organizational behavior and finds that decision making occurs in a complex context that successful college/university institutional research offices must recognize and work with. Finds that emerging organizational theories suggest there are limitations on the use of data and…