Elevating education

On top of this workforce, Babey also brought some external management help: "I took on the overall coordinating. But we brought in an IT person, Bruce Purcell, from the US to handle the project management because he had experience in data warehousing. He was someone who worked for me previously as a programmer at the University of California Davis and was between jobs,so he came over as a consultant.

He's run data warehouse operations for Stryker Pharmaceuticals in Europe where he worked five years. People here didn't have that experience, so he came over to help with the idea that we'd get it working and then it becomes an industry project."

While some may be surprised that Sungard beat out database giants Oracle for the project, Babey says that the reason the vendor is successful is because its Banner system is already wide in use throughout the three federal ministries. The data warehouse exists as a module within the overall Banner ERP system and as such users were already familiar with its workings. By comparison, selecting Oracle would have required the ministry to virtually build the entire system for the warehouse from scratch, including the various screens and forms required.

This position was confirmed during the proof-of-concept stage, when Babey and Badowah tested Sungard to see if its systems would cope with the Ministry's data.

"We collected Excel spreadsheets from 2006, used 2007 data and deleted all of the identifying information and sent the file to Sungard. They ran it through their database to see how easily it fell into the data elements - and it worked out pretty well. They were able to - on the first try - take what we were feeding them and they went right into the database," explains Babey about the test phase.

"Oracle didn't get the file because they didn't have anything to put it into. Sungard had the database already set, we just forwarded them the information. With Oracle, we would have to build everything, nothing's pre-packaged. Oracle were also more expensive than the package that Sungard had offered at that point. That was certainly something that we looked at but in terms of time, it would have taken a while to develop everything that was in the package that was already tested and proven. The institutions knew what Sungard was about and how to work with it," she confirms.

One of the big issues with projects of this size and scope is support. Sungard's main office is based in Dubai while the Ministries are based Abu Dhabi, but Babey says this isn't a problem since they have extensive service level agreements (SLAs) in place.

Now that the system is up and running, Badowah has had time to reflect and think of future improvements. Unsurprisingly, she says, language is one of them, since Cognos does not support Arabic and the main database administrator is also not a native speaker.

Now that the system's complete, Babey says she is happy that the Ministry has been able to build the system using a detailed project plan and stick to the prescribed dates. However , issues still remain around the question of who within the Ministry has access to the data and what sort of queries they can run.

"Where we are running into difficulty is still getting agreed-upon access, who sees what in regards to confidential information. We have data on students - who's going to have access to that data? Individual institutions can only see their data. What kind of reports can go out publicly - we're dealing with this and working with the colleges and the CAA to come up with an agreement. That's a struggle, because everybody has a different take," she explains.

"We're working on the policies. I'm having a meeting with the institutional research team to take the policies I've already drafted several times - and every time it changes because something else comes up - and try to work through it and come up with a recommendation that we can get to the steering committee. People are getting frustrated - we have all this data now and we really can't share it, even with the people that gave it to us because they haven't agreed on the access," she continues.

"Let's say you're one of the institutions. We have got your information and they need to make sure that their data is being protected. This is one of the challenges but I think that the institutions will in time be comfortable with their data [moving around]. We can have also the responsibility to report data to any federal institutions or decision makers," she adds.

Badowah says that to be truly useful, the data warehouse must eventually link to the wider labour market of the UAE and provide authorities with the crucial data they need to make informed choices about how to educate the workforce.

"According to the UAE Strategic Plan, [the Ministry] are looking for Emiratisation for all the federal ministries and also local institutions and government. With the percentage that they are looking for, if the data warehouse is to help the government for the Emiratisation, we need to ask how we can make this data more useful for the labour market and the people who are working to help the students to find a job. This is one way in which we can help the whole UAE Strategic Plan," she concludes.

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