R. Brendan Aldrich, Executive Director of Data Warehousing at City Colleges of Chicago, discussed moving from a data dictatorship or aristocracy model to a data democracy model where all employees have access to data. This involves providing interactive reporting instead of static reports, using dynamic data environments tailored to user roles, integrated training and data dictionaries, and rethinking expensive licensing models. The City Colleges of Chicago is taking these approaches using a custom system built by Zogotech on Microsoft SQL Server to empower its over 5,800 employees and 120,000 students.

1. Rise
Business Intelligence Innovation Summit
November 14th, 2013

2. Speaker Introduction
R. Brendan Aldrich
Executive Director, Data Warehousing
City Colleges of Chicago
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18+ years in Information Technology
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12+ years running data warehouse, business intelligence and analytics teams
for global high volume data companies such as The Walt Disney Company,
Travelers Insurance and Demand Media
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Currently expanding the City Colleges of Chicago’s data democracy
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TDWI and AERA membership

3. The City Colleges of Chicago is the largest community college district in the state of Illinois
and one of the largest in the country with more than 5,800 administrators, staff and faculty
educating over 120,000 students annually at facilities located within the city of Chicago.
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Colleges
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Richard J. Daley College
Kennedy-King College
Malcolm X College
Olive-Harvey College
Harry S Truman College
Harold Washington College
Wilbur Wright College
Satellites
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Culinary
Lakeview Learning Center
– The French Pastry School
Dawson Technical Institute
– Washburne Culinary Institute
• Parrot Cage Restaurant
West Side Learning Center
• Sikia Banquet Room
South Chicago Learning Center
Arturo Velasquez Institute • Broadcast
Humboldt Park Vocational
– WYCC TV (Channel 20)
Education Center
– WKKC FM 89.9
…as well as five child development centers, the Center for Distance Learning and
the Workforce Institute

4. Rise of the Data Democracy
“Humans are not an important part of utilizing new
data, they are the single most important part of the
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process.”
- Bryce Maddock, CEO of TaskUs.com

5. We are the Information Generation

7. Individual Data Use At All-Time High
• 30+ billion pieces of content are added to Facebook every month
• 230 million tweets are sent each day
• 72 Hours of Video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

8. But What About The Workplace?
• Data and reports restricted and provided by data specialists
• Data made available via traditional BI platforms
• Let’s evaluate typical business approaches to the
use of data…

9. 2
Data Regimes
Data Dictatorship: Data is controlled and its use is restricted.
There is asymmetric distribution of information based on your
position.
Data Aristocracy: Data analysts, scientists and PhDs are
needed to do anything meaningful. Power concentrates in the
hands of these employees and their supervisors.
Data Democracy: Everybody gets timely and equitable access
to data. Line of business users are empowered and “own” the
data. Executives and IT get out of the way.
Data Anarchy: Business users feel underserved and take
matters into their own hands. They create “shadow IT”
systems and work around the “unresponsive” IT group.

10. Changing the Conversation
Data
Democracy
Vs.
BIG Data
Small Data
• Less than 4% of U.S. companies have enabled even 50% of
their employees to use data. Why?
• The focus on a Data Democracy introduces new challenges
that will drive infrastructure, architecture and
software choices

11. So What Are These Challenges?
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The static reports bottleneck
Drowning in data
Varying user skills and capabilities
Expensive licensing

12. The Static Reports Bottleneck

13. Why Do We Provide Static Reports?
• Assumptions
– It’s too complex to expect business users to build reports
– They don’t have the time to work with the data
– We know how to prep the data better than the business

14. Why Do We Provide Static Reports?
• Result
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BI Teams require dedicated resources to build and maintain reports
As business needs change, reports need to be updated
Reports and logic need to be validated with the business
Ultimately, we are the bottleneck

15. The Move to Interactive Reporting
Not Actual Data
• Drag-and-drop to add, remove or modify all measures,
filters, dimensions, etc.
Note: All CCC screenshots in this presentation are generated from a randomized
environment and do not reflect actual institutional or student data.

16. The Move to Interactive Reporting
Not Actual Data
• The Student Navigator allows users to create interactive
filters to identify student groups
• Import and Query / Table filters provide
additional flexibility

17. Drowning In Data

18. Using Data, Not Managing Data
University
Staff
University
Administrator
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College
Staff
College
Administrator
University
Programs
College
Programs
Department
Chair
Faculty
Member
Student
Advisor
All organizations have roles that require different data
Some roles require very specific data, such as a faculty member
Some employees may belong to multiple roles
How can we minimize the time spent looking
for the right data?

19. Dynamic Data Environments
Not Actual Data
• Minimizes non-relevant data by dynamically changing all
data within the system and every report to that which
is appropriate to the selected role

20. Varying User Skills and Capabilities

21. Enable and Empower
• Users must have the training and
information they need to use the
BI system
• Typically offered in a
classroom, online, guided
sessions, etc.
• But these don’t scale well with
large numbers
• How do you provide this to 5,000+
users… and ensure they remember
it when they need it?

22. Integrated Data Dictionary
Not Actual Data
• Data organized into logical groupings of measures and
dimensions that form the basis of all reports
• Data Dictionary contains full Definitions
with value samples and examples

23. Integrated Data Dictionary
Not Actual Data
• And integrated into each and every report by clicking on the
“Data Dictionary” link in the footer

24. Just-in-Time Video Training
Not Actual Data
• Short, 1 – 5 minute “how to” videos integrated directly into
the user interface
• Can customize videos displayed by module
or even user role

25. Expensive Licensing

26. 3
BI Software Licensing
CCC: 6,875 users
Others: 500 users
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Megavendor: IBM Cognos, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP Business Objects
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Large and Small Pure Plays: MicroStrategy, Information Builders, SAS, Actuate BIRT iServer,
Actuate BIRT Enterprise, arcplan, Panorama
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Self-Contained Pure Plays: Board, LogiXML, QlikTech, Tableau, Tibco Spotfire, Targit
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SaaS: Oco, SAP Business Objects OnDemand, PivotLink
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Open Source: Jaspersoft, Pentaho

27. Cost is Only one Aspect*
• Integration
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BI Infrastructure
Metadata Management
Development Tools
Collaboration
• Information Delivery
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Reporting
Dashboards
Ad hoc Query
Microsoft Office Integration
Search-based BI
Mobile BI
• Analysis
– Online Analytical Processing
(OLAP)
– Interactive Visualization
– Predictive Modeling and Data
Mining
– Scorecards
– Prescriptive Modeling,
Simulation and Optimization
* - Gartner BI Platform Capabilities by
Definition and Category, 2013

28. City Colleges of Chicago Approach
• Zogotech is a data technology services
company exclusively working in higher
education
• Has built & deployed data solutions to
over 50 colleges across the country
• Built on Microsoft SQL Server 2012

30. What’s Next for CCC?
• The number and quality of data sources
– Finance, human resources, student support & LMS
• Adoption & Integration into regular operations
• New Tools and Capabilities
– Sophisticated user-generated dashboarding
– Dynamic data cubes
• Data d------------------------------------------------s
– ------------------------------------------------------h

31. Data Democracy Takeaways
• Change the Conversation
– It’s not about big or small data – it’s how well we enable our people to use data
• Static Reports are Dead
– Let’s get out of the way and let our user’s work interactively with the data
• The Right Data for Each Person
– Minimize non-relevant data by using role-specific views across your system
• Even the Playing Field
– Integrated data dictionary and “just-in-time” training
• Re-think Licensing Costs
– A data democracy can be built without breaking the bank

32. References
• Articles
• Photo Credits
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Bryce Maddock, Blog, “People and Big Data: Separately Good, Together Great”,
9/26/12, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bryce-maddock/big-data_b_1908358.html
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Shash Hegde, Mariner, “The Rise of Data Regimes”, 9/12/13, http://www.marinerusa.com/rise-data-regimes/ (image substitution for Mao Zedong)
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Andrei Pandre, Blog, “DV SaaS”, 10/17/10, http://apandre.wordpress.com/dv/saas/
Steve Paine, UMPCPortal.com, “Baby Sees the iPad Magic”, 5/5/10,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpcportal/4581962986/
SubmitEdge News, Photo, “Social Media is Everywhere”, 4/12/13,
http://www.submitedge.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Social-Media-isEverywhere.png
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Mark Strozier, Photo, “Chance”, 11/19/04, http://www.flickr.com/photos/r80o/1583467/
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DataDemocracy.com, Photo, “Untitled”, 5/16/10, http://datademocracy.com/