Exploring Research Metadata Governance with Design Thinking

If you want great research analytics, you’re going to need great data governance for your research metadata. That’s a tall order when the best information often spans incompatible systems, departments, policies, and mindsets.

Research metadata governance is a great illustration of how research analytics is not just a technology problem. It happens at the intersection of technology, policy, process, and culture. Do any of us feel like our organization is “nailing” metadata governance? What level of research analytics could you achieve if there could be more alignment and cooperation around this kind of governance?

In this session, you will join your fellow attendees in a facilitated design thinking workshop around the culture and organizational patterns of research metadata governance. We will explore the problem space and the solution space together. And we’ll highlight the group’s best findings.

Whether you’re at the technical implementation level or the VP level, you will have seen and experienced good and bad patterns of how research metadata is being governed at your institution. These experiences are valuable to your fellow community members. Using design thinking, we will explore the collective intelligence on this complex topic, shoulder to shoulder.

You’ll leave with a better understanding of how the patterns and struggles of data governance at your institution correlate with those of others. You’ll gain new ideas on how to address the hard cultural and organizational problems of governance. And you’ll meet new colleagues who you can stay connected with.

Finally, you’ll gain an appreciation of how design thinking techniques themselves can be useful for these types of challenges at your own organization, and how they help to create understanding and alignment.