State Task Order Summaries - Indiana

Contact Person: Anne Brinson

FY 2007

Indiana FY 2007
Task Order: $79,800
Data Dictionary Development

The Indiana Department of Education (IDE) has been funded to create a data dictionary that will contain (but may not be limited to) the following information: precise definitions of data elements; usernames, roles, and privileges; schema objects; integrity constraints; stored procedures and triggers; general database structure; and space allocations. IDE believes that this data dictionary will advance data quality assurance procedures at the State level and improve federal-state cooperation in data collection, processing, analysis, and reporting. The goals of the project are the:

1. Development of a shared data dictionary for use in cross-state longitudinal data analysis
   1. Objectives:
      1. Ensure consistency between data items across different tables.
      2. Utilize Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) elements and definitions as a foundation where applicable to make Indiana’s data dictionary more applicable to other states.
      3. Ensure that the dictionary includes formal version control systems at the data element level.
      4. Ensure existing staff are prepared to maintain the dictionary once the grant has ended.
2. Future implementation of a data warehouse solution for all divisions within IDE.
   2. Objectives:
      1. Identify existing data sources across divisions at IDE.
      2. Use data dictionary as foundation for agency-wide conversion to Oracle 10g.
      3. Define reporting requirements for analyzing existing data based on the data dictionary.
      4. Identify data sources that can be consolidated to eliminate redundant databases and help improve data quality.
      5. Ensure quality and accuracy of data submitted through EDEN to populate EDFacts once the data sources are consolidated.

IDE expects this effort to enable it to engage in the necessary practices of extracting, querying, reporting and analyzing information from a variety of disparate systems, which will be an important step in the future development of the planned IDE data warehouse. Other anticipated benefits include: a consolidated data submission to the U.S. Department of Education (USDE); a common format and process for submitting required data; access to analysis and reporting tools used by USDE; unification of USDE data collection from the states; enabling of analysis across program offices; and reduction of cost of data collection over the long-term. Upon project completion, Indiana’s data dictionary will be made available as requested by other states working on longitudinal data systems.

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