Why Next Frontier?

All areas within Boise State have manual inefficient ways to pull and summarize data in order to utilize the data to make decisions.

The early stages of the Next Frontier initiative focused on a needs and effectiveness assessment, meetings with other higher education institutions, and developing a vision for the future state of analytics at Boise State. What began as a project has now become the Next Frontier Program with six identified objectives:

• Structure: Ensure the viability, visibility, and success of the Next Frontier program.
• People and Organization: Ensure organizational and human resources to facilitate progress toward the Next Frontier, establish governance, and ensure accountability.
• Improve Processes: Implement a strategic approach to projects and processes that has a cross-functional view aligned to the overall analytics vision and includes end-user input/involvement for functional requirements and systems decision-making.
• Data Governance: Strengthen existing data governance and management activities.
• Data Structure and Tools: Ensure a modern, scalable, and sustainable data warehouse and architecture and the tools needed for reporting, operational data, and advanced analytics.
• Culture and End User Experience: Revitalize and improve the end-user experience through training and resources, making data more easily accessible, and cultivating a culture of data literacy.

The project is aligned to the University’s Blueprint for Success strategy to “create a transparent, centralized business operations model that responsibly uses university resources, supports collaboration, and promotes consistency across individual campus units.” With widespread engagement and cross-divisional collaboration, the Next Frontier will attend to operational and analytical data needs, data integration, the data ecosystem, and the data consumer experience so that Boise State can support efforts in student success and research, facilitate effective academic decision-making, and accelerate progress toward the Blueprint for Success.