Step 1: Collect Needs and Requirements
Follow the steps below to identify stakeholder needs and requirements for the data. These steps may be iterative. For example, you may draft an initial purpose, but after talking to your data users, you may need to update it.
The steps are:
1.1 Define the purpose for the data
1.2 Identify your stakeholders
1.3 Assess stakeholder needs and requirements
1.1 Define the purpose for the data
Provide a brief background and motivation for this dataset. Why do you need to collect it? What business need, problem or process will it address? Update this purpose as you learn more.
1.2 Identify your stakeholders
Your stakeholders are the source of your needs and requirements. The lifecycle model helps you identify stakeholders. Answer the questions to identify stakeholders throughout the lifecycle. Also refer to the roles and responsibilities page.
Lifecycle Phase | Relevant Roles | Questions |
Plan and Define | Business and Data Stewards | Who identifies objectives and assigns priorities and resources? Who develops processes, business rules and standards? Whose support can help this project succeed or fail? |
Obtain | Data Producers | Who acquires information from sources? Who enters new data and creates records in the system? |
Maintain | Data Steward and Custodian | Who decides what should be updated? Who makes actual changes in the system? Who needs to know about these changes? Who supports the storing technology? |
Access and Use | Data Users | Who directly accesses the data? What do web analytics for the relevant web pages tell you about who is accessing and how? Who (within your government) uses the information? What business processes rely on this data? Who (at other agencies) uses the information? Who (in the business sector) uses the information? Who (in the media, non-profit & public interest sector) uses the information? Who has requested or downloaded the data? What other programs or agencies will use this data? |
Dispose | Data Steward and Custodian | Who sets the retention policy? Who archives the data? Who needs to be informed? |
Adapted from POSMAD interaction matrix detail, copyright 2005-8 Danette McGlivray, Granite Falls Consulting and Data Quality Guide for Governments by Stephanie Singer.
1.3 Assess stakeholder needs and requirements
New data collection is an opportunity to add value to each of your stakeholders. A variety of tools exist for working with stakeholders and doing user-centered design. We won't try to be exhaustive but here are some tips to get you started.
For each lifecycle phase, work to answer the questions below.
Lifecycle Phase | Questions to ask |
Plan and Define | Define organization need and value
Identify existing requirements Are some of our requirements already determined? Either by ordinance, law or executive order? What laws or regulations will govern this data? |
Obtain | Understand those responsible for obtaining the data
Plan for collection How should they create or collect the data? What quality controls should be in place at collection? How frequently should they obtain the data? How will you maintain motivation to collect quality data? For example, can you provide regular examples of uses of the data? If the data is coming from somewhere else, e.g. a data warehouse or integration, how will it be changed to support your needs? |
Maintain | Storing and archiving the data
Change Management and Versioning How are changes made to the dataset? How do you track changes made over time? Will you need to know what the data showed/contained at points in the past? How will we track and manage versions? Quality of the data What quality controls should be used and how frequently? What data profiling tools do we need? How will we measure data quality on an ongoing basis? |
Access & Use | Access
Use How do users expect to use the data?
How will user feedback on data quality be solicited and incorporated? |
Dispose | How long should previous versions of the data be retained before disposal? How long should the data be held when it is no longer in use? Is the historical data of value? What is the risk / benefit of the historical data? What laws or data retention policies apply? |
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