Customizing Off-the-Shelf Data Management Systems: A Data Stewardship Team’s Lessons Learned

Oral Presentation

Prepared by K. Klatt
ddms, 1217 Bandana Boulevard North, St. Paul, MN, 55108, United States


Contact Information: kklatt@ddmsinc.com; 651-842-4221


ABSTRACT

Customizing off-the-shelf data management systems to fulfill total data management needs is becoming increasingly important in the ever expanding environmental industry. Given the growing importance of data in the environmental industry, data administrators need to view their project role as “data stewards”. Data stewardship encompasses more than data management, it includes designing intelligent systems to maximize capabilities of off-the-shelf data management systems. Frequently project data administrators inherit off-the-shelf systems that do not meet project needs. As data takes on a more recognized role in the industry, data management systems need to better meet project needs by: addressing situations that are outside the “norm” (i.e. non analytical data), ensuring data quality, and improving secure data access. Customization of off-the-shelf systems can prove challenging, but ultimately data stewards can learn from these challenges to apply better data management practices to their environmental projects. This presentation will look at our team’s experience with maximizing off-the-shelf functionality and how data collection and reporting benefited from intelligent custom design.