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As the project updates or completes features, this section will be updated. These dates are intended as an estimated timeline and do not constitute when features will become publicly available.

This quarter, DataVerse advanced from early integration and pilot preparation into a more mature, governance-enabled platform with strengthened data alignment, expanded user workflows, and increased readiness for broader adoption. Building on foundational work from the previous quarter, efforts focused on operationalizing Data Warehouse (DW) integration, enhancing governance controls, and refining the user experience through pilot-informed improvements. Significant progress included the implementation of DW data pipelines and translators, ingestion of real-world data, expansion of governance workflows such as approval processes and visibility controls, and continued alignment of application architecture with enterprise data standards. These advancements collectively position DataVerse as a scalable, governance-driven platform capable of supporting both technical integration and business-facing data operations.

Technical Accomplishments

Data Warehouse Integration and Data Pipeline Maturation

The team significantly advanced integration with the Data Warehouse through the implementation of scalable data pipelines and supporting data structures. A data translator was introduced to transform DW data into DataVerse-compatible formats, enabling successful ingestion of real-world datasets, including fall enrollment data. Enhancements to data configuration replaced placeholder values with live DW data, improving accuracy and trust in system-configured information. The development will continue into Q3 and likely Q4 of 2026 as more assets are analyzed and prepared for consumption into DataVerse. Operational refinement will be critical to reducing strain on DW resources and remains a major focus for the DataVerse team as we collaborate with DW users. Continued alignment between application data structures and DW models further strengthens interoperability and establishes a foundation for long-term, scalable data integration.

Governance Workflow Expansion and Control Enhancements

Governance capabilities were expanded through the introduction of formal asset approval and disapproval workflows, enabling structured review and validation processes. Additional governance controls — including an internal-only flag for content containers and expanded enterprise attribute and metadata management — provide more granular control over data visibility, ownership, and compliance. This conversation continues to evolve as data classification conversations have already provided a new direction, with Q3 development tasks underway. The result in either direction strengthens accountability and aligns platform capabilities with evolving enterprise governance requirements.

Asset Management and Data Model Refinement

Ongoing improvements to asset management workflows enhanced consistency, usability, and alignment across asset types. Relationship management capabilities were strengthened through support for two-way relationships and controlled propagation, ensuring more reliable and transparent connections between assets. Updates to source association, metadata structures, and resource integration improve how users define, organize, and manage governed assets. These refinements build on prior data model changes and better reflect real-world data relationships and workflows.

User Experience, Guidance, and Onboarding Enhancements

Significant usability improvements were made to support pilot readiness and long-term adoption. Enhancements included expanded guided walkthroughs, a dedicated tutorial area, and improved instructional content across workflows. Interface refinements — such as consistent navigation, improved filtering behavior, persistent editing states, and clearer input guidance — reduce user friction and promote more intuitive interaction with the platform. Personalization features, including user profile customization and asset favoriting, further support user engagement and efficiency.

Resource Management and Content Capabilities Expansion

Resource management capabilities were expanded through the introduction and refinement of a centralized repository with enhanced search functionality and improved asset-resource associations. The separation of asset and resource management workflows, along with support for richer content types (including Word documents, rich text, and grid editors), improves content organization and accessibility. These capabilities support more effective documentation, reference management, and knowledge sharing across the platform.

System Monitoring, Transparency, and Data Quality Improvements​

New system monitoring tools — including System Logs and System Metrics panels — were introduced to provide visibility into system activity, infrastructure health, and data processes. Data quality improvements, such as removal of duplicate records and standardization of data formats, increase trust in platform information. Enhancements to back-end consistency and configuration accuracy ensure that system behavior more reliably reflects underlying data structures and relationships.

Workflow Management, Planning, and Pilot Readiness

The platform saw continued development of workflow and planning capabilities, including business owner dashboards to support backlog visibility, prioritization, and decision-making. Enhancements to asset editing flows, approval processes, and navigation were informed by pilot preparation and early user feedback. Foundational work supporting dashboards, reporting, and delegation features further prepares DataVerse for expanded pilot execution and broader organizational use.

Value Proposition

DataVerse continues to evolve into an operational platform that integrates governed data workflows with real-time system data and enterprise standards. This quarter's advancements strengthen the platform's ability to support both technical and business users by combining live Data Warehouse integration, structured governance processes, and intuitive user experiences. Improved transparency, data quality, and workflow clarity enable users to more effectively understand, manage, and trust their data assets, while integrated pipelines and real-world data ingestion accelerate the transition from conceptual governance to practical, day-to-day data operations.

Sustainability

Sustainability is reinforced through scalable architecture, improved data alignment, and reusable governance patterns. The establishment of DW-integrated pipelines, standardized metadata structures, and enhanced relationship management reduces long-term maintenance complexity while supporting future growth. Continued investment in user guidance, onboarding tools, and usability improvements promotes self-service adoption and reduces reliance on manual support. Additionally, system monitoring capabilities and data quality enhancements provide a stable operational foundation that can scale without increasing administrative overhead.

Collaboration

Ongoing collaboration with the Data Warehouse team enabled successful implementation of data pipelines, translators, and live data integration while ensuring alignment with enterprise data models and standards.

Engagement with program areas and pilot participants informed usability improvements, governance workflows, and onboarding enhancements, ensuring the platform reflects real-world needs.

Coordination across development, data, and business stakeholders supported the refinement of asset relationships, metadata structures, and workflow processes, strengthening cross-functional alignment and platform readiness.

Strategic Considerations for Executive Leadership

To sustain and scale this progress, executive leadership is encouraged to continue reinforcing accountability across data ownership roles, support adoption of standardized governance practices, and promote DataVerse as the authoritative platform for both data understanding and operational governance. Continued investment in Data Warehouse alignment, governance workflows, and user enablement will be critical to expanding adoption and ensuring consistent, high-quality data management across the agency.​

This quarter, DataVerse continued to mature as the agency’s centralized platform and unified data dictionary, advancing from foundational capabilities into validated, pilot‑tested workflows and deeper system integration. Efforts this quarter focused on strengthening asset governance, improving user experience and accessibility, and operationalizing DataVerse’s integration with the Data Warehouse (DW) through end‑to‑end examples and monitoring capabilities. Key advances include the launch of a DW Process Log monitoring feature and the initiation of a Data Strategies & Analytics (DSA) Department mini-pilot of the asset management workflow. Feedback from the mini-pilot informed a remodel of the core asset data model, as well as improvements to workflow usability and guided onboarding. Together, these outcomes further embed governance, quality, and sustainability into day‑to‑day data operations while preparing the platform for broader adoption.

Technical Accomplishments

Asset Workflow Pilot and Feedback Integration

The team initiated a DSA mini‑pilot of the asset workflow, incorporating structured, context‑based feedback directly into DataVerse. Guided walkthroughs were added to support pilot participants and first-time users, enabling meaningful validation of governance workflows and usability prior to broader rollout.

Core Asset Data Model Remodel

The core asset data model was redesigned and completed based on feedback from DSA mini‑pilot activities. The updated model improves consistency across asset types, better supports real‑world use cases, and establishes a stronger foundation for future expansion.

Data Warehouse Process Log Integration

A new DW Process Log monitoring feature was designed, implemented, and successfully deployed to QA. This capability provides increased visibility into Data Warehouse processing activity, strengthens traceability between DW processes and DataVerse assets, and supports improved operational monitoring. The feature was demonstrated through full end‑to‑end simulations with the DW and Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) project teams.

End-to‑End Data Examples and Pipeline Validation

The team developed (and continues to refine) realistic, end‑to-end data examples demonstrating how dictionary data elements, collections, business rules, datasets, and reports connect across DataVerse. These examples validate system integration, showcase pipeline functionality, and serve as reference implementations for future onboarding and demonstrations.

User Experience, Accessibility, and Visualization Enhancements

Continued improvements were made to workflow usability, branding, and accessibility. Design mockups and report analysis informed visual enhancements, and early work began on richer visualization capabilities to support clearer interpretation and analysis of governed data assets.

Expansion of Asset Types

Design and requirements work began on two new asset types — Portfolio and Foundation — expanding DataVerse’s governance coverage and aligning the platform with emerging needs identified through DSA feedback.

Value Proposition

DataVerse continues to evolve from a centralized reference for metadata and definitions into an operational governance platform that supports both program and technical users. This quarter’s advancements strengthen transparency, trust, and accountability by pairing governed workflows with live system integration and monitoring. Improved asset models, guided workflows, and validated examples reduce ambiguity, promote consistent data use, and accelerate the agency’s ability to understand and manage its data assets.

Sustainability

Sustainability is reinforced through feedback‑driven iteration, decoupled system integration, and reusable design patterns. Pilot‑informed enhancements reduced rework and improved readiness for adoption, while the DW Process Log and remodeled asset structures provide durable foundations that can scale without increasing maintenance burden. Ongoing emphasis on usability, accessibility, and guided onboarding further supports long‑term, self‑service use of the platform.

Collaboration

• Continued weekly collaboration with the Data Warehouse team supported successful delivery and demonstration of the DW Process Log monitoring feature.
• Engagement with the DSA Department expanded from mini‑ pilot activities into a structured mini‑pilot, enabling deeper validation of workflows and asset models.
• Ongoing coordination with the SIS development team supports identification and refinement of source‑to‑DataVerse information exchange.
• Collaboration with program area data owners and data stewards, including the Public School Calendar data collection, continues to align dictionary data element data and metadata understanding across program and technical stakeholders.
• Cross‑team coordination resolved authentication challenges early in the quarter, restoring secure access and minimizing disruption.

Strategic Considerations for Executive Leadership

To sustain and scale this progress, executive leadership is encouraged to continue reinforcing accountability and engagement across all agency data roles, support timely decisions on shared technology standards, and promote DataVerse as the authoritative platform for data asset understanding, governance workflows, and cross‑system transparency.

This quarter, DataVerse matured as the agency's centralized platform and unified data dictionary by delivering capabilities that embed governance, quality, and sustainability into day-to-day operations: the Manage Asset Workflow enables business user self-service with governed approvals, reducing rework while strengthening accountable stewardship; a decoupled Data Warehouse–DataVerse interface makes DataVerse a reliable, read-only consumer of curated data, improving resilience and lowering maintenance overhead; the System Value Manager provides no code updates to taxonomies and templates, shortening change cycles and aligning terminology across programs; and bulk import tooling accelerates onboarding at scale, harmonizing large datasets into consistent structures. These technical advances are sustained by weekly collaboration with Data Warehouse, expanded engagement with Public School Calendar and SIS teams, ongoing coordination with DSA to refine asset definitions, and role-aligned training tied to the Agency Data Strategy Policy — together elevating usability, transparency, and data quality for analysts and engineers. With continued executive emphasis on role accountability and engagement, the organization can scale these gains, unlocking faster program insights and a durable, cost-efficient data foundation ready for broad rollout.

Technical Accomplishments

• Manage Asset Workflow
  The framework for an asset management workflow has been established. This includes basic UI collection of information coupled with review and approval processes to allow business users to add and edit their information directly into the system.
• Data Warehouse/DataVerse Interface
  Data Warehouse and DataVerse continue to improve upon a common interface where Data Warehouse can prepare data for DataVerse to ingest with proper decoupling, so DataVerse is merely a read-only consumer.
• DataVerse System Value Manager
  The system has an early working version of a value manager where appropriate users can update and modify recognized system values without code deployment or UI modification. This allows quick changes to feedback for things like field names and values recognized in a field, and can be expanded to include customization of entire templates of information (called containers in the system).
• Bulk Import Tools
  In preparation for integration with program area staff across the agency, DataVerse now has a functioning bulk import tool built around a template. This will facilitate fast onboarding of large quantities of data in preparation for full system rollout.

Value Proposition and Sustainability

Value Proposition

DataVerse continues to evolve into a centralized platform for data access and a unified agency data dictionary. This quarter's work strengthens the platform's ability to serve diverse data roles — from analysts to engineers — by improving usability, transparency, and data quality.

Sustainability

Sustaining this momentum requires continued collaboration, policy alignment, and technical support. The team remains committed to:

• Collaboration
• The team continues to engage weekly with Data Warehouse.
• Program area engagement has expanded to include Public School Calendar (both program area and dev staff) as well as the SIS dev team.
• The team regularly engages with DSA to refine asset definitions and work through early preview testing of concepts before expanding to larger pilot groups.
• The team has been compiling a comprehensive list of agency data collections, and their corresponding program department data owners, in anticipation of entering data assets into DataVerse.
• The team has been working on training resources to complement the agency Data Strategy Policy data roles to help all agency data roles understand their roles and responsibilities for all agency data activities, including utilization of DataVerse.

Strategic Considerations for Executive Leadership

To ensure long-term success, executive leadership is encouraged to:

• ​Continue to emphasize the importance of accountability and engagement for all agency data roles, both program and technical, for all agency data activities.​​

We are pleased to share the latest quarterly progress on the development of DataVerse. This quarter, the team delivered several key technical enhancements that strengthen the platform’s foundation and usability. In addition, the team began a broader conversation with program staff, data owners, and stakeholders of the system.

Technical Accomplishments

• Application and Data Model Refactor
  A comprehensive refactor of both the application code and underlying data model was completed. This effort improves maintainability, performance, and scalability, laying the groundwork for future feature development. While this is largely invisible work to end users, it greatly simplifies work to add and update the data as it continues to evolve, yielding significant efficiencies to the team.
• User Experience and Navigation Enhancements
  Continued improvements to the platform’s interface include streamlined navigation and visual refinements that enhance clarity and accessibility for all user roles. Of note, long-form content now contains a “table of contents” feature that makes on-page scrolling easier and aids in quickly identifying the content of interest.
• Data Warehouse Monitoring Proof of Concept
  A new ETL console was developed to provide real-time visibility into data warehouse processing. This proof of concept demonstrated how DataVerse can enable faster troubleshooting and better transparency into data pipeline health. This work was a highly collaborative effort between DataVerse and ISBE Data Warehouse development teams.
• Data Import Process From the Data Warehouse
  An import mechanism was implemented to allow ingestion of data from the Data Warehouse into DataVerse. This work proved the ability of DataVerse to ingest data with direct input from Data Warehouse resources. As new datasets, reports, and assets are identified, this process will grow and provide the backbone of data availability through DataVerse.
• User Guide Development
  A user guide has been started that will grow as the application grows. This container of information will provide user documentation “as we build” so by the time the application is ready to launch, a fully functional user guide will is already available.
• Database Server Configuration
  new database server was successfully configured and integrated into the platform’s infrastructure, improving performance, reliability, and future scalability.

Value Proposition and Sustainability

Value Proposition

DataVerse continues to evolve into a centralized platform for data access and a unified agency data dictionary. This quarter’s work strengthens the platform’s ability to serve diverse data roles — from analysts to engineers — by improving usability, transparency, and data quality.

Sustainability

Sustaining this momentum requires continued collaboration, policy alignment, and technical support. The team remains committed to:

• Collaboration
  
  • The Dataverse team began collaboration with Entity Profile System gatekeepers.
  • The team expanded conversation with Data Warehouse developers.
  • The team provided a tool demonstration to ISBE executive directors and directors to solicit feedback and encourage accountability for maintaining up-to-date information in the tool once operational.
• Sustainability
  
  • The adoption of the Data Strategy Policy provides guidance and direction for data ownership and maintenance.
    

Strategic Considerations for Executive Leadership

To ensure long-term success, executive leadership is encouraged to:

• Monitor Engagement: Promote active participation across all data roles.
• Champion Policy Adoption: Reinforce the importance of the Data Strategy Policy.
• Commit Resources: Invest in both technical and programmatic supports.
• Promote Accountability: Foster a culture of shared data stewardship.
  

We are pleased to share key progress updates on the continued development of DataVerse, our evolving data platform. The team has achieved several important milestones this quarter that enhanced the platform’s usability, security, and data interoperability.

Technical Accomplishments

• User Experience Enhancements
  Significant improvements have been made to the platform’s visual design and navigation. These include refined filter and sort functionalities, updated color schemes, and improved iconography to enhance clarity, accessibility, and ease of use.
• Security of Data Governance
  A robust security framework has been implemented, focusing on user, role, and permission management. Integration with MyISBE ensures alignment with organizational data strategy policies and reinforces secure data practices.
• Data Dictionary Development
  Collaboration with program areas has begun to build comprehensive data dictionary records, starting with the Employment Information System (EIS) and the Entity Profile System (EPS). This initiative supports consistent data definitions and improves interoperability across systems.
• Asset Workflow Optimization
  New capabilities have been introduced to streamline the creation and modification of all asset types, enabling a more efficient and scalable workflow for data management.
• Universal QuerySets
  The introduction of Universal QuerySets represents a major advancement in enabling flexible, reusable data queries across the platform, with promising potential to significantly improve data accessibility and analysis.

Value Proposition and Sustainability

Value Proposition

DataVerse will transform how the agency accesses and manages data by providing a centralized platform for data access and a unified agency data dictionary. This quarter, the team collaborated with Educator Effectiveness, the Educator Licensure Information System, EIS, EPS, and Data Strategies and Analytics (DSA) to understand how data is accessed and how metadata is organized. These insights actively shape a platform that supports the full spectrum of agency data roles — from data owners to engineers.

Sustainability

Sustained investment and engagement are essential to maintain this value long term. The platform’s success depends on:

• Ongoing collaboration with agency teams to continuously create and update assets.
• Adoption of the agency’s Data Strategy Policy to define roles, responsibilities, and platform usage.
• Technical support to ensure the platform remains scalable and adaptable.

Initial buy-in from teams, such as DSA, Software Solutions, and TSI, have been promising. However, long-term sustainability hinges on formalizing these efforts through policy and ensuring that all data projects leverage DataVerse as the central hub.

Strategic Considerations for Executive Leadership

To ensure the continued success and long-term impact of DataVerse, executive leadership should:

• Monitor Engagement: Ensure broad and sustained participation from all agency data roles to fully realize the platform’s potential.
• Champion Policy Adoption: Support the implementation of the agency’s Data Strategy Policy to align goals and clarify responsibilities.
• Commit Resources: Invest in both technical and program staff to maintain and evolve the platform post-launch.
• Promote Accountability: Encourage a culture of shared responsibility for data stewardship and asset maintenance.

We are excited to share the latest updates on the ongoing development of DataVerse. The team has made significant progress in several key areas this quarter, ensuring that DataVerse will continue to evolve into a powerful data platform.

• Searchable Catalog of Data Assets: Our team is actively working to implement a comprehensive searchable catalog of data assets. This catalog will include dictionary records, business rules, datasets, and reports, making it easier for users to locate and utilize the information they need efficiently.
• Role-Based Access and Dynamic Redaction: Security remains a top priority for us. We've introduced role-based access to both secure and public data assets. This feature includes dynamic redaction capabilities, ensuring that reports and datasets are tailored to the user's access level. This enhancement will safeguard sensitive information while maintaining usability for all users.
• Administrative Features and Approval Workflow: Early in the design phase, we identified ongoing maintenance and administration as key risks and requirements for DataVerse. Our team has laid the groundwork to support an intuitive and potentially expansive set of administrative features. Initially, we've focused on a simple approval workflow for the ingestion of new dictionary records. This will continue to expand and evolve as we learn from this initial launch and determine how best to automate and integrate with existing processes.
• Application Analytics and Customization: DataVerse leverages application analytics to provide real-time, actionable insights to users about assets in DataVerse. These insights, while initially simple, will expand to inform everything from navigation enhancements to dynamic content governed by ISBE's goals for the information contained in DataVerse.

We are excited about these advancements and remain committed to delivering a platform that empowers our users with efficient, secure, and insightful data management capabilities. Stay tuned for more updates each quarter as we continue to develop and refine DataVerse!