MODULE 3
Developing and Operationalizing HEMIS at the National and Regional Level
Coming soon
Welcome to Module 3. This module transitions our focus from individual university data systems to the broader national and regional higher education ecosystem. Over the coming weeks, we will explore how governments, regulatory agencies, and regional bodies utilize system-level data for policy planning, quality assurance, and funding allocation. We will also address the core governance challenges inherent in this space, such as balancing university autonomy with public accountability. Please review the video lectures, live session schedules, and individual exercises detailed below to guide your learning journey.
Schedule: September 9, 2026 – September 22, 2026
Time Commitment: This module requires an estimated total of 12 study hours distributed across 2 weeks.
Introductory Survey Instrument for Module 3
Please complete this survey individually before you begin watching the video lectures for Module 3. This survey serves as an essential pre-module tool designed to evaluate systemic issues across your national or regional higher education data ecosystem. Operating as a critical diagnostic component within the broader HAQAA3 capacity-building program, it explores key operational areas such as duplicate reporting, data standardization, the clarity of institutional mandates, and the specific requirements of primary data users. Your insights will directly inform and ground our upcoming live sessions and framework planning, ensuring the module addresses the exact technical and governance challenges present in your context.
This introductory video sets the stage for our transition to system-level data ecosystems. It outlines how governments, regulatory agencies, and regional bodies utilize system-level data for policy planning, quality assurance, and funding allocation. It also previews the core governance challenges of the module, such as balancing university autonomy with public accountability.
LESSON 1: Understanding System-Level HEMIS and Diagnosing Current Systems
Lesson one of this module establishes the essential foundation for understanding higher education data ecosystems at the system level. Lesson one is divided into two consecutive video lectures designed to bridge the technical demand for information with the institutional realities of governance. In the first video, Segment 1a, you will examine the specific data domains, policy benchmarks, and accountability frameworks required by national and regional entities to monitor the sector effectively. The second video, Segment 1b, immediately connects these requirements to operational reality by unpacking the complex web of institutional mandates, overlapping agency roles, and stakeholder coordination bottlenecks. By engaging with both parts of this segment, you will gain a complete baseline view of the data landscape, discovering why system-level data challenges are almost always governance challenges in disguise.
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Individual Exercise 1: Initial mapping of system-level HEMIS data needs and gaps
The objective of this exercise is to create an initial, structured overview of your country or region’s higher education data landscape. Using the provided template, you will review and customize system-level policy purposes and data domains. You will then assign preliminary scores from 1 to 5 to evaluate current data availability across three critical criteria: coverage, timeliness, and quality, briefly noting the primary bottlenecks behind missing or unreliable data
LESSON 2: Strategizing System-Level HEMIS Transformation
Identifying your data gaps is only the first step, now we focus on how to solve them. In this segment, we address the practical coordination barriers that often lead to duplicate data requests, overlapping institutional mandates, and fragmented reporting systems. You will learn how to design governance frameworks that balance institutional autonomy with public accountability. During our interactive live session, you will compare your system diagnoses with peers from other nations to identify shared challenges and co-create improvement strategies.
Moving from system diagnosis to strategic action, this video details how to actively address identified data gaps and fragmented setups. It highlights strategic interventions such as formalizing inter-agency committees, standardizing data protocols, and building institutional capacity. It serves as a structural guide to prepare you for collaborative live discussions and upcoming framework planning.
Synchronous Session 1: Strategizing System-Level HEMIS Transformation
This synchronous interactive session runs for 90 minutes. This session shifts participants from sector diagnosis to the active creation of governance and coordination strategies. Through small-group activities and plenary syntheses, you will compare national contexts, unpack root causes of data fragmentation, and design collaborative mechanisms, like inter-agency committees, to bridge critical data and capacity gaps.
Individual Exercise 2: Mapping the key stakeholders of the system-level HEMIS
The objective of this excercise is to analyze the operational capacities and constraints of the specific actors who produce and use higher education data. You will select four priority data domains from Exercise 1 and evaluate the relevant data producers, checking mandates, tools, and coordination, and data users, checking demand, accessibility, and analytical capacity, on a 1-to-5 scale. Finally, you will isolate specific bottlenecks to prioritize stakeholder engagement and targeted capacity-building.
LESSON 3: Designing HEMIS Architecture
Here, we turn our attention to the foundational technical backbone of a system-level HEMIS. You will explore the four core layers of robust data architecture: Data Acquisition, Data Integration and Management, Analytics and Application, and Access and Dissemination. We will examine how to ensure interoperability among diverse institutional platforms and discover how artificial intelligence can be embedded as a distributed intelligence capability to clean data, identify anomalies, and generate predictive modeling.
This video explores the technical backbone of a system-level HEMIS, demonstrating how architectural design directly enables data governance. It details the four core architectural layers: Data Acquisition, Data Integration and Management, Analytics and Application, and Access and Dissemination. Additionally, it introduces how Artificial Intelligence can be embedded across these layers as a distributed intelligence capability to enhance automated validation, predictive modeling, and user interaction.
Recommended readings
Individual Exercise 3: Sketching a conceptual architecture for a system-level HEMIS
LESSON 4: Prioritizing and Planning HEMIS Transformation
This synchronous collaborative session runs for 90 minutes. Focused heavily on implementation, this session helps participants transition from conceptual architecture to actionable, phased transformation roadmaps. The collaborative exercises guide you to evaluate trade-offs between cost, impact, and feasibility, map out dependencies between technical and governance reforms, and explore strategic opportunities for regional alignment and interoperability.
Synchronous Session 2: Prioritizing HEMIS strengthening interventions and Opportunities for regional collaboration
Individual Exercise 4: From HEMIS diagnosis to action plan for system strengthening
case studies
In this video, Dr. Charles Sheppard presents the South African Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) as an example of a mature national higher education data system. The session examines how data are collected, validated and used to support planning, funding, quality assurance, policy development and institutional monitoring. Participants will also explore the governance arrangements, reporting processes and performance indicators that underpin evidence-based decision-making within South Africa’s higher education sector.
