The Utah Data Research Center (UDRC) acts as a reliable, centralized hub for longitudinal health and employment data from the state’s Departments of Commerce, Health, and Workforce Services, as well as educational data from the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) and the Utah State Board of Education. By capturing the behavior of individuals from early childhood through employment to aging and retirement, UDRC provides policymakers and researchers with a detailed portrait of state residents throughout their life cycle. Its published reports, online dashboards, and data visualizations give stakeholders insight into public services.

But managing these massive annual datasets from multiple sources is a considerable challenge. Some of UDRC’s partner data comprises billions of rows and all of its records need to comply with FERPA and state data protection and privacy acts.

In 2022 UDRC became part of the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE), which meant migrating UDRC’s complex data repository into USHE’s existing IT infrastructure. The transition provided opportunities as well as challenges. UDRC needed all their data to work together seamlessly, but they also knew they could use this moment to modernize their data storage and access. With only three internal IT staff members at the time, and limited experience with cloud computing, they brought in Burwood Group to help them manage the data migration to Google Cloud smoothly while expanding and improving their capabilities.

Managing Change Without Disruption

Both Burwood and Google Cloud had already worked with the state, so UDRC could benefit from that history. Jeremias Solari, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Research and Data Systems at USHE, says that “we received great customer service from Burwood from the beginning, and Google Cloud was the most competitive in price.” In August 2022, they embarked on a three-way collaboration to transform how UDRC manages its data.

Improving Agency Operations with Cloud Computing

The migration of the combined UDRC data to Google Cloud in 2023 went smoothly. Instead of maintaining data servers on-prem or buying different products for different functions, UDRC now has an integrated state-of-the-art data system with one license that is scalable for flexible computing power. Already UDRC has found benefits in 

1. Managing costs by paying only for the resources they need, when they need it

2. Automating templates for faster internal work processes

3. Standardizing data formats for easier transfers

4. Upgrading to FedRAMP Moderate-level data safety standards for higher security

Transforming Educational Research

“The needs of public sector data are changing,” Solari says. “Agencies need to communicate with each other to make decisions about applications and services. There is currently no system backbone to handle all those transactional data requests.” UDRC aims to build transactional data capabilities into their next project with Burwood, called BRIDGE. “BRIDGE will be a really significant improvement to how data is transferred across in-state organizations,” he says.

USHE and Burwood are also building the Athena Data System to manage collecting, storing,  analyzing, and researching institutional data for all of USHE’s 16 member institutions. This will achieve the major goal of integrating the patchwork of previous systems into one centralized hub and automating processes that used to be mostly manual. Solari points out that “the stakes are high for this data because our reports help USHE and its institutions communicate with the public, state, and federal partners. We believe Athena’s new system and improved user interface will transform the way USHE conducts institutional research in Utah. We’re going to see more research, analytics, and reporting produced more quickly and at a higher quality. That’s a huge victory.”

Advancing Their Mission

UDRC’s collaboration with Burwood and Google Cloud, which began with an MVP to migrate data in 2022, has led to material improvements. With another four-year project ahead of them (BRIDGE), they foresee greater benefits for all of their data partners, and the public at large. Researchers will have easier, more secured access to centralized data; staff will save time and money with improved workflows, and state residents will gain new insights to better plan their futures in school and beyond.

Created in 2017, the Utah Data Research Center (UDRC) collects and analyzes longitudinal data about employment, education, and health from five partner agencies across the state. It aims to conduct meaningful research to inform public policy initiatives, and help policymakers, practitioners, and the general public to make data-informed decisions.

Defining Key Terms

The Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) governs the use of student educational records for all schools that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Education. It gives parents certain rights and protections to their children’s data and transfers those rights to students themselves when they leave high school or turn 18.

The Federal Risk and Authorization and Management Program (FedRAMP) is a data security standard for cloud service providers that ensures that sensitive user data is protected and private. It assesses data security for confidentiality, integrity, and availability at three levels of impact: Low, Moderate, and High. The Moderate level protects against serious adverse effects of compromised data on an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.

As an award-winning Premier Partner and Reseller with Google Cloud, Burwood Group has worked with many higher education institutions to improve operational efficiency and advance their missions. For example, in 2021 they helped the University of Wisconsin at Madison develop a secure platform on Google Cloud for sensitive public health research.