Portuguese Levantamento Geral de Dados da FMUP (LGDF)

The university of FMUP has implemented a web-based interface for data insertion of its staff. The data of about 300 staff gets neatly organized in the system. It is then easily worked on and the information is organized according to the requirements of different services.

@Photo from Pixabay.

Summary 

The university of FMUP has implemented a web-based interface for data insertion of its staff. Besides its logical organization, most fields have word-matching capabilities from relevant internal lists, drop-down menus for options, calendars, etc. There is also a detailed explanation for data format errors. This system has been going on since 2012, is updated every year using the comments from users and is also evaluated by them every year. From the administrative point of view, the data of about 300 staff gets neatly organized into an excel book. It is then easily worked on and the information is organized according to requirements: Scientific Report of the Faculty; Scientific Report of each department; evaluation of each researcher. Furthermore, any faculty service knows that only needs to contact one person to request staff information: human resources, academic departament, directors, scientific council, etc. The LGDF is also updated from feedback from all these people.

ENABLING ASSETS OR COMPONENTS

Legal interoperability
Simplex+ (Portuguese National Government)
Published in 2007 and still well and alive today, this document changes many things in Universities. The main ones were: i) the compulsory evaluation of teaching staff (article 92 - Rector attributes); ii) the compulsory publication of the annual report (article 159) otherwise a fine up to 100 000 € might be paid (article 164). Both of these are related to our own efforts with the LGDF. 

Simplex+ (Portuguese National Government): https://www.simplex.gov.pt/medidas
This is the main national programme for simplifying public services. There are several measures specifically related with higher education. For example: “Ensino Superior 360º”: centralise all information of students in portuguese universities. Students in control (e.g. student transportation passes go directly to the companies). The objective is to fight the dispersion and inaccessability of information. "Once and Only Principle for Higher Education": as the name says, the idea is to have a single platform with data of university staff (just like our LGDF system but countrywide!). Finally, also foreign students will be directly connected with our "Foreign Office" so that they get quick access to vital information for them.

Juridic Regimen of Higher Education Institutions (RJIES) - National Government LAW: https://sigarra.up.pt/fmdup/pt/legislacao_geral.legislacao_ver_ficheiro?pct_gdoc_id=509608&pct_nr_id=7&pct_codigo=1

Published in 2007 and still well and alive today, this document changes many things in Universities. The main ones were: i) the compulsory evaluation of teaching staff (article 92 - Rector attributes); ii) the compulsory publication of the annual report (article 159) otherwise a fine up to 100 000 € might be paid (article 164). Both of these are related to our own efforts with the LGDF. 


Semantic interoperability
Not applicable. As said elsewhere in this document, all our data exchange processes are rather arcaic. As mentioned, to connect with the main university system (Sigarra) we use Excel sheets for import/export. In addition, we do connect with external databases, such as publication repositories (e.g. Web of Knowledge, PubMed) but, again, we import a text file created by each user (related to their publication record).

Socio-cultural influence factors
LGDF has been crucial internally. It would be, otherwise, impossible to present detailed and accurate annual reports. In addition, indiduals are no longer constantly harrassed internally for providing the same information again and again. The OOP is now fully working in our institution. The data are also valuable at the highest level since it is the country Presidency itself involved, every year, on using a good part of the data collected to produce the comparative annual report of our institution. The individual data are not disclosed to anyone except the individual himself and his superiors. The only exception is the Science Manager, who is responsible for data checking for accuracy.

Data quality
The data is shared collectively, i.e., although each invididual gives is own data, a lot of it is dilluted with similar one given by others (e.g. collaborative publications). What comes out is the "whole", combined and per department or for the whole faculty (annual report). Each individual has access to is own data only on the context of his own evaluation. In this case, only him, his evaluator and the Science Manager have access to his personal data.

Data handling / data exchange

Type of data sharing

Actual data

Data handler

Lessons learned
Must define what we want the data for straight from the beginning. This will permit to tailor-make the language and system to be used avoiding later issues of compatibility. At the moment the way we work here is archaic, using an Excel sheet that is imported into the University system (Sigarra) for concluding the process of the evaluation of staff. Every year we are learning of improvements from the users themselves and, indeed, we have been doing our best to implement them all (this has been the key enabler and success factor). Quite for some time too (3 years), we have been dreaming of an LGDF2.0 upgrade but lack of staff has been preventing such a major improvement.

Source: https://scoop4c.eu/cases/portuguese-levantamento-geral-de-dados-da-fmup-lgdf

Disclaimer: Please note that this article is a result of the SCOOP4C Pilot Project, not an application of a CEF Building Block.

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