{"id":336002,"date":"2018-08-31T10:40:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T14:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=336002"},"modified":"2018-08-31T10:40:32","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T14:40:32","slug":"first-chief-data-officer-better-data-better-decisions-336002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/first-chief-data-officer-better-data-better-decisions-336002\/","title":{"rendered":"First chief data officer: Better data = better decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sandra (San) Cannon\u2019s job is to help the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ make better use of the mountains of data generated by hundreds of individual clinics, research labs, academic departments, and administrative offices.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are lots of places around the University where data live, where data should live, where data don\u2019t live. People are really struggling to figure out how to do better with what we have\u2014in keeping with Meliora\u2014but not really understanding how all the pieces fit together in the data landscape,\u201d says Cannon, the University\u2019s first chief data officer and associate vice provost for data governance.<\/p>\n<p>A trained economist, Cannon sees the challenges as an optimization problem: \u201cEveryone is doing a fantastic job in their own part of the University, optimizing their local problem, doing what\u2019s best for the function they\u2019re charged with fulfilling, not realizing that those local optima are not necessarily contributing to a global optimum.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s why this new role of chief data officer is really important. I\u2019m charged with connecting the dots, figuring out how we can coordinate data management in a way that actually allows the larger University to make better use of its data\u2014in short, helping people to understand the bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cannon\u2019s work is anticipated to result in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Better decision making at all levels. \u201cWe seem to have a lot of places where people are doing the best they can, making decisions with the data that they have, but not understanding that there are other data in the University and in the outside world that could contribute to that.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Greater consistency in how data is defined, and greater efficiencies in how it is gathered.<\/li>\n<li>Broader depth of analysis. \u201cWe need the dashboards and the charts and tables that keep the University running, but once we actually get all of the data organized and understood, there will be a capacity for using data science and predictive analytics to go beyond that, to doing analysis and making predictions we\u2019re not able to do now because we don\u2019t have the data shaped in a way that would support that.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cannon started July 1 after serving 24 years in data management and research positions with the Federal Reserve System.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/cannon-to-become-universitys-first-chief-data-officer\/\">In announcing Cannon&#8217;s appointment,<\/a> Rob Clark, provost and senior vice president for research, said he was enthusiastic about her joining the University: \u201cShe brings a wealth of experience from the Federal Reserve in this domain with an incredible understanding of the importance of technology, people and culture for our success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the Fed, Cannon dealt with similar data management issues similar to those that the University is addressing. At data conferences, she has heard \u201cpresentation after presentation\u201d about the challenges corporations face because marketing departments, for example, have different data to define customers than the billing departments have.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn just about every organization that I\u2019ve talked to or worked with, everyone thinks they\u2019re the only ones with silos. But they\u2019re not. Everyone\u2019s trying to figure out what makes sense for their institution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, this issue is not unique to this university, though it may be a bit more extreme because of the culture of each school operating independently,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got tons of shadow systems that have popped up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Working in the University\u2019s favor, she says, is that \u201cpeople here started this journey several years ago. There\u2019s already been a ton of groundwork.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Grasping the \u2018pain points\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The magnitude of this task, you might think, will leave Cannon little time to worry about the plight of the individual researh coordinator or administrative assistant, toiling to manually update outdated spreadsheets because they don\u2019t know where else to turn.<\/p>\n<p>Think again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to hear from the people who are actually struggling with this data, day to day,\u201d says Cannon, \u201cWho are the people who have built those spread sheets because they had no other choice? What would be helpful for you? These are the pain points I need to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/provost\/datagovernance\/index.html\">data governance page<\/a> at the Provost Office website has just been updated to make it easier to provide this kind of feedback.<\/p>\n<p>Cannon says she can\u2019t promise to make everybody\u2019s experience with data management better. But she\u2019s a firm believer in a concept called Pareto improvement, named after an Italian engineer and economist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I can make one person better off, without making anybody else worse off, then it\u2019s a net gain to the University.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ Sandra (San) Cannon<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>\u201cPeople ask me where I\u2019m from,\u201d San Cannon says. \u201cAnd I say: \u2018Pick a year.\u2019\u201d She:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Grew up in Billerica, Massachusetts, a suburb of Lowell.<\/li>\n<li>Was an undergraduate in economics at University of California-Irvine.<\/li>\n<li>Earned a master\u2019s degree in economics from the London School of Economics.<\/li>\n<li>Received her PhD in economics from University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/li>\n<li>Worked 20 years with the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.<\/li>\n<li>Worked the last four years with the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cannon offers a few personal details as well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cannon has been married 29 years to her husband, Frank. They have two grown children.<\/li>\n<li>After two years, Cannon is \u201cstill being trained\u201d by her rescue dog, a beagle mix named Buddy.<\/li>\n<li>She\u2019s a \u201chuge\u201d fan of mysteries, science fiction, and historical fiction. Her favorite authors are Sharon Kay Penman, Christopher Moore, and Neil Gaiman. \u201cI read just about everything they write.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>She\u2019s also a runner. \u201cTen-milers and half-marathons have traditionally been my distances.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>She likes to knit. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to live someplace where I can wear some of the things I have knit over the years.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trained as an economist with 20 years of experience at the Federal Reserve, Sandra (San) Cannon\u2019s job is to help the University make better use of the data generated by hundreds of offices and departments. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":286,"featured_media":336022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11716],"class_list":["post-336002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university-news","tag-data-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>First chief data officer: Better data = better decisions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sandra (San) Cannon\u2019s job is to help the University make better use of the data generated by hundreds of offices and departments.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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