Modeling Policy and Data Structuring

Data is considered one of the most important strategic assets for Najran University, forming a primary foundation for supporting decision-making, enhancing operational efficiency, and promoting transparency and accountability at both the academic and administrative levels. The university works to adopt best practices and standards in data management and governance to ensure maximizing the benefit from this institutional asset and consolidating its management in an organized and sustainable manner.  In this regard, the Data Management Office prepared this policy to establish an integrated institutional framework for modeling and structuring data within the university, ensuring standardization of methodologies, aligning the design of data structures and their outputs, linking them with business needs, reports, and indicators, and in line with national trends in data governance and management.

“the policy”

• Data Modeling:the creation of an accurate and systematic representation of the university's data within various business contexts, including describing data elements, identifying their components, and clarifying their relationships, which supports comprehensive understanding and facilitates future reuse.

And the University commits through this policy to lead and direct the systematic and organized modeling and structuring of data, to ensure alignment of data with its strategic objectives, and support optimal use thereof as an institutional asset that contributes to enhancing quality, efficiency, and transparency in all its operations.

This policy aims to:

• Document the university's understanding of data components and their relationships, enabling consistent applications that meet current and future operational requirements.
• Establish the foundations for implementing major institutional initiatives, such as managing reference and master data and governing them.
• Reduce costs associated with data support, increase opportunities for its reuse, contributing to lower development costs for new applications.
• Enhance strategic utilization of data as a key asset to support decision-making and achieve operational excellence.

This policy applies to all data and applications and programs and services belonging to Najran University, including all units and departments and affiliated administrations associated with it.

• The data produced by the university is national assets that must be protected and managed in accordance with best practices, while preserving intellectual property rights.
• Promoting the use of data to enhance spending efficiency and support service sustainability.
• Ensuring the availability of comprehensive documentation to understand the data for both business sectors and technical departments.
• Limiting data transfers to reduce costs, errors, and improve data accuracy.
• Updating data models and structures periodically to ensure continuous benefit from data as a shared asset.

Najran University is committed to managing its data with precision according to best practices, in order to document all of its components, standardize its models, and link them to the university’s operational and strategic processes.. This policy also aims to create an integrated framework for modeling and structuring data that ensures accuracy, consistency, and reusability, while enhancing the use of data as a strategic asset to support decision-making, promote transparency, and institutional efficiency.. And the main commitments are as follows:

• Supporting and accelerating the completion of its current data structure accurately, documenting all its components, with this data structure covering the three models: Conceptual, Logical, and Physical. Accordingly:
  • The conceptual model includes the key entities in the university and their data exchange relationships.
  • The logical model clarifies the characteristics of the data and their relationships in detail, ensuring compatibility with operational processes.
  • The physical model defines the names of the attributes, primary keys, and data types in databases.
• Working on integrating big data requirements within the overall data management framework, ensuring consistency with traditional data to enhance its efficient use across all systems and institutional operations, and guaranteeing effective data utilization.
• Supporting decision-making by integrating large data into operational and strategic processes, without requiring additional independent or redundant structures.
• Utilizing advanced technical tools to support data modeling and structure design.
• Managing change requests related to models and structures to ensure flexibility and continuous updates.
• Developing a monitoring record for data modeling and structuring projects, including designs and reference documents.
• Committing to the target structure to ensure its compatibility with the data management strategy and personal data protection.
• Integrate the target framework with the university’s overall institutional structure.
• Commit to utilizing the target framework in all technical projects to ensure standardization and sustainability.

The Data Management Office will periodically review and update this policy as needed to ensure its alignment with best practices and strategic changes.

All university units must fully comply with the provisions of this policy, and the Data Management Office will be responsible for monitoring compliance and ensuring its implementation in projects and daily activities.