It happens often. You get ready to change your data system; you test it, you deploy it, and it fails or becomes a frustrating experience. Data quality suffers. Users lose trust in your data. What happened? Did you remember the people in the system? Our data systems are dependent on people who are engaged in data entry, data quality, and data analysis. Getting the people in your system to buy-in to changes that you are implementing will improve the probability of success when you deploy your new system. Employing evidence-based change management principles to your data strategy ensures that your users are true stakeholders and part of your solution. Using experience from a state education data system change with more than 2,000 primary users and 15,000 secondary users, this presentation will help you to think about change management, and how people are the key to any successful transformation.

The presentation will cover the following topics:

• Engaging users in the purpose of the change
• Preparing the human side of the change
• Applying a change management model to data systems
• True buy-in: Making your users part of the solution