The HESA Estates data collection holds a peculiar place among the HESA open data offerings.
Unlike the collections you most often see, the data items are chosen and defined by the sector itself – in the form of the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE).
It is designed to allow estates managers to benchmark their own institutions performance against peers – and is primarily used in the annual production of AUDE’s Estates Management Report (EMR). There’s an executive summary available to the public, but the full report – available to AUDE members only – is quite something.
Though AUDE members get a lot of value from the collection and analysis of estates information there is a burden inherent in any data collection. The past few years have seen an intensification of data collection, fostered in England by a desire for “data driven” regulation – data returns have become more complex, and the stakes have become higher.
