ICE of Lower Saxony – an information system for Lower Saxony’s specific requirements

Start of the project: 2002-Jan-01

Lower Saxony's Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and Statistical Office (LSN) commissioned the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) in 2002 with the installation of an information system in their own secure federal state network in order to cover their own specific information requirements. The aim was to base it on the official data supplied by Lower Saxony's higher education institutions (HEIs) to the statistical office (LSN). These data are stored on a separate server at the LSN and can be flexibly evaluated by authorised users in both institutions within Lower Saxony's ICE information system.

Lower Saxony's ICE information system makes comprehensive data bases available to MWK and LSN, in particular on the topic areas students, examinations and staff at Lower Saxony's higher education institutions (HEIs). Flexible data analysis (FleDA) is at the core of the evaluation instruments; this feature enables tables of any kind to be composed interactively using the available data pool. A special feature of Lower Saxony's ICE system is a function enabling flexible and fast evaluation of individual case data while mostly retaining the ICE's existing user interface, which was previously designed to evaluate summarised data.

The research area "Research Infrastructure and Methods" carries out the central system supervision, data processing and data management as part of the project. The research unit also advises and supports MWK and LSN in all issues related to the information system (by hotline, telephone and email).

A web application to generate statistics of applicants and registrations was also developed for the MWK. It enables Lower Saxony's HEIs to enter their application and registration figures within a short period. The data are used by the MWK; pre-defined statistics can be accessed in HTML and Excel formats.

Contact person

Judith Grützmacher
Judith Grützmacher +49 511 450670-498

Researchers

Helena Kopp

Project website

http://ice.dzhw.eu/

Employer/client

Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur