{"id":133,"date":"2026-10-16T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/data-and-information-management\/?p=133"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T08:49:08","slug":"data-management-plans-taming-the-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/data-and-information-management\/2026\/10\/16\/data-management-plans-taming-the-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Management Plans: Taming the Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Whiteley<\/a>, Climate Action Scope 3 Data Officer in the Sustainability & Space Team<\/a>, writes a guest blog on his experience of creating Data Management Plans for non-research purposes<\/a> and why they are helpful.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So why did I make the effort to write a Data Management Plan?<\/p>\n

Well, if I was not careful, my (data) work at the University could quickly become chaotic.\u202f\u202fI calculate the University\u2019s carbon footprint<\/a> using almost 25 data sources, ranging from small spreadsheets to large databases. Each of these sources have a wide variety of data that must be collated and manipulated every 12 months. As the sole person responsible for this work, the data was sitting exclusively on my University laptop and Bath OneDrive.<\/p>\n

It was also clear that if I left the Uni at short notice (for whatever reason!), it would leave behind a complete mess.\u202fMy replacement would have to somehow understand my inner workings or start from scratch. Neither of which I would wish on a colleague.<\/p>\n

I decided to replace my unformulaic, memory-dependent approach with a formal system to, if nothing else, standardise how our carbon footprint data is managed.\u202fWhat I needed was the\u202fdiscipline<\/em>\u202fto ensure consistency and quality.\u202fI needed a robust document with guidelines that:<\/p>\n