# When Data Systems Are Asked to Do More Than They Were Built For: Moving From Compliance to Action June 24, 2026 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) In higher education, you will find that a lot of big data systems were built for one fundamental question: Did we meet the basic requirements? That compliance-first mindset does meet some needs. It helps produce standardized numbers that legislators, auditors, and the public can trust. But what happens when those same systems are suddenly asked to answer a very different question: What do we do next? And what happens when that new purpose is tied to an emergency unfolding in real time, with people watching? At SDP Convening, Chris Ozuna, an SDP Fellow Cohort 13 alumnus now at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, explored these questions and shared about how the California Community Colleges system stretched a compliance-oriented data infrastructure into a system to support urgent, student-centered action in a during the 2025 LA wildfires. **Compliance vs. Action: Two Different Worlds** Ozuna began by contrasting two kinds of data systems. ![graphic](/sites/g/files/omnuum4446/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-06/Screenshot%202026-06-24%20at%2011.12.48%E2%80%AFAM.png?itok=cCUD7vRJ) On one side is compliance, which is built for the basic requirements and often relies on longer-term indicators. On the other side is action, which can help answer what we do next and leverages leading indicators. Neither system is inherently better. For example, compliance systems work because they build trust in the numbers. But Ozuna argued that when you live mostly on the compliance side and an emergency hits, you quickly discover your system’s limits. **A Case Study: LA Wildfires and 2.2 Million Students** The California Community Colleges (CCC) system is the largest higher education system in the country with 116 colleges, 72 districts, 2.2+ million students, and one statewide data warehouse (COMIS) with one set of reporting standards. Across the 116 different colleges in the CCC system, there are just as many local boards, calendars, and data practices. Due to the breadth of colleges and differences in operation, the statewide infrastructure was built for term- and year-end reporting, not real-time crisis response. When the Eaton and Palisades fires tore through parts of Los Angeles County in January 2025, two questions landed quickly at the Chancellor’s Office: 1\. Who are the CCC students affected by these fires? 2\. What can the CCC system do to support affected colleges and students right now? And therein lies the challenge with a system built on compliant: these are action-oriented questions, relying on a compliance-oriented tool. **What They Could See and What They Couldn’t** Ozuna walked through the landscape: ![graphic](/sites/g/files/omnuum4446/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-06/Screenshot%202026-06-24%20at%2011.13.47%E2%80%AFAM.png?itok=0clB7zhT) In the face of lagging data, varying local timelines, and a lack of data-sharing across agencies, , his team pushed the system to do more. **Repurposing the Data: From Perimeters to People** To estimate impact in real time, Ozuna described a two-step approach. 1\. Geographic overlap Using fire perimeter files, the team identified which ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) overlapped the burn areas for the Eaton and Palisades fires. Fourteen ZCTAs emerged as “potentially affected.” 2\. Student matching They then flagged Fall 2024 students whose reported ZIP codes aligned with those ZCTAs. The initial results: > \- About 7,200 unique students systemwide appeared to live in affected areas, across 114 colleges. When they reran the analysis in Summer 2025 to include the full 2024–25 academic year, the total jumped to \*\*18,200\*\*. Colleges with early-start terms, such as Pasadena City College and Santa Monica College, had especially large numbers of directly affected students. To make these findings usable for decision-makers, the team built a Tableau tool that allowed users to: > \- View affected students by college (with basic demographic characteristics) > > \- View impacts by ZIP (to see how far the effects spread across the state) This turned lagged, compliance-focused data into something leadership could use for outreach, emergency aid, and planning. **Looking Backward to Look Forward** Ozuna didn’t stop at the 2025 fires. He also asked: What do past emergencies tell us about how students experience and recover from crises? He shared a historical analysis of four events: 1.1994 Northridge Earthquake 2\. 2017 Thomas Fire 3\. 2018 Camp Fire 4\. 2023 “Pineapple Express” flooding in Santa Cruz County For each, the team identified affected ZCTAs using perimeter or evacuation-zone data matched those areas to relevant Census ZCTAs (2000, 2010, 2020), and then was able to flag potentially affected CCC students. Through this process, several themes emerged from the descriptive work: > \- Local emergencies are rarely local. Students living in affected areas were enrolled in colleges all over California. A fire in one region has implications for “faraway” colleges that may not realize how many of their students are impacted. > > \- Impacts cut across demographics. Race/ethnicity breakdowns showed emergency-affected students looked broadly similar to their surrounding communities—no single group bears all the impact. > > \- Student populations are complex. Many potentially affected students were K–12 dual-enrolled rather than fitting a “typical” college-student profile. Crises don’t align with our administrative categories. > > \- Outcomes are nuanced. On one-year same-college persistence, Ozuna showed patterns suggesting a slight advantage for emergency-affected students, possibly reflecting intensive local support. But he emphasized that we know far less about longer-term impacts on transfer, completion, and equity gaps. This backward-looking work is now informing a more systematic research agenda on access, progress, and success for students who live through emergencies. **Strategy Implications: Making a Compliance System Action-Ready** In the aftermath of this responsive work, Ozuna reflected on how the system is trying to move forward without abandoning its core compliance role. He framed the work along two strategic strands. 1\. Put Logistics in Place Before the Next Emergency To make the existing infrastructure more “action-ready,” his team is working to: > \- Build a shared repository of emergency-relevant data (evacuation zones, pre-matched ZCTA shapes, reusable scripts to flag affected students) > > \- Establish clear contact points in institutional research offices to coordinate during crises > > \- Co-create protocols and best practices with colleges, and practice them through existing professional networks The goal: have the technical pieces and relationships in place before the next emergency starts. 2\. Better Understand How Students Experience Emergencies At the same time, Ozuna described a growing analytic agenda aimed at: > \- Tracking short- and long-term persistence after emergencies > > \- Examining units accumulation, course success, and time to award or transfer > > \- Identifying which students are most affected and which services (DSPS, EOPS, Rising Scholars, etc.) appear protective This work relies on descriptive, correlational, and causal methods, while also accounting for other policy shifts that shape student trajectories. Crucially, all of it uses the \*\*existing\*\* statewide data system—stretching a compliance machine so it can also support student-centered action. **The Bigger Lesson for Data Leaders** Ozuna closed with a reminder that “the purpose of a system is what it does.” The CCC data system was designed to report up and out: slowly, reliably, and in aggregate. During the LA wildfires and in the historical analyses he shared, it was asked to do something different—to help leaders see students quickly and clearly enough to act. The experience revealed lags, gaps, and silos. But it also showed what’s possible when data teams get creative with the tools they already have. See also:- [ SDP Convening 2026 ](/tags/sdp-convening-2026) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)