HESPA’s advocacy work involves maintaining good relationships with key stakeholders and lobbying on behalf of members to drive positive change for the sector. This happens in both proactive and reactive ways. For example, when policy changes are made or consulted on in the wider community, HESPA collates feedback from its members to feed into the debate helping to aid deeper understanding of the way issues or changes affect specific functions and may lead to unintended, and sometimes undesired, consequences.
HESPA also proactively seeks out opportunities to lobby government and other stakeholders on matters which are important to its members and might otherwise have a negative impact on the sector as a whole. This is done in a number of ways, through representation of members on sector-wide working groups, e.g. HESA’s Data Futures Programme Board, and via our Higher Education Data Insight Group (HEDIG) which comprises a number of external stakeholders including, DfE, HESA, OfS, SFC, HEFCW, UCAS, Jisc, UKRI and others, who meet to discuss the responsible use of HE data.
Find out how HESPA is represented on certain boards and forums, such as HESA, OfS among others.
HEDIG exists to enhance understanding of data on higher education and promote and influence better use of such data within the public domain broadly and, more specifically, within UK public policy.
