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How to Fill Out the Service Request

Click any question or field below to learn how to give answers that will allow your request to be processed more efficiently. 

These questions in our service request can be answered in many different ways, and people sometimes ask for more guidance. Click the title of the field below to see how to answer it and read some sample answers.

Tell us why you are the person submitting this request. Some examples are below.

  • I am an accounting technician who is responsible for making sure my office’s software subscriptions are kept up to date.
  • I am a PI requesting use of this software for my study.
  • I have been asked to find a tool that will meet my supervisor’s needs for a project.
  • I am an administrative assistant trying to get data that my school’s Dean needs for accreditation.
Ultimately, what we’re asking here is “What are you trying to do, why, and how?” The “why” and “how” are crucial here, we want to know what your plan is and why you think it’s the best approach. Think about some of the questions below as you explain your situation. There are some examples of helpful answers for each.

  • If you are buying or building a new software or service, how will you use that software or service? Why do you need it?
    • Procurement of continuous service from PowerSchool. We will use it as a system of record for student information for our lab school.
  • If you are contracting a vendor or independent contractor, what are they doing for you?
    • We are contracting Jane Doe for website design for the Robotics Lab.
  • If you are asking for access to data, what will you do with it once you get it? Why do you need access?
    • I am requesting a report run on July 1st of every year between 2016 and 2021 showing employees that were active on those dates. This information is a required part of my departments accreditation report. The Dean of the School will be writing this report.
  • If you are requesting a plugin, what platform is it for and why do you need that plugin?
    • I want to enable the Mural plugin for Microsoft Teams, which is a visual workspace that can be used collaboratively during meetings.
  • What are all of your intended uses? Think about the life cycle of your data. Tell us what you are doing immediately, but also tell us what will happen in the future with this data.
    • I am using this tool to analyze data that I collect in the process of conducting my research in the Robotics Lab. This research will be made publicly available once it is published.
This is where we want you to get specific about what data elements in scope. If information about individuals will be in scope, what information? For example, it is not enough to tell us that PHI is in scope, there are eighteen different PHI identifiers, and PHI can include as little as a birthdate or as much as an entire medical record. FERPA can include student grades, student financial information, student disciplinary information, student health information, etc. Especially when we are working with Tier 3 data, individual fields are helpful, but we can also look at categories of information.
Where are you getting the data that you are using? If a new application, platform, tool, or process is a part of your request, also tell us how the data is getting from its source to that new application/platform/tool. Is there an integration? Do you download a file from one location and upload it to another? Do you have a process set up for scheduled automatic transfer of data? Is the data being manually entered? Some examples are below.

  • We are collecting the data directly from study participants, and the interviewer on the study team is manually entering it into the application.
  • Data from Connect Carolina is scheduled to automatically be sent to our platform once a day.
  • We will share the data with the vendor who is doing the analysis for us via SFTP.
  • No data will be transferred into this platform. All of the data in scope is being generated in this platform.
What new data is being stored in this system? Will this system be a system of record for any data, and if so, what data? Is there data that will be stored here that only exists in this system? What new records are being created here?
We are asking about two things here, first party access, and third party access. Who, as in what groups, at UNC will have access to this system or to this data? How is access managed? Will anyone external to UNC (such as the vendor) have access to this data?
Oftentimes, the DGOG receives requests in which the requestor is submitting on behalf of someone else. The Responsible Person is someone who is involved in what you are requesting. They should be someone who can answer specific questions in detail about the data, how it will be used, who else will be involved, access, management, and more. They should be able to provide history and context to the DGOG if needed. If you are buying a new application or tool, the Responsible Person may be the person who will be managing that tool. If your request is related to an IRB study, the Responsible Person may be the Principal Investigator. You’re telling us who we can go to to understand how the data will be handled as it relates to your request.