The first person was loaded into Emory Shared Data (ESD) on May 11, 1992. For those who don’t remember 1992, here’s some context. George H.W. Bush was president. The newly constructed Georgia Dome opened in September of that year. Greg Maddux, not yet a Brave, won the Cy Young award as the Cubs’ ace pitcher. Sun had recently formed a project to develop Oak, a new programming language which would later be renamed Java.

ESD was the brain child of Barbara Anderson, who is now retired. Barbara noticed that people in different departments were each building their own application to integrate commonly used data. They rarely used the same business rules for their integrations, leading to inconsistent data and reports amongst the departments. Always a visionary, Barbara created ESD, an integrated database of commonly used data and made it available to the Emory IT community.

Emory Shared Data’s purpose has sharpened over the course of time. Under the leadership of Anne Marie Alexander (LITS: Identity and Access Management) ESD has focused on its role as a person repository, containing the identities of everyone affiliated with Emory.

The ESD Team Today (from L to R): Elizabeth Bell, Anne Marie Alexander, Erika Buchholz, Russ Havard

Never heard of ESD? Here’s what you should know. Emory Shared Data gets data from PeopleSoft HR  and OPUS and combines those records into one Emory identity. Identity data for both University and Healthcare sponsored persons are manually entered directly into ESD through web applications, as are records for pre-started employees. And once an identity is in ESD, it stays there. There are over 840,000 people currently in ESD.

Emory Shared Data is also the source of a number of commonly used identifiers, such as NetID (University and Healthcare), PPID (Public Person ID), and Emory Card Number. A host of flags are derived there as well.

What does it take for a system to not just survive, but thrive for 25 years? It must fill a need, be built on stable technologies, and evolve as the needs of the business change.

Congratulations, Emory Shared Data, on reaching your 25th birthday!