The Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators (MAISA) has been named a 2025 AWS Champions Award winner for its visionary leadership in building the Michigan Great Data Lake (MiGreatDataLake), a modern, cloud-native data architecture designed to transform how Michigan’s education system collects, manages, and uses data to support student success from prenatal to workforce.

Building on the success of the long-standing Michigan Data Hub, MAISA has launched MiGreatDataLake to enable advanced analytics, AI/ML capabilities, and future scalability, ushering in a new era of educational intelligence for the state.

Project Overview
For over a decade, the Michigan Data Hub has supported statewide interoperability by standardizing and distributing essential education data to school districts. While effective, its capabilities were limited when it came to advanced use cases like machine learning, predictive analytics, and unstructured data management.

MiGreatDataLake, hosted on AWS, is designed to overcome those limitations. It will ingest and transform both structured and unstructured data using best-in-class pipelines, cleansing tools, and governance frameworks. The platform will support everything from early warning systems and early literacy initiatives to personalized learning pathways — all powered by integrated, high-quality data at scale.

Challenges Addressed: Future-Readiness and Scalability
MAISA sought to overcome several limitations inherent in its legacy architecture:

• Limited scalability for statewide or cross-agency analytics 
• Inability to support AI/ML tools required for predictive or personalized insights 
• Fragmentation of data systems across districts, limiting holistic student understanding 
• Desire to build a prenatal-to-workforce data continuum to better inform long-term education and workforce strategies 

With MiGreatDataLake, MAISA is now building the infrastructure to deliver deep insights, support strategic planning, and enable data-driven instruction across Michigan and beyond.

Results: Early-Phase Implementation with Exponential Impact Potential
Though still in its early implementation phase, MiGreatDataLake is already demonstrating potential for major impact:

• Statewide applications are migrating to the new platform, including those supporting literacy and student risk identification 
• MAISA expects a 10x scale-up of Michigan’s early warning and literacy systems once fully transitioned 
• The architecture is designed to support advanced analytics and AI, unlocking new opportunities for innovation in educational equity and personalized learning 

This foundational investment will enable Michigan’s schools to shift from reactive to proactive strategies and improve outcomes across all regions and student demographics.

Laying the Groundwork for a Statewide AI-Powered Future
The Michigan Great Data Lake is a bold reimagining of what statewide educational systems can achieve when powered by scalable, cloud-native infrastructure. With a vision that spans early childhood to career, MAISA is setting a new benchmark for how states can responsibly and intelligently manage education data at scale.