DIGITAL GOVERNANCE OF THE NATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION RANKING: AN AI-BASED MONITORING ARCHITECTURE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22091057Abstract
This article examines the national ranking of higher education institutions in Uzbekistan from the perspective of
digital governance: not what the ranking measures, but how its indicators can be produced, verified, and monitored. The
2026 regulation establishes 25 indicators and links ranking outcomes to strategic and funding decisions, yet it leaves the
data infrastructure behind the ranking undefined, and current practice relies on an annual campaign of manual reporting.
Using document analysis of the indicator formulas and a design science approach, the study first maps every indicator
to its primary data elements, source system, and update cadence, and then classifies the indicators into three automation-
readiness tiers. The results show that 76 of the 100 ranking points rest on administrative registers and external
machine-readable databases rather than surveys, and that between 57 and 65 points, depending on institutional category,
can be generated fully automatically from data already maintained in existing digital systems. On this basis, the article
proposes a four-layer monitoring architecture - source systems, an interoperability layer, an analytics and artificial intelligence
layer, and a governance interface - and assigns concrete AI functions to specific indicators: rule-based validation,
cross-source verification, anomaly detection, and short-term forecasting. The discussion identifies four governance risks
of such a system, including data-quality failures and metric gaming, and formulates safeguards for each.
Keywords
digital governance, higher education, national ranking, education management information systems, data governance, artificial intelligence in the public sector, monitoring architecture.References
Regulation “On maintaining the national ranking of higher education institutions”, approved by Order No. 8 of 6
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President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (registration No. 10/26/3783/0179, 2 March 2026). URL: https://lex.uz/docs/8067678
Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan No. PF-58 of 10 April 2026 “On additional measures to
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