The need for data-informed decisions is not limited to national policy, state systems, or senior leadership of postsecondary institutions. Decisions that impact the achievement of higher education missions are also made by students, faculty, frontline staff, and program administrators--all of who deserve data and information to support their decisions. Foundational to effective decision support is the quality of data inputs and analytics provided by each college's or university's institutional research (IR) function. There is wide agreement that variations in higher education organizations complicate efforts to collect uniform data on institutions and the students they serve. Yet federal and state policies must be informed by data that accurately describe the totality of U.S. higher education arrangements. This paper series provides highlights and details of how improvements to collection of national and state postsecondary data could be undertaken. This specific paper focuses on institution-level data capacity to prepare and report data as the foundation of existing and proposed data collections. As efforts are undertaken to improve state and national data systems, attention must be given to improving institution-level data capacities to ensure the quality of the data that enter the data ecosystem. This paper calls for the development of institution-level data strategies that are foundational to all levels of the ecosystem, including students, institutions, states, and federal agencies. This paper acknowledges the state and federal interests in the college/university IR function--its resources and leadership--because IR is a core part of the ecosystem of postsecondary data. As such, there are roles at the institution, state, and national levels in establishing individual and overall data strategies to align and coordinate existing and future data collections. This paper is part of the larger series "Envisioning the National Postsecondary Data Infrastructure in the 21st Century." In August 2015, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) first convened a working group of national postsecondary data experts to discuss ways to move forward a set of emerging options for improving the quality of the data infrastructure in order to inform state and federal policy conversations. The resulting paper series presents targeted recommendations, with explicit attention to related technical, resource, and policy considerations.