The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), responding to a need for systematic data collection and utilization for the effective management of increasingly complex institutions of higher education, appointed a design committee to develop a conceptual framework and guidelines for a management information systems project. The recommendations of this committee of representatives from institutions of higher education and state agencies in the West were reviewed and accepted by a larger representative committee. The substance of this report constitutes the basic recommendations of the design committee. The WICHE Management Information Systems Program is a regional cooperative 5-year project to encourage the development of management information systems with common data elements in institutions of higher education. The purpose of the information systems and data bases is to improve the capability of local institutions and agencies to allocate resources more effectively, and to provide comparable data from throughout the region and elsewhere on the cost of instructional programs by level of student, level of course, and field of study. The report presents the objectives, planned and anticipated phases of the project, and descriptions of data requirements for effective decision making on the allocation of resources. (WM)