Transcript SIFA - Value of Standards in PK12 Interoperability

5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
April 28 – 30, 2008
Hyatt Regency Washington
on Capitol Hill
www.PESC.org
Value of SIFA in pK12 Interoperability
Dr. Larry Fruth
Laurie Collins
5th Annual Conference
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Interoperability:
the ability of two or more diverse systems
and organizations to exchange information
and to use the information that has been
exchanged
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Identifying Needs
• Eleven years ago a group of US school districts
convened numerous software vendors whose
applications did not share data leading to
numerous operational inefficiencies.
• Together this new community identified the
initial interoperability needs for the seamless
data transfer to run the business of schools and
support student data usage.
SIF was Born!
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Cafeteria
SIS
?
?
?
Network
Accounts
?
?
Library
Transportation
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Building a Community
• As conversations continued with additional needs
identified, this growing group required a formal
organization of the work and the various players in
schools interoperability.
• A non-profit entity was established to facilitate
conversations and organize the work. Schools,
government agencies, developers and vendors all
have an equal community vote.
The SIF Association (SIFA) was Born!
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Schools Interoperability Framework
• Non-profit membership organization which began 10 years ago
and is now made up of over 1,400;
– Schools, Regional Service
– National and International Government Agencies
– pK-12 Educational Technology Companies and,
– Other educational organizations
• Community jointly building XML Specifications for software to
share data quickly, dynamically and securely along with
Implementation Support Tools
• The Specification is available free at www.sifinfo.org
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This Can
Help Us
Get It
Done!
End-Users
and
Developers:
Business and
Use Case
Development
What Do We
Need or
Would Like
to Do?
Technical
Development
Specification /
Certification
Development
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Solutions Development
Business Case
“What do we want?”
Glossary
“What do we mean?”
Scope
“What will we do?”
Use Cases
“What will it solve?”
Impact Analysis
“What is the affect?”
Resource/Time Estimate “What do we need?”
Ongoing analysis among numerous stakeholders.
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SIF Implementation Specification
• Not a product but a “blueprint”
for managing school data
• Describes the data (what) +
infrastructure (how)
• Works cross platform via web
interfaces
• “Platform Independent Vendor
Neutral”
• Has a mature, developed
Certification Program
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Thomas
Smith
Zone Integration Server
• Software
• Routing
• Access Control
Applications
Sarah
Jones
Free Lunch
Applications
• Existing Software Programs
Thomas
Smith
SIF Agents
• Communicate with ZIS
• Assemble and process
messages
• Aware of Applications
Business Logic
Data Objects
• Sets of information
• XML
• e.g. Student
Demographics
Jane
Doe
Teacher
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Results
New Student Registering for Enrollment into:
*Student Information System *Directory Service Application
*ID Card System
*Library Automation System
*Cafeteria Management System
Typical School
- 49 minute task
- 10 times data entered
SIF School
- 4 minute task
- 1 time data entry
45 minutes/student X 18,000 students=
6 FTE’s!
1/10th the Time – 1/10th the Risk
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Multiple Level
Needs…
State/Fed
Zone
Learning
Management
2 Identified
Implementation
Concepts:
• “Horizontal”
• “Vertical”
Student
Information System
Grade
Book
District/L
A Zone
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National Usage and Activity Update
Validation as a part of:
• US Dept. of Education National Ed Tech Plan
• Migrant Education Student Data Exchange
• Child Nutrition Act Re-Authorization Bill
Expertise:
• Lead Agency providing Technical Assistance for
Longitudinal Data System Grant Program
•Lead support agency for the development of a
National pK12 Data Model
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SIFA Promoting Interoperability
• Student Records Exchange Pilots
• EDEN/EDFacts Alignment and Pilot Expansion
• Academic Content Repository
• Higher Education Alignment and Usage
• Data Quality Curriculum On-line Course
• LEA Resource Management Support
• Knowledgebase, Implementation Tools and SIFA University
• Student Health Records
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SIF Certification
• Officially launched on April 25, 2003
• Voluntary program of the SIF Association, open to any product
meeting the conformance requirements.
• Formal process built collectively by the SIFA membership.
Suppliers of certified products warrant and represent that the
product meets all the applicable conformance requirements.
• Provides 3rd party validation of applications
• Confidence for purchasers / validation for vendors
• Tests functionality and verifies data delivery
• There are currently 92 applications certified
• States developing “profiles” for vendors to adhere to
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Current Status and Future Directions
 Utilized to serve over 12 million students, teachers,
coordinators in 45 states - 6 countries
 Legislatively mandated in states/internationally
 Demanded/suggested by USED, states, schools and
international governments in dozens current and planned
RFP’s
 Expanding from student/administrative data into
curriculum, content and other industry “verticals” including
supporting the teaching and learning
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SIF Future - Linkages
• Linking of Student Learning and Performance Data
with Curricular Resources
• Linking of Educational Data Systems with Other Child
Support Data Systems (i.e. Health and Human
Services, Criminal Justice, etc)
• Linking of pK12 Data Systems to Higher Education
Data Systems for Articulation and Dual Enrollment.
USED now supporting SIFA and PESC collaborative
on pK20 standard.
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Specification
Development
Audiences Served
Local Education Agencies
Regional Service Agencies
State Education Agencies
Governments
Vendors / Implementers
Post Secondary Institutions
Biz and Use Case
Data Model /
Definition
Infrastructure
Transport
Tools
Development
Certification
RFP Generation
TA Development
Pilot/POC
Implement
Support
SIFA U
Application Inventory
TA Planning/Support
Best Practices
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Rationale and Need
“The ability to transmit a transcript does
not excite me, but student record
exchange between LEAs does and is
badly needed in areas of high student
mobility.”
Patrick Plant, Director of Technology for AnokaHennepin ISD, MN
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What is SRE?
• Student Record Exchange = SRE
• Established in the SIF Implementation
Specification 2.0 released October 15, 2006
• Allows the ability for a secure and
automated transfer of data about a whole
students record or the subsets of that data
e.g. e-Transcripts, IEP records, additional
programmatic areas
• Eliminates the need for “sneaker-net” or
“fax-gate”
Copyright © SIF Association
SchoolInfo
StudentDemographic
StudentSnapshot
LEAInfo
MarkValueInfo
StudentSchoolHistory
StudentCourseHistory
Others:
Current
Coursework
StudentGradeSummary
Program
Participation
Immunization
Rank in Class
Diploma Type
Attendance
Academic
Tracks
Additional State Requirements
StudentAssessmentHistory
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SIF - SRE Components
• Student Record Exchange
– Wrapper object to contains all needed SRE “pieces”
• Student Demographic Record
– Identifies the student
• Student Academic Record
– Identifies the schools or institutions student attended
• Student Special Education Record
– Provides special education placement and participation
data
• Student Record Content
– Container object for non-SIF data
Copyright © SIF Association
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Wyoming SRE Proof of Concept
• What?
– Develop an agent using SIF 2.0 Student Record
Exchange Objects
• Agent would need to respond to requests
• Agent would need to form valid SIF 2.0 XML
• Agent would need to test against the SIF 2.0 test harness
– Collect real “e-Transcirpt” records for use as test data
– Build and test the SIF 2.0 Test Harness
– Test movement of data in a controlled test
environment
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UW
CC
WTC
SIF 2.0 Test
Harness
Fremont District #25
Wyoming – SRE POC
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Wyoming Transcript Center
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Naperville District to HE POC Pilot
• Why?
– Need to establish a district to HE pilot of SRE
– Need to prove we could move a e-transcript
– Need to prove we could move an e-transcript
“using a full SIF Methodology”
– Need to validate that we could move the etranscript from an LEA to Higher Ed institutions
and translate them into various formats e.g.
PESC-XML, SPEEDE/ExPRESS etc…
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2. The clearing house
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sends the transcript
request to the SRE SIF
on Technology &
9.agent
The clearing house
7. The SRE
Standards
sends the transcripts
toSIF Agent
and
sends
3. The
SREthe
SIF agent
the higherpackages
education
transcript
datarequests
to the to the
issues
institutions
clearing
house
zone for
the information
6.
The
forwards the
8. The clearing house it needsZIS
to
create
aforwards the
4. ThetoZIS
responses
the
SRE
transforms the data into
transcript
requests
SIF agent to the
transcript formats
applications containing
preferred by the higher
the transcript data
education institutions
1. A student requests
that transcripts are
sent to schools that he
or she is applying to
5. The applications
send their responses
to the ZIS
SRE Data
Flow
28
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Additional SRE POC Pilots
• Naperville IL to Las Cruses NM a full Student
Record Exchange – interstate record transfer
with a clearing house using SIF methodologies
of request / response
• District to district using the SIF Student Locator
to locate and move a full student record within a
state without using a clearing house using SIF
methodologies of an event driven request /
response
• District to district / HE between different vendors
to show and prove interoperability between SIF
and PESC
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• How PESC and SIF are working together
– Identify the needs between pK-12 and HE to
data movement
– Find the common touch points between work
groups or form joint work groups
– Work on common pK-12 / HE data definitions
• Develop and promote joint proof of concepts
• Continue to evangelize the need to use
standards
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Q&A
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Standards
• Dr. Larry Fruth, SIFA Executive
Director
–[email protected]
• Laurie Collins, SIFA Project Strategist
–[email protected]
www.sifinfo.org