5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards April 28 – 30, 2008 Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill Value of SIFA in pK12 Interoperability Dr. Larry Fruth Laurie Collins

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Interoperability: the ability of two or more diverse systems and organizations to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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!

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards SIS Network Accounts Cafeteria Library Transportation ? ? ? ? ?

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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!

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards End-Users and Developers: Specification / Certification Development Technical Development Business and Use Case Development This Can Help Us Get It Done! What Do We Need or Would Like to Do?

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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.

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Copyright © SIF Associatio n

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards SIF Agents Communicate with ZIS Assemble and process messages Aware of Applications Business Logic Data Objects Sets of information XML e.g. Student Demographics Zone Integration Server Software Routing Access Control Applications Existing Software Programs Applications Thomas Smith Jane Doe Teacher Sarah Jones Free Lunch

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Results New Student Registering for Enrollment into: *Student Information System*Directory Service Application *ID Card System*Library Automation System *Cafeteria Management System Typical School SIF School - 49 minute task- 4 minute task - 10 times data entered- 1 time data entry 45 minutes/student X 18,000 students= 6 FTE’s! 1/10 th the Time – 1/10 th the Risk

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Multiple Level Needs… 2 Identified Implementation Concepts: “Horizontal” “Vertical” Learning Management Grade Book Student Information System District/L A Zone State/Fed Zone

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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 National Usage and Activity Update

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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 SIFA Promoting Interoperability

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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 3 rd 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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.

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Tools Development Certification RFP Generation TA Development Pilot/POC Implement Support SIFA U Application Inventory TA Planning/Support Best Practices Specification Development Biz and Use Case Data Model / Definition Infrastructure Transport Audiences Served Local Education Agencies Regional Service Agencies State Education Agencies Governments Vendors / Implementers Post Secondary Institutions

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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 Anoka- Hennepin ISD, MN

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Copyright © SIF Association 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”

LEAInfo StudentDemographic StudentSnapshot SchoolInfo StudentSchoolHistory MarkValueInfo StudentCourseHistory StudentGradeSummary StudentAssessmentHistory Additional State Requirements Others: Current Coursework Program Participation Immunization Rank in Class Diploma Type Attendance Academic Tracks

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Copyright © SIF Association 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards WTC Fremont District #25 SIF 2.0 Test Harness Wyoming – SRE POC UW CC

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Wyoming Transcript Center

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Copyright © SIF Association 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 e- transcript from an LEA to Higher Ed institutions and translate them into various formats e.g. PESC-XML, SPEEDE/ExPRESS etc…

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards A student requests that transcripts are sent to schools that he or she is applying to 2. The clearing house sends the transcript request to the SRE SIF agent 3. The SRE SIF agent issues requests to the zone for the information it needs to create a transcript 4. The ZIS forwards the requests to the applications containing the transcript data 5. The applications send their responses to the ZIS 6. The ZIS forwards the responses to the SRE SIF agent 7. The SRE SIF Agent packages and sends the transcript data to the clearing house 8. The clearing house transforms the data into transcript formats preferred by the higher education institutions 9. The clearing house sends the transcripts to the higher education institutions SRE Data Flow

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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 Additional SRE POC Pilots

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards 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

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Q&A

5 th Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Dr. Larry Fruth, SIFA Executive Director Laurie Collins, SIFA Project Strategist