Introduction

Introduction

The Reporting and Visualizations Work Group (RVWG) is a community work group within the Ed-Fi Governance structure

The AVWG’s main purpose is to evaluate the value of the Ed-Fi Dashboards bring to the community and explore the future of this offering alongside options for the Ed-Fi Alliance to contribute meaningful tools for the community to support adoption of the Ed-Fi Data Standard. This work group represents the perspectives of SEAs, LEAs, vendors and thought leaders to the Ed-Fi Governance processes with the purpose of making the Ed-Fi data and technology standards more widely adopted and used.  The AVWG may make recommendations through the Ed-Fi Governance processes about investment in the Ed-Fi product roadmap and business strategies. 

The organizing charter for this work group can be found at Analytics and Visualization Organizational Charter.

Subgroups

The Analytics and Visualization Work Group currently has 2 smaller subgroups, each which meets regularly to provide input and direction on community work, and to propose technical or other changes necessary to meeting the overall workgroup mission as defined in the charter. 

• Use Case subgroup.  Discusses and develops use cases and proposes target areas to be addressed by the community and via the technical artifacts.
• Technical subgroup. Provides input on the technical roadmap for the Ed-Fi Dashboards, codebase maintenance plan along with a proposed budget for all technical activities necessary to execute on the proposed Ed-Fi Dashboard proposed roadmap.

Meeting activities of the subgroups are published under Analytics and Visualization Work Group Meetings and are indicated as a subgroup meeting.

Membership

Any education organization, vendor, thought partner or standards body (e.g. CEDS or IMS Global) that is in good standing with the Ed-Fi Alliance may have representative members on the AVWG.  Members are responsible for:

1.      Identifying the primary contact for the organization

2.      Providing input and feedback on abstracts that are presented for review

3.      Registering and participating in the Ed-Fi polling process

4.      Participating in information sharing on practices and issue resolution

5.      Providing input and feedback on Ed-Fi data and technology standards

If you are interested in learning more about the AVWG and perhaps becoming a member, please express your interest by email to Governance@Ed-Fi.org 

Membership in the AVWG is ongoing unless the individual requests to be removed from the membership roster or has not participated in any AVWG related activity or conference calls.

Resources

that has been established to propose the future direction for the Alliance’s investment in providing a free toolset  that “lights up” the Ed-Fi Data Standard.

The origins and early success of the Ed-Fi vision and mission are deeply rooted in a free toolset for reporting and visualizations. To demonstrate the value of the Ed-Fi Data Standard, the Alliance and MSDF invested in successive releases of the Ed-Fi Dashboards. This free toolset successfully showcases the value of, and provides context around, what data can look like using the Ed-Fi data standard as the foundation, and has been instrumental in the adoption of Ed-Fi by education agencies.

However, while the Ed-Fi Dashboards excel at “lighting up” the data standard, and offer a clear value proposition to non-technical stakeholders, the current offering is complex and costly to deploy, upgrade and maintain, has an aging code base, and has low utilization in the current ecosystem. This has lead the Alliance to consider whether or not to adjust their investment and strategy in this aspect of the Ed-Fi solution.

Through its governance process, the Alliance has affirmed that continued investment in a toolset that “lights up” the data standard, and is made available to the community for free as part of Ed-Fi Core, is important to deliver on two key strategic goals:

1. Demonstrate the Ed-Fi value proposition to stakeholders outside of IT departments.
2. Provide an “equity” option for education agencies that do not have either budget or technical resources to buy or develop an Ed-Fi-based reporting tool.

Membership

• To join the work group, please consult: Community Work Groups Operations Charter#Membership
• To see a list of current members, consult RVWG - Current Members

Resources

• Meeting notes are published under the RVWG Meetings sections.
• Collaborative documents are managed in an

• RVWG Google Docs folder (members should request access as needed).