New States SIG - 2023-08-16

Participants

Materials

Meeting Recording LINK

Agenda and Notes

• Introductions and purpose of this meeting
• Status updates from each state
  • Kansas 
    • Partner with DoubleLine
    • Migrating from 5.3 to 6.1 installation, not ready to upgrade in production
    • Getting API development
    • About ready to allow vendor access to 6.1 sandbox, ready by end of this week; vendor to develop SIS field and environment
    • Get in position to have up and functioning test system
    • Work with multiple SIS vendors (8)
      • PowerSchool (most districts), Synergy (most students), Infinite Campus. Skyward
  • Utah 
    • Utah Information Management
    • installing Ed-Fi base API in our environment
    • Not using out of box ODS
    • A month ago we stood up charter of account API
      • We call it rules for balance sheet account
      • In next few weeks to have end point data from vendors
    • Will use local account, local budget, local actuals
      • Finished local actuals last week
    • Use 7 different vendors
      
      • All financial vendors?
        • Finance, some are SIS
        • Assessment vendors ramping up
    • Communications from Skyward
      • Takes 3 months from publish our end-point to share information from their systems.
      • Anticipate will take longer
    • Not using ODS, only using API and data standard
      • Where is data stored?
        • Azure environment, setting up data lake
        • Using Cosmos
      • Interest to see how API performs with data lake storage
  • Vermont 
    • Work with 3 SIS vendors
    • We are making progress standing up test systems with education analytics. defining roles and responsibilities and getting folks access. We have met with Sis vendors, some are farther along than others. We also meet with South Carolina about developing a EDFI to CEDS IDS pipleine.
    • Vendor setting up prod environment
    • Customized API for data requirements
    • Have dev environments (sandbox) set up for vendors for next school year; comparing data from legacy system
      • PowerSchool in previous environment had several; now doing just 1 school for dev environment
      • Start send 23-24 real time starting this Winter
    • Customized API to description
      • Change descriptor to match what we have already
    • Parallel or pilot
      • Not using data for anything = PILOT
      • 5.3
      • EA will use 6.1
• Pain points and how our CST can assist
  • Utah
    • Connected with vendor
      • How long from publishing your API for vendors to connect to your system?
      • Skeptical that vendors can do quickly; anticipate to take closer to 6 months
    • Kansas
      • Maybe 6 to 8 weeks
      • From giving information to stand up sandbox
        • We switched version so don’t have anybody in sandbox yet
    • Vermont
      • We leave pieces in the model for them to test
      • It allows us to work on , convert VT source data from legacy system
      • Iterative process that took a whole year
      • Now about to connect to EA in 4-6 weeks once you release requirement
      • We have a very small vendor who is not meeting Ed-Fi requirement(not Ed-Fi certified) but meet our requirement; they are just getting data to us
    • Kathleen
      • Finance vendors may take longer as Ed-Fi is new to them
      • Skyward, PowerSchool have done Ed-Fi for a while and should be quicker
      • Assessment - depends on which one, some may be familiar with Ed-Fi
  • Vermont
    • Next steps after you get the data into ODS, tier that people work on
      • Data validation, middle tier analytics to feed errors on data type
    • Kathleen
      • There are agencies that do validation on ODS
      • In Ed-Fi Exchange, there is a validation tool
        • Several vendors use it and expand it for their own needs
    • Utah
      • Validation in data lake?
        • We are just focused on getting the data in first
          • Budget in beginning of year
          • Actuals info to get in more real-time
    • Kansas
      • We are working on validation
      • Portal for districts to see when data is coming in
      • Double Line is working on it - we are writing the rules
    • Vermont
      • We have EA, but don’t think they are doing validation
      • We are doing it ourselves
      • Interested to see examples of other users
        • Help Desk can show what is in the Exchange
        • Jon Hickams
        • Vermont will open a ticket if needed after they take a look at the Exchange tools first
      • Nate: There will likely be a few sessions at the Summit on Validations too
  • Kathleen
    • Reminder about Academy courses
  • Kathleen - Utah - let us know if need help with data mapping
    • Let us help us to see if there is alternative approach before doing an extension
    • We are looking at common extensions that may get incorporated in our core data model
  • Vermont - data extension
    • CEDS - Joining community group to add to option sets, when multiple states have same data
    • Ed-Fi - flexible, we can add option sets in
    • Mustafa
      • We get information from states to see if it’s a multiple state request
        • We consider work on it immediately; otherwise we work with the individual state as extension
        • We share analysis of extensions with community to see if other states can use
        • We try to align with CEDS
  • Kathleen
    • 1 x 1 monthly call is an option if needed
• Summit
  • Not able to attend
    • Brian (Kansas), Don (Utah)
    • Utah - chief program officer should attend

Next meeting 20 Sep 2023