SIS SIG - Meeting 4 - 2024.01.24

Participants

Agenda

1. Shared API resources. From our last meeting, we have completed some research on best practice with regards to how SEAs can handle access and authorization to these. 
2. Improving SEA Specifications Alignment. We talked about our program that reviews SEA specs and proposes tighter alignment with LEAs. We’d like to spend some time showing you the details of that and getting your feedback.
3. Updates and feedback on API error handling.
4. Time permitting: updates to SEA Playbook from SIS feedback- State Education Agencies - Implementation Playbook
   • Changed timelines
   • Recommend RFC process
   • Emphasize the creation of working relationships

Materials

Notes

Shared API resources

The slides were reviewed; these were the main points of discussion

• The SIS systems agreed that the Wisconsin solution should be recommended as a best practice
• However, they also pointed out that there were cases (e.g., in Texas) where the Wisconsin solution does not easily apply: where a single API resource has elements owned by different systems but the elements are logically under a single API resource.
• For these examples, the group explored the possibility that the current Ed-Fi technology could support these use cases (using API profiles - see API Profiles)
• SIS vendors also pointed out that there are practices elsewhere where there is multiple ownership of resources (e.g., in Arizona) that they don’t understand the need or logic for

Actions for next meeting

1. Using the Texas examples from the meeting show if and how it could be implemented without causing thrashing
2. Get the details on Arizona (what they are doing and why) and tee that up for conversation

Improving SEA Specifications Alignment

A summary of the work on SEA data standards alignment was reviewed; these were the main points of the discussion:

• The members liked the program to improve SEA alignment a lot and asked the Alliance to keep it going
• However, the SIS systems disagreed with the conclusion  that the states were staying most well semantically aligned, and pointed out that large chunks of business logic were falling on them as evidence that Ed-Fi's specifications were not being respected enough
• It was suspected that the disconnect was that we were not looking at the same SEA data model resources they were.

Actions for next meeting

• Identify the source of the misalignment of our conclusions and their experience and bring that back to the SIG. See if it suggests a way to improve the process and the current conclusions as to the state of SEA alignment

Updates and feedback on API error handling

The slides were introduced and there was little time for discussion. These will be discussed at the next meeting.