GAT Meeting - 2019-5-23
- Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
Agenda
- Ed-Fi executive update
- Tech Congress report out
- Proposed changes to Ed-Fi Certification
- Review of proposed Finance API from Finance WG
- Governance health metrics
- Governance activities at the Ed-Fi Summit
Link to meeting PPT
Participation
Members:
- dean.folkers
- Veronica Amundson
- Nancy.Smith
- hochst
- Mark Racine (Unlicensed)
- satish.pattisapu
- Jon Berry (Unlicensed)
- Eric Miller (Deactivated)
- Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
- Jami O'Toole (Deactivated)
- Troy Wheeler (Deactivated)
- Maureen Wentworth
Support:
Meeting Minutes
Refer to the meeting PPT for additional details on the meeting minutes and discussions.
When available, meeting minutes should be read, and any corrections sent to Chris.
Introduction of New Members
The GAT welcomed four new members to the group:
- Veronica Amundson , Pittsburgh Public Schools - representing the Technical Advisory Group
- Nancy.Smith , Ed-Fi Alliance - interim representative of the TPDM work group
- Jon Berry (Unlicensed) , Infinite Campus - at-large appointment to represent SIS vendors
- Eric Miller (Deactivated) , Illuminate- at-large appointment to represent Ed-tech vendors
Tech Congress Report Out
The technical congress report out was reviewed, and it was noted that governance activities are involved in a number of the actionable follow ups, including the formation of 2 new work groups and 3 special interest groups.
New community work groups:
New special interest groups:
- Strategies for Data Out from the ODS/API
- Open Source Rules Engine and Validation API
- Ed-Fi Integration with Google Classroom
A call for participation for these new activities was published in the most recent Ed-Fi newsletter, and can be found here.
Proposed Changes to Ed-Fi Certification
Eric Jansson reviewed the context and motivations for making refinements to Ed-Fi certification, and led the group through the current proposal, which included Ed-Fi staff-recommended aspects, as well as open questions for the GAT (see the meeting deck for more details on these). Some of the notable discussion points and recommendations from the meeting follow:
- Customer references
- Change the terminology to refer to "verification" rather than "reference".
- Broad agreement to collect from 3 LEA's, 1 of which is provided prior to technical certification, and require these to be from LEA-centric implementations (vs. state reporting).
- References (or verifications) can be based on either a production or pilot implementation, and are encouraged, but not required, to be from different geographies/states.
- Noted that some LEA's may be restricted from providing references due to legal directives
- Collecting data domains being shared
- The GAT recommended that certification record should provide links to additional information that can be optionally supplied by the certifying vendor, such as details of what data fields are mapped and supplied as part of the integration. This would replace the proposal to capture what domains are in use by references.
- There was consensus that the certification record should indicate whether or not the certified provider charges fees to the certified functionality.
Aspects that require more discussion include:
- Providing waivers for providers unable to provide three references
- Discussion of the suggestion from John Raub (via email as he was not able to attend the meeting ) that Ed-Fi certification incorporate information from SEA certifications
The Alliance proposes to convene a subset of GAT members to review and make a final proposal to the GAT at the June meeting.
Conclusion
The GAT ran out of time to discuss the remaining agenda topics, which will be carried forward to the next meeting.
Action Items
- GAT members to indicate if they would like to participate in the finalization of certification program refinements