Agenda

1. Setting Priorities for 2021

2. GAT Membership Rotation & Status of Work Groups

3. Vendor Rating System – Report Out & Discussion

4. Show & Tell – Ed-Fi Starter Kits

Link to meeting PPT

Participation

Members:

• dean.folkers
• Billy Buchanan
• Happy Miller (Unlicensed)
• Monica Hogan
• Mark Olofson
• John Raub
• jennifer.downey
• dougquinton
• Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
• Maureen Wentworth
• Jami O'Toole (Deactivated)
• Troy Wheeler (Deactivated)

Support:

• nwilson, rrozzelle

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.

Setting Priorities for 2021

Troy explained that this is the time of year that the Alliance begins to align resources and planning for the next year. The top 3 identified priorities for 2021 are:

• Customer Success Model
  • Cost effective customer support model strategy and execution
  • Training and a revised community engagement strategy
• Vendor Strategy
  • A 360 approach to engaging vendors
• Starter Kit maturation / promotion
  • Reducing cost and complexity while increasing access and impact.

Questions and comments from the GAT included:

• Reports/dashboards from a data out strategy are very important to many (smaller to mid-size) districts
• Lack of vendor adoption of APIs is causing LEAs to use Data Import and creating more work for them
• Do the starter kits include basics for reports/visualizations for the use cases?
• Can existing implementations (LEAs and collaboratives) help to market and build the case with their peers and/or states for adoption of API standards in their purchases? What incentives would be effective?
• SIS vendors struggle with the ROI – state implementations are not off-the-shelf core implementations, and each must be maintained/modified each year at significant cost.
• Some of the LEA data is in state modules in the SIS and are not pulled by the core API. LEAs have to either pay to have the API customized or populate the data in 2 places.
• SISs have become the “Swiss Army Knife” for education agencies and have been highly modified and customized across the various states and districts, making adherence to a core Ed-Fi API difficult if not impossible without significant investment ($500K to $750K).
• Should the Alliance be doing more to centralize district asks to vendors and convene vendors and districts to try to get more consistent data requirements and better alignment across the states?
• The Alliance could help put a wrapper around this issue to foster broader conversation around the why and how behind these issues.

Action Item: Follow up conversation with Jennifer and Doug re: state pain points and perhaps broker conversations with SEAs.

GAT Membership Rotation

Chris explained the rotation schedule below.  Billy is moving to a new job and this will be his last GAT meeting. The Alliance is extremely grateful for the volunteer service of GAT members. Those rotating off this year will be receiving a small token of our appreciation.

2020 Rotations

Anticipated 2021 Rotations

Chris also reviewed the recommendation to bring to a close (or move to inactive) the Finance Work Group (FWG) and Internationalization Work Group (IWG).

It was requested that the FWG and larger community be given an update on the status of the pilots in WI and AZ and options for moving forward with the finance domain changes and moving this to core before closing down the FWG.

Action Item: Communicate options to Ed-Fi community for moving forward with the finance domain changes and moving this to core before closing down the FWG.

Discussion Topic: Vendor Rating System

Rick reviewed the work done regarding an action item from the previous GAT meeting to determine what options are available for establishing a vendor rating system. The report can be found here.

The eventual desired result is a process that encourages and rewards vendors (most notably SIS vendors but not exclusively) to continuously improve their Ed-Fi integration work. This might include measurable types of performance metrics such as how well their products move data through the Ed-Fi API, the degree to which errors are minimized and how well the vendors interact with the LEAs to resolve issues and provide training. It does not include measures such as satisfaction with the degree to which vendors are willing to customize their integrations to a particular LEAs specific needs or how friendly or accommodating the vendor representatives might be. 

After researching well over a dozen options on the market today, it was determined that while all of the current vendor rating methods are good in their own right, none are currently providing the type of data that is needed to continuously improve the performance of vendor APIs for the Ed-Fi ODS. 

Given the overall intent of the vendor rating request and the lack of a strong fit for the intent, the recommended path forward is: 

1. Establish a set of metrics that can provide helpful information to vendors that want to continuously improve their APIs. See below for a starter set of metrics.
2. Fashion a survey that can be sent to Ed-Fi LEAs and SEAs that is built around the metrics.
3. Administer the survey, collect the data and analyze the results.
4. Provide the results to the vendors in a spirit of cooperative continuous improvement. Offer suggestions as to how their APIs could be improved.
5. If the data are published, do so in a positive way, perhaps by showing the top 3 or 5 best performing APIs.
6. Repeat the survey and process of recommending improvements annually.

Following are some categories for interoperability metrics:

• A measure of overall customer satisfaction, similar to the Net promoter score (see above)
• Vendor training
• Vendor responsiveness to resolve issues
• Ease of implementation of the API
• Quality of the data received
• Scalability and performance of the API
• State reporting

Discussion of the recommendation included the following:

• The approach is intended to be positive and constructive.
• Some vendors currently have tools in place to get customer feedback. There was a concern expressed for creating extra or duplicative work.
• There needs to be consideration for the vendor side of the issues such as a venue to discuss what had been problematic for them.
• Implementation of the recommendations could include a vendor focus group session to develop the metrics and survey process.
• Also, focus groups could be facilitated for interested vendors and their customers for the purpose of discussing options for improving API operability.

Action Item: Troy and Ed-Fi team to discuss the path forward for the vendor rating system recommendation

Action Items

• Follow up conversation with Jennifer and Doug re: state pain points and perhaps broker conversations with SEAs.
• Communicate options to Ed-Fi community for moving forward with the finance domain changes and moving this to core before closing down the FWG.
• Troy and Ed-Fi team to discuss the path forward for the vendor rating system recommendation

Next meeting: November 15, 2020 at 11:00 AM CST