Agenda

Check-in – any updates or pressing items from the front lines?
Update on Ed-Fi events
Improving performance and efficacy of Ed-Fi API’s
1. Initial recommendations from the GAT sub-group
2. Review and discussion of related Alliance-led initiatives
3. Next Steps
Update on Ed-Fi Starter Kits
Wrap Up

Refer to the PPT (which can be found here) for additional details on the meeting minutes and discussions.

When available, meeting minutes should be read, and any corrections sent to Chris.

Participation

Members:

Support:

nwilson, rrozzelle

Meeting Minutes

Debbie Dailey from Indiana DOE was welcomed to her first meeting of the GAT.

Agenda Item #1: Check-in – any updates or pressing items from front lines members

INSITE – Have their first research project going through review by Indiana University Institutional Review Board to ensure that the appropriate protocols are being followed regarding student data and research usage. The project is focused on identifying gaps in how students have been identified for IEP or sped services pre and post pandemic
Wisconsin: Moving from on-premises to Azure, and interested in experience or practices that can be shared. Debbie from Indiana said they made the transition and she is happy to put John in touch with their technical staff.
Indiana: Focused on modernization efforts including implementing Ed-Fi – in the process of onboarding all districts. They are going with a positive attendance model and have 25 million student records (1.2 million students), and expect to have 200 million attendance records by end of day; power of Azure is letting them receive data at this rate.

Agenda Item #2 - Update on Ed-Fi events

Ed-Fi Exchange Live will be on June 9 and 10 and will be 100% virtual with a mix of live and pre-recorded sessions. Registration fee is $35.
The Ed-Fi Summit is being planned for November 2021 and will be a hybrid event.
Tech Congress 2022 will be in San Diego on April 6-8, 2022. It will be in person with virtual options.
In-the-Weeds with Ed-Fi will begin weekly meetups to connect technical contributors in April 2021.

Agenda Item #3: Improving Performance and Efficacy of APIs

Update from GAT sub-group – John Raub

Sub group has held 3 meetings so far
Focused on the first 2 of 4 key focus areas to ensure successful integrations:
- Improve API error response and handling
- Provide new vendors and agencies with better information to get started
- Collision of LEA/SEA data collections
- Informed vendor selections
Initial recommendations to address the top 2 focus areas are:
- Identify 10/20 highest impactful errors and return more meaningful response to help calling system process the errors – delegate to TAG
- Develop a strategy to cut down on the number of errors
- Improved onboarding documentation for new vendors and agencies
- Real-world sample data sets for certifying new vendors.
Comments:
- INSITE has created docs that identify patterns of errors – ready to share to a public domain for external input for other vendors beyond those used by INSITE districts.
- Wisconsin: High error rates cause performance issues at peak data transfer times, which raises the API issues to a high priority.
- PowerSchool: The approach will help both vendors and agencies.
- INSITE: improves transparency and helps vendors and agencies plan better.

Related Alliance-led Initiatives

The Alliance is pursuing 3 additional strategies to help with API performance and efficacy:
- Converge demand into discreet use cases – define technical specifications and incent vendors to implement those specifications – aimed at new adopters as starter kits – legacy community to also be addressed with similar process with community involvement.
- Tackle collision of SEA/LEA data collection requirements – convene overlap/joint meetings between SEA and LEA governance groups and rely on GAT to mediate – select key areas to focus on, such as: course codes, attendance, duration, student modality.
- Aggregate and prioritize integration issues – vendor-integration reporting page using Tech Docs and Tracker ticket entry page – capture current issues to help prioritize efforts and pass to SEA/LEA joint sessions.
Comments:
- Wisconsin – student modality is a good example of why this is needed.
- INSITE - seconded – need to try to get LEAs and SEAs using the same set of data.
- Boston – LEA voice at the table is often missing – SEAs drive much of the needs and specifications – need to consider LEA needs such as adding modality to the transportation process to ensure students can get to school. Collaborative Work Group does not fully address LEA needs yet.
- Wisconsin – suggested a House/Senate and joint committee analogy for this process.
- Jami – how do we identify and prioritize issues – Chris, by using vendor-integration reporting process.
- Troy – need to promote integration issue reporting process to get folks to actively contribute.
- Wisconsin – they use UserVoice to capture customer needs and run past an advisor group.
- Rio Rancho – as an LEA they are the least involved in the Tracker and email conversations – how will they (small LEAs) be part of the conversation? Happy cares most about reporting and what fields to include – need work groups to work together on short term challenges – need to offer a voice to all.
  - Chris – use work groups as point of intersection: SEA WG, Collab WG and RVWG.
- Nebraska – where is tension or competition to bring in other contributors to these integration issues to the discussions (CEDS API – for example). How do these get on the table?
  - Wisconsin – exactly – saw this conflict of interests with digital equity and CCSSO – need to better align the external entities (CEDS, CCSSO, feds, etc.).
  - Troy – bring CEDS work and issues to the GAT to help connect efforts – add as a standing agenda item for external organizations for all to contribute.
- Indiana: Curious how wide the input net is cast? For example, are CTEs and Special Ed Coops represented? How wide is input on some of these priorities? A lot of different use cases ultimately drive how to set up those models and how are we getting that input?
  - Chris - lets cast the input net very wide
- Wisconsin – how can we learn more about what the feds are thinking?
- Troy – consider guest speakers to GAT to help stay informed.
From Chat Log
- Jami - MSDF is co-funding some CGCS interop work. It is likely to be standards agnostic and unlikely to get into the weeds of each standard. Notionally, it is set up to help districts and states figure out how to use procurement as lever to increase vendor adoption of the district/SEA standards of choice for their given use case.

Agenda Item #4: Update on Starter Kits

We ran out of time, so attendees are encouraged to review the slides for this topic and respond with any questions.

Agenda Item #5: Wrap up – April meeting topics

Review of charters for new work groups
End-of-life for Tech Suite 2
Update on CGCS project (Jami)
Externalities (CEDS, CCSSO, federal collections)

Action Items

Add Jami to next GAT meeting agenda to share the CGCS work.
Also add efforts to determine action on/response to/etc. to agenda.

Next meeting: April 29, 2021

Ed-Fi Governance

GAT Meeting - 2021-03-25