Internationalization Work Group 2019-12-20

Owned by Eric Jansson
Last updated: Jan 06, 2020
2 min read

Participants

  • Stephen Fuqua
  • Chris Moffatt
  • Ed Comer
  • Linda Feng
  • Gene Garcia 
  • Don Hutchings
  • Craig Jordan
  • Eric Jansson
  • Gabrielle Garonzik

Notes

The agenda was to review the "Round Up" summary - see meeting materials. Notes from the discussion were added directly to that document, but some points summarized below as well.

There were some initial questions about the outputs and timelines for the group. Eric noted that the hope is to get to outputs that can help others in the community to react to the work, as in the absence of any artifacts, we can't take the community pulse. See the charter. It is also appropriate for the work group to propose other outputs along the way, or to discuss shifting the charter.

Proposed Alignment with IMS Specs
One Roster and Edu API are key products
Not yet discussed: How much change can Ed-Fi absorb?
Comment:Timing is good due to the work happening for Edu API. And when you talk about alignment, this can be two-way where IMS adjusts its model as well.
Comment: Feels like there is a lot of natural convergence and so having the awareness across the ecosystem can allow us to be deliberate about continuing towards convergence.


Proposed Strategic Use of "Generic" Elements for Flexibility
Perhaps DDD less critical or moved downstream
Comment: The devil will be in the details but it is a good discussion point for this group.


Proposed References in API Behavior
Prioritizing data movement over references resolving.
In general, we want references to resolve but there may be cases where we should prioritize movement.
So does this mean there should be a way for local settings to adjust these requirements?
Comment: A good summary of what we seem to be saying. It's tricky because it may mean the local system may need to account for eventual consistency instead of immediate consistency. So puts some work on the part of the local system.
Comment:This is a very use case driven idea. Gets into responsibilities and sources and uses of data. Driving the requirements but ultimately we're looking at essential versus eventual consistency.
Comment: Discussions around scenarios and requirements is a strong way to get to a more specific discussion. Curious to hear from Ed-Fi's point of view, what scenarios will get us the most practical application points? Can help us focus.
Comment:If you look at the FHIR spec, Healthcare is a collection of extremely disparate systems. And to expect those to start referencing the others properly is not realistic. So even if we have use cases, which is a great idea, we also need to expect these are going to be very different in the reality of the environment.


Proposed Adopting Internationalization Norms
Names and vocabulary, addresses, strings with language attributes and the like seem to be across the board a good path.


Proposed Consistent Approach to Associating People with Orgs
Possibly using membership and roles
Generic is good but don't want to go too far as some associations don't make sense. E.g., PersonSectionMembership versus StudentSectionMembership.

Proposed Person Entity
Seems to be agreed as a need across the board.
- Raised but not yet Discussed
Key and Identity of Entities
Soft Deletes (based on Gene's MS model share)
Comment: Interested to know how the environment views this. Does feel there is a need to modernize this approach.

Discussion (Quick) FHIR Specs
Slide deck discussing comparison.
To pick back up when we reconvene in 2020.

Materials