The
Ministry knew by the fall of 2010 that BCeSIS had to be replaced. There had been a disastrous opening of school
where the system simply failed to deliver at a crucial time in the school
year. In addition, the Pearson corporation
bought out the company that developed the software for BCeSIS, the AAL
company. Pearson is expanding its reach
into all aspects of education by buying companies and closing down their
products. In effect, they are buying a
customer base for their existing products.
This is what Pearson did, when it told the ministry that the company would
stop supporting BCeSIS software as of 2013.
To
get an idea of how to move beyond these problems, the Ministry hired Gartner, a
technology consulting corporation, to look at BCeSIS, consult with users about
future directions and make recommendations.
The
consultants interviewed technology coordinators and people who had played a
role in BCeSIS. They also developed a
questionnaire and ask superintendents to identify who should be surveyed. In at least some cases, only administrators
and technology staff were identified for the survey.
The
consultants interviewed me as well.
The
report Gartner produced recommended that the province develop another
centralized system and that the province should buy off-the-shelf software that
could meet the system needs. You can find their report at http://www.bcedplan.ca/actions/technology/gartner-report-highlights.php
The
report said that everyone they interviewed, except the BCTF, essentially wanted
what BCeSIS was supposed to be—an “enterprise” system where all the data for
the system goes into a central database.
It noted that I had disagreed with this—I had said that it should be a
decentralized system where data was held locally and only data that needed to
be reported provincially should be drawn from the locally held database and
sent to a central database.
The
ministry then had another consultant contact people who had been contacted
before to see if they agreed with the Gartner recommendations.
In
a recent meeting, the ministry offered to brief the BCTF on the developments in
proceeding with the replacement system.
I
had a phone discussion on October 22 with Renate Butterfield, an Associate
Deputy Minister and this is some of the information from that meeting:
*It
will be an “enterprise-wide” system—meaning a single point database and access.
*It
will be based on a 10-year service contract—the ministry or districts won’t own
it. Rather, a company will provide the service.
*It
will not be just “off-the-shelf”—in other words, there will be programming to
meet the needs identified. This is
essential if it is to meet the changing needs of the BC Education Plan.
*Lots
of companies have expressed interest through the processes of requests for
information and qualifications to carry out a project of this size.
*The
request for proposals will be based on a description of the functional
requirements aimed at meeting the administrative needs, the teacher needs and
student and parent needs. Each would
have access to only a pre-determined level according to role.
*The
request for proposals will be issued at the end of November.
*The
functional requirements will be an important part of the request.
*The
ministry brought together 44 people over the last summer to create the
functional requirements document. They
say that some of those were teachers, but the BCTF was not asked to identify
participants, as far as I know.
*The
56 page list of functional requirements was posted on the ministry web site
this week. It can be found on the BC
Education Plan web site at www.bcedplan.ca/actions/technology.php.
*The
ministry is looking for feedback which must be posted by November 16. A web-based survey is on the ministry website
at http://www.bcedplan.ca/actions/technology/sis-feedback.php
*The
“Application Design Requirements” are
1) It
will be a single student record/data model
2) It
will be built on an information sharing/security model
3) It will include analytics and a data
warehouse (analytics tools have been developed by the ministry, including a
dashboard provided to districts)
4) It will include data retention for 55
years
5) It will be usable on mobile platforms
6) It should support attaching digital
files to student records
*The
ministry estimates that the cost of this system will be $10 each per student
for the board and the ministry. That, of
course, is only the cost of operating the system, not the hardware, training
and support locally required to actually run the student information system.
One of the dangers of consultation on technology issues is that people comfortable with the technology are more likely to respond to consultation. Since the day to day work of all teachers will be affected by the nature of the student information system, all teachers should spend some time looking at the functional needs.
Again,
the functional needs can be found here [www.bcedplan.ca/actions/technology.php.]
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