To gain the support of the education sector, the Architectural Framework must deliver interoperability solutions in a way that engages people. If we build it the right way, people will come. The solutions must embody the following Success Factors, which reflect the underlying ESAF principles.
- Maximise choice within an open standards framework
- Individual organisations need to have the freedom to choose the products that best meet their local needs. This will mean different things for different functions. In some cases, it will mean restricting choice to a set of products certified as meeting agreed sector interoperability standards. In other cases, it could mean organisations collaboratively choosing to standardise on a single product to provide a service. Or it could mean publishing standards and guidelines to which services are required to conform. It means that ESAF will set compliance standards but will not dictate products.
- Participants agree to forego right of veto
- Individual organisations have the right to participate fully in ESAF processes if they choose to do so. In participating, they agree to abide by the collective outcomes. The timing and level of compliance that individual organisations achieve will depend on their own business priorities and budgetary constraints. Where organisations are unable to comply with ESAF standards, they will bear the costs of non-compliance. They may not shift such costs to those with whom they wish to exchange information, without prior agreement.
- Ensure reciprocal benefits
- All interoperability solutions must make life easier for both the centre and the edges. This means ESAF will seek ways to rationalise technical infrastructure to free up people and financial resources that can then be put to direct educational use. It means presenting web services in a standard way, so that others can subscribe to them. It means simplifying administrative processes by looking at the end-to-end process flow, across organisation boundaries. It means that when we collect data, we then have an obligation to give information back with value added.
- Advance through proofs of concept
- There is a balance between taking the time to deliver robust, well-designed solutions (measure twice, cut once) and the imperative to show tangible benefits quickly (release early, release often). ESAF will structure its work programme around proofs of concept that deliver visible results in 6–9 month time boxes. This will impose a scope discipline on individual initiatives and give interested parties in the education sector an opportunity to influence the future direction of the services. It will also contribute to raising sector capability in incremental stages, while reducing the risk of delivering solutions that don’t get used. This approach is also known as evolutionary prototyping.
- Retain, share and grow knowledge
- The sector must retain control of its own intellectual property, while creating an environment in which knowledge can grow. It can achieve this through Open Data Standards? for information exchange. It can take advantage of international initiatives such as the Creative Commons. Where agencies commission bespoke software, they need to retain ownership rights and seek opportunities for software reuse. We can also explore the wide range of education-oriented Open Source Software? licensing options, where the author retains copyright while giving others the right to use, modify and contribute their modifications. With access to source code, knowledge grows.
- Increase diversity through standardisation
- This apparent paradox is at the heart of ESAF. One size does not fit all learners. New Zealand is becoming more culturally diverse, the curriculum is becoming broader and deeper, and there is increasing recognition of the need to support a range of different learning styles. ESAF is about acting always to increase the number of options learners have and helping them to make more informed choices. This means a process of ongoing rationalisation, done in a way that opens up opportunities to do things that weren’t possible before. The challenge will be to move people from dependence on proprietary solutions to open standards. It will mean educating the vendor community that closed solutions are inappropriate for the education sector.
The sector’s growing diversity means that one size will never fit all and freedom of choice remains critical. The sector doesn’t want to become an ICT monoculture. This means we need to build to agreed standards at the interfaces between systems, using common data element definitions. We need to emphasise code-mobility, so solutions can be readily reused. We need to promote development of specialist eServices providers, such as “authenticate this eKey” or “validate this NSI number”. We need to learn from interoperability initiatives in other sectors and other jurisdictions.
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