Introduction
Welcome to the temporary site for the Education Sector ICT work programme. These pages contain general information about the business and governance of the cross-agency ICT work programme, including projects planned and underway.
The development of a permanent site is one of the items in the Education Sector work programme – we would hope to launch it in late 2007.
For any information regarding the Education Sector ICT work programme, please email: ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz [no spam]
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Education Sector ICT overview
Expenditure in ICT across early childhood, schools, tertiary education organisations and government agencies represents a significant investment. The Education Sector ICT Standing Committee (Standing Committee) was established in September 2003 to oversee the collaborative development and use of ICT across the education sector by taking a whole of sector approach, thereby avoiding duplication of effort and higher compliance costs.
The Standing Committee comprises the chief executives of Career Services rapuara, Education Review Office, New Zealand Qualifications Authority, New Zealand Teachers Council, Tertiary Education Commission and National Library of New Zealand, with the Secretary for Education as Chair.
Since the establishment of the Standing Committee, there has been a focus on:
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developing a more collaborative culture amongst the agencies
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how investment in ICT can support increased system performance, i.e. student achievement, relevance to stakeholders, quality teaching and affordability to students, government and employers; and
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developing joint approaches to governance of IT in the sector.
Key outputs for the Standing Committee include:
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ICT Strategic Framework for Education
The ICT Strategic Framework for Education (Strategic Framework) is the mechanism to guide and coordinate ICT investment towards the government’s vision of improved education outcomes. IT seeks to improve learner achievement in an innovative education sector, fully connected and supported by the smart use of ICT. The Strategic Framework is aligned with, and supports, the government’s goals and education priorities as well as the e-Government and National Digital Strategies, and the international e-Framework for Education and Research, to ensure the benefits of increased collaboration and cooperation between national and international partners are realised.
After initial consultation with education sector representatives, the Strategic Framework was released in mid-December for broader consultation across all areas of the education sector. Submissions were due by mid-March and the feedback is being collated and analysed. The input received from stakeholders will help inform the next iteration of the Strategic Framework (2007-08), by enabling us to determine what the priorities and goals are for education organisations in relation to ICT, and the usefulness of the Strategic Framework in guiding ICT investment in the future.
All documentation relating to the ICT Strategic Framework for Education consultation is available here.
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Education Sector Architecture Framework
The Education Sector Architecture Framework (ESAF) is a cross-sector suite of projects delivering core common or ‘shared’ services to the education sector. These shared services will enable education sector participants to share a common understanding of data and information; to transfer information based on business rules; to identify themselves; to authorise access to services and information; and to locate services and information within the sector.
Examples of these shared services include:
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Education Sector Authentication/Authorisation (ESAA): a single sign-on and identity management service for the education sector to support a seamless link to all relevant education sector services, systems and resources. Stage 1 of ESAA provides a fully functional authentication and authorisation service across five selected NZQA, TEC and MoE applications within the tertiary sector (replacing the legacy Single Internet Authentication (SIA) service.) Stage 2 (2007) will roll out the ESAA service to a wider range of education sector applications. The ESAA service will be supported by the Sector Service Desk (formerly the Tertiary Helpline). For more information, contact the Sector Service Desk on 0800 422 599 or email ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz [no spam]
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Education Sector Integration Services (ESIS): a set of services to support information technology interoperability between organisations and systems, eliminating the need for the point-to-point interactions that exist today and improving access to, and management of, shared sector data. The first stage of this project focuses on school data exchange processes and will extend to include tertiary and early childhood processes.
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Education Sector Data Model (ESDM): a sector data model has been produced that defines a common framework for shared sector data. It defines a logical model of shared sector data to facilitate management of and access to shared sector data, and it defines sector agencies’ data custodianship responsibilities (i.e. it identifies the master copy of data and who is responsible for its upkeep).
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Education Sector Federated Search (ESFS): a search brokerage service which connects to key sector and international electronic catalogues in order to provide a sole point of access to educational related information. Its objectives include more effective sector searching; greater satisfaction with sector portals; better decisions through better information; and participation in global resource-sharing. Going forward, ESFS is looking to expand the number of collections it searches and the number of websites that the search tool sits on. (A pilot of the ESFS service can be found at the eLearn website)
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Education Sector Metadata Schema (ESMS): enabling a more efficient and effective discovery of education-related resources by using a standard means of describing resources across different repositories. Its objectives include improved functionality and accuracy of sector searches; more efficient metadata management within the sector; and greater interoperability in sector metadata management.
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CLiK (Connecting Learning Information and Knowledge)
CLiK is a New Zealand Education sector project that will provide an effective web presence for the education sector by building an integrated platform with business process management tools; effective data searching and management; and, other collaborative tools and services, such as online communities. CLiK is a scalable solution for New Zealand’s education sector long term.
The CLiK platform integrates three pieces of software:
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FileNet content management system;
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BEA web logic server; and
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Verity K2 searching tool.
The platform, and its tools and services, will be leveraged by many websites, including the Ministry of Education’s Minedu site and Te Kete Ipurangi The Online Learning Centre, a repository for learning materials used by teachers.
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Other Projects
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edCentre: The online gateway to New Zealand Education, which assists first time and infrequent users find electronic education information and services, and promotes consistency of content and related processes across the agency websites.
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National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA): This digital archive collects, preserves in perpetuity, and makes accessible documents in all media that are part of New Zealand’s cultural heritage. It is being created to preserve New Zealand’s digital memory and is a significant building block in New Zealand's National Content Strategy. The development of the archive is a collaborative project between the Ministry of Economic Development and other government agencies, and is led by the National Library.
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Digital Research Repositories: Three projects are underway that are developing and implementing a resource discovery function for New Zealand’s tertiary sector. New Zealand is also actively participating in an Australian digital research repository project (RUBRIC) to share learnings with the New Zealand education sector.
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Better Tertiary Education and Trade Training Decision Making: This new initiative by Career Services will enable learners to navigate and manage their way through tertiary and trade training information, which will ensure a more comprehensive understanding of their decisions and connections with the labour market. Detailed scoping and design work is currently underway for this initiative.
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Education Sector ICT Target Landscape
The education sector agencies are actively taking a leadership role in planning the co-ordinated use of ICT. Among other things, two key documents are under development:
1. A target state for early childhood, schools, tertiary and government agencies, along with a roadmap to achieve it;
2. A series of Business Architecture Models (BAM) encompassing the provision of Education at all levels.
For the target state, an architectural approach will be taken, which focuses on modelling the NZ education sector as a whole. This approach will focus on the services and components and their relationship to each other (administration, assessment, learning and infrastructure). From this a key planning tool will be created that will:
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Deliver a view of the sector that, through the governance process, will enable the co-ordinated planning of ICT initiatives;
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Clearly show who is responsible for what; and
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Allow all ICT initiatives to be able to be assessed against building towards the target state.
On behalf of the education sector agencies, the Ministry of Education has been modelling the business architecture of the education sector to facilitate the development of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based systems. Service orientation describes an architecture that uses loosely coupled services to support the requirements of business processes and users. This work is contributing to the development of the International e-Framework for Education and Research (see section below).
A series of Business Architecture Models are being created for the generic environments of Early Childhood, Schools and Tertiary. The series consists of:
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Business Competency Framework (BCF)
A BCF is a graphical diagram that provides a succinct overview of the major functions a business uses to achieve its goals. A BCF does not depict processes and data exchange but rather shows, at a high level, the sub functions that exist inside the major functions and the common services and infrastructure used across the business. BCFs provide a single graphical representation of a business.
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Business Element Model (BEM)
Business Element Models are chiefly an informing tool and a resource to support future planning. BEMs provide a single graphical representation of a business. This gives a consistent ‘big picture’, allowing anyone working in the business to see how the individual components of a business relate and depend on each other.
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Business Service Model (BSM)
A Business Service Model is a diagram that shows the services (processes) required to implement the Business Processes and, in so doing, identifies Process commonality across the Business Areas. A BSM is a way of looking at the interconnectedness of the different applications in a business, and provides an excellent resource when any future application development is being considered.
Of the three models, a BSM is the one that would usually be used to show a target state, whereas the BCF and BEM are more likely to show a current state.
Consultation with the education sector about the ICT Target Landscape will take place from April 2007. For more information, email ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz [no spam].
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International e-Framework for Education and Research
The New Zealand Ministry of Education (on behalf of the Standing Committee and the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Kingdom’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). JISC supports further and higher education by providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities to use ICT to support teaching, learning, research and administration.
The MOU between the Ministry of Education and JISC will see close cooperation between the two organisations around areas of mutual interest such as the development of the International e-Framework for Education and Research (e-Framework) initiative, middleware development and e-learning developments.
New Zealand now has partner status in the development of the e-Framework joining DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training, Australia), SURF (Netherlands), and JISC (U.K). The e-Framework initiative is exploring more flexible approaches to the technical infrastructures for e-learning, e-research and e-administration. The development of such a service-oriented technical framework, based on open standards, will maximise the flexibility, interoperability and cost-effectiveness of IT systems.
The purpose of the e-Framework is to
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Provide a strategic approach to technical infrastructure development within and across domains
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Provide a consistent technical vocabulary
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Provide a focal point for interaction with software developers and those providing services to education and research
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Act as a catalyst for the development of further specifications and standards
The e-Framework website will act as a knowledge base, puling together a wide range of information and making it available to partners, institutions and developers. The knowledge base will comprise:
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A set of services and their descriptions
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Sets of service usage models (SUMs)
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Sets of guides, methodologies and analyses.
For more information on the e-Framework, email ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz [no spam].
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Other international partnerships
In addition to its partnership with JISC and DEST, New Zealand is a participating member of:
IMS Global Learning Consortium: IMS GLC is a global, not for profit, member association that provides leadership in shaping and growing the learning and educational technology industries through collaborative support of Standards, Innovation, Best Practice and Recognition of Superior Learning Impact.
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training: An ISO and IEC International Standard embodies the essential principles of global openness and transparency, consensus and technical coherence. ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 endeavours to safeguard these principles through the use of processes and procedures in the development/production of International Standards and Technical Reports, representative of all its interested National Member Bodies (NB), and Liaison Organisations (LO).
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ICT Shared Services Business Unit
The ICT Shared Services Business Unit will provide ongoing support for joint education sector planning on ICT, and delivery of joint services enabled by ICT. To find out more about any of the initiatives outlined above, please contact the Shared Services Business Unit (ICT.Sector@minedu.govt.nz [no spam] or through Sector Service Desk 0800 422 599).
This Business Unit and the Sector Service Desk (formerly the Tertiary Helpline) sit within the Sector and Business Services division of the Ministry of Education, but work on behalf of the education sector agencies and the National Library.