Notes From A Meeting With Ron Kleinman, Schools Information Framework Association, 21 July 2009

Notes from a Meeting with Ron Kleinman, Schools Information Framework Association, 21 July 2009

Ron Kleinman is Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for the Schools Information Framework Association (SIFA). During a trip to Washington DC, colleagues Arnie Miles and Tim Bornholtz and I met with Ron. He is well known to higher education’s Java development community because of his technical presentations at Jasig Conferences and Workshops. While working a Sun Microsystems Ron participated in a number of formal software standards development.

Summary

 In higher education there are at least five current real-time data transport networks under development or implementation or implemented similar SOAP-based messaging technologies. If these are not fully interoperable each college and university incurs additional installation and maintenance costs over the costs of a single network.

 The participants believe the best, and perhaps only, solution would begin with a collaborative standards effort by the existing and planned network initiatives to achieve a single “profile” of specifications.

 Based on prior experience there are incentives for dominant servicers not to quickly achieve full interoperability. This impedes standards development and technology adoption.

 Education has not considered, but could, being interoperable with government agencies as well especially since the OASIS e-Government initiative and profiles are now required for real-time processing with some colleges and universities (primarily government payments and student financial aid processes) and adoption appears to be growing.1

Purpose of the meeting

Several real-time data exchange networks are under development or enhancement. The purpose of this meeting was to further discuss the possibility of a common data transport specification or profile to avoid the installation and continuing maintenance costs associated with supporting multiple networks. Such message-based specifications are separate from content specifications specific to an application such as the exchange of admissions applications, transcripts, educational records, European Bologna process

1 Online data exchanges between U.S. research universities and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have been implemented. Volume is still limited, but demonstrates feasibility. Sweden uses Web Services to provide real-time data exchanges between and among universities and the national agency.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 1 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 documents, resumes, and student financial aid data. That is, a data transport network should exchange any business messages.

The Discussion

In previous conversations I had suggested that the OCSI specification was well designed, widely implemented (at least for middleware), and had several levels of specifications depending upon the needs. The OSCI specification is likely to be used by RS3G. Many international student offices will be using RS3G compliant software and services to implement the Bologna process. It will speed international enrollments and provide consistent education documentation.

Ron was quick to point out specifications and profiles are never adopted by a group without modification. He thought it would be useful for representatives of the organizations sponsoring data transport specifications and of schools, colleges, and universities to meet to see if they could adopt a common profile.

He also pointed out that this may not be successful, citing the Open Travel Alliance standardization effort in which he was an active participant.2 Because the Global Distribution System companies (who served as the equivalent of reservation brokers between travel agencies and travel industry suppliers) failed to reach agreement on a common transport, the central reservation systems of many airlines and hotels were forced to support and pay for individual interfaces to multiple brokers even though in every case the format of the actual reservation was conformant to the XML schema set defined by the OTA..3 By contrast the banking industry was able to quickly adopt and implement the FIX protocols.4

Higher education has a successful example—the Meteor network. Prototyped in 2001, the network has exchanged and consolidated student loan data since it was implemented in April 2002.5 The network uses SOAP messages, proprietary addressing (WS-Addressing emerged in 2006), and encryption. The system supports NIST Level of Assurance (LOA) 2.6

2 “The OpenTravel Alliance provides a community where companies in the electronic distribution supply chain work together to create an accepted structure for electronic messages, enabling suppliers and distributors to speak the same interoperability language, trading partner to trading partner.” From www.opentravel.org, 12 September 2009. 3 This example may no longer be representative of the travel industry. 4 “With the release of FIX 5.0 [30 December 2006], the FPL Global Technical Committee (GTC) introduced a new Transport Independence (TI) framework which separates the FIX Session Protocol from the FIX Application Protocol. Under the TI framework, the application protocol messages can be sent over any suitable transport technology (e.g. MQ, WS-RX, message bus), where the FIX Session Protocol is one of the available transport options for FIX application messages.” From www.fixprotocol.org/specifications/FIX.5.0. 5 A project description is available from NCHELP at www.nchelp.org/pages/page.cfm?id=27 The software and its use is well documented with copies available from ww.nchelp.org/pages/page.cfm?id=140. Meteor received a “highly secure” rating mid-2009. See ww.nchelp.org/initiatives/meteor/PressReleases/db0701.pdf, page 1. 6 In response to a question at the 20 August 2009 FSA Software Developers Conference, the FSA representative confirmed that student financial aid systems are LOA2.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 2 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 Tim Bornholtz was architect for the production version and has been involved since Meteor was implemented. He said a transition from current Meteor to one that used WS- Addressing and WS-Security and message encryption was feasible and consistent with Meteor serving students as well as financial aid administrators.7

The use of such a data transport network implies support for federation and distributed computing.

The current U.S. Department of Education funding plan for longitudinal data systems appears to create 50 separate state-level data warehouses exchanging high school transcripts with colleges and universities and, in the future perhaps the SIFA student education record. This implies a federation of data to obtain the records of students who have studied in different states or foreign countries.

If the proposed design harmonization effort fails, likely there will be multiple data transport protocols.

Arnie Miles pointed out that the Thebes distributed computing network design will support federation and will be data transport protocol agnostic. He also said it is likely the Sun Microsystems-funded Thebes project would have completed implementing open source software by late 2009 or early 20108

The meeting ended with consensus that an effort should be made, as Ron suggested, to “harmonize” the various data transport standards for K-12 and higher education. The “window” for that harmonization is short—no more than 12 months—to influence the federally supported exchange of high school and college transcripts and education records.

With budget constraints such an effort is unlikely to have the active participation of schools and colleges and universities unless the costs of travel were funded externally. Sources of funding will be sought.

The alternative is to implement a number of different data transport protocols and hope that sometime in the future there will be consolidation through attrition.

Current Network Initiatives

7 The NIST Level of Assurance 2 s guideline requires identification processes that so far registrars have not confirmed can be supported. This currently prevents direct access by students. 8 Thebes promotes a data grid design popularized by the National Cancer Institute’s cancer Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG) as an improvement over the classic monolithic centralized data warehouse. Thebes improves upon the caBIG model with improved identity assurance and scalability. A workable data grid improves data accuracy, data timeliness, and data availability by providing user attribute based authentication and authorization and distributed discovery services to allow data to be kept where it is generated and moved only when requested.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 3 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 The meeting began by constructing a list of current data transport initiatives. In the U.S. these would be:

 NCES/SIFA/DQC longitudinal data systems (assuming the scope includes real- time exchange of transcripts and/or education records; not required for annual or semi-annual evaluation of schools).  RS3G Bologna Process document exchange9  Meteor Federated Student Loan Data10  PESC Electronic Transcript Exchange (the University of Texas EDI and XML servers)11  Kuali Rice application software development project12 And likely later:  IMS Global Learning Consortium13  Electronic resumes using HR-XML14  Enrollment Verification  Admissions applications  Test scores PESC developed a data transport specification last updated 21 May 2007.15 This standard is based on OASIS, W3C, IETF and NIST specifications.16 The IMS Global Learning Consortium has a similar specification. Neither has significant adoption.

9 Developed for the 46-nation European Higher Education Area (EHEA), automation will reduce the time to request and get approval for a student to take courses at another university, automation reduces the time from days or weeks (EU) tor several weeks (other EHEA countries) to a few days. If this were implemented in the U.S. then the 250,000 U.S. students who attend universities in the EU and the 34,00 EU students studying in the US would benefit. David Moldoff, Academy One, represents PESC and serves as an adviser to the RS3G Board. Randy Timmons, President, Sigma Systems Inc. has served as technical advisor. Participation by the U.S. began with the first meeting at the invitation of EUNIS, the European University Information Systems organization. QS-unisolution has an online service called MoveOn Net now serving 200 universities in 17 countries. RS3G, the Rome Student Systems and Standards Group, is a series of meetings focused on developing specifications to ensure interoperability of real-time document exchanges among universities. The name comes from the first informal meeting held in Rome 9 November 2007. 10 Although processing of federal student loans has been nationalized, private (commercial) loans will increasingly be used to fill the gap between student and parent contributions, federal, state, and institutional student financial aid and the cost of education. 11 These are two separate systems. Though specifications exist for converting EDI to XML transcripts this work has not yet been done. Some transcript servicers do make these conversions as part of their services. 12 So far the Rice project has focused on developing Java interfaces—which in turn define the data exchanges. Speaking at the 95the AACRAO Conference April 15, 2009, Richard Spencer reported that the identity management would be completed and delivered in June. Although there is no documented report that the Web Services version of data exchanges have been made, that remains the intent. Discussions February 2008 with Aaron Godert, Cornell University, suggests Kuali data transport could be a profile based on the same WS-* specifications used by OCSI. 13 Specifications are available from www.imsglobal.org/gws/index.html. 14 The February 2006 HR-XML Consortium Resume specification is available at s.hr-xml.org/2_4/HR- XML-2_4/SEP/Resume.html. Higher education was asked to participate in the development of this specification, but declined. 15 The Version 2.0 specification is available from www.pesc.org/interior.php?page_id=165.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 4 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 Context

This meeting followed a series of exchanged telephone calls and email about the standards being adopted by SIFA and the OCSI standards recommended for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Current SIFA data exchanges specifications are between agents and zone servers and among zone servers. These specific use proprietary protocols developed before the WS series of specifications were published.17 However, SIFA is considering the use of Web Services messaging to exchange data between U.S. State and District Education Agencies, and between K-12 and higher education.

This year the federal government has budgeted US$250 million, in addition to funds provided by the National Center for Education Statistics, for developing and implementing longitudinal data systems for K-20. The funding is usually in the form of grants to K-12 organizations and state education agencies even though exchanges with colleges and universities are included. There are several states implementing Longitudinal Data Systems which will exchange high school transcripts with colleges and universities in accordance with data standards from the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council and unspecified data transport protocols. Recent financial aid programs require current student data from high schools to determine student eligibility for certain federal programs.

For more than a decade SIFA members—primarily firms supplying software for K-12— have been developing and implementing its standards. SIFA has a certification program to label those software products they have tested which were found to comply with their specifications. To ensure software compatibility, as well as lower costs, several states require public K-12 districts and schools license only SIFA certified software.18

The installation and use of longitudinal state systems was the dominant topic at the July NCES-sponsored STATS-DC Conference. Nine states delivered presentations on their initiatives. There were several presentations about the expected use of these data as one of several measures of teacher and faculty performance.19 In addition there is an expectation this data will become available to the classroom teacher or professor to improve teaching and learning effectiveness. This use requires delivery of real-time data to the teacher rather than historical data collected a few times each year.

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has advocated the development and use of student longitudinal data systems—labeled LDS—as a measure of school performance. This 16 OASIS – Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems, W3C - World Wide Web Consortium, IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force, and NIST –National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. 17 There is a parallel organization in the United Kingdom—SIFA UK. SIFA-UK coordinates with BECTA (formerly “British Educational Communications and Technology Agency”) “Becta is the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning.” [From www.becta.org.uk, 14 September 2009]. 18 The State of Oklahoma was one of the first to legislate this requirement. 19 Malcolm Gladwell cautions that only three years of classroom experience can be used as a predictor of a teacher’s success. He reports none of the current measures are valid for the beginning teacher.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 5 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 effort—supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Lumina Foundations—has cooperated with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO). For three years DQC has reported implementation progress and supported the exchange of information among the participants.20 This work will continue with additional three-year funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Gates Foundation funded the early development and use of a longitudinal data system to evaluate Chicago public schools. In January 2009 Superintendent Arne Duncan became Secretary of Education and supports these efforts.

All of this can be summarized by saying there will be a number of critical projects where a single network standard would facilitate implementation and use. The architecture needs to support federation since the state systems are likely to differ in their use of technologies and choices of data. The initiative now is with K-12 (SIFA) and the RS3G Bologna Process Automation.

The OSCI specification

Based on a likely adoption of the OSCI Version 2.0 specification by RS3G, the discussion began by asking if a SIFA specification could be compatible with the OSCI Version 2 specification. Ron suggested a SIFA profile would include SOAP and likely could include WS-Addressing and WS-Security; this would make it compliant at some level of the OSCI specification.

The OSCI (Online Service Computer Interface) specification was developed by the Bremen Department of Finance in 2002. Jörg Apitzsch (2009) writes:

Online Service Computer Interface (OSCI) is a message standard for eGovernment. Since 2002, version 1.2 of this standard has been increasingly used for confidential and legally binding communication via the Internet1 in Germany by the public administration, in certain business sectors and their customers and some other European countries, too. OSCI builds up of two parts – part A or "OSCI Transport" addresses message exchange, part B addresses the development of interoperable exchange schemes on functional, business scenario specific levels. Objective of part A of OSCI are payload-agnostic message exchange mechanisms. 21

Data Transport Initiatives: Some History

20 DQC advocacy has been focused on quarterly meetings held in Washington DC. DQC has brought practitioners, Congressional and federal department and agency staff, state legislators and agency staff, representatives from schools, districts, and state agencies, and the education research community together to exchange information. 21 An excellent description of the specification and its context: Apitzsch, Jörg (2009: 24 March). OSCI- Transport, Version 2: German Contribution to Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations. Breman, Germany: bos bremen online services GmbH & Co. KG. Available from www.immagic.com/eLibrary/TECH/OSCI_DE/O090324A.pdf.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 6 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009 The first effort to create a student data exchange involved student resumes defined in accordance with the HR-XML standards. Students would benefit by a standard resume that could be used with multiple applications for employment and would save the delay— typically measured in weeks—for the paper resume to be converted to electronic format for use by HR-XML compliant human resources (HR) systems. This effort began with a test of 30,000 submitted resumes for major German firms. At the end, 6,000 students found employment using these resumes. Electronic resumes have not been used in U.S. higher education even though most human resources systems have the capability to process electronic resumes.

The next effort was the real-time access to student loan data from14 data sources consolidated into a standard format. (A student may have loans from several different lenders as well as the federal government). This system, called Meteor, was prototyped in early 2001; the production version began operation in 2002 with steadily increasing volume. This initiative was facilitated by NCHELP (National Council of Higher Education Loan Program) members.22

In July 2009 69,927 PESC transcripts and 57,808 admissions applications were exchanged. Modeled on banking practices data files are sent to a central site where they are sorted by recipient and forwarded to that college or university. Typically this is done after the close of each business day. The specification was developed by the AACRAO’s (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers) SPEEDE Committee. Specifications were also developed for the exchange of admissions applications and test scores. This effort was transferred to the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council when it was formed in 1997.

Recognizing the advance of technology, the U.S. Department of Education moved from “flat” file formats to XML with the implementation of the Common Origination and Disbursements (COD) beginning in1999.23 PESC has three XML transcript message formats--transcript request, the transcript itself, and acknowledgment of receipt.

22 There are historical connections. The prototype was developed by Peter Kharchenko and Justin Tilton of the uPortal team. Tim Bornholtz, architect of the production version, is now developing distributed computing software as part of a Sun Microsystems’ sponsored project at Georgetown University. Arnie Miles is principal investigator. 23 This was described in the Modernization Blue print first written in 1999. A second version was written in 2000. According to GAO subsequent versions in 2001 and 2002 were never released.

Jim Farmer, Georgetown University 7 23 August 2009 Last revised 22 September 2009