He recorded the apologies received and noted no declarations of interest.

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File: 2014-03-24-JUNE-ISB-BOARD-DECISIONS-AND-ACTIONS-V1-0

Page 1 of 7 Issue Date: 05/11/14 Status: Final Version: v1.0 Title: June 2014 ISB Board decisions and action points

Date: Tuesday 24 June 2014

Attendees: Deep Sagar (Chair); Adam Cooper (CETIS); Adrian Crossley (HESA); Ann Hughes (EFA); Chris Wiltshire (JCQ); Duncan Baldwin (ASCL); John Perks (SFA); Jude Hillary (DfE); Lesley Morris (VTCT); Luke Perera (BIS); Naomi Leslie (DfE); Tom Zebedee (Ofsted); Denzil White (Technical Support to CRM)

Amanda Hopewell-Campion (TSS); Graeme Brown (DfE); Gwen McGill (DfE); Joe Crilly (DfE); Terry Knowles (TSS)

Apologies: Adrian Jones (BIS); Karen Crowston (Service Birmingham); Alison Allden (HESA); David Riley (SCCI); Frank Bowley (BIS); Jill Lanning (FAB); Peter Duffy (Ofsted)

Welcome, apologies for absences, declarations of conflicts of interests

Deep Sagar welcomed everyone and introduced Adrian Crossley, Lesley Morris and Luke Perera to the meeting.

He recorded the apologies received and noted no declarations of interest.

TSS standards development phased work plan

Terry Knowles introduced the TSS work plan. He said that the document reflected discussions at workshops and interviews with stakeholders regarding what new standards were needed.

He said that the TSS had assessed the importance of the areas identified based on perceptions of potential value across ESCS, combined with the level of commitment to implement, and had ranked them on the basis of feasibility. He said some further re-prioritisation may be required in the light of discussions with stakeholders. For example, he said that the plan flagged the need to develop standard related to learning aims, however, following discussions with stakeholders he was now recommending that leavers’ destinations should be prioritised. He said that discussions at a Children's Services working group and the Architecture SIG had confirmed a commitment to develop relevant standards.

Adam Cooper said it was a long list of work items and that TSS needed to have capacity to deal with things that emerge. For example, as people implement the ISB standards, there may be a need to make revisions in light of issues that might arise. He stressed the need for the TSS to take an agile approach to delivering the plan. He suggested where possible the plan should provide more clarity regarding the benefits and outcomes of developing standards in a specific area. There was general agreement that supporting exchanging information should be a criteria for prioritisation. It was also felt that the focus should be on developing new standards not variations on existing ones.

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Page 2 of 7 Issue Date: 05/11/14 Status: Final Version: v1.0

Developing ISB standards for finance was flagged as a priority with the initial focus being on identifying and adopting finance standards already available.

John Perks stressed the importance of focussing on where data is transferred. For example, CRM was identified as an area of work but ISB should only provide standards for data transferred into and out of CRM systems.

Tom Zebedee said that implementation support was vital. Also, the plan covered a broad spectrum and there was lack of clarity on the benefits from the proposed standards. Adrian Crossley said that the approach HESA had adopted was to define the component parts of the financial information not how the data should be structured.

The Board approved the plan adding that resources to respond agilely to new demands and support for stakeholders implementing ISB compatible systems (10% was

proposed) should be available; any re-prioritisation necessary would be considered at each meeting.

In addition, Deep Sagar asked TSS to consider how the benefits and outcomes could be better qualified within the plan.

Draft ISB Annual Report

Joe Crilly said that the draft Annual Report highlighted the Board's record of

achievement and aimed to stimulate engagement and interest among stakeholders. The Board approved the draft annual report subject to changes to reflect the discussion on priorities, including making clear the criteria for prioritisation and the benefits

envisaged.

Approve standards for inclusion in the August release

Terry Knowles outlined the standards developed for the August release. He said that the Board is recommended to approve the changes to standards as follows:

• Safeguarded Salary: changes to one standard to address the business needs relating to the CBDS “Safeguarded salary” flag and those who manage

safeguarded salaries

• JCQ requested updates: changes to 21 standards where new attributes or other changes were needed for the A2C project to operate

He said that the Development and Implementation Special Interest Group (SIG) had been consulted on the changes.

He said that the planned changes to a controlled list in relation to Needs Descriptors could not be included in the August release because of outstanding policy issues.

John Perks said it would assist Board members when approving standards to know who had been consulted and what issues were raised. It was agreed that the Board would

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receive details of the responses received from the consultations and how they had been addressed (being mindful of any sensitive comments). In addition, information would be provided to show how the standards for approval matched what was identified at the scoping stage (Gate 2).

It was resolved that Board approval of Gate 2 scoping proposals was a governance question for the Chair. ISB secretariat would send copies of the scoping proposals to the Chair for approval copied to Board members. ISB secretariat would ensure areas of particular interest to individual members were flagged. The Board approved the standards.

Departmental and Board Members’ Update

Jude Hillary said that Cabinet Office approval of the DfE’s Data Transformation Programme business case was still pending.

He also gave an update on the independent review of the ISB Business Data

Architecture (BDA). The review would specifically consider whether it was proportionate in addressing the needs of the Data Transformation Programme, especially the Data Exchange project. He said that he expected the review to conclude it was fit for purpose. He said that a reviewer would be appointed shortly. It would be someone with

experience of data warehousing / near real-time data exchange.

The review would entail interviewing people both pro-ISB and anti-ISB and those involved in implementation. It was observed that the review needed to take account of the multiple individual agencies that fit within the ESCS environment. The report would clearly explain the benefits and challenges of the Business Data Architecture.

John Perks said that BIS was committed to looking at legacy systems and how they could move closer to ISB standards. He said that the way that the sector operates was undergoing significant change which would create potential opportunities.

He said that BIS is facing big reforms in the skills sector, such as making employers responsible for apprenticeships. This will impact on systems creating the opportunity to adopt standards that align with ISB as a new system is introduced.

He said with the abolition of the information authority a new governance board, the Data Board, had been set up. It had overall responsibility for developing new IT systems and the related budgets. This Board was jointly chaired by the SFA Chief Executive and a BIS Director General.

Tom Zebedee said Ofsted was developing a new off-the shelf system for social care. It was also considering what was needed for sharing and receiving data from schools. This would entail re-configuring the data exchange system to move away from using Edubase, at present it was not clear what this would mean from an ISB perspective. Jude Hillary offered to work together with Ofsted to share experience of developing data exchange systems.

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investment programme. This entailed systems to support finance, funding, data storage and data exchange. EFA was embarking on a re-prioritisation exercise to reflect

available budget.

Adam Cooper said the Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and

Standards (CETIS) was undertaking a project on behalf of the Higher Education Data & Information Improvement Programme (HEDIIP). CETIS was engaging with stakeholders in order to gather requirements for a new subject coding system in HE and to set out options for the development of a replacement for JACS. It was hoped to publish a report in September 2014.

He said that the Open Standards Board (OSB) will announce shortly proposals for document formats to support collaboration and dissemination. OSB is likely to recommend open document formats such as PDF and HTML.

Adrian Crossley said that there was scope for HEDIIP to comply with ISB standards, however, this should not put delivery at risk.

He said that there was an increased desire for in-year data collections to create timelier data (can be 18 month time lag) and to support data collections from alternative

providers and provision not based on the academic year.

Duncan Baldwin said Association of School and College Leaders had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Fischer Family Trust.

JCQ’s A2C project

Chris Wiltshire informed the Board about JCQ’s A2C project. He said that JCQ was made up of the seven larger awarding organisations. A2C had been developed to allow examination centres to submit people for qualification and to receive results. It was currently undergoing intensive testing with an initial roll out in autumn 2015. The system would be fully operational for September 2016.

It has been developed to be compliant with ISB’s standards and a high level of MIS suppliers’ engagement. The resultant A2C specification was being made open to all awarding organisations. There were challenges in relation to supporting vocational qualifications and the 50 schools with their own MIS systems.

JCQ found the top-down approach from ISB was very useful – two previous attempts to define A2C using bottom-up approaches had not succeeded where the joint JCQ-ISB approach had succeeded.

He said that it had been invaluable to have the support of the ISB data architect and the input of an implementation group of technical people representing awarding bodies and suppliers. The key lessons were to provide implementation support for suppliers; to provide a high level of stakeholder interaction (eg monthly meetings); to plan for and allow time for user testing. Initial plans underestimated the implementation timetable; the revised timescales allow 27 months.

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He said it was important to explain up front how the XSD was constructed and why XML was not used for validating. He also suggested that additional guidance may address concerns around whether the BDA was too complex.

Lesley Morris said that FAB is made up of medium sized awarding bodies and that it is not practical for them to develop systems individually. She said that FAB was actively working with its members to explore joint ventures, including changes to the transport mechanism.

CRM Project

Naomi Leslie gave a presentation on arrangements to replace the DfE’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. She said that the Department's current CRM was based on multiple technologies with multiple data models, which meant there were duplicated and inconsistent data and no interoperability.

The goal was a rationalised application set based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM data architecture from which the ISB format could be constructed for the purposes of import and export.

A set of solutions have been created that implement a data model consistent with the ISB BDA. When mapping the BDA to dynamics CRM the data architecture was roll up to third rather than fifth normal form for implementation and usability.

Development of the base solution was due to be completed in summer 2014. The first projects to utilise the base solution will be Department of State Functions (ie logging parliamentary questions and correspondence).

She said what would help with this project are:

• Machine readable controlled lists that are stored and managed centrally within the DfE

• Development of the BDA in areas required for future projects

• A mapping from the BDA entities to the business processes requirements

Secretariat update

Joe Crilly updated the Board on forthcoming meetings including a Development and Implementation SIG meeting taking place on 15 July and a Children’s Services Workshop on 17 July.

He said that work was underway to move the ISB website from education.go.uk to

data.gov.uk. This was likely to happen in September and it will utilise a range of services to provide improved functionality. It was intended to move away from publishing the standards as PDF documents to using linked data to draw all the relevant information together. The ISB has been assigned resource from the DfE and Cabinet Office web teams to work on the new website.

Meetings’ minutes, actions and feedback

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that TSS would contact Adam Cooper regarding a meeting to discuss his concerns on the principles and acceptance criteria for standards proposed.

Deep Sagar updated the Board on meetings he had attended. He said that the

Children’s Services workshop on 11 June was well attended, however, delegates had noted Ofsted's absence. Tom Zebedee asked to be sent details of the next workshop, so that he could ensure a representative could attend.

Deep Sagar noted that LeGSB highlight report had been circulated and said he hoped LeGSB could help support engagement in the development of data standard for the children’s services area of work.

He said that improvements to the format of the 4 Nations meetings had ensured the April meeting was more focus on data standards development. Northern Ireland had led on organising by and the meeting and there had been a good discussion on harmonising the common transfer file (CTF).

He said that the Architecture SIG met on 19 June to review the technical documents that had been recently developed. The group he said would take a more prominent role in the underlying governance of these documents.

In David Riley’s absence Deep Sagar said that the ISB HaSC has been replaced by a new Standardisation Committee for Care Information, which had still to meet.

Any other business

Deep Sagar reminded Board members that he was interested to hear any suggestions regarding who he might invite to join the Board in light of the work plan that had been agreed.

Next meeting

The date of the next meeting will be Tuesday 18 November at 11.00am in Sanctuary Buildings, London.

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