Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) going Open Source
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) or even (LDS) are intended to aid state educational agencies to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze and use education data. Most often this means turning out tons for CSV files which are then loaded in staging areas and the pushed into reporting system to include but not limited to a data warehouse. Many of these systems are built over time and recollect the same data over and over.
There is a better way to integrate data and it is to start your SLDS with a SIF enabled Operational Data Store (ODS). According to Bill Inmon, an ODS, is a subject-oriented, volatile, current-valued, detailed-only collection of data in support of an organizations need for up-to-the-second information. Wikipedia states that its designed to integrate data from multiple sources and contains low level (atomic) data with a limited history captured in realtime.
Basically this means that the education agency that implements an ODS has detailed or non-summarized data about the students within its reporting structure. This gives the agency capability to offer services that before might have been more difficult to provide. For example a state agency could construct and support a Parent Portals, Student records transmissions, or even a district reporting system.
So why are we talking about this within OpenZIS blog today – well over the next few months we will begin to document an open source longitudinal data system (SLDS)(LDS) with our first step being the development of a SIF enabled operational data store (ODS).
Thanks
Christopher