Policy Context and Legal Framework

On one hand, NED contributes to an efficient calculation of costs in the Romanian Education System and therefore to an efficient and healthy definition of national education policies on medium and long term. On the other hand, NED is the source of the School Map, the presentation of the Romanian Education System and of all individual schools over the Internet, contributing in this way to the transparency of the decisional acts of the Romanian Government in the education area. Publication of accurate and complete data about the education system has increased the participation of the citizens to the decisional acts of the Romanian Ministry of Education and the Romanian Government. Through the transparency of the information and the participation of the citizens, the NED project has contributed to the improvement of the democracy in the region. By making public services better, more cost effective and more accessible, the NED project is inline with the "2010 - A European Information Society for growth and employment" initiative of the European Commission NED has been realized within a project co-financed by the World Bank and the Romanian Government.

Implementation and Management Approach

The management approach was based on the procedures of the Project Management Unit with respect to the guidelines from the World Bank, who financed the project. The consultant’s activities were managed and regulated by their ISO9001:2000 procedures and work instructions. All the project’s aspects and activities were documented and the progress was carefully tracked via reports and managed with industry standard software tools. The partnership was between public and private sector.

Technology solution

The data collection and reporting application uses the Internet for the client-server communications. The client application is available in two flavors, online and offline application. The online application accesses the central database directly and the latest version is checked and if necessary downloaded from the server at each application start. The online application data exchange is optimized for Internet connections. The advantage of the online mode of work is that all the changes are committed instantly in the central database and all the data dictionaries updates are immediately available. The offline application offers the same functionalities as the online application, but the updates can only be applied manually, via patches. Each Data Collection Center has a number of schools assigned and it collects data for those schools. The central database can make customized exports for each Data Collection Center that has the offline application installed. The data collected with the offline application is imported in the central database. This dedicated interface shows the conflicts between the central and imported data and offers them means to solve these conflicts. The offline application can also import data from central database. The layered architecture allows the system to be easily expanded or modified. The system can be translated in any language, the data dictionaries are manageable via GUI, the entities’ properties and attributes can be extended via the user interface and new reports can be created using standard SQL or using a graphical WSYWIG interface. All these characteristics make the system extensible and adaptable to any other education environment where such administrative tools are needed. The deployment environment is also flexible, the system can be deployed in any environment that supports Java.

Impact

One of the things that makes the system stand out is its size and spread, since it is a nation wide implementation with over 1,500 simultaneous points of access, which makes it one of the few such systems in Romanian Education and Administration. The Romanian Ministry of Education, Research and Youth is one of the few that have available a database with all the students, teachers and schools information with such degree of detail. The availability of such large amount of data allows new queries to be made: - Because all the data about a pupil is stored in the same database, it is possible now to track a specific pupil’s entire path through educational system - The analysis of the indicators can provide information on mass and individual evolution and to help detection of anomalies (e.g. sudden major increase/decrease of grades, continuous weak results for certain specialty in certain areas) - The historical reporting facility provides an accurate comparison method for the values of an indicator in time. It can also track and display comparative evolutions of similar or connected indicators The OLAP multi-dimensional analysis of education indicators is also new, such analysis being reserved so far only to economic and financial environments.

Track record of sharing

The experience of implementing such a nation-wide system with so many users produced a series of best practice approaches to various implementation problems and to dealing with such large number of users, in terms of technical assistance, training, help and technical support.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The most important lesson was the one derived from the work with large group of users, with specific needs and requests. The system changed significantly their way of work and the transition was not easy, considering the average age of the operators and the fact that they are government employees. We managed to organize very well the interaction with all these people in terms of assistance, training and support. We can say now that we have solid experience in working efficiently with such type and number of users. Lesson 2 - The second lesson was that careful planning and analysis before actual start of work is mandatory. A good outcome from the analysis phase, capturing as much as possible and as accurate as possible the users requirements, is very important in having a successful project. Lesson 3 - The third lesson is that methodology and procedures must be applied in the management of the project. A sound methodology based on good procedures will yield a well managed, monitored and controlled project. This is a very important element that contributes to the measurability of the project’s success.