Proposed Changes to the Unity Product Standard 

There is no denying that the transition to the Unity Specification in North America is rapidly becoming a reality.  Because of this, the Policy & Procedures group is looking to update the requirements around SIF Certification. 

As part of this work they are proposing the following. 

• Consumers will not be required to create their own environment, but the call will still be supported.
•  Changes Since support will be expected of all providers.
•  Unlevel the Transport Layer Security (TLS) to version 1.2.
•  Certificates exchanged to verify identity employ a key length of at least 2048bits.
•  All certificates employed must be current.
•  All valid certificates will be accepted.
•  Hostname and certificate mismatches are allowed.
•  All encrypted connections employ a cypher with a minimum key length of 128bits.
• Keep:  HTTP 1.1, XML 1.0, UTF-8, XPath 2.0, XQuery 1.0, XSDs, Gzip,& UUIDs
•  Authentication (pick at least one):  SIF_HMACSHA256 or OAuth 2.0 /w Bearer Tokens
•  Those using JSON will need to use PESC JSON.

Notes:

1. We have one report that Gzip is not currently working with the Test Harness.
2.  For testing our Bearer Tokens do not currently expire.

The current SIF Specification Product Standards can be found here: https://www.a4l.org/page/SIFCertification

Please provide any feedback or comments by February 14, 2020 to John Lovell, Technology Director.

Announcement to Membership: 2020 North American Elections

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community has continued to have phenomenal leadership over the past year.  The leadership, guidance and overall dedication to the Community prove critical to our collective successes. With the upcoming Annual Meeting, it is hard to believe that it is time for elections again!  Nominations for the North American Management Board and At-Large Technical Board will be available from January 15 - February 12, 2020 (inclusive).
 
The Management Board is elected for two-year terms.  This year there will be five (5) seats open for the Management Board.  To be eligible to run for the Management Board, the individuals shall be at least eighteen (18) years old and be A4L Community Voting Participants or employed by or representing an A4L Community Voting Participant and duly authorized to represent that A4L Community Voting Participant, but need not be residents of the District of Columbia.  An A4L Community Voting Participant Member institution (including associated subsidiaries of an A4L Community Voting Participant) may have at most one representative on the Management Board at one time.

The At-Large Technical Board is elected for a one-year term.  There are four (4) seats open for the At-Large Technical Board members.  At-Large Technical Board members must be A4L Community Voting Participants or employed by or represent an A4L Community Voting Participant and duly authorized to represent that A4L Community Voting Participant.

You can download the policies and procedures for the Annual Elections as outlined by the Elections Committee on the A4L Community Site here (login required).

For the 2020 A4L Community North American Annual Election process, the following dates apply:

• December 17, 2020: Announcement to membership that elections will occur
• January 15, 2020: Nominations open
• February 12, 2020: Nominations close
• by February 19, 2020: Elections Committee convenes to confirm ballot
• February 25, 2020: Ballot released
• March 10, 2020: Voting closes at 5:00 pm Eastern
• March 11, 2020: Elections Committee convenes to confirm results
• March 18, 2020: Elections results announced during the Interoperability & Privacy Symposium

We will use a virtual election tool and all nominations must be submitted electronically.  The Primary Business Contact will be the official vote for each A4L Community Voting Participant, unless a designee is provided.  Please contact Penny Murray, to confirm your Primary Business Contact, or organization ‘designee’ for the 2020 NA Elections.

We will send out information to submit your nomination beginning on January 15, 2020.  Please consider nominating yourself, asking someone to nominate you or nominate someone else to run for one of these leadership positions within the A4L Community!

The Global Education Privacy Standard – or GEPS – is finally a reality and ready for prime time! 

The tool aligns contract clauses with technical obligations to meet those clauses and then allows you to map those obligations to control benchmarks from any source (IEEE, ISO, NIST, etc.) to create a machine readable XML Privacy Obligations Document (POD). The POD can accompany a contract between end user and vendor. 

What does that mean for you? 

If you are an end user it means you can instantly communicate the critical privacy expectations with your vendors beyond normal contract terms in an automated way.  Vendors benefit by getting enough information in the POD to deliver on the expectations of their customers and then be able to validate they fulfil their part in privacy stewardship. 

To find out more, please visit: https://privacy.a4l.org/geps/

'Unity’ Specification enters Community Review

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, is now proud to cause a new “buzz” – the best of the best from 20 years of interoperability specifications to address school needs and allow for states and vendors to implement the US Department of Education’s Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).  The new Specification – code named “Unity” – is built using 20 years of experience by our more than 3,000 volunteer members developed using open, non-proprietary and transparent processes linked to a quality control Certification Program.  It contains the most comprehensive K12 data model and modern transport technologies to securely move the data to provide it to the right person at the right time in the right way under local data privacy policies.

The North American Technical Board (NATB) has set out to provide the market with an incremental path forward… and the recipe is simple!.  This draft Specification includes data objects from the (NA) 2.8 Data Model; xPress Roster objects; IEP objects; Address and Student Program Association objects; Support of UUIDs and legacy GUIDs; Pluggable Code Sets & Extension Points throughout; and CEDS Mapping.

The Community Review is currently slated to run from March 28 – April 14, 2019 (inclusive).  ALL North American Community Members are encouraged to provide their approval/feedback before COB on April 14 and will need to login to the website to access the survey here.

It’s that time of the year... no, I am not talking about the holidays!

It’s time to hit the road to start the 2019 education conference season – a season that never seems to end!  This year we start out with the UK’s BETT and the Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) from January 27-30 in sunny Orlando, Florida.  Looking at the sessions and vendors for both gatherings, it is very apparent that student data privacy is once again a “hot topic” for those who will be attending the festivities. 

If you are off to Florida we want to make the conference season a great kickoff to your calendar year – and it costs you nothing!  The Access 4 Learning Community, via it’s Special Interest Group the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) are thrilled to Join with the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) provide a free ‘Student Privacy Boot Camp’ for districts and marketplace providers.  This interactive event will outline the various privacy considerations for your role, privacy resources, and strategies that you could easily employ to protect students and link you to an international network of practitioners that are doing the same each day – just like you! 

January 28, 2019

Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC), 

Orlando, FL

If you want support in all aspects of student privacy in your role in the classroom, overseeing data management, reporting and communications or need some immediate ‘tactical’ data privacy suggestions and/or tools that you can use immediately when you get back to your school this event is for you – and FREE!

Places are limited, so REGISTER TODAY.  To download the event flyer, please click here.

To see the latest on privacy policy, legislation, in the news and almost everything else to inform your work as a data steward check out the FPF resources.  If you want tools, strategies and a more than 1,500 school peer group support for your work check out the SDPC resources.