March 2002 — Special Feature

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The Work Behind SIF's Framework

The Importance of SIF Compliance

To provide educators with the confidence that the SIF-enabled software applications they purchase will share data without any special programming or significant modifications to the software, SIF is developing the SIF Compliance Program. The SIF Compliance Program will involve SIF members putting their software application through a series of tests to confirm that their software program properly follows the rules and definitions of the SIF Implementation Specification. A third party hired by SIF to administer the program will verify the test results. A software application that successfully performs the tests will be able to display the "SIF Compliant" logo on its package, Web site and promotional literature. The SIF Compliant logo indicates that this particular version of the software has been tested and certified to properly communicate and share information with other SIF Compliant software.

Compliance is important for both educators and software companies. It gives educators the confidence that these SIF Compliant software applications will work together with other SIF Compliant programs without any special programming or significant modifications to the software. It also allows educators to choose the software applications that meet their local computing needs, and allows them to increase the number of programs sharing data with confidence.

Compliance is also important for software companies. For vendors, it verifies that their applications will be able to share information with programs from other companies. This can be an important difference when school districts are making substantial software investments. It also allows them to reduce implementation time, because adding a new program into an existing SIF implementation should be easier and faster. This will save time and money for the school, as well as for the software company, by streamlining the implementation and eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming customization.

It is important to note that no SIF Compliant programs exist today, because SIF is still in the process of developing both the compliance processes and the test suites. However, SIF-enabled applications are currently available from a number of vendors. Also, SIF has created the Compliance Beta Program as a way for schools to begin implementing SIF and for vendors to validate their products through real-time installations.

The Benefits of SIF-Enabled Applications

Implementing SIF-enabled software programs can provide schools and districts with a flexible and robust technology infrastructure to help them meet the growing list of management and accountability demands. Today, when a student enrolls in a school they often register in the front office, where their information is entered into a Student Information System by a registrar or secretary. That same information then needs to be re-entered into the library system, the cafeteria system, the transportation system and, depending on the school, a network account. And access to the school's Web site or other learning management tools must be created, all with virtually the same information.