Ministry of Education Fiji An Introduction to our EMIS

Our Profile Approximately 900 schools Approximately 10 Private Schools 681 ECE Centers 70 Higher Education Institutes Primary Enrolment – 140000 Secondary – 70000 10250 Teachers 11 Education Districts About 150 Islands inhabited.

Present Status: WORKING AND BEING HEAVILY USED MoE DATABASES Present Status: WORKING AND BEING HEAVILY USED FESA SIMS FILNA

FESA – Fiji Education Staff Appointment A database containing staff details – Personal, work related details etc. Functions – facilitates all staffing transactions, appointment, transfers, leave. Produces a number of reports eg. Appointment types etc, Discrepancy reports – Salary and Appointment etc. Retirement forecasts etc etc.

SIMS – School Management Information System. Collects all school data. SIMS 1 form in February. All details of the school. Staffing and relevant details, teaching load, subject majors etc. Roll and relevant details – Ethnicity, Ages, hostel students etc. Reports by schools, districts, school types etc. Also produces of data receipt and entry by district.

FILNA – Fiji Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Tests is done at classes 4, 6 and 8 Presently rather evaluative. Designed to be diagnostic and we are challenged to drive it in that direction.

THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT AND ENHANCEMENTS Bugs, Enhancements SOFTWARE DEVELOPER TESTING ENVIRONMENT LIVE ENVIRONMENT Colin Arunesh ITC Software Factory Microsoft FESA QA FILNA QA SIMS QA LIVE SYSTEM SIMS FILNA FESA

The Change Management System We need to manage changes. To control changes To coordinate need for changes To monitor the order of changes To monitor allocation of time for our Systems Analyst programmer

The Bottom line is Our IT reliance is on the rise. FILNA, FESA and SIMS are all fairly large systems and will be used across a large number of users. Our IT department is small We need to manage our meager resources We need to be sustainable. http://edusuvantsrv01/cms/Changes_List.aspx

What has happened since! SIMS SIMS has been advanced- Version 2.1 Launched on Wednesday Oct 17th. 121 changes to achieve. SIMS now talking with FESA. Data received and entered at all time high SIMS1 (Pri)    97.2% SIMS2 (Pri)    85.3% SIMS1 (Sec)    97.6% SIMS2 (Sec)    66.7% Awareness of and data use increasing rapidly.

FESA: New Version launched. Many changes made, transfers, leave etc. FESA talking with PSC and Finance Databases for reconciliation. Fortnightly reconciliation means as data cleans data integrity is tightened. FESA will populate SIMS before SIMS data is received. FESA cleaning being pursued. Drive to have FESA “clean”

FILNA Launched successfully. Many happy people at Exams and IT Unit. Enhancements and bug cleaning on going. Testing and sign off of changes and enhancements on going. Our officers are now able to make changes

Some aspect of our successes! Commitment to data. Sustainability: More and more changes been done by our officers. Data reconciliation. FESA now getting multi pronged cleaning. Confidence in our databases is growing.

The Potential Threats: FESA is easily more than a million dollars in terms of work and value. SIMS is many hundreds of thousands at least. FILNA is also into Hundreds of thousands The average life of 90% of databases developed by aid and consultants is 3 years. The knowledge and awareness of the databases is still not at appropriate levels. We still have a lot of dirty data. Unless we keep cleaning data confidence will fall and then the spiral downwards.

Other threats! Low level computer usage skills of many staff. – giving some computer skills training. Need for hardware support. – Proposed positions now contracted. Laxity in data entry – Better supervision, audit Laxity in data submission- Got tough on this. Ability to use software. - Training Ownership of software.- Comes with the knowledge

The importance of Good Data. We have been constantly harassed to raise data integrity. A chicken and egg situation.

We need to build consciousness Much of our communication is now based on data. Data must be good – 3 C’s. Need to develop the culture of improvement for data. All to understand and undertake to provide good data.

Way forward: Restructure of IT Unit. We are thinking of our sustainability and independence. Build efficiency. Up-skill continuously. Greater awareness. Train everybody and raise awareness. Improve data reliability. Devolve to sections and districts for ownership.

Some Records FESA has processed 4 million changes since it started. The SIMS numbers are equally impressive - Over 100,000 enrolment records and 35,000 building records.  I'd say more like closer to a million and half worth of software between FILNA, SIMS, FESA and CMS.  Might be interesting to actually figure it out one day.

FESA: Now being developed to be the vehicle for the Public Service Human Resources Management database. That is our best endorsement as the power of our databases. It is now up to us to see it continues to be build on this base. It is in our hands.

Thank you. Dhanyabad, Vinaka Vakalevu That is the story of our databases Thank you. Dhanyabad, Vinaka Vakalevu