1. Presentation to Project Certification Committee, DoIT August 24, 2008
Consumer Operated System for Measuring Outcomes in Schools (COSMOS) New Mexico Public Education Department
Presentation to Project Certification Committee, DoIT
August 24, 2008

2. FY 2008 Appropriation
In the 2008 legislative session House Bill 2 (2008), Section 7, page 259, line 7, Item 35, appropriated $1.650,000.
(32) PUBLIC EDUCATION DEPARTMENT:
For the implementation of the student and teacher accountability reporting system educational interface and enhanced data collection and reporting. The appropriation is from the appropriation contingency fund dedicated for the purpose of implementing and maintaining educational reforms created in Section 12 of Chapter 114 of Laws The appropriation is contingent upon the public education department reengineering its business processes before proceeding and expending additional funds, developing and enforcing reporting compliance and moving two term full-time-equivalent positions paid from non-recurring funds to permanent full-time-equivalent positions in the base budget.
Based on this appropriation, the funding is contingent upon:
Reengineering its business processes before proceeding and expending funds.
PED has redesigned the following processes:
Data Review – Data Final Review is no longer an IT responsibility. PED Programs have now taken on the responsibility of working with the counterparts in the districts to review, audit, and approve data prior to making data available for dissemination.
Reporting – districts and users are now able to run their own reports instead of having PED push the report to them. Users have been trained on, and given accesses to, the STARS decision support tools (Data cubes) for enhanced individual reporting.
Program Improvements: A federally reported data is now being transmitted electronically; SPED data accuracy is %. Error correction for AYP is down from 50,000 errors to 93; Processes are being defined to measure all data accuracy.
Developing and enforcing reporting compliance
District data submissions have improved over last years numbers; 40th 37 days (down from 66); 80th day 52 days ( down from 60); 120th approximately 32 days down from 60); EOY approximately (12 days down from 21 days).
For SY2009 PED will continue to enforce the submission schedule, while providing a defined submission process, monitoring program, and performance metrics to track district submission
Moving two term full-time-equivalent positions paid from non-recurring funds to permanent full-time-equivalent positions in the base budget.
PED has already complete the transition of two term positions paid from non-recurring funds into its operational budget.

3. COSMOS Project
With the successful deployment of the STARS data warehouse, NMPED’s and New Mexico school districts’ next major step is being able to utilize data. COSMOS, the Education User Interface, will allow teachers, school principals, district-level administrators, and PED agency personnel to make quality decisions through the use of information. The PED Education User Interface will provide clients:
A powerful and actionable means with which to examine, present, and apply data by providing additional analytical capabilities and decision support.
More advanced training on effective ad-hoc reporting and data query techniques.
Standards-aligned benchmark testing data as an integral part of the data warehouse.
A STARS Framework with which to:
1. Integrate curriculum, instruction, and diagnostic data to help education leaders positively influence
student outcomes
2. Incorporate end-to-end Professional Development tracking to facilitate student objectives
3. Provide data tools to create a “connected learning community” for PED stakeholders
A consistent use of “best practices” to tap the true power of STARS’ data.
A powerful collaboration and communications solution
Strategically, the COSMOS project will utilize internal PED resources to lead, plan, and execute the build and roll-out tasks for COSMOS in a phased approach in 3 components for FY09.
District STARS Coordinators and PED IT staff: build tools to assist districts in the submission, review and certification of warehouse data. It’s focus will be continued development of PED IT skills to conduct new COSMOS development and system maintenance.
PED Centralized Website and Program Content Framework: extend the PED Website as the base for the COSMOS infrastructure and develop the necessary system security for roll-out to a broader set of users.
Superintendents, District and PED Program Staffs: the final component will be development and roll-out of Website Content Pages for both district and PED program staffs to streamline processes, including the content developed in the Enhanced Data Utilization portion of the appropriation.

4. COSMOS Budget

5. Implementation Phase Certification
Following are the documentary requirements for Project Certification:
CERTIFICATION FORM: Attached.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN: Attached (synopsis follows).
PROJECT SCHEDULE: Attached (synopsis follows).
IV&V REPORTS: Vendor selected; using existing contract. The initial review is due in October.
In addition, the following items are necessary for successful project completion:
PROGRAMING SUPPORT – Vendor selected; contract in final review before signature.
TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW – Synopsis follows on Page 8; full report scheduled to be completed before roll-out.
STARS MIGRATION – To be analyzed and resolved in early 2009.

6. Project Management Plan
The PMP for COSMOS is attached to this request.
The PMP:
Outlines the rationale for the project;
Identified the funding sources and project budget;
Discussed the constraints, dependencies and assumptions
Reviews the risks associated with COSMOS;
Presents the project organizational structure;
Submits the business and technical objectives and project scope;
Puts forward the project life cycle with deliverables and acceptance procedures;
States the work schedule and resource plans;
Communicates the project management processes and controls; and
Gives the reader a synopsis of the project close procedures.

7. COSMOS Proposed Timeline

8. COSMOS Technical Strategy
COSMOS’s technical objective to utilize existing assets includes:
utilization of the existing communications
optimizing use of existing software capabilities
adhering to existing development, database and LDAP standards.
NMPED intends to house and support COSMOS in the location that provides the best user response time. The present strategy is to locate the application software, system administration, and security administration as close to the data source as possible.
NMPED intends to house and support the development environment within NMPED. System administration personnel (platform administration) will be located at NMPED.
During development, the production technical requirements will be documented and the optimum location of the production environment will be determined.

9. Thank You Robert Piro, CIO Austin Buff, IT Director
Joel Nudi, Project Manager
Mitch Johnson, Consultant