Jam Hamidi's presentation to the June 2011 IT4BC Conference. Licensed under Creative Commons-Share Alike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/): feel free to share, adapt and re-use as long as BCcampus is credited and you in turn share openly.

1. An Introduction to PESC Standards
What they are and what they can do for you
Jam Hamidi
Bccampus
PESC TAB member
jhamidi@bccampus.ca
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2. ● Standards are so universally used that they are
often taken for granted. While some might
consider them to be about as interesting as
watching grass grow, without them, modern life
as we know it would unravel.
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3. IT4BC PESC 3

4. ● Imagine Tom jumping from Institution to institution
over his long “professional” career:
● From province to province.
● From country to country.
● Imagine his Transcripts, Achievements, Awards,
Loans, Credits, Courses.
● Imagine the administrative burden.
● Protection of his identity (by law).
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5. PESC org
● PESC - the Postsecondary Electronic Standards
Council
● Established in 1997 at the National Center for
Higher Education in Washington, DC.
● Non-profit, community-based, umbrella
association
● AACRAO, ACT, Brigham Young University, Educause, Citibank, COHEAO,
Datatel, EFC, ETS, Harbinger-Supply Tech, KPMG, Law School Admission
Council, NACUBO, NASFAA, NCHELP, New York University, Pearson,
Sallie Mae, Sungard SCT, SLSA, University of Oklahoma, University of
Texas at Austin, U.S. Department of Education
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6. PESC org
● Factors in formation of PESC (90s):
● Y2K
● Electronic Transcripts
● FDSLP (Federal Direct Student Loan Program)
● EASI (Easy Assessor for Students and Institutions)
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7. IT4BC PESC 7

8. IT4BC PESC 8

9. IT4BC PESC 9

10. IT4BC PESC 10

11. ● The hub relieves each sender and receiver of having
to connect peer to peer and of having to develop
multiple interface formats.
● A single change in data needs to be implemented only
once.
● An organization that plugs into the hub immediately
connect with every other organization in the network.
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12. IT4BC PESC 12

13. Without PESC expect
● Increased cost of systems, IT, integration.
● Increased cost in resources due to serial, redundant
and customized programming for the same data
elements.
● Slower response to customer needs.
● Increased data mapping which jeopardizes data
quality and integrity.
● More difficult access to data.
● Repetitive programming if rules, regulations, or
business needs change.
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14. ● While Provinces can set up their own hubs to manage
data exchange within a Province, national standards
facilitate data exchange across the country or with
other countries.
● Peer to peer exchange is possible with national
standards.
● But a centralized method for exchanging data is
needed as well for all institutions that don’t have or
want their own hubs or don’t want a peer to peer
model.
● Canada privacy laws prohibit Student data from
crossing into US for exchanges within Canada.
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15. FA
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16. Admissions
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17. Challenges
● Broad exchange and transportation of data from one
point to another remains unaddressed in higher
education.
● There is a significant need for a centralized hub or
network that can exchange data standards for
Institutions.
● Without a service, Institutions have to search for a
mechanism on their own or build it themselves.
● Leaving each entity to build mechanisms on its own is
extremely expensive, will take years, and as a result
may never actually happen.
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18. Challenges
● Higher education is far behind other industries in
implementation and use of technical standards.
● Think of the value of:
● The ATM network
● Credit card networks (VISA, Mastercard, AmEx, etc.)
● Direct deposit
● K12 and higher education's own standards.
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19. PESC Mission
● PESC approved financial aid XML standards
implemented in every US College and university.
● High School and/or College Transcripts
used/implemented in 6 states (CA, GA, IN, NC, OH,
VA) and throughout Alberta and Ontario, in pilot phase
in BC.
● 18 states plan on implementation within 18-24 months
● Data Transport Standard implemented in Alberta, a
handful of colleges, and with National Student
Clearinghouse.
● XML College Transcript implemented by SunGard
Higher Education.
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20. Partners
● AACRAO’s SPEEDE Committee – American
Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions
Officers, Standardization of Postsecondary Education
Electronic Data Exchange
● DQC / InCommon
● SHEEO – State Higher Education Executive Officers
● SIF Association
● SunGard Higher Education
● US Department of Education
– NCES – National Center for Education Statistics
– FSA – Office of Federal Student Aid
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21. IT4BC PESC 21

22. IT4BC PESC 22

23. Adoption
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24. EdUnify
● A web service registry/index with a suite of
applications built on top of it.
● EdUnify infrastructure allows vendors, academic
institutions, and government agencies to register
their data interchange specifications.
● Users of EdUnify will be able to use these registry
and annotation services to:
● Build integrations
● Inventory services
● Access data across higher education.
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25. EdUnify Applications
• Faculty Search for Expertise, Schedule, etc.
• Student Search for Enrollment Status
• Student Progress Traceback Search
• Teacher Traceback Search
• Lookup Program and Course Learning Outcomes
and Comparability
• Government Agency Data and Information
Collection
• Applications for Mobile, Portable, or Wearable
Computer Devices IT4BC PESC 25

26. http://www.pesc.org
● Standards and Workgroups
● PESC Approved Standards
– Admissions Applications
– Education Test Score Reporting
– IPEDS
– Student Aid
– Transcripts
– Data Transport Specification
– Core Main
– Sector Libraries
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27. CoreMain
● CoreMain v1.8.0 xsd
Defines basic types
● Person
● Organization
● Transmission
● Employment
● Etc..
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28. CoreMain
● <xs:group name="OrganizationIDGroup">
● <xs:annotation>
● <xs:documentation>Allowable Organization IDs - Exclusive choice. As of January
2009, CSIS and USIS are marked as deprecated and will be removed in a future
release</xs:documentation>
● </xs:annotation>
● <xs:choice>
● <xs:element name="OPEID" type="core:OPEIDType"/>
● <xs:element name="NCHELPID" type="core:NCHELPIDType"/>
● <xs:element name="IPEDS" type="core:IPEDSType"/>
● <xs:element name="ATP" type="core:ATPType"/>
● <xs:element name="FICE" type="core:FICEType"/>
● <xs:element name="PSIS" type="core:PSISType"/>
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29. Admissions Applications
● The Admissions Application standard can be used
by any number of organizations to send
admissions application data and information to
colleges and universities.
● Members Approved:
– AACRAO - American Association of Collegiate Registrars &
Admissions Officers
– SunGard Higher Education
– Datatel, Inc.
– Oracle Corporation
– Alberta, Ontario Province-wide Admissions
– Etc..
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30. Admissions Applications
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31. Testscore Reporting
● XSD, Implementation Guides
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32. Student Aid
● XSD, implementation guides
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33. Transcripts
● XSD, Implementation guides
● AcademicRecord type
– Course
– Academic Award
– Academic Summary
● High School transcript type
● College transcript type
● Transcript Request and Response
● Transcript Acknowledgement
● Transcript Batch
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34. Transcripts
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35. Transcripts
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36. Transcripts
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37. Transcripts
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38. Transcript Exchange
● Currently in Pilot in BC
● SFU (PeopleSoft system integration)
● Kwantlen (Banner system integration)
● Douglas College (Banner system integration)
● Hub and spokes model for BC
● Last 5 months in Production
● Processed 1200 transcripts already
● Soon to expand to more institutions
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39. DTS
● Data Transport Specification
● WebService Oriented
● Published WSDL
● Security aspects including single sign-on
● SIF integration coming soon
● SIF has extensive WSDL capabilities
● More REST-like
● In its infancy
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40. EDI
● EDI-PESC Mapping document
● EDI Working group within PESC umbrella
● SNAP (Statistical Networking Application Project)
for K12 exchanges.
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41. PESC TAB
● Technical Advisory Board
● ACT / SunGard cochairs
● The Technical Advisory Board is responsible for
updating and maintaining all technical specifications
and for providing guidance on technical and
architectural issues related to electronic standards
and higher education.
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42. Conclusion
● PESC provides all standards and information to
the education community on its website without
charge.
● If your organization is not a member, but you use
the site and/or use PESC standards, please
consider joining PESC as a member and help
share the cost of bringing higher education to a
new level of interoperability.
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