The second project steering group meeting was held on the 23rd January and a progress report covering the first two months of activity was presented. The key conclusion drawn from the first round of stakeholder interviews was that the fundemental structures, technical support systems and strategy for student infomation management at SMU were sound.
The objective of a totally integrated system was on the agenda of the IS team and was being progressively addressed by members of that team in collaboration with the managers of the student information in Registry, the Faculties and elsewhere. This was a welcome message at this early stage: that the overall objective of integration was recognised and its implementation would bring valuable benefits to all of the stakeholders.
That is not to say there are no problems to be overcome or barriers to implementation. The initial survey identified a number of areas of significant inefficiency and inconsistency with regard to data entry, data processing and data access. It is expected that further areas for improvement will be added to that list as the survey continues in the next phase.
It also revealed the limited capacity for development that the very effective, but relatively small, IT support team could provide.
The survey outcomes are being used to create a model of the student information management system using Enterprise Architecture; currently at the business layer level only, but soon at the application and technical layers as well to represent the whole process and its components. The JISC-CETIS Archi tool is being used here and can be reported as being very effective indeed.
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