Ministry of Education Fiji

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Ministry of Education Fiji

• An Introduction to our EMIS

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(No Transcript)
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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.

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MoE DATABASES

• Present Status WORKING AND BEING HEAVILY USED

FESA
SIMS
FILNA
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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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 SIMSFILNA FESA
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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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

• Much of our communication is now based on data.
• Data must be good 3 Cs.
• Need to develop the culture of improvement for
  data.
• All to understand and undertake to provide good
  data.

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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.

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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.

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