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HUB’S COMPREHENSIVE REGISTRY OF VERIFIERS & PROVIDERS BUILDS TRUST
Washington, D.C. ~ The Board of Directors of the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) is pleased to announce the Student Data Privacy Consortium as 1st Place Winner for Operational Privacy role in PESC’s 23rd Annual Best Practices Competition.
The Access 4 Learning’s Special Interest Group, the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), is a unique collaborative of schools, districts, divisions, regional, territories and state agencies, policy makers, trade organizations and marketplace providers addressing real-world, adaptable, and implementable solutions to growing data privacy concerns. The Consortium also leverages work done by numerous partner organizations but focuses on issues being faced by “on-the-ground” practitioners.
The SDPC Resource Registry has been developed to provide a framework for identifying solutions that have on-the-ground and real-world impact on student data privacy enabling schools, districts, state, and vendors find resources, adapt them to their unique context and implement needed protections.
There are numerous organizations providing some great guidance, effective practices and/or tools to address various student data privacy issues. The challenge is that much of this work does not address many of the “immediate and on the ground” needs seen by schools, districts, divisions, states and territories each day. The SDPC calls these issues “tactical privacy” issues. The Consortium’s members address these day-to-day, real-world multi-faceted issues faced each day by privacy stewards in the protection of learner information.
The goals of the SDPC are:
• Establish a community of stakeholders who have various needs addressed through policy, technology and/or effective practice sharing around effective privacy management,
• Develop tools and resources to address operational issues not currently being addressed,
• Develop a clearinghouse of student data privacy operational issues and resources to support schools, districts, states and vendors in managing those issues – no matter where the resources originate,
• Identify projects that have on-the-ground and real-world impact on student data privacy enabling schools, districts, state and vendors find resources, adapt them to their unique context and implement needed protections,
• Leverage partnership organizations working in the privacy space to have their good work utilized and no reinvention of existing work.
“While I commend the various legislative and organizations beginning to address the issue of student data privacy, the ‘high level’ recommendations, guidance, certifications, etc. are difficult if not impossible to keep organized and more importantly implement at the district level. In my role as the CIO of Cambridge Schools in Massachusetts, I and my peers at the school level, need on the ground tactics and tools that help us reach the high bar set for us as student data stewards.”
— Steve Smith, CIO, Cambridge Public Schools
“The California IT in Educational (CITE) Association, representing over 1,000 districts, has joined the Student Data Privacy Consortium. The Consortium has a mature process for establishing a statewide contract and a database for posting vetted applications and provides transparency to staff and community. Collaboratively working with our partners, we expect to build clear steps that will streamline the process in protecting our student’s data by having a state-wide contract demonstrating compliance with California legislation.”
— Andrea Bennett, Executive Director, California IT in Education (CITE)
The award-winning submission made by SDPC is posted on the PESC website with prior winners at www.pesc.org. An Awards Ceremony was held during the General Sessions at PESC’s April 2022 Data Summit held in Washington, D.C. For more information about the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), please visit https://privacy.A4L.org.
For more information about PESC and the Annual Best Practices Competition, please visit https://www.pesc.org.
ABOUT PESC ANNUAL BEST PRACTICES
PESC Annual Best Practices Competition recognizes, highlights and promotes innovation and ingenuity in the application and implementation of interoperable data standards for business needs. The Annual Best Competition is open to institutions (schools, colleges, universities), associations, organizations, government agencies and departments, districts, consortia, non-profit and commercial service providers and other education stakeholders that have collaborated to design and/or adopt an electronic standardization initiative (e.g. published articles, white papers, pilots, demonstrations and implementations). Submissions can/may include documentation, artifacts and descriptions of the scope of a project, participants and partners, types of standards employed, relevant dates and project milestones, copies of articles (if an article submission), outline of mission/objectives and any related statistics (# of transactions transmitted, estimated cost savings, etc.).
ABOUT PESC
Established in 1997 at The National Center for Higher Education, the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) operates as an international 501(c)(3) non-profit, community-based, umbrella association headquartered in Washington, D.C. of: Data, Software, Technology Service Providers and Vendors; Schools, Districts, Colleges and Universities; College, University and State/Provincial Systems; Local, State/Provincial and Federal Government Offices; Professional, Commercial and Non-Profit Organizations; Non-Profit Associations and Foundations. PESC leads the establishment and adoption of trusted, free and open data standards across the education domain by serving as an open standards-development and open standards-setting body (governed by a voluntary, consensus-based model), independently funded by annual membership dues, meetings and sponsorships, enabling PESC to support, publish and maintain PESC Approved Standards and technical information free and without charge. PESC celebrates its 25th year anniversary in 2022 having been founded in 1997 at the National Center for Higher Education in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.pesc.org.