The SIF Association release Data Privacy artifacts to enable implementable solutions at ground level

WASHINGTON - March 31, 2015 - PRLog -- The SIF Association is proud to announce the release of Data Privacy artifacts to the global marketplace, which provide actionable and tangible privacy tools as well as guidance materials, to be implemented at the school or state level in partnership with marketplace providers.

These artifacts are the first draft in a series of tools and effective practices generated by global educational institutions (including LEAs and SEAs) and vendors participating in the SIF Association Data Privacy Task Force.  In this first release, the group has published Student Data Privacy Use Case Template examples for data sharing in a US State Longitudinal Data Systems, UK Social Care / Looked After Children and US Free and Reduced Lunch.  More use cases are being identified and they would welcome input from the educational marketplace to prioritize their next set of examples for general release.  Also published is a Student Data Privacy Stewardship and Data Breach example for the North American marketplace, which can be utilized immediately ‘off page’ by any organization.

“The Association recognized the rapid changes in trends for sharing of data between school systems” commented Graham Reed, Product Architect at Groupcall and co-Lead of the SIF Data Privacy Task Force.  He added “while continuing to fully support this, we wanted to ensure adequate safeguards were promoted amongst SIF members and SIF consumers.  Appropriate consumption of student information is vitally important in 2015 and beyond, but so is the privacy and protection of data. The Task Force has pulled on the best data privacy experts and SIF associates from around the globe to offer a toolset of flexible resources to be used right from the off, ensuring that data privacy is not seen as a burden to data sharing.”

Larry Fruth II, Ph.D, CEO/Executive Director at the SIF Association states “As an Association with a large end-user community base we are thrilled to release this document, which has been spearheaded by Community members in response to the concerns around data privacy, in particular student data.  With many vendor organizations offering quick and easy solutions to access student data, it is important that we remember what impacts this can have on individual learners.  All data exchange must be secure and controlled at the local source to ensure full compliance with current regulatory policy.  Members of this SIF Task Force are strong leaders in their educational fields, and I look forward to leveraging their expertise to provide further quality, tangible information to the marketplace over the coming months.”

There are many policy and guidance publications available in the marketplace, but the SIF Data Privacy Task Force is committed to providing ‘implementable examples for immediate use to address the deepening concerns around the use of student data and student data privacy.  These artifacts are publicly available on the SIF website here: https://www.sifassociation.org/Resources/Documents/SIF_Data_Privacy_Task_Force_Artifacts-DRAFT.pdf

To find about more about the SIF Data Privacy Task Force or to get involved, please contact the SIF Association at staff@sifassociation.org.

About the SIF Association

The SIF Association is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 3,200 schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The SIF Implementation Specification enables diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently, reliably, and securely regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The SIF Association has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach.  For further information, visit http://www.sifassociation.org.