EDFacts is a U. S. Department of Education initiative to put performance data at the center of policy, management and budget decisions for all K-12 educational programs. EDFacts centralizes performance data supplied by K-12 state education agencies (SEAs) with other data assets, such as financial grant information, within the Department to enable better analysis and use in policy development, planning and management.

Classic Computers has been working as a sub-contractor with the U.S Department of Education since 2005 on this initiative.

Classic Computers Solution

The EDEN system and EDFacts reporting platform are designed to address the critical need for accurate, timely, relevant performance information about education. The project implements expanded analytics capability for the EDEN enterprise data warehouse by incorporating multiple data sources and establishing subject-area data marts to meet specific analysis requirements for Program Offices within ED and for States.

The project team utilizes the Classic Computers Way methodology to govern lifecycle activities specific to constructing the data warehouse and business intelligence applications for EDEN. As part of the new contract, Classic Computers has the following responsibility:

• Data Usage – Implementing the Department’s requirements for enterprise-scale reporting, including customized web interfaces, dashboards, and ad-hoc reporting capability as well as maintaining and operating a data warehouse.
• Data Integration – Extracting, Transforming, and Loading data into the data warehouse utilizing tools such as DataStage.
• Data Quality – Defining and implementing processes to improve the quality of data submitted by states.
• Data Governance – Leading efforts to define and monitor the data.
• Data Acquisition – Analyzing and integrating legacy collections into EDFacts.
• Business Analysis – Conducting requirements definition and product validation for the EDEN Submission System (ESS) in addition to reporting solutions.

Benefits Client Received

With Classic Computers’s leadership and expertise the Department of Education has been able to accomplish the following:

• Create a Data Warehouse for K-12 information which includes nearly a Terabyte of data.
• Create an Ad Hoc Reporting environment for the Data Warehouse.
• Upgrade the Cognos Reporting tool from Cognos Report Net to Cognos 8.3
• Build and maintain data marts for collections such as Consolidated State Performance Reporting (CSPR), Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), and Electronic Application System for Indian Education (EASIE) in addition to the Grants Application Processing System (GAPS) and the EDEN Submission System (ESS).

The team continues to expand the data warehouse with additional EDEN data and other data sources as well as define processes for data quality and data governance. The data warehouse is considered a success because it provides timely access to data for planning and policy management at the federal and state levels.