ProActive Benefits

School Interoperability Framework (SIF)

The School Interoperability Framework or SIF as called within the Education industry provides the framework for data and communication from within and between participating parties. The following briefly highlights many characteristics of SIF:

• Managed by an Independent Organization named Open Group
• Supported by over 120 members including all major education technology providers
• Blueprint for systems integration
• Mandated industry standard (US Department of Education)
• Secure model of controlling access to information
• Reliable communications platform where delivery of data is guaranteed
• Models both the data and messaging
• Structured into logical zones for easy control

Quality education relies, in large part, on professional educators and parents having access to the information, resources, and tools. Seamless integration of a broad spectrum of instructional, administrative and communication tools is the essential foundation for an environment that effectively addresses the needs of all participants. The School's Interoperability Framework's (SIF) vision within this context is that schools will be enabled to better utilize technology in a manner that leverages the promise and capabilities of interoperability between disparate applications. As a result, technology is reduced as a barrier and becomes an enabler and SIF will be the catalyst in allowing systemic change to take place. Rather than have each application vendor try to create a separate connection to every other application, SIF has defined the set of rules and definitions to share data within a SIF Zone. A SIF Zone is a logical grouping of applications, in which software application agents communicate with each other through a central communication point – the Zone Integration Server (ZIS). Data is shared between applications through a series of standardized messages, queries and events written in XML and sent using Internet protocols. These events are defined by the SIF Specification.

SIF Agents are extensions of each application that serve as the intermediary between the software application and the SIF Zone. The ZIS keeps track of the Agents registered in the Zone and manages transactions between Agents, enabling them to provide data and respond to requests. The ZIS is responsible for all access control and routing and security within the system. Because the behavior of the Agents and ZIS are standard, functionality can be added to a Zone over time by simply adding SIF-enabled applications.

Vertical interoperability is a situation in which SIF agents at different levels of an organization communicate using a SIF Zone. Vertical interoperability involves data collection from multiple agents (upward) or publishing of information to multiple agents (downward). For example, a state department data warehouse may listen for changes in district level data warehouses and update its database on a regular basis. Or, a state department may wish to publish teacher certification data to districts.