Talk:Management Information and Administration Systems
From Schoolforge-UK
There has been considerable debate about this topic on the discussion list under various threads:
- On removing the addiction to proprietary school management systems
- Management systems
- MIS
- Interchange between existing projects
I find it best to view the threads Sorted by date of first message.
The problem with Plan 9
... is that a majority of UK schools are already deeply entrenched in some form of proprietary MIS.
Phil's original post "On removing the addiction to proprietary school management systems" proposed as a first step to develop a Windows API that allows FLOSS packages to make use of the existing proprietary SIMS database.
For example, Parrs Wood probably already did something like this to interface pupil data for Moodle with pupil data in SIMS (or whatever they use).
So an alternative plan might be:
- Choose the interchange format likely to gain widest favour (SIF ?)
- Develop a free Windows API for exporting/importing SIF data from/to SIMS
- Develop tools for importing/exporting SIF data to/from MySQL, PostgreSQL and Zope databases
This way, schools are free (and totally confused?) to choose the FLOSS packages that meet their needs, and we're not face with developing yet another school MIS system. Does this make sense?
Yes it makes perfect sense, interchange via Open Standards and a reference implementation seems vital now. My gut feel is that some pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Perhaps it is partly that SIF may not be open if have to pay so much. Please feel free to change Plan.
SteveLee 08:37, 21 Jul 2005 (BST)
