Washington, DC, 19 May, 2020 — The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), a special interest group of the non-profit Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, continues their support for the pandemic-driven shift to virtual education by announcing the SDPC Vendor Signatory Badge Program.
The 28 State SDPC Alliances, representing over 32 million students in approximately 9,000 districts, are proud to partner with marketplace providers to set common expectations in their attempts to build “connected and secure K12 ecosystems” for learners. The SDPC Vendor Signatory Badge Program is a visible representation for those schools and the vendors who have signed standard Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs) establishing those expectations.
The SDPC Resource Registry currently contains a freely accessible database of over 4,000 educational products and over 11,000 signed DPA agreements between schools and vendors. Other districts in that Alliance can easily piggyback off these agreements to simplify contracting and onboarding of software for learners across the globe. The Resource Registry also contains numerous tools empowering both end users and vendors to help manage their digital ecosystems and products for learners and customers alike.
“The SDPC Vendor Signatory Badge is a great way to show current and potential customers that your company is dedicated to student data privacy” states Andrea Bennett, Executive Director, CITE. “Earning the badge is easy and automatic once you have signed a standard agreement with a customer in that state. Then all new customers in that state will have the confidence and peace of mind of knowing that their data is safe and private with your company.”
There are no additional work requirements for vendors outside of their normal contracting processes with customers to receive the SDPC Signatory Badge specific to their signed state Alliance DPA. Current SDPC Vendor Members who have signed standard Alliance agreements will be receiving their badges soon while new Member Vendors signing standard DPA agreements will access their badges automatically through the Resource Registry.
Steve Setzer, Director – Business Development (& Chief Privacy Officer), Kimono commented “The standard DPAs are the fastest way for vendors to close the contracting loop and get to work. SDPC’s vendor members have done tremendous work speaking up for their legal needs in Alliance DPAs. Most market providers should be able to sign the standard alliance DPAs unchanged, and the badge program will build that momentum. More use of standard DPAs means less time and money spent on negotiations.”
To search those vendors committed to student data privacy check out the SDPC Resource Registry and the larger set of projects the community is working on – addressing both interoperability and privacy – at https://privacy.A4L.org
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About the Access 4 Learning Community
There is no other global community made up of educational marketplace product and service providers and the customers they serve, collaborating daily to address real word learning information and resource issues. The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, previously the SIF Association, is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively address all aspects of learning information management and access to support learning. The A4L Community is “Powered by SIF” Specifications as its major technical tool to allow for this management and access simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The Access 4 Learning Community 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 https://www.A4L.org
About the Student Data Privacy Consortium
The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) is designed to address the day-to-day, real-world multi-faceted issues that schools, states, territories and vendors face when protecting learner information. SDPC’s vision is to develop common activities, artifacts, templates, tools and effective practices that can be leveraged through a unique collaborative of end users and marketplace providers working together.