As we stated in our recent Student Privacy and COVID-19 print piece, “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that we educate kids by shifting their majority ‘brick and mortar’ setting to an online delivery model. This shift has put huge new demands on school personnel, parents, technology providers and the learners themselves. Even before the outbreak, schools have been challenged managing hundreds of software applications in their ‘bricks and mortar’ digital ecosystem.”
This, added to the great work you all have done, has become another reason for the great growth in the SDPC Community. School data stewards cannot let their “privacy guard” down while we shift to greater virtual learning engagement both now and in the foreseeable future – and this is why the SDPC exists and is a great way to get your current and future needs met. Again, our goal is to simplify getting apps in school digital ecosystems by establishing common expectations between marketplace providers and end users.
We hope this update is another tool in your “privacy toolbox”. There are some great updates, some places for you to plug in to get your pain points addressed, and new “stuff” to help us collectively move to our common expectations goal. The Community is here to support YOUR work so the more you can put in the more you get out of the work!
Be safe and good luck on the sprint to the end of this school year – the Year of COVID-19!
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Quick Numbers
Privacy By The Numbers
Currently there are 19 active state Alliances, 6 states finalizing their Alliances and a national Australia Alliance. This represents over 8,000 districts and over 1,250 applications using the Contract Frameworks to support over 29 million users! Both schools/states and marketplace providers are realizing the value in becoming active members of the Consortium.
SDPC Resource Registry Usage
In the last 3-months (Feb-Apr), we have noticed an average 124.7% increase in the number of users per week and an average 64.25% increase in the number of page views per week, compared to the previous 3-months (Nov-Jan). California, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are the most searched State Alliance pages.
SDPC Resource Registry: New Functionality
As discussed during the SDPC Consortium Update call on May 6, 2020, Lisa Waters (SDPC Webmaster) highlighted some new functionality available from the SDPC Resource Registry…
> You can now Email Participants directly through the SDPC Resource Registry. Just login to the website, then select ‘Tools’ > ‘Bulk Email’. Targeted audiences are determined by your role.
> Exhibit E Creator has been launched in New Hampshire! In preparation for system wide roll-out…
+ Please make sure all uploaded Exhibit Es for originating contracts are uploaded correctly which means, not crooked or shrunk on the page.
+ Ensure that it is just the Exhibit E and not the whole contract uploaded.
+ Ensure that all fields are filled out under District Account Info since that data will be used on the Exhibit E.
+ Ensure that the vendor’s email address that the Exhibit E should be sent to is added for each originating contract.
+ For existing resources already uploaded onto the Resource Registry, you will need to make these changes for each record.
> NEW: Vendor Badges. Vendors can now download a Signature Badge highlighting that they have signed an Agreement with a State. There are specific guidelines around their usage:
+ SDPC Badges are for vendors with signed standard SDPC Alliance Data Privacy Agreements (without modifications),
+ SDPC Badges can be used by marketplace providers as long as their signed agreements are active and valid,
+ SDPC Badges can be used in marketing and communications for recipients, ensuring no modifications are made to the Badge.
We are also working on linking these to your profiles on the Vendor Marketplace!
PLEASE NOTE: Vendors must ensure they have ‘Associated’ all their products to their profile in order to be able to access all available badges. Please review the SDPC Vendor video for more information on how to do this.
Communications
Have you checked out the ‘new look’ SDPC website? We have been busy updating the website and creating new presentations for you to review and share…
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SDPC Resource Registry: Overview
Are you looking for a ‘picture’ of the software applications in use in your School District and across your State? Watch video |
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SDPC Vendor Members: How to Utilize the SDPC Resource Registry
An overview for SDPC Vendor members on how they can utilize the SDPC Resource Registry… Watch video |
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Student Data Privacy: What are YOUR Obligations? |
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Student Privacy and COVID-19
A great influx of marketplace providers, and their professional organizations, have increased their communications around the value of their tools and even free or limited-time free usage of them during this crisis. While admirable, this only has added complexity to the management of these tools at the district and even school level. Read more |
In addition, we are creating a Presentations area, where you can find all our recent presentations at external conference & events.
Most recently, we held our quarterly SDPC Consortium Update call (May 6, 2020)… It was a great call with information and updates about the SDPC Project Teams, new SDPC Resource Registry functionality, Global Education Privacy Standards (GEPS), MA Data Hub update followed by a Q&A session… apologies to anyone who was unable to attend, we reached our attendee maximum before the call had even officially started!
Calling All SDPC Vendors…
This year we are thrilled to offer our SDPC marketplace provider members the opportunity to co-host 30 min webinars touting their great products and services, highlighting their support to student data privacy.
These “drop in” sessions will be a great benefit to both provides and end users in setting our common expectations. If you are a SDPC VENDOR MEMBER and interested in providing a webinar, please drop a line to Penny Murray to get your session on the calendar and promoted to the entire Consortium.
Don’t miss our next SDPC Vendor Showcase webinar:
Thursday, May 21, 2020 – 2pm US Eastern
Join Us: https://zoom.us/j/922971349?pwd=eUZ5V0U0Vm5MMnduVUF6TUpmaFBYQT09
Meeting ID: 922 971 349 / Password: SDPC2020
AU Update
Australia are currently working on a number of exciting streams in the Privacy and Security space. A key work area is enabling privacy on the wire where the teams are working on both expanding and improving upon the POD (Privacy Obligation Document) and developing open-source tools to assist in the data cleansing process. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of individual student privacy preferences and consent, with a renewed focus in Australia on developing the Personal Privacy Obligations Document (PPOD). This work will develop a mechanism to meet a number of real-world needs including:
> An individual (or their nominated parent/guardian) specifying criteria regarding their own personal privacy preferences (e.g. sharing of photos for the purposes of a school directory but not for the purposes of promotion on the school website, or specific consent for particular activities including the date of consent and the date consent was withdrawn)
> Tracking the set of laws (explicit or implicit) which are to be respected with regards to an individual’s data (particularly important for students who have GDPR protections).
> Tracking specific, localised privacy preferences related to a group/collection of data (e.g. a school providing the list of all students including ID’s and email addresses to the local photographic company).
In addition, the ongoing success of the National Education Risk Assessment initiative (now known as the Safer Technologies 4 Schools assessments) has been of critical importance as schools move to complete online delivery of content. The assessment team are continually updating the assessment approach and reports to make them more useful to schools. Current work includes an alignment activity with New Zealand to explore a single approach to AU and NZ security and privacy assessments, with an eye on future alignment as part of the SDPC Global Education Privacy Standards (GEPS) work.
Project Team Updates
Management Board – The Management Board has been busy finalizing the Rules of Governance document to ensure the Community has transparent processes to point to as we continue to mature. The Management Board has also been busy with other operational issues including the rollout of the SDPC Badge Program, criteria around “good practices” for membership and will be outlining the needs and steps in an upcoming fall election to the SDPC Management Board.
Alliances – The Alliance leaders have been discussing how to “kick start” their Alliance members usage of tools but it has been slow going with the pandemic stressors on everyone’s time. The leads will be looking over some strategic planning the A4L and SDPC has under way and providing a better story on the linking of interoperability and privacy to help develop a “Secure K12 Learning Ecosystem” for all.
Legal (and Security) Project Team – The Legal Team, along with the short-termed and sunseted Security Project Team, has done their first pass of the National Data Privacy Agreement work under the leadership of Mark Williams of F3. The draft is now in the hands of the Alliance Leads and will soon be returned to the Management Board for the comment period for all SDPC Members – so watch your mailboxes and email! This has been great work and working with the legal aspects of privacy that everyone can agree to is always an issue!
Vendor Project Team – The Vendor Team has taken their last 2 meetings to invite a panel of leading CIOs for a Q and A around vendor-end user engagement and the various issues about privacy that both sides are addressing. These have been rich conversations. The group now are looking to go back to identifying and addressing vendors needs out of the Community to provide the big growth in marketplace suppliers joining the SDPC.
Legislative Project Team – The Team has recently focused on the definitions being used in the National Data Privacy Agreement work ensuring there are aligned to those being used globally in the education vertical. The goal is then to ideally use many of these definitions to develop some model privacy legislative language to be used by Alliances when their legislators call for review, advice or guidance on their work.
The SDPC is a Community to help support YOUR data privacy work. Just send us a line to get plugged in, learn more about SDPC resources or tout your great work as a vendor or an end user.
The more you put in the Community the more you get out of it!
Stay safe.