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Global Education Privacy & Security Standard (GEPS/GESS)

The Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs) are the first step in getting common expectations around safeguarding student privacy – but only the first step.  What if you could automatically communicate between end users and vendors?

  • Simply what you can and can't do with data
  • Stipulates purpose - why you are being supplied with the data
  • Legal obligations and technical benchmarks
  • A green list of data elements you can access
  • Data conditions (subsets of data e.g. senior years only)
  • What you should do with the data if the data is no longer required
  • Details of recipient of the data, who to contact if there are issues, who is handling the data, countries impacted
  • Global Education Privacy & Security Standards (GEPS / GESS)

GEPS is the combination of the SDPC Resource Registry with Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs), linked to GESS controls and automated by Privacy Obligation Documents (PODs) – see below.

The Global Education Privacy Standard (GEPS)

PIC_SDPC_GEPS

The Global Education Security Standard (GESS)

The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) has been extremely successful in bringing the educational technology (EdTech) marketplace and school districts together in addressing student data privacy obligations.  As the SDPC continues to expand, the ability to audit and/or certify that providers, and schools, are meeting their security obligations to safeguard data is critical. Currently, there are very few mandated requirements for providers to adhere to specific security benchmarks. Some states have legislated their own set of security requirements.  In the absence of any framework or identified benchmarks to audit providers against, it is impossible to certify any application is meeting privacy and security obligations.

The new Global Education Security Standard (GESS) Project Team has been working diligently to develop a matrix/crosswalk of all existing security frameworks and identify a core set of controls applicable to PK-20 data. 

To find out more about GESS, click here.

Unity Enabling Privacy Expectations

POD - Privacy Obligation Document

The POD is a machine readable “meta-data” document that contains detailed contract expectations.  Enable its transport by utilizing the newest ‘Unity’ SIF Specification, developed by the A4L Community

FIND OUT MORE about the Unity Specification >>

GEPS is currently a part of the Massachusetts Data Hub Pilot Project – so much more to come!

The SDPC model Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs) have had a huge impact on the K12 EdTech ecosystem by establishing common expectations and streamlining the DPA execution process for both districts and providers.

Since 2016, over 222,000 standard DPAs have been executed and subscribed to.

By applying an average legal fee of $250 per hour, and minimal negotiation time of 1hr for each district and vendor per DPA, these standard DPAs have saved participating districts and vendors over $111 million.