Moscow Department of Education (Analytics of education)

In July, 2009 Custom CustIS companies and Electronic School completed the joint project on development and pilot implementation of the automated information system (AIS) of "The analyst of education" in the Information and Analytical Center (IAC) of the Moscow Department of Education. As the customer the Electronic School company – the system integrator specializing in solutions in the field of education, and software developer – Custom InformSystems acted.

Premises of the project of creation of the Analytics of Education system

The education system of Moscow includes 3816 educational institutions which collecting and information analysis about activity is extremely demanded task. Function of its information and analytical and technology support is assigned to IAC and the district IT centers.

From the level of educational institutions information on pupils, the personnel, logistics arrives as aggregated, and primary (including personified) and so forth Being collected and saved up in the storages which are located on the technology platform of IAC, data need processing for representation in the form of summary analytical reports to key staff of Department of Education, IAC, district administrations education and their IT centers.

The main complexity of obtaining the necessary summary reporting consists in high dynamics of requirements imposed to it from consumers. Even the type of the regulated report forms is subject to permanent upgrade, and an essential part of reports has ad hoc character - requirements to them depend on the current situation and, as a rule, do not repeat. In such situation the report forms implemented in systems data warehouses quickly become outdated and are not capable to satisfy requests of end users. As technical specialists of IAC, or the district IT centers by implementation of direct selections of the relevant information storages are forced to execute result, formation of the most part of the reporting, using technical interfaces of access.

The high efficiency of obtaining analytical information by consumers at such scheme of work cannot be provided. Besides, high non-core load on technical specialists takes place. Therefore the purpose of project implementation consisted in a possibility of independent and operational obtaining summary analytical information directly her consumers.

Structure of the existing information flows and target provision of the Analytics of Education system in it

According to Pavel Bobrovnikov, the project manager from Electronic school, the problem of creation and deployment in Department of Education of the AIS convenient for key users, at the time of start of the project was more than is relevant.

Stages and technologies of the project

For carrying out preproject inspection the working group including specialists of Electronic school, IAC and Custom of InformSystems was created. During inspection meetings with the staff of Department of Education, IAC, the district IT centers were held.

The next moments were by results revealed:

• the problem of creation of a uniform show-window of analytical data for key staff of the education system allowing with the minimum efforts to receive the data consolidated from different sources is available
• it is necessary to provide to users the general mechanisms of work with such sources; the problem of comparison of the same information arriving from them is also relevant
• the possibility of comparison of different values of indicators in the same cuts is of special interest (for example, the number of pupils per unit of the computer equipment by educational institutions)
• storage and work with analytical data by the date/period of their relevance for the purpose of tracking of dynamics of change is of interest. At the same time the problem of storage of all history of primary data in systems sources is not always relevant, primary data not necessarily remain for all history and can be cleaned in these systems eventually
• the park of the information systems which are potential sources of primary information is in permanent development therefore an opportunity as changes of structure of the data obtained from already existing sources and connections to the created tool new, and without participation of the supplier of the solution is important

During study of a task the analysis of a large number of summary report forms and charts of both regular, and single use was made. Their consumers are potential users of a new system. The possibility of receiving similar forms and charts using a system was selected at design as one of the main criteria of compliance of architecture and system interfaces to a solvable task.

According to the results of a stage of the preproject inspection which borrowed about a month the concept of an analytical system assuming sale of the BI tool in structure was developed:

• storage of aggregated data (Data WareHouse the module accumulating aggregated data in the form of OLAP of cubes)
• the configured subsystem of loading and data translation from systems sources
• flexible tools for accomplishment of requests and creation of reports
• the master allowing to modify and develop structure of the processed data without participation of the solution designer

It should be noted that process of refining of requirements to a system from users did not stop at all stage of its implementation. It managed to be reached thanks to application flexible (the commonly accepted term in the IT environment - Agile) methodologies of maintaining the projects gaining popularity recently. In particular, development process was constructed by Custom CustIS company on methodology of SCRUM assuming periodic demonstrations of intermediate results to key users for feedback and to - amendments of requirements.

Own technology platform of CustIS Universal .Net and "thin client" of CustIS Forms was applied to system development by Custom CustIS company. It allowed to minimize labor costs on creation of a core of a server part and functional interfaces, having focused on the main business logic of the solution.

In a system the industrial Oracle DBMS providing high reliability of storage and data processing rate is used.

It should be noted that the created AIS does not impose high requirements to a hardware platform. It was succeeded to reach it due to failure from ideology of universal data storage in advantage it is declarative / the imperative mechanism which is automatically modifying structure of base at change of structure of the data processed in a system.

As a result of project implementation within four months the analytical tool solving problems of aggregation of data from different sources in a measure type with any quantity of analytical cuts, creation of any analytical reports and charts on the basis of the units assembled and stored in a system was created.

Convenient tool of the analyst

Users of Department of Education, IAC and the district IT centers via the single interface of the Analytics of Education system can quickly receive any analytical reports on the initial data consolidated from the most various sources. Even very difficult and volume reports form in time, not exceeding several seconds that allows to speak about real applicability of a system for support of process of operational decision making.

Now in the Analytics of Education system more than 30 key indicators from the different systems sources on the following knowledge domains are described:

• contingent (pupils of educational institutions)
• personnel of educational institutions
• logistics of educational institutions
• pedagogical load of employees

Each indicator has 10-20 analytical cuts that gives to the user the corresponding quantity of degrees of freedom on selection and submission of analytical information. At design of interfaces emphasis on their simplicity and intuitivism was put.

Appearance of interfaces of setup and display of the analytical report using the designer of simple reports of a system

* the drawing opens in a separate window

More irregular report forms can be received using the designer of composite (compound) reports. They allow the user to do the "glueing together" from any number of simple reports containing values of the most different indicators. "Adherend" edges of simple reports should have identical dimensions.

Form of setup of the composite report

* the drawing opens in a separate window

Thanks to the provided possibility of preserving of parameters of creation of report forms, simple and difficult reports, being created by the qualified user once, then are used by the others.

The analytical data  presented in the form of charts

Results and perspectives of the Analytics of Education project

Now the staff of IAC and Electronic school carries out work on connection to the created system of the new systems data sources. At the same time need for assistance from developers does not arise – detailed documentation and flexible ideology of the solution allow the customer's specialists (or to users) to connect new data sources by simple structure declaration of indicators and algorithms of data sampling from systems sources.

The project manager from Electronic school Pavel Bobrovnikov so summarized project implementation results: "In a project deliverable we received the convenient, effective tool allowing to resolve issues of formation of the analytical reporting under a request of users of Department of Education and district administrations in a foreground mode".

Developers[1]of Custom CustIS company and specialists of Electronic school during the project create the universal solution of the class BI which can be used in different fields of activity. Its further development in the direction of expansion of functionality of the designer of reports, implementations of a possibility of receiving settlement (derivatives) indicators, automatic receiving and aggregation of new portions of data on the schedule and so forth is planned.