A4L Community Newsletter - June 2016 June 2016 | Page 7

NEWSLETTER | Issue 32

7

News from the UK Community
Update: DfE Data Exchange Initiative
by Penny Murray, Community Director
The A4L Community, in partnership
with the Department for Education
(DfE), hosted an event on Tuesday 14
June 2016, to provide insight to the
DfE’s Data Exchange Project to the
wider education marketplace.
If you have not heard of the Data
Exchange (DE) Project previously, the
project is focused on working with
Industry and Sector leaders in
developing an open data standard and
transport mechanism that all schools,
academies and local authorities can use
to move data and to send data to DfE.
On 14 June, we were delighted to
welcome over 75 delegates to the
event, which was aimed at providing
insights for Data and Technical Leads
within MATs and LAs and technical staff
from educational software suppliers.
The morning session started with an
introduction to the A4L Community –
which is celebrating 10 years of
interoperability in the UK – followed by
an update of the DE project ‘Scene
Setting and Current State of Play’ by Iain
Bell (Data Modernisation Unit, DfE).
These sessions were followed by a DE
Architectural Overview presentation,
which highlighted technical aspects and
the Proof of Concept developments to
date, and a presentation by Rob Potter

SAVE THE DATE!

(A4L UK Technical Board Co-Chair) on
‘Data Security, Privacy and Open
Standards’ which highlighted the
scalability of the SIF standard and how
it could be utilised in the marketplace
for much more than just the DE project,
providing many additional benefits to
schools, academies, MATs and LAs.

SAVE THE DATES:
Data Exchange
Forum, Oct 2016

by Penny Murray, Community Director

The afternoon sessions were split into
two open discussion forums: (a)
Academisation: How does it affect Data
movement,
and
(b)
Technical
Demonstration and Creating the project
‘Technical Risk Register’.

The A4L

Both the A4L Community and DfE
welcomed the lively discussion and
feedback in each of the breakout
sessions, which will be fed back into the
Project Team and considered in future
project developments.

shortly via the A4L website.

At the recommendation of participants,
we
have
already
provisionally
scheduled the next Data Exchange
Forum meeting, which will take place on
11 October 2016. Further event details
will be made available in due course.
The presentation slides from this event
can be found on the A4L website here.

Community is

delighted

to

confirm that the next Data Exchange
Forum meeting will be held on Tuesday
11 October 2016. Further information,
including a draft agenda and venue
information, will be made available
delegates

who

attended

All

the

last

meeting in June will be emailed directly
with

this

information

when

it

is

available.
The UK Community will also hold a
‘member-only’ meeting on Wednesday
12 October 2016. Again, further details
will be made available in due course
from the A4L Event Pages.