Western Australia Education pens $32M CIVICA digital transformation deal
Perth, Australia – July 4, 2016 — Four Js’ partner Civica International, one of Australia’s leading suppliers of software, technology and outsourcing services that help schools to transform the way they work, has announced a new contract with the Department of Education Western Australia to implement a $32 million upgrade to its School Information System (SIS). Civica Education Suite Finance module to be used as part of the solution is written in Genero Enterprise.
“The School Information System (SIS) will underpin the delivery of education services in Western Australia over the next 10 years. As well as the cost savings we’ve identified, there will be significant operational improvements for our schools, benefitting staff, students and parents.”
Bevan Doyle,
Chief Information Officer for the Department of Education,
Western Australia
The Department of Education is responsible for providing quality education to 800 public schools across Western Australia. The new solution will compile all student records into a single enterprise database, which will be delivered via the state government’s secure private cloud. The key highlights of the new system are:
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20,000 teachers in Western Australia will be provided with a modern, intuitive and easy to use School Information System (SIS)
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300,000 students and their families to benefit from enhanced education services, including records that can travel between schools
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New contract worth approximately $32 million will benefit local people as Civica expands its Perth office
Commenting on the deal, Bevan Doyle, Chief Information Officer for the Department of Education, Western Australia said:
Over the past twelve months we’ve undertaken a thorough procurement process and selected Civica as our partner.
Teachers will benefit from Civica’s intuitive, easy to use web based system by having access to student information from any device with an Internet connection. The new solution will also make it easier for them to take attendance and record the behaviours and achievements of their students reducing teacher’s time spent on administration, which should result in a better learning experience for their students.
The person-centric database, which allows students to hold relationships with multiple schools at the same time, will enable staff to view information from the child’s previous school, as well as their current one. As the child moves through their education, the school will be able to build and utilise a 360 degree view of the student and their family to improve educational attainment.
We are very excited that the Department of Education, Western Australia has chosen to implement Civica’s enterprise solution. We have now expanded our team within the Perth office in order to provide the best on-the-ground support possible. Our system is proven to save schools money and time, while enhancing the ability for children and families to track educational progress.
Simon Jones
Managing Director
Civica Education
The new education management platform is expected to relieve schools of many current reporting requirements, such as census reporting that can now be drawn directly from the system.
Significant cost savings will also be made, as schools will no longer need to purchase expensive software add-ons to complement the existing SIS.
In addition, the installation and maintenance of 800 school servers will no longer be required. In a state covering approximately 2.5 million square kilometres, this is likely to result in considerably reduced costs in ongoing maintenance, with a reduced need to have technical staff available to undertake maintenance. Historically, for all training, schools also needed to send staff offsite, pay a replacement teacher, as well as travel and accommodation. With the Civica Education Suite, staff are able to use an online training module to complete on demand and online training for many processes and functions.
For schools’ executive teams, the Civica Education Suite will provide reporting and analytical tools; enabling them to make appropriate data-based strategic decisions and also allowing them to build up their own dashboard and custom reports.
Civica will also be responsible for consolidating financial systems for all public schools into a single platform. The implementation is expected to be complete within three and a half years and will provide the Department and its schools with the opportunity to:
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Reduce workload through the provision of one point of data entry for information
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Enable simplified collaborative planning with regard to educational programs and resource sharing
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Deliver a ‘live’ student profile of student information, including, learning, attendance and behaviour data
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Provide a secure environment for data about students, including personal details through the central delivery of the SIS database
Civica’s system was built using a technological standard known as the Systems Interoperability Framework Australia (SIF AU). This common standard allows for the transfer of information between systems using a common data format, which is designed to save schools money when they need to transfer information into other software applications that they are using.
Schools will start being moved to the new system from 2018.
Civica has been working with the Department through a previous contract signed in 1998. This new contract will be effective for five years, with options to extend to ten years.
Read more about the digital transformation of Western Australian education:
About Civica
Civica (www.civica.com.au) is a market-leading specialist in software, technology and outsourcing services that help teams and organisations around the world to transform the way they work. Combining exceptional customer focus, experience and commitment, Civica supplies more than 4,000 organisations in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the USA.
For more information about the Civica Education Suite please visit: http://civicaeducation.com.au.
