This state Agency required a data collection system to comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) act of 2004.

Client: A State Education Agency in the USA.

Business Need: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004, signed on December 3, 2004, requires each State to develop a six-year performance plan. This State Performance Plan (SPP) evaluates the State’s efforts to implement the requirements and purposes of IDEA and illustrates how the State will continuously improve upon this implementation. In alignment with IDEA, the OSEP has identified five monitoring priorities and twenty indicators to be included in the SPP. For each of the indicators, the State must report progress on measurable and rigorous targets and improvement activities over a six-year period of time in the SPP. These indicators are performance or compliance in nature.

Federal and State law set the determination of compliance targets. The SPP was submitted to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) for approval on January 30, 2006. OSEP approved the SPP on May 22, 2006. The first Annual Performance Report (APR) based on the SPP was due February 1, 2008. The APR will be made available to the public. The State will follow the sampling procedures defined by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to initiate the development of a statewide data collection system and provide baseline data. This data will be reported to OSEP annually. Based on feedback regarding an analysis of the sampled population, improvement efforts will be applied to the data collection process on an ongoing basis.

Solution: The solution will take advantage of the application developed for State Performance Plan, Indicator system to leverage the SQL Server 2005 Database, graphical user interface developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, hardware platforms and any other applicable technology to deploy Indicator systems more quickly and at a reduced overall cost. The application will enable a statewide data collection, evaluation and accountability to meet the specific requirements of the State Performance Plan Indicator systems. The application is also capable of generating aggregate reports by state, region and district using Microsoft SQL reporting services.

Provide system access through agency intranet or through outside Internet access by authorized users via the security system. Users of the application will be role and privilege regulated. The application must support approximately 700 users. About 250 may use the application at one time. Users for each Indicator will enter and create about 1 KB of data for each entry. The application must supports up to 40 MB of data in tables during the life of the application. The application interfaces various other systems. The application will also provide export capability to MS Excel for manipulation.

Benefits: The application will enable a statewide data collection system to meet the specific requirements of the State Performance Plan Indicators and enable the Division of IDEA Coordination to fulfill their mandated OSEP reporting in a timely manner and at reduced cost improving performance, productivity, collaboration with other state or agency to better share resources with other States or Agencies and mission critical needs that cannot be fulfilled more efficiently by other means and also develop systems using defined architecture that is efficiently and economically extensible for other future needs that support the mission of the State and the Agency leveraging Microsoft state of the art technologies. The application will facilitate improvement of the State's performance on Indicators at the statewide, regional, and district level.