Ref: 021801
The Ladok consortium now includes practically all degree-granting institutions in the nation. The large majority of its work is performed at member universities, supervised by university faculty and technical experts. Ladok governance is in the hands of senior university officers; day-to-day management is exercised by a central staff of experts selected from university ranks; performance is audited regularly by government officials and experts from other organisations.
This paper outlines the organisational arrangements that safeguard independence, accuracy, and security; provide incentives for continuing innovation and technical leadership; and remain responsive to the needs of member institutions, students, and the general public. The paper describes the student data and related services routinely delivered and the experience with the continuing stream of innovations to keep pace with changing needs and technology.
The paper also outlines several new projects now being developed and deployed, including some instructive examples of cooperation with industry and government agencies.
The primary functions of a student records system are to keep track of individual students with transcripts of academic performance, and to furnish the raw material for institutional research about students. Ladok has expanded from this core by adding such related services as an admission system and very soon a service to keep track of alumni. In many countries -- though not yet in Sweden -- the student record system also delivers other data, such as student fees, financial aid, housing, and related services.
An important part of a student records system are the aggregated reports that summarise the performance of departments, faculties, and the university as a whole. These reports contain important performance indicators for institutional research that help guide university governance and allocation of resources. They are also of interest to government agencies and foundations that help support the university financially.
The Ladok system can also furnish key data about applicants for admission, and thus can assist the admission staff of any university that wishes to apply its own algorithms for screening applicants. The screening can focus on special interests of individual departments or set of disciplines. Admission systems often work with competition algorithms that aim to fill classes with applicants that best match the standards set by faculties in specific fields, such as physical sciences or fine arts.
Exchanges of students with foreign universities are becoming increasingly popular. Ladok has grown to collect and report student information in a standardised format that facilitates communication among participating universities, including implementation of the European Credit Transfer System, ECTS. This encourages cooperative arrangements between sister institutions, and the dissemination of relevant information to students and their faculty advisors.
Protecting privacy and security in a student records system is vital for its users, clients and funding agencies. The development of advanced security software and devices is a continuing effort, in which close cooperation among member universities and with industry has been especially fruitful. An example of recent efforts is the adaptation of the so-called Smart Card, which gives individual students an identification device the size of a credit card that contains a machine-readable chip with individual information about credit status, etc.; the chip also permits bringing user data up to date after each transaction, such as adjusting the account balance after each purchase or deposit.
Just as individual records are of long-lasting importance to each student, reports on the aggregate results are important measures of departmental and institutional effectiveness. One direct application is the use of the summary reports by the government in allocating appropriations to individual institutions and special projects.
In this section we describe some current activities in the Ladok portfolio of projects.
During the past year these large-scale printing runs have been moved to the National Post. This has been the result of extensive negotiations by Ladok. The shift takes advantage of the postal service's investment in a system of regional printing centres that accept computer output from Ladok directly to a central node. Reports are sorted by postal code of the addressee and then transmitted to the regional print center nearest to the receiver before being printed on paper.Thus, hard copy reports are generated only just before delivery to the ultimate addressee. The new procedure minimises physical transportation and maintains control by a service that has a well-established reputation for safeguarding the privacy of the mails.
The advantages for the consortium are substantial. The cost has been reduced by half, compared to printing at computer centres. Investment costs for special printing equipment are absorbed in a much larger whole, and printing quality and distribution speed has improved. This agreement between the consortium and the National Post will be further developed in the near future with functions for special enclosures, including applications for housing, letter from the rector, etc. Work is also under way on special handling for enclosures with high intrinsic value, such as airline tickets, and identity cards that are usable as credit cards in university book stores and cafeterias, and for other university goods and services.
For the more distant future, we are exploring options for servicing some other institutional printing by departments and at desktop.
Today, we write our documents in a word processing program in a personal computer, instruct the computer to make a printout, walk to the printer, search for an envelope, write the receiver address on the envelope, insert the document in the envelope, seal the envelope, add special instructions for air mail or registered mail, and put the envelope in the box for outgoing mail. The internal post service weighs the envelope and calculates the appropriate postage and finally handles the mail to the Postal service for distribution.
Soon, we expect to instruct the computer to make a virtual printout and choose in the print manager window to send the document to the printing service. We expect to achieve next-day delivery to the addressee, without internal handling of documents and distribution. This differs from e-mail and fax by the way the final distribution is done by ordinary mail delivery by the Postal service. Not everybody has access to fax and e-mail yet. The distributed content can include official documents and supplements that are most efficiently delivered by ordinary mail.
In Sweden and in some other countries, the reports of aggregate results from
the system are an important factor in determining the allocation of government
appropriations for education, a primary source of institutional support. There
is no hard data on the use of institutional summaries by private foundations
and other sources of financial support in assessing the merits of applicants
for grants and research contracts, but the prospects are clear. With this in
mind, accuracy and security of records are of great value to students, to the
universities, and to agencies that depend on accurate and impartial records for
allocating their support of education. The Ladok consortium addresses this
problem by applying several security methods:
- internal control mechanisms with electronic certificates
- log files
- strong logon password and other security schemes
- encapsulation of clients, communication, server modules and database and
servers
- periodic security reviews by external reviewers with wide experience
The latest approach in this area is the application of Smart Card technologies, allowing even stronger encryption and authentication methods. Our current project includes commercial vendors that service banks for the development of a national identity card with photo and a chip imbedded in the plastic card.
The identity of the card holder is guaranteed by the National Post, which is the official agency to issue the national identity cards for Swedish citizens. The high degree of public confidence in that system has encouraged us to use the new card for a variety of applications that demand reliability and security.
Student systems, especially, continue to change and grow. Therefore, it is important to accept change as a given in planning for the maintenance and development of the system. For this, we need access to the latest techniques and modern methods in development. The Ladok consortium are currently reengineering its old COBOL-based system to a modern client-server system, running on PCs and Macintosh clients. The wide use of computer-generated and machine-readable forms in industry and commerce has raised the general level of demand for user-friendly appearance and function. University faculty and students expect us to keep pace with improvements they see elsewhere. We are re-designing printouts to be more attractive and easier to use. Graphical user interfaces are easier and quicker to use than traditional text instructions.
Increasingly, our users are faculty and managers who expect professional service. Analysts are replacing clerks as primary contacts, and we have a constant influx of new users.
The client-base of universities continues to expand in size and diversity. Descriptive material, course catalogues, and application forms need to be accessible to prospective students (not to mention parents, advisors, potential employers, foundations, research agencies, government agencies, and sources of research and consulting contracts).
In an increasingly competitive field, universities have found that many of their high-potential prospects turn to computer-based information sources. This trend has been encouraged by the rapid growth of PC's and PC-based tools of substantial power. Java systems are now within reach of modest budgets, allowing users to work with their web-browsers. The cost of applications continues to drop relative to traditional, paper-based alternatives for reaching a mass market.
The obvious problem in this rapid expansion in technical improvements is the maintenance of safeguards against unauthorised access and against mis-use. Those problems are high on the agenda of Ladok staff and contractors.
Copyright EUNIS 1997 Y.E.