Introducing 'Unity'
The Access 4 Learning® (A4L) Community, is proud to announce the latest release of the ‘new’ Unity Specification (Personal Privacy release).
The newest North American SIF Implementation Specification – code named “Unity” – underpins the Community’s new focus on “connecting and securing effective learning ecosystems”
The Unity Specification was built by volunteer members developed using open, non-proprietary and transparent processes and addresses interoperability AND privacy! It contains the most comprehensive K12 data model and modern, internationally used transport technologies to securely move the data to provide it to the right person at the right time in the right way under local data privacy control. The ‘Unity’ infrastructure has increased performance and security on the wire, ease of usage, and scales for the widest educational focused interoperability by any technical standard – with or without the need for middleware!
Find out more in the Ecosystem Empowerment Guide and the Unity Adoption Guidebook.
Privacy Support
- Looking for 'privacy on the wire'? Unity has it!
- Built in privacy support, based on Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) needs and US State student privacy laws, FERPA, and GDPR etc.
- Automate Contract Clause Expectations Exchange and Vendor Verification:
The “POD” (Privacy Obligation Document)
Enabled in global SIF Infrastructure
TO FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION: Visit the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) website
Built on SIF 2.x Specification
- Enables leveraging of existing:
20-year Knowledgebase
Software in Use – Investments
Most widely used pK12 data specification globally
- Robust:
Global Development and “Lessons Learned”
Covering 17 School Data Domains
Membership Driven Long Term Path for Specifications
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION: Unity Adoption Guidebook is designed to help from concept to integration plan, API design all the way to development. The SIF Data Model: Comparison spread sheet has been developed to help you quickly identify differences in Specification releases.
CEDS Supported
The Unity Specification supports the National Center for Education Statistics and US Department of Education’s ‘Common Education Data Standard’ (CEDS) – the national data dictionary for education. Unity provides EDFacts and xPress Roster mappings to address school needs and allows states and vendors to implement CEDS.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION: EDFacts Mapping document available to align your SLDS to federal reporting requirements & improve business processes within the marketplace.
xPress Roster
The Community continues to hear the pain point around simplifying but ensuring complete datasets in rostering applications. No more continuous CSV file uploads IF your applications utilize a standardized rostering solution. xPress Roster has a modular API Design with 45+ vendors utilizing it now allowing you to scale up to the rest of Unity benefits!
- Modular API Design
- Most robust rostering standard in marketplace
- 45+ vendors utilizing it now
- Compliments (and works well with) the Unity Data Model… you can start with xPress Roster and scale up!
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION: xPress Roster Mapping document helps map across various rostering standards, and across different objects within a SIF Specification.
Individual Education Plans (IEPs)
Unity contains the first and only standardized API for IEPs. No longer should IEPs be just an accountability document but an actual learning plan tool. This standardized IEP allows for all the information to be managed and moved to let practitioners provide the best learning for students.
Unity contains: a superset of state IEP plans, Parental permissions access, measurable objectives accounting and placement, least restrictive environment, amendments, etc.
TO FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION: Visit the xPressAPI website
Global SIF Infrastructure
- Build on REST
- Scales easily
- Java & .NET frameworks available
- JSON conversion
- Designed for the cloud
- Performance is real
- In use in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom
- SIF integrators ready today with products and services to help
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION: Unity Adoption Guidebook is designed to help from concept to integration plan, API design all the way to development. To find out more, please review the SIF Infrastructure Specification.
API Documentation
- Reduce development time
follows industry standard API best practices
increases accessibility to all developers
combines Data Model & Infrastructure to allow developers to build solutions based on one resource
combines multiple aspects of Unity to create documentation more familiar and useful for people used to developing REST APIs.
The necessary files are ready for download!