EAIE

 DSDP

DIGITAL STUDENT DATA PORTABILITY

...a new EAIE's Task Force...

Foreword

Communities ought to be SERVED, not CREATED. 

Individuals have the natural tendency to aggregate around issues they share or like - communities are created without any assistance.

EAIE is the community of reference for Internationalization of Higher Education.

DSDP aims to serve the EAIE community.

Background

EAIE's board ruled last June to establish a Task Force on Digital Student Data Portability (DSDP),  rather than a SIG (Special Interest Group) as proposed by ACE Chairman, so as to ensure that DSDP would cover the interests of the whole EAIE’s association.

Rationale

Fact 1: According to the European Commission, students’ mobility shall be the “hallmark of the European Higher Education Area”, setting the "20 x 20" goal - 20% of students should have experienced at least one mobility program by 2020.

Fact 2: International Education is a  high-priority item in the universities’ agenda - this is also visibile by the massive participation to the EAIE annual  conference.

• Universities come to EAIE conferences to to meet, shake-hands and engage  in bilateral agreements which then trigger mobility.
• The more people  will meet at EAIE, the more agreements, the more people on the move.
• Along  with physical persons travels data.
• The increase of data and the  administrative processes needs to be managed somehow.  
• Hence the  issue of Digital Student Data Portability becomes a possible solution to facilitating and streamlining mobility procedures, thereby supporting the  action lines of the EC policies toward the creation of the EHEA.

Positioning

Originally sponsored and fostered by ACE PS, DSDP ought to eventually grow out of this incubator and position itself transversally across the EAIE' organizazional structure; in fact, DSDP issues today span across several domains.  While the PS and SIGs represent the "vertical" pillars,  the DSDP Task Force is an "horizontal" crossbeam in the EAIE's Temple

Dimensions

There are 3 dimensions to DSDP

1. Political/Institutional/Governmental Authorities (European Commission, Ministries, National Agencies, etc..)
2. Implementers Community (RS3G, EUNIS, TERENA, Vendors, etc...)
3. Users Community (EAIE, individual HEI, etc...)

Role

DSPD shall serve EAIE's Community (members) and Organization (PS, SIG and Presidency) by:

• reaching out to each of the PS polling issues around DSDP which may be felt in that particular section and address them.  
• selectively bringing into focus and into EAIE current DSDP issues, practices, solutions and actors which support the Internationalization of HE.  
• collecting "desiderata" and issues from the end-users, analizing them and eventually feeding this into the implementation community, like RS3G.  
• bridging the gap between the "exhibition floor" and the "session rooms" - there might be issues raised by the PS and discussed in the session rooms which may just find a solution in the offers of the exhibitors

In essence the Task Force ought to be deployed "on demand" by the whole EAIE's organization for issues pertaining to DSDP. This requires to establish sound liaisons with each of the PS in particular.

DSDP should serve  the internal organization "vertically" by focusing on DSDP themes and "orizzontally" by serving the PS needs for DSDP-related matters.  It should also help in extending the reach of EAIE by inviting new stakeholders to join its conferences sessions and possibly facilitating their permanent contribution to EAIE as new members.

Issues:

Issues for discussion include: interoperability of student data systems; student data exchange, storage, and access; systems standardisation; current pilot projects; international cooperation; and EC policy. 

• interoperability
• digital vs paper
• standardization
• security
• privacy
• data exchange
• mobility