Network and Information Services

eSIS Student System Service Level Commitment

January 18, 2006

Clackamas ESD’s (CESD) Network & Information Services Department (NIS) provides commitments in three key areas within the Resolution Services to our districts. These areas are:

Network Services (Wide Area Network)
Lawson and Finance System
eSIS Student System

This document outlines NIS-specific commitments for the eSIS Student Information System.

Comprehensive eSIS Student Information System

NIS will provide the comprehensive eSIS Student Information System for participating districts. Access to data is provided through various query tools. NIS will maintain and manage all software and hardware updates to our system. NIS will pay all costs related to annual service or maintenance fees and updates. Hardware costs will be recovered through user fees.

Customer Support/Help Desk

NIS will provide Student System Customer Support/Help Desk assistance to all participating districts:

Support hours are 7:00 AM – 4:30 PM Monday through Friday except holidays, year round via the Help Desk, 503-675-4079, 503-675-4060, 503-675-4080 or school_support@clackesd.k12.or.us.
Initial response for problem solving is provided within 2 hours during support hours.
Requests are handled as soon as possible within the usual time frame.
Over-the-phone and on site training provided as needed.
Tips/tricks/shortcuts.
Quarterly user group meetings.
Web based user documentation.
Network Streaming computer-to-computer connectivity for presentation or trouble shooting.

Availability

The eSIS Student System shall be available 99.9% of the time between the hours of 6 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday, which is considered critical available time. System shall be available 99.0% of the time between the hours of 6 PM to 11 PM, Monday through Friday, which is considered high available time. Our normal backup window is 11 PM to 3 AM, Monday through Thursday, with no system availability. System shall be available 97.0% of the time between 3 AM and 6 AM, Monday through Friday and weekends, which is considered normal available time, but might be needed for emergency maintenance. Saturday nights into early Sunday are for full system backups as defined in System Backup Facilities and Procedures below. Sundays would be the normally scheduled system maintenance period.

Events such as power and/or network outages related to disasters resulting from acts of nature such as earthquakes, flood, or other uncontrollable events are excluded.

Database Administration

NIS will maintain a shared eSIS database instance for all districts. All district data stored by NIS is owned by the district. Each district can only access their data. Each district has the capability to query and/or download any of their data. Many business rules and processes are separate from other districts and can be maintained by the district. Each district can decide how long data will be maintained on the system.

NIS will regularly perform necessary database clean up tasks to ensure the system continues to operate efficiently. The district can determine how much data will be stored within the system.

System Security Administration

Access to the eSIS System is password-controlled. Passwords are user-defined within a set of rules and can be changed by the user. System passwords are changed every six months and immediately if the need exists. After several failed sign on attempts, a user’s ID is disabled and a call must be made to the Customer Support/Help Desk to enable it again.

Each district will be able to create and control user access to the system. Through menus, some users have access to only certain types of data; some users can view data but not change it, and other users have complete access to all data for a school and/or district. Districts must annually review who has access and what level of access they should be granted.

Requests to NIS for district data must be from an authorized user, or the requester must have written district authorization specific for the request.

System Backup Facilities and Procedures

All data stored by NIS is backed up nightly (Monday through Thursday and Saturday) except holidays. NIS will make every attempt to notify districts two weeks in advance about any backup changes. Daily backups are stored at an off-site facility for one week and stored on site for two more weeks. Monthly tapes are created on the closest Saturday to the last day of the month and kept for one year. The eSIS Student System restore procedures are “as of the end of a given day.” Refer to backup schedule at:

http://www.clackesd.k12.or.us/nis/backup.html

eSIS Student System backups are taken during the annual year-end process for each of the districts. They will be kept for a minimum of five years. All eSIS files have journals meaning a copy of the record is made before it is changed.

File restores can only be requested by an authorized manager from the district. A few files can be restored by themselves. In most cases, a restore would involve replacing all database files for the entire district database. This requires several hours and is viewed as a last resort effort. All transactions are journaled. This means a copy of the record is made before it is changed as well as a copy is made after it is changed. In this way, a large group of transactions can be reversed if necessary.

Appropriate Disaster Recovery Procedures and Methods

NIS has a disaster recovery plan in place for its eSIS Student System. CESD will maintain a contract with a hot site recovery provider. The hot site provider will be required to have several recovery locations within the United States where recovery can be made. Access will be through the Internet. Districts or schools can access our system, if they have Internet access through dialup accounts or redundant data connections. NIS recovery procedures will be tested once a year at the hot site.

CESD will maintain an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) unit that will provide up to 20 minutes of power to all equipment and systems in the Network Operations Center when CESD power drops to a low level or is nonexistent. In addition to the UPS, CESD will maintain a diesel-powered generator with the capability to operate for a minimum of 72 hours without refueling. NIS will maintain a contract with a fuel company to refill our tank when necessary and in emergencies.

Application Software Upgrades to eSIS

NIS facilitates the discussion of customer needs during the user group meetings. The customer’s needs and mandated requirements from state or national authorities and new technologies direct the growth of the application programs. NIS will respond to mandated requirements at no additional cost to districts. Other requested changes will be estimated and discussed at the advisory committee level so priorities and expectations can be established based upon the project estimate.

Program/software upgrades are created in a non-production environment and a test plan is followed which encompasses examples for all appropriate customer environments. The changes are documented and distributed to district users upon implementation. NIS coordinates the implementation of an upgrade with processing schedules and selects a time that is least intrusive to the majority of users. Any necessary downtime typically occurs during the weekends or evenings. NIS staff will notify their main contact(s) at least two days in advance of such downtime and will attempt to notify districts two weeks in advance.

Requests that are specific to a particular district’s needs or requests that extend beyond CESD budgetary constraints will be reviewed by CESD’s Network and Information Services School Advisory committee. Any custom programming or service must be paid by the requesting district if it is not done for all districts.

Major changes or upgrades are done for all districts at one time. NIS asks for districts to volunteer and help in testing major changes or upgrades before they are implemented.

Problem resolution of eSIS application software

Definitions:

Severity Level 1: System is completely down.
Severity Level 2: A module of the system.
Severity Level 3: Minor problem with the system which does not prevent operation.

Response Requirements:

Severity Level 1: Initial response to call shall be made within 1 hour during normal business hours. Work on solution shall commence within two hours and shall continue until problem is solved.
Severity Level 2: Initial response to call shall be made within two hours during normal business hours. Work on solution shall commence within four hours and will continue during normal business hours until problem is resolved.
Severity Level 3: Initial response to call shall be made within one working day. Work on solution will proceed on a time-available basis, or by other mutual agreement.

If a problem is in eSIS’s software, then our support falls into their Service Level Agreement (SLA).

System Administration and Monitoring

Operating System (OS) software will be maintained by NIS. New releases will be installed annually. Patches to the OS will be made when necessary during the year. Planned system maintenance times are when the systems will be serviced or upgraded and not available. Maintenance will be done during hours outside the normal workday (weekends and evenings) when possible. Customers will be notified at least two days in advance of any such scheduled downtime.

Continuous performance monitoring is provided by NIS to ensure the system remains responsive to user needs and growth. NIS plans for network and system hardware upgrades or replacement about every three years, or as needed to provide a responsive and reliable system.

On-line Access via Web

eSIS

The eSIS Student System is available via the wide area network using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher browser and a Oracle plug-in called the J-Initiator. The district is responsible for loading the J-Initiator plug-in on their client workstations. Once the plug in is installed, the user can connect to eSIS. From time-to-time, an upgrade by Administrative Assistants, Ltd. (AAL – www.aalsolutions.com), our eSIS software vendor, may require a new version of the J-Initiator be downloaded to all workstations.

Advisory Committee

NIS facilitates two NIS Advisory committee meetings every month during the school year. One is the NIS Finance Advisory Committee with a focus on our Lawson Finance System and items that may have financial impact on the district. The other is NIS School Advisory Committee with a focus on Network Services and our eSIS Student System. Each district appoints one or two key leadership members to each committee. The role and function of the Advisory committee is to:

Serve as a forum to share common problems and solutions.
Assist the NIS staff in identifying local district needs for new or revised services.
Advise the NIS staff on program operation and evaluation.
Assist and advise NIS staff in communications with local district personnel and communications between committees.

The following are typical types of discussions:

Status and project reports from NIS Coordinators.
Status reports from state-wide IT Manager’s meetings.
Changes in funding at the ESD level.
ODE projects.
System enhancements.

User Groups

NIS has three different user groups (Lawson Finance System, eSIS Student System, and Network Services) that meet at least 3 times per year. Meetings are organized around different topics that are pertinent at the time. Following are typical types of discussions:

Detailed application-specific discussion/training
Identify, evaluate, demonstrate, and test new technologies/products to determine viability/priority
Discuss/review time-critical procedures
Share tips/tricks/shortcuts
Share procedures/documentation/automated reports
Look for ways to cut costs by providing centralized services/products
Facilitate mentoring between districts
Share networking knowledge among districts

Training

Training is available upon request and during a time agreed upon by both parties. Training can occur in the CESD Training Center or at the customer’s site. As new applications are implemented, documentation is prepared and appropriate training is planned. On request, NIS will facilitate assistance from the other districts when key district staff will be absent for an extended period of time. New feature training is provided during user group meetings or scheduled to provide optimum effectiveness.

Documentation

NIS prepares documentation parallel to testing new applications. Documentation is available upon implementation. Depending on the service, NIS posts revised manuals periodically on web pages.

Awareness on a State-Wide Level

The NIS Director will stay tuned-in to data center strategies around the state by regularly attending and contributing to the large data centers IT Directors monthly meetings. These data centers represent 75% of the students in the state. ODE is also represented and regularly reports on their initiatives and consults with the data centers to work toward a coordinated statewide effort. NIS serves on ODEs Data Collection committee.

District / School - Specific Consultation

NIS will provide district and/or school-specific consultation upon request. Typical areas for consultation include:

Formal training for school administrators assigned to creating the school master schedule is offered every year. NIS pays the cost of the class for the first attendee per school; the school or district pays for additional attendees.
Creating a school master schedule for the new school year.
Modifying the frequency of the grading cycle.
Making changes to satisfy reporting requirements (hard copy or electronic) from ODE, such as the Fall Report and the Quarterly Reports.
Interfacing to 3rd party products (downloads, etc.).

Service Level Commitment

Should the specified levels of service fail to be achieved, CESD/NIS will utilize all necessary processes within its means and budget to achieve and maintain its commitments. The department will hire, train and manage adequate, competent staff to assure the availability of the systems to user districts.

The SLA is available in pdf format.