In a related matter, I remain concerned (okay, and "rankled") that Knox County Schools still can't produce a middle-school or high-school report card reflecting a student's cumulative GPA even for the current year--much less for the three or four years students spend in middle then high schools--AND that software used to produce students' report cards is not integrated with the software used to produce students' permanent transcripts, causing Central Office staff to sit around like Tibetan monks manually keying data from the one software component into the other component and resulting in an unacceptably high margin of human error--to which one of my own students has already fallen prey.

(Yes, I know that was a long, convoluted sentence. It was a long, convoluted process I was trying to convey...)

In the same subject area, someone should look at DHS and VIP.

...and he has been complaining for 20 years about how the state can't manage to cobble together a decent computer system. Part of the problem is that the state tries to upgrade the system piecemeal, which means that there are all kinds of compatibility problems and nonfunctionality at implementation, which just adds money to the cost that could and should have been spent upfront.

That's pretty ridiculous. Doesn't the county have an IT department?

It does.

My info, though--from a former school board member--is that the report card/transcript disconnect arose after the board awarded a no-bid contract to write the subject software to the brother of a Central Office employee.

I think I've mentioned previously that this is why honor societies in KCS elementary and middle schools follow an informal practice of admitting for membership only those students with "all As and Bs," rather than the national honor societies' formal guidelines of "minimum 3.5 cumulative GPA."

KCS can't calculate such--without devoting hundreds of manhours to manually crunching the tens of thousands of related student report cards, anyway.

My younger student was initially passed over for membership in his middle school's society for this reason. By virtue of his having earned a single C in a single class for a single grading period, his 6th and 7th grade report cards were tossed in the "reject" pile.

The consequence was that my student, who actually had a 3.8 cumulative GPA while enrolled in advanced coursework in every academic area, was passed over, while other students with cumulative GPAs as low as 3.5 while enrolled in standard coursework were admitted!

I've known many, many students over the years who were cheated out of the honor they'd earned due to this software snafu--and I've told Dr. Elizabeth Alves in Central Office as much, too.

(Postscript: My younger child was admitted into his middle school's society, but only after I produced ALL of his middle school report cards (which I'd saved and which every parent should), documenting that his grades surpassed the qualifying criteria outlined on the national chapter's website. School-level staff were quite apologetic, in fact. It was then that I first came to understand WHY school-level staff were hamstrung as they are in their attempts to "screen" student report cards for society inductees.)

If anybody's interested, I can advise on how to go about getting accurate and complete student transcripts for your matriculating student's college admission packets, too?

(Preview: We can't just assume that they'll be accurate and complete...)

Another interesting computer-related tale concerns the two years in a row that KCS had no earthly idea who their high school valedictorians and salutatorians were.

Metulj has heard it already--and former KNS local editor David Keim wanted to go with a story, too, but his supervisors nixed it.

Just lemee know. I gotta few Central Office horror stories...

Well, this discussion was supposed to be about the state DCS system. Maybe you should start another topic about KCS computer systems?

This is true.

Mine were stories related to governments and their computer systems, though?

Oh, well. I've gotta run!

:-)

It's hard not to talk about crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and the (nod nod wink wink) good buddy system when talking about data base management in the public sector.

It goes from DCS to education, to resource management, to jails and our system of managing virtually all aspects of our society's common interests.

My Dad spent his entire career as systems designer, most of it in the public sector, and, like Tamara, I've got s few stories.

Your initial point, which was that the DCS system is a disgrace, is spot on. Unfortunately it is the rule rather than the exception. It's what happens when you farm out government work to the private sector. Their interest is generating more business, not performing the task at hand.

I learned of similar problems in another state department a few weeks ago when I tried to get statistics about food stamp recipients from the Department of Human Services It took two weeks for to get numbers that I expected any good administration would have at the tip of their fingers -- what is the average monthly benefit? There were some other such questions. I was appalled at the delay.

The two standards that I'm aware of are Wal-Mart's inventory management Data-Base and the UPS database. The last I heard the UPS system was the gold standard because it allows users to go in the data base and design and pull reports as needed. The problem is that the computer guys don't know what reports are truly relevant and people that know what is relevant don't know how to design reports. It's still pretty cool that they designed the thing around the idea that they could surround it with smart people in the future and have a competitive advantage though.

When it comes to design, be it information or otherwise, I've found that most people can't easily tell you what they want, but can quickly tell you what they don't want, once presented with it.
~m.

I didn't mean to take the discussion down a side road, but it is becoming clear that what I understood to be true about systems management in the public sector, likely is.

The irony of the situation is that stability is appealing to many people in the systems management field and the states could likely save quite a bit of money by using in house people and treating them fairly.

Otherwise that giant sucking sound you hear of your taxes and state contracts going to the best grant writers and not the people that are actually best for the job will likely continue. Corporate welfare rules.