Narrative Summary: 1. Describe the process used to develop your CIP, including how you obtain customer input and review of your CIP goals. The organization s customers determine the Operational goals of the Informational Technology Center (ITC) as a derivative of the high- level of standards established by our Board of Directors. Additionally, these board members represent the ITC, which represent the owners, the consortium districts. The operational goals are implemented under the direction of our Chief Executive Officer, Mike Carder, whom provides continual leadership, recommendations, direction, and support to implement the processes as set forth by the Board of Directors. The executive staff of our organization, Chief Financial Officer, Scott Armstrong; Chief Operations Officer, Robert Alexander; Director of Support Services, John Shank; Chief Instructional Officer, Tim Hilborn; Chief Technology Officer, Tim Snyder; and Chief Business Officer, Larry Zimmerman, enhance the identification process through various communication techniques such as Social Networking, Twitter, Facebook, electronic mail, video conferencing, Basecamp (project management tool), Highrise (CRM tool), verbally with our staff and our consortium districts, to ensure that the organization is continually meeting the needs of it s users. In addition to the standard communication tools identified in the previous paragraph of this document, TRECA has a Web Help Desk application to provide interactive support to our customers. The combination of these processes creates a unique opportunity for our organization to provide quality support for the Basic services, Number of Fundable Service Applications (NFSA), as well as the value- add services that meet and exceeds the expectations of the users. The TRECA Board of Directors, official representatives of our districts, the owners of TRECA, develop the goals for the organization. Our CEO ensures that the directives and goals provided by the board are implemented successfully. In addition, the goals are further enhanced by the continual involvement of our executive staff, ensuring that our goals are met to the satisfaction of our user community. Our organizational goals are constantly changing as we identify issues through the daily monitoring of our internal help desk application. As we strive for excellence, as a provider of instructional and informational services, the use of the help desk ticketing systems provides the detail analysis to aggressively develop resolutions prior to systematic network/system infrastructure/distributive applications service failures. Ultimately, the organizational goals are focused on the delivery of all services to our districts, and supporting the educational initiatives of the districts. Page 15
2. Describe how your ITC collaborates with other entities and list specific examples of collaborative shared services efforts. TRECA partnered with NWOCA during fiscal year 2011 to provide off- premise storage services, Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to several of our consortium districts. The partnership has expanded in the past fiscal year to include Wireless as a Managed Service (WLMS) for our districts and our office in Marion. TRECA has partnered with NWOCA to provide hosted VoIP services to our office, as well as several districts. NWOCA and TRECA share hosted compute/storage services for several districts throughout our consortium. All shared services have resulted in a cost reduction for both organizations and our member schools. In FY 2014, NWOCA will be hosting the OpenVMS system, USAS/USPS, for TRECA and our member districts. Service support will still be offered by TRECA to our schools. In addition to our partnership with NWOCA, we have been working with Delaware City Schools (DCS), Ohio Department of Education (ODE), Center for Education Learning and Technology (CELT) in Boston, Massachusetts, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Florida Department of Education, Georgia Department of Education, Arkansas Department of Education and the Louisiana Department of Education on the Teacher Student Data Link (TSDL) project for several years addressing roster verification concerns. The TSDL project provided the administrative staff a unique understanding of the challenges that State Education Associations (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) have with the summative and formative assessment element as prescribed in the proposed teacher evaluation scoring process. As the result of our organization s involvement with the five state s TSDL project, TRECA participated with the ODE and BFK CE linkage pilot project in the spring of 2012. Six members of our administrative team assisted ten of our consortium districts that were not participating in Race to the Top (RttT) or SOAR projects. Our participation provided an opportunity to prepare these districts and our staff with the challenges with Roster Verification that our districts were faced with as the SEA implemented the CE linkage project throughout the state in the spring of 2013. Furthermore, in order to prepare all districts in the State of Ohio for the on- line assessments that will address the Common Core subjects of English and Math in 2014. TRECA is monitoring on- line assessment procedures in our member districts i.e. ACT Quality Core, to develop an in- depth understanding of the dynamics associated with delivering summative assessments as an on- line experience. The monitoring has identified several infrastructure and procedure elements that require optimization prior to the fall of 2014. Additionally, our organization monitors the progress for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) for pertinent information for preparation of the PARCC assessments. By maintaining knowledge of the PARCC and SBAC initiatives we have been able to provide invaluable direction to districts on infrastructure designs, hardware procurements, and the required specifications to meet the expected requirements for effective delivery of the anticipated on- line Page 16
assessments. In April of 2014, TRECA, NWOCA and the ESC of Central Ohio created a collaborative service entity, the Ohio Collaborative Services Consortium (OCSC), which will leverage their individual resources, expertise and market relationships to benefit customers by providing the greatest possible breadth of high quality, cost effective services and resources. It is anticipated the partnering organizations and their customers would also realize financial benefits, especially upon full deployment of the system. Under the Ohio Collaborative Services Consortium (OCSC), each partnering organization would maintain its individual identity; serve as a provider to the collaborative enterprise, participate in its governance and share in its operational services and financial returns. The OCSC is organized as a Council of Governments and provides their customers: Stronger, more consistent quality of service and performance through; o Greater selection and broader array of products and services o Opportunities for cost savings and additional revenues for customers and enterprise partners o Stronger integration of services o Greater capacity and depth of expertise o Stronger integrity of service structure through multiple lines of support, redundant on- demand resources and integration of internal and external assets o Integrated customer service and single point of access and accountability Greater transparency, responsiveness, flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness through: o Stakeholder governance and maintenance of local control o Eliminations of market and service restrictions o Advantageous vendor relationships and asset development through economies of scale o Greater leverage of enterprise resources o Ability to serve multiple markets without detriment to local service Establishing an integrated resource, shared service structure will: Provide greater capacity to address customer and market needs without sacrifice to responsiveness at the local level Provide a structure with operational integrity that will satisfy emerging legislative mandates without abandoning prior public resource investment, without sacrificing significant local participation and without establishing a new administrative bureaucracy Enable multiple market and cross market system and service integration Provide schools and school districts more and stronger resources and management services and opportunities for revenue enhancement while allowing them to reduce costs of operation Additionally, other organizations have expressed interest as a partner in the OCSC to best leverage resources for their members. The goal of the OCSC continues to be providing the high quality, cost Page 17
effective services to customers. 3. Briefly note any continuous improvement activities that took place over the course of this past year that were done outside of or in addition to the items noted in your plan. Our Organization realizes the financial challenges facing our districts and the potential reduction of state support to the ITC as well as to our K- - - 12 community; therefore, our CEO is always encouraging the executive team to search for funding initiatives and fixed cost reduction measures to assist our districts and our organization. The following items represent continuous improvement initiatives and revenue streams designed to reduce expenditures or increase current revenue; thereby, sustaining the organization. Technical Support Personnel contracts for districts. These technicians can support multiple districts and become a resource for the district as well as our organization. Software Professional Development contracts for desktop applications, FileMaker Database Development, Web Site development, Web Site Maintenance, etc. System/Network Infrastructure project management and technical services for the City of Marion. Microsoft Exchange hosting and management for districts. Compute and storage packaged as hosted cloud services for districts, which can be unmanaged or managed. System/Network/Management support contracts for database management and project management. Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) project technology support contracts. We work with the districts and architects to ensure that the building projects meet the technology requirements of the district. District Technology Coordinator contracts. Application Service Provider contracts. Negotiating volume discounts for the consortium by promoting group purchasing. EMIS Coordinator Contracts; whereby we provide personnel for EMIS Data Entry/Processing to districts. Treasurer Support Contracts; whereby we fulfill the treasurer s position during the absence of that position. We provide interviewing services, recommendations, and complete fiscal management. Page 18
Additional service contracts will be added as required to meet the challenges of our districts. Virtual Instruction opportunities for districts that include credit recovery options, singleton courses, and the ability to deliver blended instructional environments which provide traditional educational options for students as well as on- line instruction. Redesign of wide area network infrastructure to lower monthly fixed connectivity expenditures to our districts and organization while increasing the overall bandwidth capacity. Implemented Shared Services process for OpenVMS Support, Connectivity, server hosting, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and long haul wide area network connectivity solutions with the Northwest Ohio Computer Association (NWOCA) in order to sustain operational expenditures. Brokering Wireless as a Managed Service from NWOCA Developing Shared Service strategic network connectivity solutions with OARnet in order to decrease Wide Area Network (WAN) costs. Professional Development Contract with Apple Computer Inc., and Lightspeed s My Big Campus, to provide professional training throughout the United States. Negotiating with various national instructional material providers to provide Instructional Professional Development integration services. Partnering with various corporations on Response for Proposals (RFP) as a sub- contractor. Our entrepreneurial processes provide revenue streams and the development of Shared Services initiatives to provide the revenue to appropriately staff the organization with the skill sets to meet the requirements of our districts. We understand, in order to be a viable service provider in the PK- 12 educational environment, we are required to search for additional revenue sources, and reduce costs in order to continue to provide high quality services at the lowest possible price. Therefore, as the service requirements change for our customers, as indicative of the information provided in the electronic communication and monitoring tools, our organization is adjusting staffing requirements to meet these needs accordingly. Therefore, additional staff with new skill sets and current employees are and will be receiving enhanced training to meet the changing landscape of our users. Additionally, as state and federal budgets are reduced and or eliminated, our organization will continue to strive for methods to reduce the financial burden to our member districts by increasing the organization s revenue capacity from other sources and/or reduce operational expenditures. Furthermore, it is the ultimate goal of our organization s leadership, at a point in the future, to be able to provide the Basic and NFSA services free to our consortium member districts. Page 19