Florida Department of Education · Government · Tallahassee, FL · 14 weeks
67 school districts unified on a single reporting platform in 14 weeks
The Florida Department of Education struggled for two years to unify student outcome reports from 67 districts for federal IPEDS compliance. We built a single reporting platform in 14 weeks without any scope changes, solving data fragmentation and meeting strict federal requirements on time.
Challenge
The Florida Department of Education had 16 weeks to unify student outcome reports from 67 districts for federal IPEDS compliance. Each district used a different student information system, and past efforts to merge the data failed over two years due to incompatible data models. We had to build a workable, consistent data model fast and integrate diverse systems to meet the deadline.
Approach
We created a unified data model to handle inputs from all seven student information systems across 67 districts. For each system, we developed custom ETL adapters to standardize data extraction. We added a validation step to catch quality issues early, preventing bad data from entering the reporting flow. The solution runs on Azure and uses Power BI for district-level reports.
Outcome
By week 14, all 67 districts were fully using the platform. We finished the IPEDS submission two days before the federal deadline. Automation cut annual IPEDS reporting costs from $1.9 million to $210,000. We managed the entire project without any change orders.
How we got all seven student info systems to finally talk to each other
Here’s the deal. We had 67 districts, each using one of seven student info systems. Doing 67 separate integrations? Nope, not happening. So, we built seven ETL adapters, one for each system, that cleaned and standardized all their data into one format. That way, instead of juggling 67 integrations, we only dealt with seven. Saved us a ton of time.
Making Sure the Data Was Rock Solid Before Sending It Out
We ran 140 data quality checks on the IPEDS submission pipeline and found 23 issues across 8 districts. Catching those early saved us from a ton of ugly submission errors with the federal system.
How We Cut Change Orders in Half by Nailing Down the Scope
Starting in week two, we stayed on top of the scope to dodge any surprise change orders. When new requests came in, we compared them to the original plan. If something threatened the timeline, we flagged it as a formal change order. Otherwise, it just slid into the phase 2 backlog. Easy.
Results
- $1.9M Annual reporting labor automated
- 67 Districts on one platform
- 14 wks Delivery, zero change orders
- 8 wks to 3 days IPEDS submission cycle
We tried twice before to consolidate district reporting and couldn’t get it done. Thinklytics finished it in 14 weeks, and for the first time in six years, we submitted our IPEDS data two days early.