Schools Interoperability Framework
Schools Interoperability Framework is an industry initiative to develop specifications for information sharing among education instructional and administrative software packages.
The specification is based on the W3C - endorsed XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard, thus freeing vendors from the problems of platform compatibility and proprietary formats. The resulting platform-independent, vendor-neutral guidelines and specifications provide for the easy sharing of data among disparate applications in the K-12 market.
Enabling software programs to “talk” to each other and share data was so important that they needed to overcome their own company-centric view of the problem. A solution that was flexible, scalable, reliable, secure and affordable both for the schools as well as the vendors. http://www.sifinfo.org/
Schools Interoperability Framework Association
SIFA brings together developers and vendors of school technology with the federal, state and local educators who use that technology. This organization has the cooperation of both sides of the data issues (schools and vendors) enabling a bridge to the future of data innovations to be constructed.
