Case Study: Edith Cowan Uni creates real-time data upload for Fed's TCSI portal

Edith Cowan University (ECU) has implemented a new solution to help the university upload real-time data for the Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI) project.

A new reporting requirement stemmed from the Australian Government’s TCSI project, a joint initiative between the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) and Services Australia.

Peter Corbett is the director of student administration at Edith Cowan University, he told Digital Nation Australia how the university looked to its current solution provider Tribal to help the university upload its student data in real-time. 

He said, “We could have gone to another provider, we could have developed something ourselves."

Corbett said the actual requirement for the submission to the government is the same for everybody, so that entered the equation.

“We all use our students’ systems in slightly different ways, we configure things in different ways. We've got different teaching periods, different dates and different numbers. We've got our partly unique requirements there. But it makes sense to go to Tribal and ask them to build that middle tier for us.”

The new system delivers critical student data directly into the Federal Government’s TCSI B2G API suite through an intuitive user interface to reduce risk and streamline submission. 

Corbett said Tribal does all the monitoring of the data for ECU, which gives them time to focus on other projects.

“They are constantly monitoring what's going on in terms of the government compliance requirements. They've got people that are dedicated to doing that. They're involved intimately in that process," he said. 

"They're having direct communication with the government getting their requirements from them, and then translating that for us. They do a lot of the heavy lifting for the providers.”

Corbett said in the future, they will expand the use of the platform in other areas of the university.

“[Tribal] have expanded upon the Edge platform and they're building lots the other modules on there as well. Some of them we're not using but we're about to go and implement their admissions module as well.

“We're doing a pilot of edge admissions and they're building this platform and then upon it, they're going to have admissions, enrolments and progression and other things that are involved with managing a student at a university,” he added.