![](\"http:\/\/www.ondosubeb.gov.ng\/images\/emis.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nMoreover, today, many would find themselves competent with their own institutional capacity in EMIS without any foreign assistance. There is no doubt that in these countries we are seeing more data on all aspects of education that are more frequently collected, better managed, and more available in all forms, aggregated or disaggregated. <\/p>\n
Today, many international data stakeholders (UNESCO, World Bank, etc.), NGOs and research institutions are now able to publish the data (mostly originated from these EMIS centers of the developing countries) for monitoring educational development goals. Missing data does not appear often any more in world education indicator tables. This is largely a success of country-level EMIS development. <\/p>\n
Major shifts<\/b><\/p>\n
For the past few years, I have seen major shifts in EMIS development. <\/p>\n
From computer-based to internet-based development.<\/u>
\nIt is fairly common today that EMIS data application is completely internet-based (sometime intranet-based), accessible through a MoE’s portal website. Data can now be directly entered from schools, rather than through district or regional offices. <\/p>\n
Although the ability of data reporting is still far behind the ability of data collection in most countries, the internet-based EMIS development has drastically shortened the collection cycle, made the collection process easier and less tuned for data errors, and surely enables a possibility of letting data be accessible to all levels. <\/p>\n
From reporting on national statistical aggregates to reporting on sub-national or even grassroots level disaggregates.<\/u>
\nWith more disaggregated data, we see many forms of school or district report cards that are produced by many EMIS centers. These are the report cards to individual schools or districts. Schools for the first time see their performance (on multiple education indicators) against their district, regional and national averages. <\/p>\n
Parents and teachers may now be empowered with the school performance information to engage in school improvement planning process and inform their lesson plans. Smart reporting becomes the key to the EMIS development in the new era (school report cards and dashboard on the internet, and indicators posters, etc.)<\/p>\n
From school-based development to student-based development.<\/u>
\nTracking students during the life time of schooling is now possible without too much burden of organizational management. 20 years ago, such attempt tried in several countries failed miserably. But today it is for the first time applicable. Although this does not mean tracking students on the daily basis (such as daily attendance) at national level, it can significantly identify student academic needs and provide needed services. The real value of the student-based EMIS development is to enable the school value-added assessment. <\/p>\n
From data control to data share.<\/u>
\nIn today’s era, the single most important aspect of measuring the success of EMIS development is to see how widely available the managed data is in all forms to all people. Absolutely, there should be no discount or compromise. The best practice is to make data downloadable from website in all forms for all users and EMIS management in fact promotes the awareness of the availability. The old mindset of data control is totally behind the times. Quality of data can be easily and quickly revealed if it is made available to all users.<\/p>\n
Data Abundance<\/b><\/p>\n
In the past decade, every MoE I visited around the world, I found that data was abundant, in fact, too much to \u201cconsume\u201d, particularly if I dug deep. Data often exists in various computers and grouped into multiple files stored in a powerful server at the EMIS center. Data on student performance, teacher qualification and years of experience, and school facilities are all existent and managed by different data stakeholders within the MoE. <\/p>\n
These data centers may use different computers, database applications, and organize their data differently. In fact, much data remain on paper such as student and teacher daily attendance. But they own and know their data extremely well. Yes, they may not tell each other the details of the data internally and hardly share the data with external consultants, who may happen to be the only agents who can make the data known to the outside world. <\/p>\n
As data has grown exponentially in quantity and quality, EMIS has made it possible that multiple years of data, multiple levels of data and multiple sources of data can be quickly retrievable. But, EMIS has not made a critical difference in the use of information. Although this may not necessarily be a direct responsibility of EMIS, data housed at EMIS must be so widely available and so well managed to enable the analytical and synthesizing process by all potential users.<\/p>\n
A Big Remaining Challenge<\/b><\/p>\n
A critical challenge remains, that is, the consumption or use of the EMIS data or information. In fact, I won\u2019t be surprised if we find the use of information has been somewhat abated as the production of it grows in the past two decades. While many MoEs may have been indulged in a new competency in EMIS capacity, almost none invest in the actual use and synthesis of data and information for institutional policy development or management decisions. <\/p>\n
In fact, even investing in contributing factors (such as optimal ways of displaying data, associating policy implications with each indicator analysis, or producing policy analysis or M&E briefs) to the use of data is almost nil. Data must be integrated and analyzed in a new light to be meaningful to policy makers and system managers. Simple display of \u201ccurrent status\u201d in tables or graphs is inadequate. Growths, trends and relational implications must be brought to the known surface. <\/p>\n
As we know EMIS often serves as supply side of the information production cycle, the consumption of EMIS product depends on the demand. Lack of investment in demand for data and information, EMIS development will never reach its intended potential. In today’s era, we may be at a point that EMIS has run up against the bottleneck of the demand. Yes, this is not new problem but has never been more acute and prevalent.<\/p>\n
Dilemma<\/b><\/p>\n
How can we have more data but less use of it? This is not too surprising. As a result of technology advancement, more people are inclined to collect data and manage it. In education sector, more departments and more lower levels such as schools and district offices are equipped with IT or ICT. They surely have more demand for monitoring and supervision. Many would get into the business of data or information management. <\/p>\n
As more data from more sources is produced, duplication in data collection is more likely and discrepancies among multiple sources of the similar data make the data less trustworthy by potential users. Your data vs. my data speak differently. If this is not properly managed and coordinated, the result is often undesirable leading to data flow chaos and erratic. <\/p>\n
Moreover, when more data is available, more policy or decision relevant inquiries are likely. That would also require more higher-order relational data analysis. But often the skills for it are absent in developing countries, creating a dependency on external consultancy. <\/p>\n
EMIS development in a new era.<\/b><\/p>\n
EMIS is never a technology issue, but information management challenge. Today’s technology can do all things we can dream of, but we can only fail at envisioning those things. Given the quantum leap of information development and the globalization of information accessibility, the new stimuli for EMIS development going forward is to embrace the concept of distributing (a form of aggressively disseminating) the collected data in all forms widely to all people. In other words, we must get rid of “fear” factor, fearing of getting the data to others. <\/p>\n
This is not only a new stimuli for EMIS development but an ultimate test how successful EMIS development will be. After all this is information on education we are all concerned about. Nothing could be better than informing all about the truth of the educational development and school performance. <\/p>\n
Technology will never fail EMIS development but our fear for sharing information will. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the past 20 years as computer technology has revolutionized the efficiency of information gathering and management, we have been witnessing a steady and impressive progress in EMIS development in education sector in almost all developing countries. Although the development has been uneven most can claim an accomplishment of achieving the goals of improvement in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[868],"tags":[899,901,900,895,896,897,898,894],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}