The vendor must ensure ongoing review of guidance and policy revisions released by the Office of Career and Technical Adult Education (OCTAE) guidance and must take necessary actions to update the MIS and provide State guidance for all reporting changes in a timely manner. The system must manage adult learner cohort establishment and interoperability with external data systems for required data matching. The system must be able to accommodate multiple NRS-approve assessments (e.g. TABE, CASAS, etc.). The system must keep a historical record of class and program enrollment for tracking and trending purposes. The enrollment information must include the start and end date. The system must auto-calculate exit dates using the requirements set forth by the National Reporting System. The system must track attendance information and allow for designations such as direct instructional hours or distance learning hours. Hours provided under Career Services must also be designated. The system must auto calculate the percent of distance learning hours to determine whether the participant is categorized as a regular participant or a distance learning participant at the end of the program year for accurate reporting on the NRS tables. Educators must be able to enter their own class attendance records either manually or by uploading from a common file type. The system provides learner cohort tracking. The system offers user accounts at various levels of access (e.g., data entry, view-only, etc.) At minimum, there should be the following roles and access: State staff should have the ability to configure the system, set parameters and operations/rules as well as reporting abilities at an individual program level and aggregate statewide. Title II directors and designated local staff have the ability to monitor operations, manage students and instructors, run management reports and conduct follow up activities. Educators should have the ability to manage students, track attendance, store assessment data and run reports to manage pre and post-testing schedules. Read-Only View should have the ability to view all local records and run reports, but not have the ability to enter, edit or delete data. The system is compliant with Section 508 of the American with Disabilities Act. The system provides for a back-up system such as a “fail-over” (or similar mechanism) that prevents data loss in the case of a server loss or malfunction. The system employs robust security measures and meets national standards, laws (including conforming to The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), and regulations related to encryption and protection of confidential data. The system will provide multiple methods of data validation through business rules, diagnostic checks and dashboard alerts. The rules that govern how erroneous and missing data points are identified should align with WIOA and NRS Guidelines (all students must be pre-tested with an OCTAE-approved assessment, etc.). The system offers the ability to generate program-level reports that can also easily be aggregated to produce state-level reports. All reports required for federal reporting must be available to generate for local programs. Reporting features and outputs for program-level data should mirror state-level reporting but be limited to only display data specifically related to the program. The system can generate exportable extracts for use in other applications appropriate for the user’s role.
