Experts from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education (EOE) recently met to discuss their cloud modernization mission for the Commonwealth’s residents. The office services four educational agencies that cover early childhood learning to higher education. The main objective for the EOE is their Integrated Digital Data Services (IDDS) project, which is a “five-year strategic plan that [has been] established as a program to modernize and move [the agency] into the cloud. The goal of IDDS is to “provide the Commonwealth with a secure, cost-effective, standards-based educational platform and application portfolio that connects data and user experience across all of [their] agencies from birth to career,” commented EOE’s Kim Rice, Secretariat Chief Information Officer.

Rice was joined by her colleagues Danielle Ondrick, Enterprise Cloud Architect, Danielle Norton, Program Manager, Integrated Digital Data Services (IDDS), and Srinivasa Rajan, EOE Technical Lead. The team discussed the importance of data collaboration, data linking, and the solutions used to excel in their mission. With cloud technologies, they can “provide more services and features to the people that [they] service for either the same or lower cost,” said Norton. 

Data linking is essential for meeting the IDDS program goals. It is used to collect information from different sources and compile it into a data set. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they can identify and collect corresponding data from different sources and use the information to provide better services. Rice shared the following example of how data is currently not connected across systems and the impact of not being able to link information. Using herself as an example, Rice explained that “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts knows [her] and [her] family as a parent. They know that [she is] a parent of a student in preschool and a teacher in K-12. [She is] taking classes in higher education. Kim Rice is a person with a different role in all of our systems, but [the information] is not linked. So, in order to provide great services, the power is going to be in recognizing who Kim Rice is in each of those systems and bringing it together as a whole.” 

By leveraging AI and ML for master data management, the EOE is able to recognize that a certain individual in one system can be seen in many others. While it may be a duplicate, it also might be that the individual is serving many roles across the systems. The EOE is now focused on how it can connect students, teachers, and other members with beneficial services and resources by identifying these relationships.

To learn more about the data program at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education, click here.