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Migrant Student Information Exchange (MSIX)

• Part I: Summary Information and Justification
  • Section A: Overview
  • Section B: Summary of Spending
  • Section C: Acquisition/Contract Strategy
  • Section D: Performance Information
  • Section E: Security and Privacy
  • Section F: Enterprise Architecture (EA)
• Part II: Planning, Acquisition And Performance Information
  • Section A: Alternatives Analysis
  • Section B: Risk Management
  • Section C: Cost and Schedule Performance

1. Date of submission: Sep 10, 2008
2. Agency: 018
3. Bureau: 07
4. Name of this Capital Asset: Migrant Student Information Exchange (MSIX)
5. Unique Project (Investment) Identifier: 018-07-01-02-01-1000-00
6. What kind of investment will this be in FY2010? Mixed Life Cycle
7. What was the first budget year this investment was submitted to OMB? FY2005
8. Provide a brief summary and justification for this investment, including a brief description of how this closes in part or in whole an identified agency performance gap: The Department of Education's (ED) mission, through implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation. The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) Office of Migrant Education (OME) is responsible for administering the Migrant Education Program (MEP). OME is mandated in the No Child Left Behind Act, Section 1308(b) to assist the States in developing effective methods for the electronic transfer of student records and in determining the number of migratory children in each State. OME established the Migrant Student Information Exchange (MSIX) project to accomplish this mandate. The MSIX directly supports the OESE/OME goals for the Migrant Education Program (MEP) to ensure that all migrant students reach challenging academic standards and graduate with a high school diploma, or complete a General Education Diploma (GED), that prepares them for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment. The MSIX Software Development Contract was awarded at the end of FY06. The MSIX Project Team (PT) has successfully completed the two pilots to test the prototype system and deployed the MSIX on schedule at the end of FY07. The MSIX PT provided classroom style training sessions to over 150 State personnel who will be responsible for administering MSIX for their State. Currently, the MSIX PT is working with States to test and load their States legacy data into MSIX and has also been actively coordinating technical activities with its primary stakeholders (states, migrant associations, etc.) and conducting outreach sessions and user group meetings to increase awareness around the new MSIX System. To assure that the project activities are being completed in a timely manner, independent verification and validation activities have commenced in parallel with the software development, deployment and implementation efforts. In discussion with State stakeholders during user group meetings, the MSIX PT recognized that there was a need to support States' technical capabilities and increase the features of the MSIX to better meet the needs of the users as the project moved into the next phase. MSIX was able to secure additional funding to perform these functions and re-baselined the project in April 2008.
9. Did the Agency's Executive/Investment Committee approve this request? yes
   1. If "yes," what was the date of this approval? Jun 14, 2007
10. Did the Project Manager review this Exhibit? yes
11. Contact information of Program/Project Manager?

1. What is the current FAC-P/PM (for civilian agencies) or DAWIA (for defense agencies) certification level of the program/project manager? Senior/Expert/DAWIA-Level 3
12. Has the agency developed and/or promoted cost effective, energy efficient and environmentally sustainable techniques or practices for this project. no
    1. Will this investment include electronic assets (including computers)? yes
    2. Is this investment for new construction or major retrofit of a Federal building or facility? (answer applicable to non-IT assets only) no
       1. If "yes," is an ESPC or UESC being used to help fund this investment? [Not answered]
       2. If "yes," will this investment meet sustainable design principles? [Not answered]
       3. If "yes," is it designed to be 30% more energy efficient than relevant code? [Not answered]
13. Does this investment directly support one of the PMA initiatives? yes
    Expanded E-Government
    1. Briefly and specifically describe for each selected how this asset directly supports the identified initiative(s)? The MSIX project supports PMA Goal 4 - Expanded Electronic Government. MSIX is a web-based application and hosted solution readily available to its user population including migrant personnel, educators, guidance counselors and registrars. This investment truly supports the spirit behind the PMA "The E-Government initiative will make it simpler for citizens to receive high-quality services from the federal government."
14. Does this investment support a program assessed using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)? (For more information about the PART, visit www.whitehouse.gov/omb/part.) yes
    1. If "yes," does this investment address a weakness found during a PART review? yes
    2. If "yes," what is the name of the PARTed program? 10003323 - Migrant State Agency Program
    3. If "yes," what rating did the PART receive? Adequate
15. Is this investment for information technology? yes

For information technology investments only:

16. What is the level of the IT Project? (per CIO Council PM Guidance) Level 2
17. In addition to the answer in 11(a), what project management qualifications does the Project Manager have? (per CIO Council PM Guidance) (1) Project manager has been validated as qualified for this investment
18. Is this investment or any project(s) within this investment identified as "high risk" on the Q4-FY 2008 agency high risk report (per OMB Memorandum M-05-23)? yes
19. Is this a financial management system? no
    1. If "yes," does this investment address a FFMIA compliance area? no
       1. If "yes," which compliance area: [Not answered]
       2. If "no," what does it address? [Not answered]
    2. If "yes," please identify the system name(s) and system acronym(s) as reported in the most recent financial systems inventory update required by Circular A-11 section 52 [Not answered]
20. What is the percentage breakout for the total FY2010 funding request for the following?

21. If this project produces information dissemination products for the public, are these products published to the Internet in conformance with OMB Memorandum 05-04 and included in your agency inventory, schedules and priorities? n/a
22. Contact information of individual responsible for privacy related questions:

23. Are the records produced by this investment appropriately scheduled with the National Archives and Records Administration's approval? yes
24. Does this investment directly support one of the GAO High Risk Areas? no

2. Will this project require the agency to hire additional FTE's? yes
   1. If "yes", How many and in what year? 1.5 FTEs have been assigned by the Department to support the MSIX System in FY07 and FY08. To meet the oversight and management requirements for MSIX, It is expected that 2 FTEs will be required to oversee MSIX in FY09-FY13.
3. If the summary of spending has changed from the FY2009 President's budget request, briefly explain those changes: With the implementation of the pilots and national rollout during FY07, MSIX is deployed and operational. The MSIX summary of spending has changed due to additional funding provided by ED to the MSIX software development contractor in order for the contractor to assist States develop the technical interfaces that will allow them to seamlessly transmit live data to MSIX, enhance the MSIX user interface and reporting capabilities, and establish a web-based training environment for use by State trainers. Furthermore, state support will be required throughout future years, FY2010-FY2012, given the States MSIX interfaces may require changes and updates to remain compliant with ED requirements. In addition, we anticipate that as States begin to fully use the MSIX to transfer data from one State to another, additional features will be identified to enhance the effectiveness of the system. In regards to 2013-beyond, the project team has determined that funding will be required for maintenance of the system. At that time; however, the project team will assess and reevaluate the current web-based MSIX System (after BY 2012) to determine if the current system is still valid or if new technologies should be leveraged to develop a successor to MSIX. Finally, future costs are included to provide independent verification and validation services as well as project management activities in support of the project activities. These costs are based on preliminary independent government cost estimates as the contracted services are in the pre-award phase and we expect the contract award will be made by the end of FY 2009 at which time actual costs will be available.

1. Is this investment included in your agency's target enterprise architecture? yes
   1. If "no," please explain why? [Not answered]
2. Is this investment included in the agency's EA Transition Strategy? yes
   1. If "yes," provide the investment name as identified in the Transition Strategy provided in the agency's most recent annual EA Assessment. MSIX
   2. If "no," please explain why? [Not answered]
3. Is this investment identified in a completed and approved segment architecture? yes
   1. If "yes," provide the six digit code corresponding to the agency segment architecture. The segment architecture codes are maintained by the agency Chief Architect. For detailed guidance regarding segment architecture codes, please refer to http://www.egov.gov/. 072-000

6. Will the application leverage existing components and/or applications across the Government (i.e., USA.Gov, Pay.Gov, etc)? yes
   1. If "yes," please describe. MSIX uses school demographic information provided by the Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN).

1. Did you conduct an alternatives analysis for this investment? yes
   1. If "yes," provide the date the analysis was completed? May 4, 2005
   2. If "no," what is the anticipated date this analysis will be completed? [Not answered]
   3. If no analysis is planned, please briefly explain why: [Not answered]

3. Which alternative was selected by the Agency's Executive/Investment Committee and why was it chosen? Alternative 1 - Consolidated Replica (status quo) was selected because it has major advantages over the remaining alternatives and was determined to best meet the requirements of MSIX. Compared to the other three alternatives, the consolidated replica had the lowest percentage of risks (10%) as compared to the other alternatives (Peer-to-Peer, 50%; Transaction Broker, 33%; and Transaction Broker with Directory Service, 33%). As a web-based system, the selected alternative will allow stakeholders (the states) to access the system via a web browser. Compelling advantages include: ? Provides the least invasive technology of all the alternatives from the perspective of the MEP component systems. ? Provides a high-performance option because end-user searches execute against one data source. ? Provides a consolidated data store, which facilitates the generation of reports based on aggregate statistics. ? Provides a means to identify and merge duplicate records via the consolidated database, which improves the quality of data and provides more accurate information. ? Supports the implementation of robust business rules, such as a notification system. This alternative provides the least amount of risk to the government. OMB Circular A-94, Guidelines and Discount Rates for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Federal Programs states that "Cost-effectiveness analysis?[is] appropriate when the benefits from competing Alternatives are the same or where a policy decision has been made that the benefits must be provided." ED is mandated by NCLB Act Section 1308 (b) to develop a system for the electronic transfer of student records and to assist states in determining the number of migratory students in each State. Circular A-94 further emphasizes "cost-effectiveness analysis is appropriate whenever it is unnecessary or impractical to consider the dollar value of the benefits provided by the possible Alternatives. This is the case whenever (i) each Alternative has the same annual benefits expressed in monetary terms; or (ii) each Alternative has the same annual effects, but dollar values cannot be assigned to their benefits." During the benefits analysis phase, it became evident that differentiating tangible benefits could not be identified or quantified for purposes of the study because tangible benefits were equal across all Alternatives analyzed. Therefore, only intangible benefits were analyzed.
   1. What year will the investment breakeven? (Specifically, when the budgeted costs savings execced the cumulative costs.) 2010
4. What specific qualitative benefits will be realized? Based on the Alternative Analysis that was conducted for this investment, the consolidated database replica alternative met the requirement of the Department and the stakeholders (the States). MSIX as implemented in the consolidated replica will ensure timely updates between the states without the states having to replace their current migrant student tracking systems. Once implemented the states will have access to migrant student data via a centralized system that will be coordinated at the Federal Level. Furthermore, the consolidated database will allow the states and ED to better manage student records and eliminate duplication of records and merge records as necessary.

6. Will the selected alternative replace a legacy system in-part or in-whole? no
   1. If "yes," are the migration costs associated with the migration to the selected alternative included in this investment, the legacy investment, or in a separate migration investment? [Not answered]
   2. If "yes," please provide the following information:

1. Does the investment have a Risk Management Plan? yes
   1. If "yes," what is the date of the plan? Jul 15, 2007
   2. Has the Risk Management Plan been significantly changed since last year's submission to OMB? no
   3. If "yes," describe any significant changes: [Not answered]
2. If there currently is no plan, will a plan be developed? [Not answered]
   1. If "yes," what is the planned completion date? [Not answered]
   2. If "no," what is the strategy for managing the risks? [Not answered]
3. Briefly describe how investment risks are reflected in the life cycle cost estimate and investment schedule: In order to launch and deploy MSIX in a timely manner, an aggressive development schedule (one year in length) was adopted by the project team. The assessment of risks had to be reevaluated to account for the aggressive development schedule. New risks were identified and many of the known risks had to be raised to higher priority and a great likelihood of occurrence. Furthermore in order to align its stakeholders with the MSIX Investment, the project team identified an elevated risk in terms of getting data from the stakeholders. To reduce and mitigate this risk, additional funds were dedicated to support the states to assist them with preparing their technical interfaces for MSIX. In order to mitigate this risk in the future, MSIX will continue to support the states and help them with their technical and data needs specifically dedicating funds for future state support from FY09-FY11. Security for MSIX was also identified as potential high risk to the project given the project's aggressive implementation schedule. In order to mitigate this security risk, the lifecycle costs have been adjusted for security activities, and additional funding has been dedicated to reduce the risks associated with IT security, contingency planning, and disaster recovery.

1. Does the earned value management system meet the criteria in ANSI/EIA Standard - 748? yes
2. Is the CV% or SV% greater than ± 10%? (CV%= CV/EV x 100; SV%= SV/PV x 100) no
   1. If "yes," was it the? [Not answered]
   2. If "yes," explain the causes of the variance: [Not answered]
   3. If "yes," describe the corrective actions [Not answered]
3. Has the investment re-baselined during the past fiscal year? yes
   1. If "yes," when was it approved by the agency head? Mar 26, 2008

Return to OMB Exhibit 300 page