OCAS recognized with PESC Best Practice Award
The P20W Education Standards Council (PESC) in Washington D.C. has awarded OCAS its 2013 Best Practice Award for innovation in the way OCAS secures transcripts for colleges. The award recognizes ingenuity in the use of interoperable data standards for business needs. Previous winners have included the California Community College System, the University System of Georgia, and the US Office of Federal Student Aid.
OCAS developed an automated system which enables non-direct applicants to request their high school transcript while applying to college online. OCAS can now reach into the record systems of enabled high schools through a secure web service to retrieve an applicant's high school record in real-time without any intervention from the school. The high school transcript appears within the online application-to-college within seconds of the request. In addition, OCAS has given high schools and school boards flexibility in how they integrate with the transcript exchange as a way to encourage more users, and every trading partner signs a formal Service Level Agreement which sets performance standards for both OCAS and the schools and boards using the system.
While the technical workings of this system are largely invisible to college customers, this innovation is important to applicants and schools and it significantly reduces the time it takes to secure a transcript for the college admissions process.
We are grateful to many people for their help in developing this new, and now award-winning system, including Operations Director Bill McKee and his team at OCAS, Barry Billing, secondary school student information system partners like SRB Education Solutions, OCAS technology partners Navantis and Xylotek, and the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board.
Quick Links
PESC Best Practices Competition
Media Contact
Alissa Robson
Manager, Marketing & Communications
519.763.2363 x6888
robson@ocas.ca
