WNYRIC

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1 WNYRIC
2 History of WNYRIC
3 Locations of WNYRIC Staff and Resources:
4 Audit Findings
5 External Links
6 Component Districts

[edit] WNYRIC

WNYRIC is an acronym for Western New York Regional Information Center, a regional public education service organization. There are 12 RICs statewide. The WNYRIC serves over one hundred school districts covering 7 counties (Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Niagara, Orleans and Steuben) in the western region of New York State.

What is a Regional Information Center?

Several years ago, educators in New York State expressed a need for a statewide telecommunications network. It was not cost effective for more than 40 separate BOCES to compete with each other to deliver this service. As a result, 12 BOCES computer centers were selected to serve as the backbone for EdNet NY, the communications network. These locations are called Regional Information Centers (RICs) or Regional Computer Centers (RCCs) and they are an intermediate unit of the NYS Education Department. They work cooperatively with all BOCES and school districts throughout the State to deliver mainframe, mini- and micro-based services.

[edit] History of WNYRIC

WNYRIC began with Williamsville and Clarence (2 E1B component districts) who wanted a shared payroll service. This was in the late 1950’s. Some of the employees of these districts became the first WNYRIC employees. Initial requests were for data management such as payroll or financial services and student data needs such as demographics. In the late 1950’s the start of keypunch services located at WNYRIC began. In the 60’s and 70’s everything was on paper. The paper would be driven to the center, key punched in and then reports were printed. These reports were then driven back to the district. The staff grew to 30 or 40 personnel by the 1970s. In the 1980’s the larger mainframe was installed and terminals and some networked printers were used. Input was done at the district but processing and reports were still done centrally at the center. Printing was done centrally for the most part. The WNYRIC WAN was initially developed in 1981. In 1986 through 1990 there was state funding for the TNT network, SIS (student model 204 language) FAME (financial model 204) and Part 200 (special education) applications. WNYRIC developed FAME and Part 200 and CNYRIC in Syracuse developed SIS. In the mid 80’s this printing was decentralized and done at E1B for the components but at RJE (remote job entry) sites in other region. There was remote RIC staff at these sites and couriers took jobs to the districts. In the late 80’s and early 90’s there began to be PCs and servers in the districts. This started the evolution of larger AS400 systems located at remote sites. In the 90s LANs (local area networks) evolved and the WAN (wide area network) began to grow. More applications were networked. By the mid to late 90’s the WNYRIC began providing Web services and started the datawarehouse and data analysis. The original datawarehouse was not in the eScholar model. In the mid 90s the addition of instructional aid for BOCES services prompted many more networks set up for schools and classrooms. In the mid-90's, the RIC financial team began supporting several Windows-based financial applications that used district-housed servers. In 2005, the RIC began offering RIC-hosted server solutions for these applications. In 2000, the WNYRIC began to add student Web services. Planning for broadband began in 2000-1 and it was in place by 2004.

[edit] Locations of WNYRIC Staff and Resources:

West Seneca: Most of the WNYRIC services are housed at 355 Harlem Road, West Seneca

Allegany: A satellite site for the Cattaraugus/Allegany region housing offices and an instructional lab.

Bath: A satellite site for the Greater Southern Tier region housing offices.

[edit] Audit Findings

During an interview by an audit committee for SED the following information regarding the WNYRIC was shared:

Trends identified:

More emphasis on data driven decision making and the use of data of all kinds
Growth in staff development options tied to data and research based instructional software
Growth in districts using test scoring services
Growth in districts using data in the Datawarehouse
Growth in districts moving to RIC supported Web student management systems
Growth in districts using Web pages and teacher pages to communicate with parents
Growth of document archival service
Request for rapid notification of emergency situations service
Increased awareness of the responsibility and choice of the level of district responsibilities
Trend of more distributed technical support
Trend towards choice of Web services
Broadband allows for the district to choose the placement of critical applications at the RIC if desired as well as the remote back up of those district based applications to be done at the RIC.
Trend towards new data collection for SED and USDOE
Staff development is customized for the needs of the districts and much of it is done on a district based scenario.
SIF is more cost effective and becoming a reality

We believe WNYRIC is unique among RICS in the following areas:

Strength in datawarehouse and number of districts/regions and cities stored in this datawarehouse.
Websphere portal in place
Choices of student and financial service options for ASP hosted and in district solutions.
Regents and 3-8 scoring done with teleforms and image scanning software.
In district options for regents scanning
One broadband network for the entire region with no redundant DL or telecommunication lines in any region serviced by this RIC
DL runs on the same broadband network as data and Internet services. All BOCES in the WNYRIC region run DL as a consortium. The coordination comes from the local BOCES but is advertised as consortium classes with the ability for students to take courses throughout the region. There is a regional scheduler for distance learning in the region. Once other RIC regions move to broadband, the possibility of using this as a statewide scheduler exists.
No other BOCES in the WNYRIC region has their own 6360 service. Some have 6368 Model Schools which supplements the Model Schools from the WNYRIC. This means that the options for hardware and software are standardized throughout the region.
PDP Timekeeper is offered as a statewide professional development tracking option.

Other RICs use this as well and do the support locally for their components.

Enterprise server model 204 services still exist. (mainframe option) Model 204 applications are being phased out by 2010 and are being replaced with Web options.
Because of our close proximity with Model School/CSLO and the data warehouse team, we are able to offer complimentary workshops such as data analysis, data mining, curriculum mapping and Deep Curriculum Alignment. This collaboration and close proximity also offers us many opportunities for “think tanks” to help us stay ahead of the curve, and develop and plan staff development opportunities for our component districts
WNYRIC has a long standing relationship and the delivery of services to two of the Big 5. (Buffalo and Rochester)
Our percentage of broadband districts involved is higher than other RICs. We have 98 of 103 involved.
Our procurement and project process is very involved.
Our customer support representative concept is very instrumental to our organizational process. There is a customer service coordinator, project manager and technical support for each district.
WNYRIC has an Advisory Council and a JMT that is very supportive of the WNYRIC services.
There is a standard’s committee and a forum for instruction, curriculum and assessment. These committees inform the services that are offered by the WNYRIC.
The WNYRIC has a data team that is made up of representatives from all service teams and mirrors the type of activities of the district data teams.

WNYRIC is also similar to other RICs in the following ways:

This RIC offers management and instruction services
This RIC offers technical services to schools.
This RIC faces similar sets of issues/problems

The RIC functions as a component of Erie 1 BOCES in the following ways:

The WNYRIC serves Erie 1 BOCES in the same manner as it serves all other WNYRIC school districts.
There is a chargeback process for support
Erie 1 tech support concept
TS knowledge supports E1B as a BOCES.

The following things affect the operations of this RIC:

The WNYRIC has an Advisory Council made up of the District Superintendents from all BOCES regions and representatives from component districts such as superintendents, instructional technology representatives, local BOCES instructional and technical representatives.
There are also two subcommittees that report to the WNYRIC Advisory Council. They are the Standard’s Committee which determines hardware and device standards for all services delivered by the WNYRIC and FICA (Forum for Instruction, Curriculum and Assessment) which informs the services delivered under the instructional services, data analysis services, library, distance education, media library and assessment services. This committee is made of curriculum leaders, data analysis liaisons, school library directors, distance education leaders and media library leaders of all component BOCES regions.
For Common Set of Learning Objectives – CoSer 6360 there is a list of approved hardware and software standards. All software must meet criteria addressing the NY State Standards. Each year, districts can request additions to the list but must submit rationale. In addition there must be more than one district requesting the software or hardware with appropriate rationale.
COSERS affect the services provided by this RIC.
Statewide bidding laws affect our services.
There is a distance learning consortium that meets regularly that collaborates to make decisions regarding distance learning in the region. An RFP was done collaboratively to purchase the equipment as well as the region wide scheduler for all regions.
Civil Service rules and restrictions on hiring
Legal and business office policies and bidding processes of E1BOCES
Local BOCES technology coordinator groups
Surveys that are sent to external and internal customers
Input from our customer service representatives collected from district visits

The following must go right for WNYRIC to succeed:

Support of component districts in all regions.
Support of the District Superintendents in all regions.
Continuation of BOCES aid.
Our ability to hire and retain quality staff

These factors could prevent this RIC from functioning as intended:

Loss of BOCES aid
Deterioration in the fiscal condition of school districts may cause a reduction in their requested services. This may increase the cost to other school districts still subscribing to WNYRIC services or the elimination of services that are no longer cost effective to operate because of too few districts to share the costs of delivering the service.
Legislation changes

The most complex operations in our WNYRIC currently are:

Project process
Portal and Web development
Datawarehouse
Statewide SED datawarehouse
Data collection
Central installation site and capacity
Firewall capacity and analysis capabilities

The WNYRIC dominates in the following areas:

Statewide Datawarehouse and data warehousing
Data analysis and the impact on instructional change
Technical strength in many areas
Portal and Web services
Wide area network
Our model for DW and data analysis
Test scoring expertise
Erate involvement on the part of our districts and support given by our WNYRIC

The RIC serves SED in the following ways:

Scoring of state assessments
Population of data to L1 warehouse and movement to Level 2 warehouse for reporting
Serves as Level 2 datawarehouse provider
Serves as Level 3 datawarehouse provider
SED train the trainer sessions and implementations.
Training on VLS
SED attendance collection
Medicaid processing
Liaison relationship between WNYRIC districts and SED's State Aid division

WNYRIC receives the following guidance from SED: