Our Solution:

STG helped the customer to address critical process requirements with respect to over 400,000 certification records of teachers statewide. Customer issues over 20,000 certificates and renewals and 25,000 permits annually. STG helped develop a fully integrated solution leveraging state of the art web-based technologies. STG developed automated interfaces to all the surrounding systems including the systems that provide the Teacher Certification Scores, Educational Entity Master, Registry of Educational Personnel, and Centralized Electronic Payment and Authorization System.

The new application has a very intuitive wizard driven interface towards applying very stringent and complex business rules. The application provides very useful reporting capability and several adhoc report modules for performing what-if type analysis on our data to improve business effectiveness and serve our constituents better.

STG implemented the following key features in this project:

• Individuals seeking certification or permits will be able to create and maintain a secured profile online. The profile will include the demographic data of the individual, some of which will be provided through the passing of parameters between the new system and the existing process.
• Individuals seeking certification or permits will be able to submit new or renewal applications online using electronic signature and check on the status of the application processing.
• Individuals seeking certification or permits will be able to pay the fees online using a credit or debit card or Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT).
• The general public will be able to verify/look up individual certificates and licenses online using the customer’s web site.
• Universities/colleges will be able to submit their rosters via online single submission and/or bulk upload without having to put in the demographic data of the individual (s) that is (are) being recommended. Must be able to generate customized reports.
• School districts will be able to submit requests online to customer’s Department of Education for temporary permits or annual vocational authorization (Single or bulk submission). Must be able to generate customized reports.
• Process applications that were submitted online by the individuals in a timely manner.
• Process rosters submitted online by the higher education institutions for both new certificates and renewal of existing certificates.
• Upload scanned documents/credentials that are received from the individuals and make it part of their profile and have the documents available to be viewed by the Department of Education staff for processing.
• Update/modify records based on the user’s role and maintain an audit trail of activity.
• Generate and customize reports using the data collected.
• Print Certificates/Licenses in batches.

Results:

The application developed by STG is a completely online system that has the capability to receive certification recommendations from over 40 teacher preparation institutions. The information stored and managed by the system is accessed by over 2400 school districts statewide. Customer’s Online Educator Certification System provides:

• A highly automated capability towards timely submission and assessment of the applications and validation of very complex and stringent business rules.
• The lead time for receiving, assessing and issuance of certificates has been significantly reduced from weeks to just a matter of few hours.
• Automated payment processing has enabled the Customer’s Department of Education to quickly receive and process payments.
• Customer is able to provide improved customer service and improve efficiency in processing applications