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• What is the Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIF Association)?
  
  
• What is the SIF Specification?
  
  
• Who is involved in the SIF initiative?
  
  
• How will a school benefit from the SIF Association?
  
  
• Will this become a product that gets sold in the future?
  
  
• Are there products out that are developed based on the SIF specification?
  
  
• On what language is the specification based?
  
  
• What do all those numbers and letters following the Specification mean?
  
  
• How can I join the SIF Association?
  
  
• What is the membership commitment?
  
  
• Will SIF be a worldwide specification?
  
  
• There have been many consortia, initiatives, and collaborations formed in education and industry to address technical issues and interoperability standards (e.g., SPEEDE/ExPRESS). Why are you working on yet another one?
  
  
• How will education technology decision-makers know which products are developed according to the SIF specification?
  
  
• What is SIF Certification?
  
  
• Why does Certification Matter?
  
  

The Schools Interoperability Framework Association is a non-profit organization that brings together vendors, government agencies, state departments of education, and other industry leaders to develop a specification that ensures that primary and secondary (K-12) instructional and administrative software applications can share information seamlessly. The SIF Association is not a product but rather an industry-supported technical blueprint for primary and secondary (K-12) software that will enable diverse applications to interact and share data now and in the future.

The SIF Specification is a set of documents developed by SIFA work groups, committees and task forces comprised primarily of software engineers from educational software companies. These documents articulate a set of common definitions for school data and a set of rules for how this data can be shared. The common data definitions are called data objects.  Data objects cover many items that are involved in schools. For example, a student´s name, address and phone number are part of the ´StudentPersonal´ data object. Having different software programs understand this common definition of a student makes it possible for them to share this information properly. There are 89 data objects currently defined. Additional data objects will be defined as the Specification matures.

In addition to the data objects themselves, the SIF Specification also defines the rules for how software programs can send these data objects to each other. This set of rules is called the ´infrastructure´ and uses ways of sending messages that are built on the types of technology utilized by the internet. By using open and commonly available means to transport these data objects, SIF ensures that all vendors will be able to use the SIF framework and that all school systems will be able to implement it regardless of what kinds of computers or networks they have. Ensuring that SIFA is vendor-neutral and software-platform independent is an important guiding principal of SIFA and a foundation for the long-term viability of the SIF Specification.

The SIF Association is comprised of vendors, schools, state departments of education, the US Department of Education, international ministries of education, various education associations and other agencies. Please look at our list of members to see who is involved.

The goal of the Schools Interoperability Framework Association is to help educators maximize their instructional and administrative software investments and make more efficient use of staff and faculty time. Educators constantly lament that their financial management, administration, library, transportation routing, and cafeteria applications do not work together. SIF solves these problems. By using SIF Certified applications, schools can dramatically reduce redundant data entry and spent more time on teaching.

No. The Schools Interoperability Framework Association is not a product and will not be sold. It is an industry initiative to develop a set of technical specifications for ensuring that pK-12 instructional and administrative software applications work seamlessly together.

Since the development of the SIF Specification is an evolving process, it is necessary to indicate to vendors and the general public when changes have been made to the SIF Specifications. The SIF Association has created a regular process to make changes and implemented a numbering scheme to reflect those changes. For example, the current release of the SIF Implementation Specification is SIF Implementation Specification 2.3. The first number in front of the period (2) is the number of the major release, the number just after period (3) indicates the minor release version. Making a substantial change to the messaging rules or data definitions would constitute a Major release and would change the number in front of the period such as: 3.0. A change in the status of a data object, for example, would trigger a minor release and be written like: 2.4. The SIF Association members are currently working on SIF Implementation Specification 2.4. To summarize:

Please fill out our secure on-line application. Or, visit the following links for additional information on benefits of membership, current vendor members, and the SIF Specifications.

SIFA participants must sign a membership agreement that encourages members to participate in working groups, tasks forces, meetings, and conference calls – as well as pay a fee based on the sliding scale. Please review the SIFA Membership Agreement for more information.

Yes. We are currently working on a number of international projects in locations such as Australia, Canada, UK and Europe.  While the focus of the initiative is supporting and empowering pK-12 schools in the United States, bringing other countries to the table during specification development can benefit data modeling, enhance vendor opportunities internationally and extend the usage of SIFA.  

We are responding to the needs of the educators who continue to grapple with interoperability issues. They are telling us that they need greater flexibility from their instructional and administrative software applications. For example, they need to produce reports using data from multiple applications and deliver those reports over the Internet securely. Those are the kinds of issues that the Schools Interoperability Framework Association addresses. Whenever possible, we will use the SPEEDE/ExPRESS specifications without reinventing definitions of common attributes like codes for gender, ethnicity, and grades.

SIFA has established a Certification program that provides third-party validation for all products developed using the SIF specification. Each product that is certified as SIF-Certified uses a SIFA Certification logo. To find out more about the SIFA Certification program, please visit The Open Group website. For a complete list of SIF-Certified applications please click here.

The SIF Certification Program is a formal program undertaken by SIFA to confirm that software programs adhere to the rules and definitions of the SIF Implementation Specification. SIFA has contracted a well-respected international certification organization to serve as the SIF Certification Authority. The SIF Certification Program involves a series of formal tests which validate that software applications properly implement the SIF specification. A software program which successfully completes the program will be able to display the “SIF Certified” logo on its package, website and in promotional literature. The SIF Certified logo is your indication that this particular version of the software program has been tested and certified to properly communicate and share information with other SIF Certified software programs.

It is important to note that software programs will be Certified only to a particular release of the SIF Specification. The particular release of the specification will be indicated on the logo, for example, the words: "SIF Certified, Version 1.1", indicate that this version of the software program is Certified with SIF Specification Version 1.1. In completing the Certification Program, each company must complete a Conformance Statement Questionnaire that indicates which SIF data and messages the company’s application supports. The application will then be tested against this questionnaire to confirm the company’s statements. The completed questionnaire will be available on the certification authority’s website for you to review. In order to continue to use the SIF Certified logo, each company must support a “conformance guarantee” which states that they will continue to keep their application in conformance with the specification throughout the duration of their certification period. For more information, please visit certification.sifinfo.org

Certification is important for both educators and software companies.  For educators it gives them the confidence that the SIF Certified software applications they purchase will work together with other SIF Certified programs without having to do any special programming or make any significant modifications to the software. It also allows educators to choose “best of breed” software applications that meet their computing needs and it allows them to confidently increase the number of programs sharing data. For software companies, it verifies that their software program will be able to properly share information with software programs from other companies. This can be an important differentiator when school districts are making substantial software investments. Knowing that a new program will work with one already installed saves time and money for the school as well as for the company.

SIFA has prepared suggested SIF RFP language for schools and districts to use when purchasing software to ensure that they receive SIF Certified applications and are working with SIFA Vendor Members.