Director of the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI) Margaret Merlyn Ropp, Ph.D announced this month that CEPI, along with seven other state agencies, received an Excellence in Technology Award at the Michigan Digital Government Summit.

CEPI, along with the Departments of Community Health, Corrections, Education, Human Services, Information Technology, Labor & Economic Growth and Treasury received the Best IT Collaboration Amongst Organizations Award.

“I am tremendously proud of the staff members at CEPI and our partner state agencies who contributed to this strategic that will streamline and improve the collection and reporting of educational data,” said Director Ropp. “We have worked jointly to improve the quality of educational data in order to provide Michigan citizens and policymakers with more accurate information on our schools. Educational data governance involving eight state agencies is unique in vision and scope across the nation.”

The Best IT Collaboration Amongst Organizations Award is presented to organizations that have demonstrated special efforts to facilitate inter-organizational technology projects, governance initiatives, datashare initiatives and/or integration initiatives that lead to or facilitate greater cooperation between organizations, government agencies or business units.

In receiving this award, the state agencies listed above collaborated to implement an interagency educational data governance process. This collaborative process brought stakeholders together to realize a vision for educational data to collect once, store once, and use many times. This will enable Michigan to maximize the value of educational data and provide stakeholders and policymakers with timely, accurate, and high-quality data. In addition to increasing the communication and collaboration among the state agencies involved in educational data collection, this process will also reduce duplicative reporting from various educational entities including the Intermediate Schools Districts, Local Education Agencies, and higher education.