Washington, DC, December 17, 2010 — The SIF Association Board of Directors is proud to announce to the educational marketplace the release of the 2010 SIF Association By-Laws. The newest version of the By-Laws (https://www.sifassociation.org/us/upload/news/1ZC786_2010_Bylaws_of_SIF_Association_Final.pdf) have been in process since early summer with extensive feedback from the membership across the AU, UK and US communities and represents some substantial shifts for the Association.
“The changes made to the By-Laws should provide a terrific framework to extend our reach and serve the global education market in the U.K. and Australia, as well as further the community of staff/volunteers/partners energized to bring out-of-the-box interoperability to school systems.” states Dave Moravec, President of Integrity Schools and the SIF Board Legal Sub-Committee Lead.
One of the major changes is the formal recognition of the three established international communities to leverage and align the global work of the Association. The By-Laws establish an international SIF Association Board of Directors made up of representatives of the AU, UK and US Local Management Boards. To ensure technical alignment, there also an International Technical Board made up of representatives from the three community’s Local Technical Boards. This international enabling will continue the membership growth and solutions development for the global educational community.
Under the newly approved US Management Board of Director’s Rules of Governance there is the stipulation that “end users” (i.e. schools, LEAs, SEAs) must make up the majority of the Board seats. “I applaud the Board’s commitment to ensuring that end users have the loudest voice in the Association, and this continues to position the community as an organization committed to addressing real-world educational agency needs”, states Larry Fruth Ph.D., the SIF Association’s Executive Director. “This shift, added to the fast tracking of Specification changes from end users requests, is another step in making the community THE place to get the identification, management, movement and usage of educational data addressed”.
These changes and the impacts they will have on the 3,200 members of the SIF community will be a major topic at the 2011 SIF Association US Annual Meetings in Washington, DC on January 19-21. More information on the meeting can be found here (http://www.sifassociation.org/us/event-details.asp?id=154).
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About the SIF Association
The SIF Association is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 3,200 schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The SIF Implementation Specification enables diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently, reliably,
and securely regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The SIF Association has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.sifassociation.org.