USIMS team reports steady progress on student, finance and educator domains; student data APIs and finance pilot integrations underway

Product teams reported progress across the Utah School Information Management System (USIMS) projects for student, finance and educator domains.

Katrina Brinkley, program manager for USIMS, said the program is funded through the legislative appropriation for USIMS and the teams continue to prioritize features that yield the most business value for LEAs. The system’s three domains are intended to reduce data redundancy and eventually enable timelier, cloud-based data exchange between LEAs and the state.

In the student domain, product owner Mark Wadups said USIMS has completed work to ingest real student data for Utah Aspire Plus and is preparing synthetic datasets for RISE and Utah Aspire Plus so development and testing can proceed without using live student records. Vendors were asked to provide preliminary feedback on a student-data API that would allow secure, authenticated transfers between SIS vendors and USIMS.

In the finance domain, product owner Dawn Moody said USIMS is coordinating with seven external finance vendors; three vendors have started pilot work to submit budget and actual data via the USIMS finance API and another vendor (Sage Intacct) has scheduled pilot work. The finance domain team is implementing calculations needed to support indirect-cost reporting and post-close adjustments.

In the educator domain, product owner Tim Davis said the system has provisioned four university educator-preparation programs to begin submitting recommendations, and teams are building an assignments feature to let LEAs manage staff assignments inside USIMS instead of across separate systems.

Brinkley said the program hosts regular domain working groups and a quarterly functional advisory board with vendors and LEAs; an on-site visit program to gather LEA feedback is scheduled for April–May. Teams asked board members to participate in advisory sessions as available.