The information MUST be submitted by the data provider seeking certification using the following form. Information from this form will be published as part of the product's certification record.
Requirements
- Geographic information MUST be (at a minimum) precise enough to allow any local education agency operating within the United States to determine if it is or is not within the specified geography.
- Version information MUST be for versions generally available on the market (i.e., version information MUST not include development or future versions). Note that for Ed-Fi certification generally, only functionality actually available in the market can be certified, not functionality under development.
- Non-specific information MUST NOT be included (e.g., “Please contact us for availability information").
The main goal of collecting availability information is to enable users of Ed-Fi certification records to determine if they have access to certified product functionality, and for providers to clarify their customers or users expectations on availability.
In the initial years of Ed-Fi certification, a number of issues emerged from the lack of clarity on where and if an education agency could get access to data exchange functionality defined by Ed-Fi standards. In some cases, an education agency took a dependency on certified functionality based on a certification record only to later discover that they did not have access to that functionality.
Data providers likewise experienced customer misunderstandings based on certification records, and expressed a need to clarify where and when the certified functionality was available.