Ministry of Education

Ministry of Education

Context

The Ministry of Education (the Ministry) has traditionally carried out a range of functions - advising government; providing information to the sector; providing learning resources; administering sector regulation and funding; and providing specialist services. More recently, the Ministry has become directly involved in building the knowledge base and capability of the sector at a system, institutional and individual teacher/student level.

There are five other central education agencies: the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Education Review Office, Career Services, Teachers Council, and the Tertiary Education Commission. The National Library of New Zealand is also working with these agencies to provide access to digital repositories.

Ministry of Education E-government Initiatives

• Programme office to coordinate e-government projects
• Portals
• Internal systems development
• ISSP and integrated information strategy development
• Education Sector Architectural Framework

Summary

Ready Access: The Ministry provides ready access to its information and services via a number of websites and portals. People can also access most of the Ministry's information through the government portal.

Alignment: The Ministry has a key role in the education sector, developing standards and coordinating the use of information technology and the Internet by education providers. The Ministry's strategies and plans for the education sector align with the E-government Strategy.

Internet and Communications Technology

The Internet is increasingly being used throughout the education sector to provide and share information and services. The Internet will eventually transform the way that the various agencies in the sector work together and deliver their respective services.

The Ministry, in its lead role in the education sector, is supporting the development of an ICT Framework to guide the direction and coordinated use of ICT across the sector. The Ministry's new programme office is providing support for a range of IT projects and overall programme processes. This includes the coordination of reporting across approximately 55 projects, many of which are e-government related.

The Ministry has developed a web strategy that is audience based, and four key portals that are audience-based. The portals include:

• LeadSpace, that contains governance and administration information for school leaders
• Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI), that contains bilingual information for teachers on curriculum, the education gazette and training courses, and content shared with Australia
• Tertiary e-Learning (TEd), used by tertiary providers to access information, policies and complete data returns
• e-Learning for students that will include course information and electronic delivery of courses.

The Ministry has begun to actively develop software for education providers to use. For example, a package of software tools in the e-Admin programme is being designed for schools and early childhood education providers, and will automate the collection of the education provider funding and staffing information.

The Ministry intends to use the Internet to make information gathered from education providers more available back to them. Better access to this information should assist with learning outcomes as well as education provider management. For example, work has begun to determine the ramifications of introducing a unique identifier standard for each student. A unique identifier would enhance the use of information collected in the sector

Ministry websites do not support advanced presentation of information, interaction or customisation. For example, the main Ministry site is a simplistic, first generation website that is hard coded and expensive to update. It is not sophisticated enough to support advanced online delivery of web content.

A comprehensive redevelopment of internal information management systems is currently being considered to take place in the next 12 to 18 months. Redevelopment of internal systems is planned to include a document management system that will enable better web content management as well as enhanced portal software for the development of websites and portals.

Ready Access to Information and Services

Metadata

The Ministry currently has 162 metadata records, with 106 documents, 54 services, and 2 agency records. Overall, metadata is of a high standard, providing ready access to the Ministry's information and services. Titles and descriptions are generally well written with the audience in mind. Metadata is fairly specific and detailed. This level is appropriate for the Ministry as people may not be able to find information easily if they were directed to extensive index pages rather than particular web pages.

The Ministry provides good coverage of its information and services through the portal. The Ministry should create metadata for information on its website about School Statistics, ESOL and the NCEA. Some existing records could be updated and condensed.

Website Assessment

Websites assessed during May 2004 included:

www.minedu.govt.nz
www.tki.org.nz
www.teachnz.govt.nz

but excluded LeadSpace, EdGazette, and e-learn and TED portals

Overall, the Ministry's websites are of a good standard.

The strengths of the sites are in information and e-services delivery. In future, the usability of the sites could be improved.

Key quality issues noted during the assessment included:

• Good range, depth and presentation of information and services.
• Usability and site navigation could be improved for easier use.
• Missing website policies mean people are unsure about privacy, copyright and complaints.
• Missing accessibility features, such as navigation skipping, access keys and style sheet problems may impede some physically impaired people's access.
• Some documents are in PDF only, excluding people who are unable or unwilling to read this format.
• Some required email addresses are not available or were not answered during the assessment.
• Contact details could be more specific, to enable responsive handling of enquiries.

Alignment With E-government Goals

Convenience and Satisfaction

The Ministry uses many websites for people to access information, which indicates that the Ministry does not have an enterprise approach to delivering information. Improved access to information could be achieved using an education portal, for which a business case is currently being developed.

Integration and Efficiency

The Ministry is beginning to integrate information and services using sector wide data and technology standards. Naming conventions, federated searching and education sector metadata projects are all intended to improve information and service integration.

In addition to a number of other Ministry initiatives, the Ministry will be auditing school networks. The audit - in conjunction with guidelines and standards for schools' information management systems - will ensure that computer infrastructures will be able to support the Ministry's e-government initiatives.

Participation

The main Ministry website could be used more effectively to encourage participation in government. Although, the homepage does have a main section called 'New on the Site' that includes requests for input, finding consultation topics when they are not included in 'New on the Site' is not straightforward.

Although there is information about policies, projects and numerous email links and other contact details for people to use, it is generally not clear from the main website how people can actually be involved.

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