Oxfordshire County Council is securing and managing online
access to educational resources for over 100,000 people with
technology originally used by banks.
The council is using a java application from software developer
and compliance specialist, Pirean, to meet its obligation of
providing digital learning services while meeting data protection
regulations.
About 85,000 students and 15,000 council staff will have access
to resources at over 280 educational facilities.
The software allows the council to manage access centrally and
enables user groups such as schools or teachers to manage their own
accounts. Mike Cartwright, CTO at Pirean, said this will keep the
overhead of managing accounts down while ensuring control is at the
county council level.
The software can also be used to help the council meet the
requirements of Government Connect, a project to link local and
central government through the Government Connect Secure
Extranet.
The software was originally designed for large financial
institutions to secure and audit access to hundreds of applications
for up to hundreds of thousands of users.
"The worlds of education and banking may appear to be quite
different, but the needs of managers and staff actually mirror the
relationship between teachers and pupils when it comes to providing
access to applications - whether that's a brokerage system or an
e-learning platform, the processes are very similar," said
Cartwright.
Stephan Conaway, head of ICT services at Oxfordshire County
Council, said it chose Compliance:One software because it can
integrate with the systems it uses from Capita, Citrix and RM,
which are "vital for our delivery of e-learning".
