United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

School Cockpit (SC) system is one of the first comprehensive, integrated, web-based
administration system in South-East Asia that supports student management and school
operations, and which involves a large user base. MOE has a school staff strength comprising around 26,500 Education Officers and 2,500 Executive and Administrative Staff (EAS) from 358 primary schools, secondary schools, junior colleges (JC) and centralised institute (CI).

SC system provides a portal through which school users carry out their administrative
tasks to better manage their work, and their students’ development and talent identification, just like pilots who have all they need in the cockpit to fly their planes. The
target users are School Staff (Principals, Vice-Principals, Heads of Department / Subject
Heads / Level Heads, Teachers, EAS and personnel from HQ). The mode of access is
through the Ministry Intranet.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
SC system has enabled schools and MOE HQ to achieve administrative excellence by equipping the Ministry Headquarter (HQ), School Leaders and Teachers with timely and accurate data on schools and students. Since implementation, SC has become the key application used in schools to conduct the bulk of the schools administrative tasks for both schools and students. There are over 350 schools, 26,500 teachers and personnel from HQ as SC users. SC has successfully been established as a centralised source of information for schools and MOEHQ, providing an integrated source of information on students and school related data. The system also enabled school leaders, cluster superintendents and zone supervisors to conduct analysis and make informed decisions about resource planning and allocation (personnel, finance, equipment, etc) through timely and accurate information available in SC. For example, the pass/fail results of students could lead to more resources being channelled to assist the students with real needs. With the rich information ranging from student’s academic and non-academic schooling records to personal data, SC system provides a more holistic view of the students, enabling teachers to have a better understanding of their students so that potential of each one of them can be better realised, and their learning needs better catered for. This information will eventually be used as inputs for the School Graduation Certificate that will be issued to the graduating students of JCs/CI and Secondary from 2007 and 2008 respectively. From HQ prospective, SC functions as a single source of student information for the purposes of policy-making, analysis and planning. The scope of data which includes both school-based and nationwide, also encompasses historical data from 2003. Through the years, surveys have been conducted after every major operation with school users, and feedback has shown that the system has improved over the years and SC has contributed to the efficiency of schools’ operation. SC has won accolades like the CIO 100 award in 2005 and ZDNet Asia award in 2006.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The project was kicked-off in 2001 and was rolled out to participating pilot schools in 2002. The system was fully implemented and rolled out to all schools in 2003. After the original system was rolled out and achieved stability, it subsequently underwent modifications and enhancements to cater to changing business requirements as well as to respond to end-user requests for additional functionalities. The project transited from development to maintenance in January 2005. Thereafter, the application underwent further major changes functionally and technically. From a functional perspective, enhancements were carried out to cater to changes in education policies such as streaming and integrated programs offered by schools. From a technical perspective, the system underwent a major hardware and system software upgrade to cater to growing demands as a result of a larger concurrent user base, as well as to harness the new capabilities of new system software versions. These enhancements were successfully implemented and rolled out according to plan in 2005 and 2006.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The project was initiated to provide a comprehensive suite of school administrative tools for Principals, Heads of Department (HODs) and teachers in schools to help them carry out their work better. It was intended to be a common system to be implemented in all primary schools, secondary schools, junior colleges and centralised institute. The system would enable teachers and school leaders to access all the necessary information, data and statistics at their fingertips to manage their students and related work better, just like pilots having all they need in the cockpit to fly their planes. SC system’s development to support the administrative needs of schools is in line with MOE’s strategic focus on administrative excellence to support schools.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The objective of SC system is to provide a comprehensive and integrated suite of IT systems to support the administrative functions and operations in schools. SC system is envisaged to allow school users to do their jobs and manage the students better, thus increasing the productivity of teachers, HODs and Principals. At the same time, these also improve the degree of co-ordination between schools within school clusters, and eventually within zones comprising of several clusters. Teachers, HODs and Principals can access different aspects (besides academic results) of information on students through a single source. With all data hosted centrally within the SC system, it is possible for school users, especially teachers, to have a more holistic view of their students in areas like co-curricular activity, community involvement, physical fitness, their strengths, and awards won for their schools. It allows teachers to understand their students more holistically so that the potential of each of their students can be realised, and their learning needs better catered for. The Ministry hopes that with this system, it is able to provide the support to help realize the vision of holistic education. The use of integrated student data in generating a single Holistic Report Card that includes both academic and non-academic student information will enable the Ministry to move towards educational excellence in Singapore. The system will also enable the HQ divisions to access school information directly so that information can be gathered quickly for policy making, analysis and planning. In addition, this also frees the schools from the need to submit data to HQ from time-to-time.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Identification of Critical Success factors From the onset, the factors that were key to the project’s success were identified. These included: 􀂉 A very strong end-user focus – with the needs of teachers and staff in schools and HQ at the centre of system design and implementation decisions 􀂉 An agile user interface to all system components – streamlining administrative tasks and ensuring easy take-up by the users 􀂉 A robust technical infrastructure – one that supports a centralised solution, is “future proof” and able to take advantage of new technologies and capabilities as they be- come available 􀂉 A focus on MOE wide integration – enabling links to other systems within the Ministry, leveraging on products already familiar to MOE ITB officers 􀂉 Rich functionality – supporting the administrative functions performed in the schools, and providing access to data at all levels within the Ministry Emphasis on People Impact Aside from the technical implementation, a strong emphasis on people impact was present. Significant effort went into Change Management, Training and Knowledge Transfer to successfully assimilate change into the organization. This includes assessing change readiness among staff, communicating and involving the various key stakeholders, aligning individuals’ roles and responsibilities with the new processes, and developing workforce capability to execute the change. Phased Implementation Approach The original 18-month implementation timeline was conceived to complement the project approach above and to be in line with the Ministry’s operations milestones. The phased implementation provided a first early release of functionality to deliver ‘Quick Wins’ to the schools. This began the change journey by providing users with basic but useful functionalities as well as introducing them to the new system which would be the focus of their future school administration activities. The completion of this phase also put in place the infrastructure that would provide the building blocks for subsequent releases. In the subsequent months, the build, test and release of the other components and modules were carried out and integrated into the main system. Numerous focus group discussions were held with the users to ensure accurate capture of user requirements and to ensure that the functionalities delivered meet the agreed requirements. Governance Structure A project of this complexity requires a clear organisational structure, which evolved over the life of the project. A well-defined governance structure which incorporated senior management support was conceived at the onset. This provided clarity on lines of authority, responsibility and accountability for getting the job done.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
In schools, through the use of SC, teachers and school leaders can now have a holistic view of students at their fingertips and are able to cater to students’ needs more effectively. Processes are also streamlined and made more efficient to align to SC implementation. The productivity of teachers also increased as they can make use of the different administrative tools available to alleviate some of the current tasks which are manual and taxing. Cluster superintendents are also able to monitor effectively the performance of the schools under their charge through the use of analysis reports. For HQ, data needs are fulfilled by the implementation of SC as policy and planning decisions can be made faster due to the availability of data centrally stored in SC. Overall, the coordination effort between schools and HQ for data is greatly reduced and the education landscape is transformed by the use of SC. It is now information-driven rather than the sole reliance on teachers’ contact with students as all aspects of students including their history from previous schools are readily available.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Effective change management could make or break a project implementation, especially if the rollout of the project spanned a wide user base. In the case of SC, the sustainability of managing a user base of around 26,500 was a challenge. The project team always consider change management as a top priority as the system undergoes changes frequently due to policy changes as well as enhancements to meet users’ needs. SC information website, e-Postcard and email snippets are means of the communication setup to reach out to school users. Regular school visits are conducted to understand the problems encountered by schools as well as an informal platform to present to school users on how to align schools’ processes to leverage on SC. Briefings are conducted for school users whenever there are major enhancements and operations coming up. Continual cycles of training are provided to school users on the use of OLAP tools and School Cockpit Timetabling modules. There are also sharing sessions with identified expert users as well as cluster level meetings on the new enhancements that are coming up to consult and share with them on the designs and usability of the system. There was also a need to ensure that the application operational issues would not disrupt schools’ work processes. It is also important to ensure that usage issues and mismatched expectations do not leave a first and lasting negative perception. Constant communications through various means are used to correct wrong perception due to usage issues. To manage users’ expectation, periodic review of system infrastructure through load test as well as hardware upgrades are conducted to ensure system is able to sustain under high loads under different scenarios.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The switch over to SC system from the legacy systems had not been without hitches as users had to make adjustments, learn new tools, adapt and get adjusted to new processes while enduring application bugs in the early days of the rollout. For SC system to gain acceptance by users, the change process was continuously being well-managed and at a pace that was comfortable to the users. The pilot implementation in 2002 in some pilot schools provided a good learning platform as it helped to mitigate major problems that may be encountered by all schools during the full roll-out. It also helped the project team to refine some of the business processes and logic before official release. The concept of the SC coordinator was born to champion the usage of SC in every school for this reason. Updated news and briefings were given to the SC coordinators periodically so that they can disseminate the information back to the school users. The nomination of a SC coordinator for each school has served its purpose well till today.


Institution Name:		Ministry of Education (Schools Division)
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Hang Kim Hoo
Title:		Manager, School Cockpit Administration Centre
Telephone/ Fax:		+65 68796212
Institution's / Project's Website:		+65 67738217
E-mail:		hang_kim_hoo@moe.gov.sg
Address:		MOE Building, Level 19, 1 North Buona Vista Drive
Postal Code:		138675
City:		SINGAPORE
State/Province:		SINGAPORE
Country:		Singapore

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information