Objective

This article describes the changes Silverband is implementing to ensure that Paradigm is compliant with the new Higher Education reporting standard as defined by the Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI) project.

Complexity: MEDIUM to EXPERT

Page Contents

Assumptions

• You have an understanding of the Australian Tertiary Education System.

• You are familiar with the HEIMS (HEPCAT) reporting standard

• You have read the TCSI resources published by the Department of Education

Project Summary

Following the first round of consultations between the Department of Education and key representatives from the industry, Silverband publicly confirmed its commitment to develop a Business to Government (B2G) integration with TCSI that offers our providers a one touch solution to government reporting requirements. This represents a deliberate rejection of the portal method on the basis that it would not scale well and in time, would be a hindrance for our larger providers. Following the release of the initial reporting specification we further refined our development efforts toward achieving what the Government phrases as “near real-time” reporting. This means that users of our software will be submitting data to the Government via TCSI in real-time. Any corresponding messages returned from the Government will be displayed within Paradigm in as close to real-time as possible. In practice, messages should be returned and displayed within seconds of a save event completing within Paradigm.

The proposed near real-time B2G implementation presents numerous benefits, the most important being an efficient workflow while entering data to validate and resolve reporting errors in an efficient and timely manner. This approach closely aligns with the vision that the Department of Education has described for the TCSI project and far exceeds the minimal expectations around reporting data within 5 business days of it being recorded by the Government.

A core component of the integration consists of a new system that we named NEXUS, which will serve as a gateway for all communication between Paradigm and the government PRODA servers. The main function of this system is to get an authentication token that enables users to send requests to the TCSI B2G API’s. All packets sent from Paradigm and all notifications received back from TCSI will pass through NEXUS.

Key features

• One touch B2G reporting solution

• Near real-time reporting

• Timely identification and resolution of reporting errors

Data Packets Summary Table

The table below describes the packets that are in scope for each provider type based on the current published reporting specifications.

Migrating to TCSI

There are four broad phases that providers will need to progress through to successfully complete the migration to TCSI reporting. The four phases are summarised below and explained in further detail in subsequent articles.

1. PRODA Account Registration

The word PRODA is an acronym for Provider Digital Access, a system used to securely access multiple online Government services, including for the purposes of submitting information as part of TCSI. In order to submit data via TCSI providers must hold a valid PRODA account, register a new B2B device key and shared these credentials with Silverband.

2. Preparing Paradigm for TCSI reporting

In preparation for the production launch of TCSI reporting there are a number of necessary configuration changes that need to take place before a site is able to successfully start reporting data via TCSI. This article should be used as a checklist to ensure that your Paradigm site is TCSI ready and compliant.

3. TCSI read-only mode

The purpose of TCSI Read-Only mode is to validate that the PRODA device key is registered and working correctly, and to retrieve the UIDs generated by the Government and assign those UIDs to records that were previously reported via HEPCAT.

4. TCSI write mode

Providers reaching this step are now ready to start submitting real student records to the government via TCSI. Note that once a provider starts submitting data via TCSI then they are prevented from making further submissions via HEPCAT.

Further reading

TCSI Packets (Higher Education Providers)

TCSI Packets (VET Student Loans)

TCSI Push Rules

TCSI Remapped Elements

TCSI Elements with changed options

External resources

We highly recommended that all users who will be performing data entry read the following documents so that they gain a strong understanding of the elements that are required to be reported. In further reading of the data elements please see all the elements above number 580, as they are new to TCSI.

• Government TCSI Support website

• TCSI Access portal