Public school systems and state departments of education, like many government entities, are being asked to do more with less. Budget constraints, regulatory compliance, and other resource limitations continually challenge K-12 organizations in their mission to provide high-quality learning experiences for their students.

The good news? A well-designed, successfully implemented information technology strategy can help school systems simplify their state and federal compliance efforts (such as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reporting), aid in curriculum delivery, assist with teacher recruitment and retention, and ensure that the organization does not lose federal funding due to student misclassifications or reporting challenges.

In short, a strong IT strategy can streamline operations so limited resources can be allocated to what’s most important—the students.

187 School Districts, 1.8 Million Students

CIBER, Inc. helps K-12 organizations design, build, integrate, and support IT solutions specific to the K-12 industry. CIBER has more than 10 years experience providing technical and business support services to state departments of education and 187 school districts, encompassing nearly 1.8 million students. CIBER can solve IT and business difficulties, whether it’s to provide a single custom application, an entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, an end-to-end IT sourcing program, or business support and management consulting services.

“We were looking for an efficient way to provide important information to our constituents, without having to rely on programmers or specialized staff to create web pages, data dashboards, and scorecards. CIBER created for us an open, scalable, service-oriented architecture portal that can be easily updated and integrated with our other IT systems, so it will grow as our needs change.”

Nick Gledich — Chief Operating Officer, Orange County Public Schools

K-12’s Full Service IT Partner

CIBER offers a unique combination of industry experience and expertise, technology leadership, and strong partnerships to provide K-12 organizations a full continuum of IT services in one place. CIBER’s IT solutions help organizations reduce costs, eliminate redundant manual tasks and data entry, increase data analysis capabilities, and enable optimum deployment of limited resources.

CIBER offers K-12 organizations the following services:

• Project and Program Management
• ERP Assessment, Implementation, Integration, and Support
• Application and Network Security
• Assessment and Achievement Planning
• State and Federal Compliance
• Application Development and Management
  · Custom Application Development and Maintenance
  · Legacy Modernization
  · Web Portals
• Enterprise Integration
  · Data-Driven Decision-Making / Data Warehousing
  · Service-Oriented Architecture
  · Data Governance
  · Dashboards
• IT Operations
  · Disaster Recovery
  · Help Desk Support
  · Infrastructure Support
  · Hardware Technology Solutions

A leader in providing IT solutions to government entities at the federal, state, and local levels, CIBER is familiar with the challenges faced by non-commercial organizations that “serve many masters”: the public, oversight boards, government regulations and mandates, and the ultimate end-user—in this case, the students.

For that reason, public, private, and special education schools, and state departments of education have turned to CIBER for their IT needs, from assessment and selection to deployment and integration to maintenance and on-going support.

With 60 offices throughout the U.S., CIBER has a branch location near you to provide local accountability, a single point of contact, and in-depth understanding of local issues and requirements. At the same time, CIBER is a global company that offers the breadth and depth of expertise and resources needed for solutions built around newer technology.

Project Management: CIBER’s AYP K-12 Methodology

CIBER has more than 10 years experience supporting state departments of education in their data collection efforts. CIBER has also supported the evolution of the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) initiative since its inception.

Given this experience, CIBER has developed and implemented an AYP K-12 methodology that enables schools and school districts to more efficiently analyze and report their AYP data and achieve their AYP goals. CIBER consultants work directly with school principals throughout the year to analyze data and prevent surprises. We help schools with re-rostering strategies that allow for more beneficial reporting elements to better understand raw data and the resulting impact on school performance. We offer seminars regarding the dynamics of AYP for schools which have made their AYP goals or for those who have missed them. CIBER works closely with Title I and “needs improvement” schools to clearly define strategies and create action plans for future progress.

CIBER’s K-12 consultants can also provide organizational development and policy management services.

ERP Assessment, Implementation, and Integration

CIBER has helped numerous K-12 clients with their ERP initiatives, from assessment and selection through implementation to hosting and support. CIBER offers a vendor-agnostic approach to ensure we evaluate and recommend solutions that best meet our clients’ needs. At the same time, we maintain strong partnerships with the major ERP vendors so we are always aware of new developments in their products, and can tap our partners for support as needed. CIBER can help your organization implement and integrate ERP systems to assist with financials (e.g., grants, funds, and project system accounting), logistics (e.g., purchasing, inventory management, and warehouse management), and technology (e.g., systems integration, data conversions, ABAP, and Basis).

CIBER is a Lawson Business Partner, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Oracle Certified Advantage Partner, and SAP Alliance Partner.

Application and Network Security

The best IT solution must incorporate application and network security to prevent unwanted system disruptions and data breaches. CIBER assesses your system security challenges and regulatory compliance issues to define, achieve, and maintain security objectives that provide the best protection for your specific risks. We offer more than just perimeter and firewall protection—we incorporate security into our application and system designs, so it’s an integrated part of your K-12 IT solution. Read more

Application Development and Management

CIBER designs, builds, integrates, and supports custom applications that deliver full lifecycle benefits. Our expertise includes client server and mainframe environments, service-oriented architecture (e.g., J2EE, .NET), Web portals, legacy modernization, managed content services, and wireless solutions. We cultivate partnerships with major players in the K-12 space. And we provide flexible delivery options—application development can be completed on your site, at our site, or at one of our application development and management centers, called CIBERsites. Read more

Enterprise Integration

For many organizations, their IT systems are a mix of products from different vendors. They work well on their own, but can’t be easily integrated to share data and eliminate duplicate processes. CIBER can help you overcome this challenge by designing and integrating applications and interfaces to deliver fully functional and integrated IT environments. We can also provide business intelligence, data warehousing, and data governance services to help build systems and policies to govern the use and management of data.

CIBER can build daily management dashboard reports for specific school administrators, whether the administrators are at the school level, the school district level, or at the state Department of Education level. These reports organize and display critical information so administrators at any level can easily review, assimilate, and manage information, such as performance testing information, financial information, or grant or fund information. This enables you to “fine-tune” policies and procedures as needed to maintain progress toward organizational goals.

The benefits? Your organization has greater visibility across departments, schools, central offices and suppliers, so you can simplify analysis and reporting tasks, while extending the life and functionality of existing IT assets. In addition, school principals can lead the management of internal data to focus on data driven by AYP reporting requirements. Better access to data means more accurate reporting to the federal government, and reduced risk of losing funding because of an error in reporting AYP progress. Read more

IT Operations

In many situations, K-12 organizations find it is most cost-effective to outsource some or all IT operations, reducing the demands on their technical staff and helping them focus on their core mission of providing quality education to students. CIBER offers several data centers where we provide application maintenance and support, ERP support, help desk services, and data center hosting at prices that work with your budget. CIBER also offers disaster recovery services to help you plan for and recover from events that disrupt school operations.

CIBER can help you select, design, and implement hardware that best maximizes your investments in IT while reducing capital requirements and operating costs. CIBER’s approach is vendor agnostic, but we nurture partnerships with leading vendors in this space, such as IBM, Intermec, Symbol, Printronix, and Teklogics. Read more

Why CIBER?

CIBER is the safe choice for your IT challenges and initiatives. We understand the K-12 environment and have significant experience working with schools. We offer a full range of IT services, from hardware and software assessment and selection to custom development, ERP implementation, and full-service application and network hosting.

CIBER uses proven methodologies and industry best practices to ensure your solution is built around efficient business processes, yet can be efficiently and cost-effectively delivered and implemented.

We recognize, however, that each client’s challenges and requirements are unique, and that a “cookie cutter” solution will not provide an ideal solution, but may, in fact necessitate change orders and budget overruns to reach the best solution.

CIBER’s approach is different. Our first step with each engagement is to understand the client’s needs and requirements fully and completely, and collaborate with the client to design a solution that solves their specific challenges. We are flexible, nimble, and adaptable to accommodate the technological changes and unexpected hurdles that inevitably alight on each project.

Our goal is to help clients find efficient, cost-effective solutions to their IT challenges while minimizing risk and delivering impressive results.