At 35,000 feet (work in progress)

Upon my return from San Diego and Anaheim attending the GDN and PESC conferences over the last few weeks, flying at 35,000 feet makes me pause and reflect on the P20W challenges and demands unfolding.? From high above sitting in the window seat, the details of the landscape below are blurred and often not visible. We can say the same thing about most data systems especially those that gather and summarize data for government policy oversight. The data gathered in IPEDS or NSC or State level longitudinal support - and others - are like flying way above the details of individuals on the ground following their distinct pathways or life long journeys. We can't see their steps. We don't know of their life events like having a child, or changing jobs, or getting married or having to support an aging parent. You may ask why does this matter?

The nuance of following, tracking, delineating, guiding, and planning learning to earning journeys needs to overcome the legacy of automating record keeping systems as we also transform functions and silioes to serve learner centric services. In other words, much of what we have in place today - has to change - if we want to utilize #AI and #machinelearning to get beyond the summary level of bias and abstraction recorded by present enterprise applications utilized as the authoratative support.

My reason for attending both conferences overlaps with my passion, desire and mission to unify efforts across the globe to improve the learning to earning ecosystem so that billions can be better served – empowering individual learning journey’s and lifting all boats.? I am not saying I am the only one with this purpose and desire – I feel both conferences are attended by people who have similar feelings and seek to apply their efforts like me.? You can call me an idealist when I am flying high – and a pragmatist when I am on the ground.? ??

Organizing enterprise systems in a global ecosystem like P20W, which requires extensive external coordination, communication, and collaboration, is a formidable yet achievable task. It involves creating a unified framework that supports interoperability and effectively manages the complexities of global educational needs. Here’s a strategic approach to organizing these systems effectively:

1. Establish a Global Standardization Body

- Role and Function: This body would be responsible for setting global standards for data, privacy, and interoperability. It should include representatives from various countries and educational sectors to ensure inclusivity. Data Standards United was formed by a group of small, dedicated standards bodies getting together to develop such a body.

- Standardization of Protocols: Develop and implement universal protocols for data exchange, educational content delivery, and credential recognition. This can't be one size fits all. We need to support a range - to support the various technical stacks employed and localization.

2. Implement a Decentralized yet Unified Technological Infrastructure

- Cloud-Based Solutions: Utilize cloud technology to create a flexible, scalable infrastructure that can support various educational tools and platforms globally.

- Shared Technology, Digital Services: Employ Digital Services for secure, transparent, and immutable records of educational achievements that can be easily verified and recognized across different regions.

- Address the lack of trust and unfamiliarity with other systems: Many are not in the loop so to speak. There is no map to view. Specialization, governance, culture and policy differ contributing to variations we do not see or have familiarity with. This contributes to the feeling of disorder and boundaries meant to protect interests. We are one human race. Yet, economics, scarcity and how we behave can be set aside - so differences can be respected - as we find common ground to work on - incrementally. It's an orientation we need - not simply technology to drive one way or another.

3. Foster Collaborative Networks

- Global Educational Consortium: Establish a consortium of educational institutions, technology providers, and governmental bodies to foster collaboration.

- Shared Goals and Objectives: Clearly define the shared goals of improving educational outcomes and enhancing the learning-to-earning pathway, ensuring all participants are aligned and motivated.

4. Develop Comprehensive Communication Strategies

- Regular Conferences and Meetings: Like the GDN and PESC conferences, regular interactions can help stakeholders stay aligned, share best practices, and address emerging challenges.

- Technology-Enabled Communication Platforms: Use advanced communication tools to ensure constant and efficient communication across different time zones and geographical locations.

5. Create Incentive and Reward Mechanisms

- Funding and Grants: Provide financial incentives for institutions and organizations to adopt and implement the standardized systems. Many are supported by for-profit EdTech vendors, governments and agencies who also must be drawn along with incentives.

- Recognition Programs: Recognize and reward EdTech providers that effectively contribute to and utilize the global ecosystem, promoting a culture of excellence and cooperation.

6. Ensure Regulatory Compliance and Ethical Standards

- Global Compliance Framework: Develop a framework that addresses the legal and regulatory aspects across different countries, respecting local laws while promoting common global practices.

- Ethical Standards for AI and Data Use: Set high standards for ethical use of AI and data, ensuring that these technologies are used to enhance educational outcomes without compromising privacy or equity.

- Privacy Controls and Ownership of Data: Respecting individual rights is not uniform across the world. How we build an architecture that respects boundaries and practices - while ensuring individual privacy and control has to be a focal point.

7. Continuous Innovation and Adaptation

- Research and Development Focus: Invest in continuous research and development to keep the technological infrastructure and educational methodologies up to date with the latest advancements.

- Feedback Loops and Adjustments: Establish mechanisms to gather feedback from all stakeholders and make necessary adjustments to strategies and technologies.

8. Promote Cultural Understanding and Exchange

- Cross-Cultural Programs: Implement programs that promote understanding and exchange between different educational cultures, enhancing mutual respect and cooperation.

- Localized Adaptations: While maintaining a global framework, allow for localized adaptations to meet specific regional educational needs and cultural contexts.

By pursuing these strategies, we can organize enterprise systems in a way that not only supports the P20W ecosystem but also actively enhances it, creating a more connected, efficient, and inclusive global educational landscape. This approach not only aligns with missions to unify efforts across the globe but also leverages my pragmatic understanding of the challenges involved in such an endeavor.

How Should We Evolve Enterprise Systems From Here?

It takes effort to organize and collaborate with others.? Organizing and orchestrating any enterprise such as a company, school, college or university or government agency, divides resources across the organization reinforcing a functional division of labor. The functional orientation reflects specialization to enable focus, scale, efficiency and effectiveness. We have marketing, sales or enrollment, administration, business, and other departments established with operational responsibilities. Then we have the management layer coordinating, communicating, measuring and leading with some form of executive leadership. We also blended functions that serve the internal organization like IT, website, parking, mail, and legal.

Enterprise Systems reflect the same functional divisions spanning the organizational activities that are planned, honed and executed addressing the purpose - teaching, research, product development, service delivery, support and so on. Each division or department holds the details of what they do, achieve and track through their functional interfaces with the Enterprise System and the practices they normalize and manage.

Applying the First Law of Thermodynamics to Enterprise Systems Design:

The first law of thermodynamics, often referred to as the law of energy conservation, provides a fascinating analogy for understanding the dynamics of Enterprise Systems in organizations. Just as energy within a closed system is conserved, transitioning between forms but never disappearing, the resources within an organization—be it information, capital, or labor—are reallocated but never lost. They shift in form and function to drive various processes and outcomes across the enterprise.

1. Resource Allocation and Conversion: In an enterprise system, resources such as data, manpower, and money are akin to the energy states in the first law of thermodynamics. These resources are constantly being converted from one form to another (e.g., raw data is processed and transformed into actionable insights) and transferred from one department to another, driving the business processes and adding value without loss of resource integrity. The enterprise system ensures that these resources are utilized efficiently and effectively, maximizing output without resource loss.

2. System Efficiency and Optimization: Just as the first law prompts us to consider how energy transfers and transforms with efficiency, enterprise systems are designed to optimize these transformations of resources. By reducing redundancies and enhancing workflows, the system ensures that the organizational energy—whether it be human energy, operational energy, or informational energy—is not wasted but rather redirected towards productive outcomes.

3. Balanced Energy Flow: In thermodynamics, energy balance is crucial for system stability. Similarly, in an enterprise, the flow of information and resources must be balanced across all operations. An effective enterprise system achieves this by integrating disparate functions—such as sales, customer service, and inventory management—into a cohesive whole, ensuring that no single part of the company is overloaded or starved of resources.

4. Adaptability to Change: Just as energy in a closed system adapts to external pressures and changes in form, enterprise systems must be flexible enough to adapt to market changes, technological advancements, and internal growth. This adaptability ensures that the organization can reconfigure its resource allocation and processes without losing momentum or efficiency, akin to how energy shifts forms while conserving its total magnitude.

5. Continuous Improvement and Feedback Loops: The conservation of energy principle encourages the continuous monitoring of energy states and flows. Similarly, enterprise systems rely on continuous feedback loops to monitor and adjust processes, ensuring that the system remains efficient and effective. This might involve using data analytics to track performance metrics or gathering user feedback to refine IT systems.

By viewing an enterprise system through the lens of the first law of thermodynamics, organizations can appreciate the importance of resource conservation, efficiency, and adaptability. Just as energy in a physical system is meticulously balanced, transformed, and preserved, so too must resources and information within an enterprise be carefully managed to ensure optimal performance and sustainable success. This perspective not only enhances strategic planning but also deepens the understanding of how integral parts of an organization interact and contribute to its overall objectives.

Applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to Enterprise Systems Design:

The second law of thermodynamics, focusing on entropy and the inevitable increase in disorder within a closed system, offers compelling insights into the management and evolution of enterprise systems. In the context of an organization, this law can be interpreted to mean that without proactive efforts to manage and renew systems, processes, and strategies, they will naturally tend to become less efficient and more chaotic over time. This means to me - change is inevitable. Nothing remains constant. Evolution impacts from inside and outside the enterprise system designed to manage, control, coordinate, and serve. Here’s how this principle can be applied to the design and operation of enterprise systems:

1. System Complexity and Decay

As enterprise systems expand and integrate more functions, they naturally tend to become more complex and harder to manage. This complexity can lead to inefficiencies and errors—essentially, an increase in systemic entropy. To counteract this, organizations need to regularly update and simplify their systems through consolidation, standardization, and the elimination of redundant processes.

2. Continuous Improvement

Just as entropy informs us that systems will become more disordered unless energy is applied to maintain them, enterprise systems require continuous investment in terms of resources, time, and innovation to maintain their order and efficiency. This can be achieved through regular system audits, updates to software and hardware, and training programs for staff to ensure optimal system use.

3. Innovation and Adaptation

The tendency of systems to move towards disorder can be combated with ongoing innovation. In the business context, this means constantly seeking new technologies, processes, and business models that can integrate into the existing system to offset entropy and improve overall efficiency and effectiveness.

4. Data Management

In the digital age, data is a critical asset for any organization, but as data volumes grow, so does the potential for disorder. Effective data governance and quality management systems are necessary to ensure that information remains accurate, relevant, and secure, thus minimizing entropy within the data management system.

5. Feedback Mechanisms

Feedback loops are crucial in identifying areas where entropy is increasing within enterprise systems. These mechanisms can help organizations detect inefficiencies, redundancies, or breakdowns early and address them before they lead to system-wide issues.

6. Scalability and Flexibility

To combat the natural progression towards disorder, enterprise systems must be designed with scalability and flexibility in mind. Systems that can adapt to changing business needs and scale up or down as necessary are better equipped to manage increases in entropy.

7. Cultural and Organizational Entropy

Beyond technical systems, entropy can also manifest in organizational culture and workflow processes. Maintaining a clear organizational structure, well-defined roles, and streamlined processes can help reduce disorder and improve overall organizational efficiency.

By understanding and applying the second law of thermodynamics to enterprise systems, organizations can better prepare for and mitigate the natural progression towards disorder. This proactive approach not only maintains the system’s efficiency and effectiveness but also ensures that the organization can continue to innovate and adapt in an ever-changing business environment.

Applying the Third Law of Thermodynamics to Enterprise Systems Design:

The third law of thermodynamics states that as the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value. In practical terms, it's about the behavior and properties of systems at very low temperatures, where systems become perfectly ordered and predictable. While the direct application to enterprise systems might not be as intuitive as the first two laws, the third law can still provide metaphorical insights into optimizing business processes and system design.

1. Striving for Minimal Entropy:

- Ideal State of Order: Just as the third law discusses an ideal state where entropy (disorder) is at its minimum, enterprises could aim to design systems and processes that are as streamlined and efficient as possible, minimizing waste and redundancy. This would mean creating highly optimized workflows that reduce the chances of errors and inefficiencies.

2. Perfecting the Process:

- Continuous Refinement: Approaching zero entropy in a physical system is a limit state, representing maximum order and minimum energy state. In enterprise terms, this could be seen as the continuous effort to refine and perfect processes and systems, making them more efficient and effective over time, much like striving for 'zero defects' in quality management.

3. Predictability and Control:

- Manageability at Low Entropy: At near-zero entropy, systems behave more predictably. Similarly, in an enterprise, the more streamlined and well-defined each process is, the more predictable the outcomes, making the system easier to manage and control. This translates into better forecasting, planning, and performance across the organization.

4. Resource Optimization:

- Efficiency at the Core: The third law implies that as systems reach lower temperatures (and thus lower entropy), they require less energy to change their state. In business, this concept can be applied to resource optimization—developing systems that use the least amount of resources for the maximum output, ensuring sustainable and efficient operations.

5. Technological and Process Limits:

- Recognizing Limits and Innovating Within Them: Just as the third law shows that absolute zero is asymptotic and unattainable, it reminds businesses that certain technological and operational limits exist. Recognizing these limits can spur innovation within them, compelling companies to find creative solutions that approximate these ideal states of operational efficiency and product quality.

By metaphorically applying the third law of thermodynamics to enterprise systems, businesses and organizations can focus on striving for the highest level of order and predictability in their processes, aiming for a state of minimal entropy where resources are optimally utilized, and outputs are maximized. This approach encourages continuous improvement, precision, and efficiency, which are crucial for sustaining competitive advantage in the market.

I can conclude, enterprise systems employed by educational organizations across the P20W ecosystem need to evolve to support greater interoperability, which is essential for fostering collaboration, enhancing efficiencies, and ultimately serving the educational mission more effectively across diverse global contexts. As the world becomes more interconnected, the need for a "digital freeway" that enables seamless communication, data sharing, and integration of services across different educational providers becomes increasingly critical.

Here’s a strategy to establish a global system, focusing on connectivity, standardization, and mutual benefit.

1. Developing Common Data Standards

To achieve interoperability, the first step is establishing common data standards and protocols. This would involve:

- Standardizing Data Formats: Agree on common formats and terminologies that ensure data from one system can be understood and processed by another. This is not an easy undertaking. Within countries, provinces, states and other boundaries, the evolving data formats relate to practices and procedures that have a legacy. In order for us to come to terms with this, we need to sacrifice and put skin in the game to align, map and appreciate the comparability and purpose. The governance effort to do this requires consensus and comprimise - as we try to bridge the many towers of babel that have evolved.

- Open APIs: Develop and implement open API (Application Programming Interface) standards that allow different systems to communicate effectively without exposing proprietary data. This has been very difficult to achieve across the ecosystem filled with variation, differentiation and behaviors inhibiting the utilization. Risks are everywhere. Trust is weakened by our lack of familiarity and the effort it takes to overcome.

- Event and Action Dictionary, like the Music Staff. The grandularity of the learner journey is not captured or shared in detail. Events and actions are summarized like the completion of a credential or grade at the end of the course is recorded and conveyed. Within functional components managed within the enterprise or provider, the events and actions hold the details that are the basis of patterns that could trigger greater cooperation and collaboration as signals holding their triggers could be shared. In order for this to happen, we need some form of a digital freeway with guard rails.

2. Adopting Robust Integration Platforms

Integration platforms that can handle diverse data structures, events, actions and workflow orchestration are crucial. These platforms should address:

- Support Modular Integration: Facilitate the integration of various educational tools and platforms in a modular fashion, allowing for flexibility and scalability.

- Ensure Security and Privacy: Implement robust security measures to protect data integrity and privacy, adhering to international standards such as GDPR.

- Messaging, Signals and Communications: Implement loosely coupled platforms that all can embrace how systems can publish the actions and events of their functions involving the curriculum, learners, teachers and other roles.

Systems need to improve coordination and communication across boundaries. How can we do that without a vehicle like the radio used to coordinate with the air traffic control during takeoff and landing?

We utilize email and text messaging to enhance our human interaction. They evolved from snail mail and package delivery - which can be pretty secure and fast when logistically oriented.

We need to develop similar vehicles to improve how enterprise systems and the connections across them can signal and share messaging that can be acted upon through the extension of the integration platforms. Imagine how we could innovate software and services if we could do this!

3. Fostering a Culture of Collaboration

Interoperability isn’t just a technical challenge; it also requires cultural alignment among stakeholders.

- Building Trust and Transparency: Establish clear policies and communication channels that build trust among participants. Transparency in how data is used and shared is vital. Our level of trust is not just a system function. It is behavioral and embedded in what we do.

- Incentivize Participation: Develop incentives for institutions and organizations to join and contribute to the interoperable ecosystem. This could include access to shared resources, analytics capabilities, or performance benchmarks.

- Decentralization: How do we serve the greater good spread across the globe with variations and differing priorities, resources and capabiities? We don't need to look far to find good examples to model. Airplanes fly in and out of airports everywhere. The rules and standards enable transportation in physical forms - from boats navigating the ocean waters to space ships. We need to do the same with virtual and digital cooperation and alignment.

4. Leveraging Emerging Shared Technologies

Utilize advanced technologies to enhance interoperability across the ecosystem:

- Shared Ledgers for Education: Connect a network of shared ledgers spanning the globe with nodes that can create a secure, immutable record of educational credentials, accessible anywhere without central gatekeeping.

- AI and Machine Learning: Employ AI to analyze patterns, data and differing practices from interconnected systems to provide insights, predict trends, and personalize education at scale.

- It's Personal - and Mine: Our personal devices (like my iphone) need to help us manage all the detaiils for us, like email and text messaging apply the default or custom rules established to protect me and my information. My Health app does not share my data outside my device and I can control it by access to settings is a good example. My browing history is another example where my localized cache storage can be used by others without me knowing it. We give up the right to control it, if we trust the app will provide greater convenience and benefits than the risk of exposure. Like Netflix and Amazon keeping track of what I view, buy and watch or return.

Who is responsible for establishing these shared technologies? How will we maintain them and fund their continuous improvement? Do countries establish their own? And, then how do the functions and protocols span the nodes?

5. Regulatory and Policy Frameworks

Support from governmental and international bodies to create frameworks that encourage interoperability:

- Developing Educational Technology Policies: Governments and international organizations can formulate policies that promote data sharing and interoperability in education.

- Global Partnerships: Encourage global partnerships that foster international standards and cooperative projects, bridging gaps between different educational systems.

6. Continuous Evaluation and Feedback

Implement mechanisms for ongoing evaluation of the interoperability initiatives:

- Feedback Loops: Create channels for regular feedback from all stakeholders to continually refine and improve the interoperability processes.

- Performance Metrics: Develop metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of interoperability in enhancing educational outcomes and adjust strategies accordingly.

It's Time: We need to Develop a Digital Freeway to Support the P20W Ecosystem

By establishing a digital freeway that respects privacy, secures data, and promotes collaboration, the P20W ecosystem can not only enhance operational efficiency but also drive educational innovations that are responsive to the needs of learners globally.

Introducing highways, rails, and airports to facilitate travel and mobility - improved commerce and the economies of all those who supported them.

So, it is in our self-interest that we can build a digital freeway to support the evolution of P20W. This approach will help better orchestrate how we can all work together paving the way for a more integrated, inclusive, and effective educational landscape that can adjust and serve 21st century learners and their journeys.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You are welcome to share this post with attribution, but please do not modify or use it for commercial purposes without permission.