Let us look at experiences of establishing EMIS in the African context and compare them with similar efforts in Malaysia. This has been reported by two different authors. The African experience is summarised and the issues in establishment of EMIS is highlighted by John Lovely (2011). The second experience from Malaysia have been detailed by Azlinah Mohamed et al. (2009) in a report detailing a research study on the data completeness of Malaysian EMIS. The two experiences look at two aspects of EMIS establishment and both contribute to the understanding of EMIS establishment in different ways.

Now, let us look at the African experience.

What are the highlights of John Lovely's article?

1. Procuring hardware and software for EMIS is very time consuming and most users find it difficult to fully grasp a paper based system specification. This is equally true whether the user is based in Africa, New York or London. Often the development of the EMIS is coinciding with the introduction of radical changes to the Education System itself, and hence, it is quite likely that the requirements will themselves have changed by the time the EMIS is implemented. This approach to software procurement is likely to lead to a solution that does not represent good value for money.
2. With usually a single budget line for ‘EMIS' in large scale funding, there is often a desire to include ‘everything' in the specification. This in turn will lead to a longer specification/development/installation cycle which in turn further increases the risk that the requirements on the ground will have changed before the system is delivered.
3. Another problem indicated in the article is that of the nature of technology being proposed. Current practice would (for example) expect that delivery relies upon access to the internet and on high speed communications and this often overlooks technical difficulties on the ground or upon unreasonable expectations of what will be delivered ‘in the future'.
4. Finally, there is often a sustainability problem, in that the recipient is often unable to afford to pay for the necessary support for the system. Donors will agree to cover the capital expense of the system development but will not agree to cover the total life cost of a system.

What are the solutions?

What could be the solutions for the issues raised in the above paragraphs?

1. An EMIS system will typically consist of a database and application software. However, attention should also be given to the users of the system. The establishment of an EMIS Home Unit should be the first priority before any specification or development of an EMIS should commence. This must be staffed by people with a wide knowledge base. They must fully understand the education system (and be aware of the changes proposed to the education system that will probably be happening in parallel with the EMIS development).
2. There should also be staff who have technical (IT) skills. These staff must be able to make decisions on behalf of the Ministry of Education. Indeed they must be empowered and relieved of other duties (or at least supported).
3. RAD (Rapid Application Development) technology offers an alternative approach to systems design and development. Rapid Application Development was a response to non-agile processes developed in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method. RAD technology unlike previous methodologies took less time to build.
4. Another problem was the assumption that a methodical requirements analysis phase alone would identify all the critical requirements. Ample evidence attests to the fact that this is seldom the case, even for projects with highly experienced professionals at all levels.
5. The developer and the end user can sit together and look at actual screen and report layouts. This will give the end user a much better feel for what will (and will NOT!) work.
6. In the new model, the development of the specification is taking place in conjunction with the system and database development. Of course, this changes the nature of consultancy that is being delivered by donors. Now the consultants must be able to provide classical needs analysis but must also be able to develop and or configure computer software.
7. There is then the issue of the scale of the developments. Rather than specifying a complex system in a single shot that attempts to deliver everything to everybody, a better approach is to deliver components in manageable sections. These need not mean that a fully functional system cannot be delivered in this way, it simply means that users (and donors) are seeing benefits along the way. Of course this may mean that it becomes harder for the donor to pre-define a budgetary figure for application development. This approach is now being adopted in the development of a Tertiary EMIS system in Botswana and it is believed the that this will give a better experience for the system users and a more relevant system.

The abstract of the article says that the Education Management Information System (EMIS) plays a significant role in helping the education policy-makers, decision-makers, and managers in Malaysia to make timely and good decisions. This requires high quality data to be made available to relevant people. However, EMIS has been plagued with data quality problems. Education data is important for the purpose of macro level administration and management. These data include staff emoluments, teacher deployment, school development, decision making, policy analysis, and evaluation that were gathered through the State Education Department from schools throughout the country. Since data collection involves the processes of importing, merging, and exporting at various levels, factors such as lack of facilities and skilled staff, or even data manipulation errors can affect data quality. The study aims to measure the EMIS data completeness using custom tools and to identify possible causes for EMIS data quality problems. Analysis indicates that EMIS data completeness has achieved the desired level of completeness targeted by its developers. Practical suggestions for improving the quality of EMIS data collection are presented.

While the entire article provided a good study report on Malaysia's EMIS set up by the Ministry of Education we will make an attempt only to look at its basic structure and identify some of the problems faced by the education system.

The EMIS database structure

In general, for every EMIS data collection exercise, four categories of data are collected. They are: Basic School Information, Basic Teacher Information, Basic Non-Teacher Information, and Student Enrolment Information. The basic structure of EMIS database contains 28 data tables, and 91 domain codes tables.

1. Basic School Information category consists of 15 data tables. The main data table is TSekolah. This table contains basic profile information of a school. The primary key for this table is KODSEK, which is the school code. The school code is assigned by the EPRD when a request for school registration is submitted to the MOE. The code is used as the key identifier for every government school in the country. Other tables contain information about school land areas, buildings, classrooms, quarters, and other facilities, including toilets and parking lots.
2. Student Enrolment Information category consists of three data tables. The main data table isTEnrolmen1Jad. This table contains the number of students per class and classes' information in a school. Other tables contain information on the number of students with specific conditions.
3. Basic Teacher Information category consists of nine data tables. The main data table isTGGuru. This table contains basic personal and service information of a teacher. The primary key for this table is KPUtama or the Identity Card Number, which is also the key identifier for every citizen of the country. Other tables contain information about teacher academic and professional qualifications, subjects taught, in-service training, co-curriculum activities, allowances, and responsibilities at school. The four tables used here (TGBElaun, TGBKelulusanAkademik, TGBLDP, and TGBTarikh) are also shared tables used to store the same information for non-teachers.
4. Basic Non-Teacher Information category consists of five data tables. The main data table isTBBGuru. This table contains basic personal and service information of a non-teaching staff. The primary key for this table is KPUtama or the Identity Card Number. Other tables are shared tables with Basic Teacher Information category as described previously.

Through observations, discussions, experiences, and feedback from school level, some of the difficulties identified were:

1. The EMIS data was not regularly used in decision making processes at all levels in the education system.
2. Insufficient commitment from the top management.
3. Insufficient co-operation and collaboration among the various levels and across CEDs in the education system.
4. Lack of basic supporting facilities at school level.
5. Issues with the EMIS application software and database (either in its design, user-friendliness, or other technical issues).