USBE staff outline timeline for student "backpack," finance API and data-access controls

Utah State Board of Education staff on April 29 briefed district and charter representatives on progress for USIMS, the state's new education data platform, including pilot finance API work with vendors, a target schedule for student-record transfer capabilities called the "student backpack," and a phased rollout of technical access controls for LEAs and vendors.

Mark Waters, product owner for the student domain at USIMS, said the team is targeting July 1 to finish the first set of API endpoints that will let local student-information systems pull student-backpack data. He said an IEP-sharing mechanism is targeted for Jan. 1, 2026, and full integration across all SIS vendors and LEAs is targeted for July 1, 2026.

The student backpack is designed to move a subset of student records when a pupil transfers between local education agencies (LEAs). Waters said the project's early scope includes demographic data, assessment summaries and other records intended to give receiving LEAs faster access to critical information such as special-education status. "Our target for finishing the endpoints ... is July 1," Waters said. He illustrated the problem by describing a transfer in which a receiving district did not learn a student had an IEP for almost three months.

Don, who described himself as working with USIMS's finance domain, briefed attendees on a finance API intended to automate the annual submission of LEA revenue and expenditure reports to USBE. He said the team has identified seven major finance-platform vendors to work with and that two vendors had submitted pilot data for initial checks. "The finance API is a means by which the LEAs can use this to submit their annual revenue and expenditure reports to USBE," Don said. The plan is to run parallel submissions (both the legacy upload process and USIMS) for a fiscal year so LEAs and USBE can compare results before retiring the legacy process.

Waters and other presenters described privacy and technical controls being built into USIMS. The platform will issue API credentials (tokens and secrets) and provide a web-based management application so LEAs can see and cycle keys, grant third-party access, and set which categories of student data a third party may request. Waters said the team will roll out the tool in phases and initially will set up client accounts manually on request.

USIMS staff also raised a proposal to collect course-section attendance at the state level so attendance can move with the student. Waters asked district staff for operational feedback; several speakers described complications including differences in LEA policies, weekly or periodic attendance-taking for some online courses, and local rules about excusing or expunging attendance records. Waters said those operational differences are precisely the reason USIMS staff sought LEA input before formalizing policy or data specifications.

USIMS staff invited LEA staff and vendors to participate in upcoming focus working groups and in-site workshops. Tim Davis, product owner for the educator domain, said the educator team will host an on-site workshop April 29 to let participants "get their hands on the software" and provide feedback on assignment, qualification and employment workflows.

The presentation included a request for LEAs interested in piloting the student-backpack endpoints or the secrets-management tool to contact USIMS staff. Waters said the team will provide test (synthetic) data to SIS vendors and continue to iterate with pilot participants.

The briefing did not include any formal votes or board actions; staff requested operational feedback and sign-ups for pilots and working groups. Presenters named the following assessments and data types as initial student-backpack endpoints: RISE, Utah Aspire Plus, ACT and third-grade Acadience reading scores; staff said they had already distributed mock data for testing. Vendors named in the session as having submitted pilot data were identified by staff as "Lync" and "Pelos" (as spoken in the briefing). Waters acknowledged a slide typo in one target date and said staff would correct the slide deck before distribution.

Lower-priority details from the briefing included logistics for account setup (initially via help-desk ticket), an acknowledgement that the student backpack does not replace all paper "CUM" files and a reminder that USIMS is taking an agile, phased approach to rollouts.

Speakers and commenters in the briefing included Mark Waters (student domain product owner, USIMS/USBE), Don (finance-domain staff, USIMS/USBE), Tim Davis (product owner, educator domain, USIMS/USBE) and multiple LEA staff who asked operational questions and described district practices. USIMS staff requested LEA feedback on attendance definitions, expungement and retention schedules and on which LEAs would pilot the new functionality.

The briefing materials and mock data are to be distributed to invited participants; USIMS staff asked interested LEAs and vendors to contact Mark Waters, Don or Tim Davis to be added to pilot lists or workshop invitations.