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USIMS team urges districts to work with SIS vendors as Ed-Fi transition proceeds
Summary
USIMS program managers updated educators on a phased move from SIF to Ed-Fi, new APIs for assessments and student data, and a compliance deadline for SIS vendors of July 1, 2026.
The USIMS product team told LEA and vendor participants that Utah’s statewide education information system is entering an integration phase that will rely on Ed‑Fi APIs and require active participation from local SIS vendors.
Katrina Brinkley, chief product owner and program manager for USIMS at the Utah State Board of Education, said the project is releasing functionality in small increments and asked district staff to “please mention to [SIS vendors] the importance of working with UCEMS and getting compliant by 07/01/2026.”
Why it matters: districts rely on their student information systems to feed data to state systems for funding, accountability and services. USIMS staff said this transition is intended to standardize integrations and create new reporting capability via Power BI.
USIMS highlights and next steps USIMS has separate product teams for finance, educator and student domains. Katrina Brinkley said the finance domain is connecting to finance vendors via APIs, working on account combinations and base calculations for indirect cost rates. The educator domain has added assignment history and educator qualification features and is onboarding educator preparation programs.
Mark Wadeps, product owner for the student domain, said the team is close to an initial release of a “student backpack” that will manage tokens and secrets for vendor integrations. He reported that real ACT scores were recently enabled and that API documentation and synthetic test data for RISE, Utah Aspire Plus and ACT were sent to SIS vendors to support testing.
USIMS asked districts to engage their SIS vendors directly and to participate in ongoing focus working groups. The team listed Don Moody, Tim Davis and Jared Felt as product owners available to help with vendor questions and testing.
Vendor and timeline notes Brinkley and Wadeps said some vendors have been slower to engage and mentioned Infinite Campus specifically as having been engaged in conversation but not uniformly ready. The USIMS team stressed that they will continue phased releases so districts and vendors are not overwhelmed, but repeated the July 1, 2026 target for vendors to be compliant with UCEMS/Ed‑Fi access.
Staff contact and opportunities to participate USIMS staff invited educators and vendors to weekly focus working groups (educator, student, finance) and to a Functional Advisory Board meeting in April for a fuller update. The team also said the USIMS on‑site visits are resuming, bringing developers out to visit LEAs to see real‑world workflows and integration issues.
