Big brother eyes students
Dorothy Illing
MAY 21, 2003 

A NATIONAL ID number for students and a new computer system to 
track them has been compared with the failed Australia card bid 
in the 1980s.

It has also raised the issue of privacy and how much access 
government should have to personal information on students. 

But Education Minister Brendan Nelson said privacy would be 
protected with the "full force of the law". 

He said the new system was to make the transfer of data and financial 
information between the commonwealth and universities more efficient 
and to track student loans and entitlements. 

The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee has warned that universities 
will be reluctant to give out personal information on students. 

"Universities are [also] unlikely to support any scheme that has 
the government obtaining direct access to university databases," 
AVCC chief executive John Mullarvey said. 

However, vice-chancellors were happy to work with the Government 
to deliver best-practice information, he said. 

The federal Government will introduce the Commonwealth Higher 
Education Student Support Number as part of moves to monitor 
students' five-year learning entitlements, scholarships and loans. 

Universities will get $200,000 each to help implement a new Higher 
Education Information Management System that will drive the new program. 

The Government says the ID number will be "limited in its use to HEIMS 
and protected under commonwealth privacy legislation". 

But given the fracas prompted by the Australia card and later the 
tax file number system, it is not likely to be a smooth introduction. 

It also raises the question of how the new system will sit with the 
information management systems such as PeopleSoft and Callista, which 
universities have been installing at great cost and considerable upheaval. 

HEIMS is also supposed to be used for collecting other university data 
such as finance plans, performance statistics and course offerings. 

The Department of Education, Science and Training has been under 
pressure for some time to come up with time series for data on areas 
such as completion and attrition rates. 

Weaknesses in data collection were highlighted recently with the 
complex implementation of the new Research Training Scheme, which 
needs to track postgraduate students. 

DEST has begun changing the way it collects data from universities, a 
move that will be accelerated with last week's higher education reforms. 

One senior administrator, who asked not to be named, said HEIMS and 
CHESSN were the Australia card in another guise. 

The Government could collect information using the ID number the
same way it used the tax file number. 

He said the first thing DEST should do before it introduced HEIMS 
was approach the software suppliers such as PeopleSoft. 

"The whole success of any changes in student reporting really depends 
on consultation with the major software package providers," he said. 

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Source: Australian IT ...
australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6466302%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

Cheers, Steve..

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