OpenEMIS
OpenEMIS, or Open Education Management Information System (EMIS), is an Education Management Information System for the education sector. Its main purpose is to collect, analyze, and report data related to the management of educational activities. Initially conceived by UNESCO, OpenEMIS serves as a response to Member States’ need in the area of tools for educational strategic planning. History. OpenEMIS is an initiative launched by UNESCO. The initiative is in line with UNESCO's effort to promote EMIS to address the issues of access, equity, quality, and relevance in education and subsequent gaps between Member States in providing an adequate  decision support system since early 2000s, in keeping with the Education for All goals adopted in Dakar in 2000. OpenEMIS was conceived to be a royalty-free software that can be customized to meet the specific needs of implementing countries, without conditions or restrictions for use, with the purpose of encouraging country-level capacity development and helping countries upgrade their local skills for managing the tool. The initiative is coordinated by UNESCO in partnership with a nonprofit organization (NPO), Community Systems Foundation (CSF) for the implementation and technical support since 2012. Architecture. OpenEMIS is a suite of interrelated software solutions  that supports data collection (Survey; Classroom; Staffroom), management (Core; School; Integrator), and analysis (Visualizer; Monitoring; Dashboard; Analyzer; DataManager; Profiles). Each application is designed to provide unique standalone features to support different information management requirements at different levels. These features could be customized and integrated with existing systems. Implementation. OpenEMIS is being implemented in the following countries. In nearly all cases, the Ministry of Education is central to implementation, with support and engagement with a wide range of stakeholders: Support. Support is available to implementing countries with all aspects of country implementation from the technical support team. Support activities include services  for: Policy and Planning; Analysis; Implementation; Custom Software Development; Training; and others as needed. System set up may involve cost for additional technical support for setup, configuration, migration, and capacity building.