The Ministry of Education is seeking business intelligence tools including ad hoc reporting tools, OLAP tools, an OLAP repository and ETL tools.
It's all part of a data toolkits project, says Ministry data management and analysis senior manager David Lambie.
"The project is aimed to identify, procure and implement a suite of tools to store, update, maintain and deliver sector-wide information," Lambie says.
Funding has been approved for the first stage of the exercise and a business case for the next stage is being developed.
Ultimately, the tools will be put to use to extract information "for policy generation and student case management", he says, and a "populated warehouse" is also a planned outcome of the project.
There will be some integration with the new tools and the Ministry's SAS analysis and reporting system, which was implemented last year to track school performance.
"We'll need to feed into that system — there'll be an interaction at some stage."
The SAS tool is for SPM (strategic performance management) and is based on the balanced scorecard model, but isn't a conventional balanced scorecard.
Lambie says the data toolkits project isn't related to the NCEA assessment process which has generated controversy in recent times.