This page contains answers to actual and anticipated questions about the NSPA Data Standards Initiative.

Questions:

General Questions

What is the NSPA Data Standards Initiative?

In the broadest sense, the NSPA community is contributing to data exchange standards related to scholarship program information.

Primarily, the NSPA is actively soliciting input for the NSPA Scholarship Program Data Standard, documented here. The NSPA Scholarship Program Data Standard is in production use today in the NSPA Exchange. In that use, the data model defines what the Exchange “knows” about a scholarship program, while XML and JSON specifications describe the technical details of how that information is shared with other systems. The XML and JSON specifications are intended to be general enough to be useful for sharing information between systems other than the NSPA Exchange.

Some early stakeholders have indicated that there may be a role for the NSPA in coordinating the development of additional scholarship-related standards that don’t exist today. So, secondarily, the Data Standards Initiative will work with the NSPA community to identify, prioritize, and, if appropriate, develop additional standards. To be clear, “developing new standards” is not a goal of this Initiative — but the NSPA can play a coordination and publication role for additional standards, if appropriate.

Must I belong to an NSPA Member organization to participate?

We do expect that active participation in meetings will require an NSPA Membership. As of Q4-2020, however, it is not absolutely required.

That said, we will consider input and feedback on technical details from any source, including non-members.

You’re asking for contributions from the NSPA community. What, exactly, is a contribution?

Contributions consist of input, feedback, technical ideas, requests — any information conveyed to the NSPA and Data Standard Initiative members relating to scholarship data and data sharing.

Many (perhaps most) contributions from Initiative participants are expected to be technical in nature. Is the data type of an element correct? Is the model aligned with how data is generally organized in existing scholarship systems? Is there an existing standard we can use to define a value list instead of creating our own list?

But, contributions can be nontechnical in nature, and still provide significant value. For example, scholarship program directors can identify high-priority data elements that are missing from the NSPA Scholarship Program data model today. Scholarship administrators can hint at data that’s useful — but hard to collect.

Technical Questions

Do I need to be a programmer or technology professional to contribute?

No. It’s true that much of the expected activity will touch on technical issues, and meetings are expected to raise technical and operational matters. But, suggested additions to the NSPA Scholarship Program data model or requests for new elements to support reporting capabilities are in scope for this initiative, and that type of input requires no technical expertise.

In other words, you’re welcome to contribute even if you’re mostly concerned with the programmatic or reporting aspects of this work, but you may encounter brief periods of soul-crushing boredom as the group descends into a technical discussion.

What technical standards are relevant to this initiative?

At the moment, JSON (and JSON Schema) XML (and XSD), and OpenAPI are most relevant.

Logistical Questions

Are the data standards posted online?

Yes. The current version is documented here. This includes the XML and JSON specifications and sample files.

[ Q4-2020DRAFT NOTE. The above references are to formal drafts, meaning that the schema are stable and the data fields in the schema are implemented in the Exchange. We also intend to publish working drafts, mostly likely in an NSPA GitHub repo. ]

Is there an issue tracking system?

[ Q4-2020DRAFT NOTE. The NSPA recently set up a Jira instance. We’ll likely post issues, status, and updates there. ]