This page contains answers to actual and anticipated questions about the NSPA Data Standard Initiative.
Questions:
General Questions
What is the NSPA Data Standard 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 Exchange Data Standard, documented here. The NSPA Exchange standard is in production use today in the NSPA Exchange. The data model defines what the Exchange “knows” about a scholarship program, while the XML and JSON specifications describe the technical details of how that information is shared with other systems.
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.
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 Initiative members relating to scholarship data and data exchange.
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 Exchange 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?
Much of the expected activity will be technical in nature, and meetings are expected to focus on technical and operational matters.
Having said that, suggested additions to the Exchange data model or requests for new reporting capabilities are in scope for this initiative, and that type of input requires no technical expertise.
What technical standards are relevant to this initiative?
At the moment, JSON (and JSON Schema) XML (and XSD), and OpenAPI are most relevant.
