POD Pilot Update

Back in April, I began writing about the POD pilot (POD is the new proposed Primary School Online Database) which I decided to try out. The pilot came with a big manual of how it worked. In order to get going, I had to transfer all the pupils’ information into the system. This could be done manually or via the Management Information System that my school already uses. I followed the instructions on Aladdin to export my data and sent them off to the Department of Education. Then I heard nothing.

A few days ago, I decided to email the Department of Education and got an email on Friday letting me know that none of the Management Information Systems were providing all the data they required and I would now have to go and edit the information they had sent me into some template that they had designed. Once I’ve done that, I will have to send it in an encrypted format to the DES and then I may be able to use it.

It looks like this pilot is going to be a bit of a headache. I’ll try and persevere and hopefully I can get to a stage where I can start using the system. So far, the process is proving difficult and I can foresee huge issues with migrating data to POD. I hope the system, if I ever got to use it, is more user-friendly.