In 2018, the National Audit Office published two reports highlighting issues with data sharing:
“The Department [for education] and the Education and Skills Funding Agency use a variety of documents and multiple spreadsheets and databases to store and share information about academies, risking duplication, error or omission”.
and so.. TRAMS (TRust and Academy Management Service) was born. It went through Discovery, Alpha, Beta, it was launched using a Microsoft Dynamics system.
Who are TRAMS users?
- Regions group delivery officers, delivery leads
- SFOS delivery officers, case managers, case workers
- Ad hoc users eg. Those getting information to supply to a minister
What do they use TRAMS for?
Trams is often a first point of call, users check details about a trust or an academy or get the information they need to complete a document template as part of their role. They also go in to TRAMS to help inform their decisions, assessments and actions in providing support to trusts and academies. For example, they might look at Ofsted data comparing how an academy has improved since joining a trust to decide if its a good fit for another academy to join.
In 2022 a pre-discovery was held to identify the problems the business and users were having with TRAMS:
Business problems:
- High costs due to licensing
- Service support time and costs
- Unable to properly maintain the service
- Users downloading and duplicating unnecessary data
Problems for TRAMS users:
- Poor system usability
- Difficulties accessing the service
- Does not meet web accessibility guidelines
- Still having to use multiple systems to find data
An Alpha was launched at the end of 2022 with the goals of:
- Agree on an MVP user interface design to enable users to get the information they need quickly, efficiently and in an accessible way.
- Agree on a service architecture which allows the service to get the information it needs to operate and aligns with other products in the Regional Services Division architecture.
- Continue user research to better understand identified user needs and ones that needs to be explored further.