WA TAFE department seeks integrated student and financial management system

The WA government’s Department of Training and Workforce Development (DTWD) has issued an RFI for an integrated student management system (SMS) and finance management system (FMS).

DTWD manages public investment in vocational education and training delivered by TAFE colleges, private training providers and other service providers within Western Australia. The department, on behalf of TAFE, establishes contracts with software vendors for the supply of commercial, off the shelf, software packages.

The current SMS and FMS are embedded across the whole TAFE WA Sector, with the FMS also used within DTWD.

DTWD is considering options for an integrated student management and finance solution and is undertaking preliminary market research to identify and understand contemporary approaches and solutions the market can deliver.

As part of this broader integrated solution, DTWD has identified a need to improve how receipting and associated financial transactions are supported across the sector. For the purposes of this RFI, this capability is referred to as the Integrated Receipting System (IRS).

As part of the integrated solution, DTWD said it has identified a need to improve how receipting and associated financial transactions are supported across the sector.

DWTD notes the TAFE sector comprises five colleges spread across WA with a total of 70 campuses, and will therefore require five separate instances of the integrated student and finance management system, as well as a single instance of the finance solution for DWTD itself.

The Sector’s future vision is for a modernised, fully integrated, scalable student management and finance management solution that optimises and enhances the experience of DTWD and the TAFE Colleges and provides a seamless, end to end process for the administration, management and reporting of business processes.

Within this context, the integrated solution is expected to support a range of business capabilities, including receipting and associated financial transactions across both digital and inperson service delivery environments. 

The RFT closes on August 28 at 2:30PM WA time.

In 2017, TechnologyOne won a $12 million contract with the WA government to develop a new student management portal for TAFEWA.