[Cato] Trusted tester update

Mon Mar 12 10:20:10 PDT 2018

I'm not sure something like this limits us to the once-and-for-all $10,000 limit or if it's a different kind of thing. There are two things in play and they're not the same.

One, I have a $10,000 discretionary spending limit associated with my position. The Deputies have more. The other thing is the $10,000 total agency limit before a competitive procurement is required. I'm not sure this sounds like a procurement per se but I guess if it's a "contract". . . .

Anyway, I'm not sure I understand all the ins and outs of that, but I'll find out this week.

Mark Jenkins, Director
eLearning |Open Education
Coordinator, Accessible Technology Initiatives
Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

mjenkins at sbctc.edu
360.704-4363

________________________________
From: Cato <cato-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> on behalf of Hsiao, Terence <thsiao at cascadia.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 9, 2018 5:05 PM
To: Jess Thompson; cato at lists.ctc.edu
Subject: Re: [Cato] Trusted tester update

Jess,

That is an idea, and it is a good one. That said, in my experience this type of collaboration is extremely difficult to pull off until some type of foundation is laid, i.e. if there is not already a stake in the sand, the “transaction costs” associated with collaboration are too high.

Terence

From: Cato <cato-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> On Behalf Of Jess Thompson
Sent: Friday, March 9, 2018 1:20 PM
To: cato at lists.ctc.edu
Subject: [Cato] Trusted tester update

Hi all,

I just had a conversation with Cyndi Rowland (of WebAIM) about working with us to revamp the DHS trusted tester training. I've been meaning to find out just what they could offer that would keep us under the $10,000 limit.

As you all may recall, they've tried pursuing this for the last few years, but unfortunately have not been able to secure funding for it.

Cyndi proposed trying a new approach - she's going to reach out to other systems that have expressed similar interests in this to see if we can pull together some sort of consortium of institutions that can pitch in to make this happen. WebAIM would essentially work to pull the training out of flash, align it with WCAG 2.0AA, then hand off the content to someone (like SBCTC) to build in the pedagogical structure.

While she says truly revamping the Dept of Homeland Security trusted tester training into what it should be is more like a half-million dollar project, she thought this might be possible if we get enough folks involved that could contribute a similar chunk and serve as part of a governance structure to help make some of the hard decisions that come with making what should be a half million dollar project happen on a dime. While we may be limited to contributing $10k, perhaps we (mainly, I) could also dedicate time into building out the instructional side with their content.

Anyways, Cyndi is going to touch base with me again next week to see if she's made any traction pulling in other partners. I'm going to reach out to WaTech and UW, maybe Western, and see if they might be interested. I think this could be really exciting. This could shift the vision from us developing something that we hope others would find credible and useful to developing a process in collaboration with others, thereby guaranteeing wider spread use. Our system could play a pretty instrumental role in this if we can offer up some resources in terms of time and effort and potentially put us in the national spotlight as a true leader in this area. I trust that SBCTC can do that given the leadership role we've developed for projects like Open and I-BEST.

Friday ramblings Part II coming to a close...

Jess

Jess Thompson

Program Administrator, Accessible Technology Initiatives

Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

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