Akari Software Ltd

Curriculum Management

Akari Software's Curriculum Management solution provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use application for managing the design, delivery, publication, cost-effectiveness and quality of information on education programmes and their attendant documentation. The software manages workflow for developing, editing, approval and the publication of the curriculum underpinned by seamless integration and business intelligence capabilities.

Features

Integrated Modular Curriculum Management System
Accessible to students and to both administrative and academic staff
Browsing and searching capabilities easily mastered by all users
Integration with other information systems within the university
Identifies alignment between graduate outcomes, learning content activities and assessment
Supports curriculum development, review and administration
Integrated Business Intelligence and Insights
Robust and secure system including authentication
Easy and reliable data capture and retrieval
Reduces and removes duplication of information

Benefits

System is easily accessible via the web
Integration with existing systems
Browsing and searching capabilities
Minimal training requirements (easy to use)
Ability to be acquired and set up relatively quickly

£45,000 a licence a year

Service documents

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at eoleary@akarisoftware.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

Contact

Akari Software Ltd Eoghan O'Leary
Telephone: (0203) 405 9230
Email: eoleary@akarisoftware.com

Service scope

Software add-on or extension: No
Cloud deployment model: Public cloud

Private cloud
Service constraints: None
System requirements: Users require a modern browser with javascript enabled

User support

Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
Support response times: Our response time to queries and incidents is based upon the priority and the severity of the incident in question. Customers have the ability to allocate a severity and business impact rating when raisiing incidents to facilitate the prioritisation of incidents and support triage processes. Severity/Priority 1 incidents are responded to within 2 hours. Severity/Priority 2 incidents are responded to within 4 hours.Severity/Priority 3 incidents are responded to within 8 hours. Severity/Priority 4 incidents are responded to within 2 days. Support is available Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, excluding Public Holidays.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Phone support: Yes
Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support: No
Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
Support levels: Akari Software currently provides support to customers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Bahrain in addition to the United Kingdom and Ireland. We have a team of support analysts and developers dedicated to the Akari Curriculum software who provide all support – there is no ‘front line’ or generic support layer to negotiate prior to talking to system experts.We mutually agree service levels and response times as part of the contract definition and agreement process. These will be formally documented as part of our Akari Service Reliability document. The purpose of document is to ensure that the proper elements and commitments are in place to provide consistent IT service support and delivery to the University and its campuses.Our objectives in the definition of the Akari Service Reliability document are to:
• provide clear reference to service ownership, accountability, role and/or responsibilities.
• present a clear, concise and measurable process of service provision to the University.
• report actual service provision within the agreed terms of contracted service support and delivery.

A regular framework and engagement process is adopted post-implementation to regularly review customer support issues raised and SLA metrics.
Support available to third parties: No

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started: Upon initiation and on boarding, Akari will provide a full training and solution implementation plan aligned to the project's timescales. Training activities are conducted on site, however, training as well as implementation services may both be provided remotely. Full training documentation is provided and training is targeted to both business as well as application administration users.
Service documentation: Yes
Documentation formats: HTML

PDF
End-of-contract data extraction: Seven days following the end date of the contract, Akari shall, in accordance with Akari’s standard disengagement procedures provide all customer data to an agreed specified customer-accessible destination upon conclusion of the contract. Akari will additionally provide the data dictionary as a standard component to the disengagement. The
data dictionary will include all Akari tables irrespective of whether they have been adopted and used by the Customer.
End-of-contract process: Akari would work with the customer to define a disengagement plan which would involve extraction of all customer data and completion of any outstanding services. The activities and outputs of the disengagement plan may vary for each customer and the cost of any such plan will be mutually agreed based upon any specific requirements.

Using the service

Web browser interface: Yes
Supported browsers: Microsoft Edge

Firefox

Chrome

Safari
Application to install: No
Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service: Functionally, there is no difference between mobile and desktop service. It should be noted that on smaller devices e.g. phone the screen space may not provide an optimal end-user experience whilst performing complex business operations.
Service interface: Yes
User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 A
Description of service interface: The application includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and and Application Programming Interface (API) to support integration and management data reporting. Other service interfaces are also provided to facilitate the migration and import of legacy data and the export of data for reporting purposes.

The Graphical User Interface is premised on sophisticated configurable privileges and business rules; called Teams. The Teams functionality ensures the dynamic presentation and destruction of data based upon an individual's role within the organisation and business process and is automatically determined upon login to the application.
Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 A
Accessibility testing: We regularly test our application for accessibility in addition to conducting testing with our customers on their own configured version of the application and we aim to make our application accessible. Our functionality is operable using a keyboard and can be used by any user. The application provides extensive as well as configurable contextual help text facilities and meaningful error messaging. Our web pages operate in a predictable and consistent manner to ensure that all common features operate in the same way throughout our application. Our customers have the ability to configure the application and can determine the presentation and styling of externally published content within the constraints of the web browser and operating system.
API: Yes
What users can and can't do using the API: Akari Curriculum provides an extensive and fully documented suite of RESTful open APIs, which exposes all Akari entities and is fully event driven, providing both push and pull integrations.

Akari provides an interface to the APIs to permit institutions to create and modify APIs to their own specific business requirements to integrate with any downstream solutions - such as VLE/MLEs, Student Information Systems, Timetabling solutions, Library, CMS, etc. and additionally to publish information to the institutional website or to integrate with institutional business intelligence tools and data warehouses.
API documentation: Yes
API documentation formats: Open API (also known as Swagger)

HTML

PDF
API sandbox or test environment: Yes
Customisation available: Yes
Description of customisation: The Akari curriculum management solution is highly configurable. Application users with the appropriate privileges may utilise the integrated application maintenance interface and tools to configure the application to meet their unique business requirements and to enhance the application and its processes to align to the future needs of the organisation.

Scaling

Independence of resources: Akari Curriculum is implemented as a single tenanted solution only, providing complete application and data isolation. The solution is hosted on AWS and auto-scaling is implemented which guarantees that further resources are added to the service when demand is increased.

Analytics

Service usage metrics: Yes
Metrics types: Akari operates automated active monitoring on service usage which triggers alerts to the relevant teams in the instance of a usage incident and facilitates the provision of relevant services metrics to support and enhance both internal. business processes and procedures in addition to underpinning regular SLA (Service Level Agreement) reports for our customers.

Akari provides as a minimum standard, metrics relating to:

- Tickets logged per period
- Tickets resolved per period
- Average resolution time
- Uptime per period
- Performance against SLA per period
Reporting types: Regular reports

Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
Government security clearance: Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom

European Economic Area (EEA)

Other locations
User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
Datacentre security standards: Supplier-defined controls
Penetration testing frequency: Less than once a year
Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
Protecting data at rest: Other
Other data at rest protection approach: All the data is stored on AWS system and secured by them. AWS regularly achieves third-party validation for thousands of global compliance requirements that we continually monitor security and compliance standards. AWS supports more security standards and compliance certifications than any other offering, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST 800-171, helping satisfy compliance requirements for virtually every regulatory agency around the globe.
Data sanitisation process: Yes
Data sanitisation type: Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach: In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach: Users may export data from the application in the form of JSON via the API suite.

User-specified reports and datasets may be exported in Microsoft Excel (.CSV), Microsoft Word (.DOC), in addition to Adobe (.PDF) formats.

User specified documents may be exported from the application in Microsoft Word (.DOC) and Adobe (.PDF) formats.
Data export formats: CSV

Other
Other data export formats: JSON

MS Excel

MS Word

PDF

HTML
Data import formats: CSV

Other
Other data import formats: JSON

MS EXCEL

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability: We offer a standard 99.5% uptime for the Akari Curriculum solution with additional options for High Availability services. Service Level Agreements may vary from customer to customer, in line with individual customer requirements.
Approach to resilience: The Akari solution is hosted in the AWS environment and is configured to utilise the advantages of the AWS highly available and resilient infrastructure. AWS redundancy provides built in business continuity. Should an issue occur with the AWS infrastructure, AWS’s self-healing capabilities are automatically activated. In these situations, the restoration of service will occur within 30 minutes.

The Akari platform has full data service backups every 24hrs managed by Amazon Glacier service. Backups are stored in different AWS Availability Zones (AZ) which are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones and provide inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same Region. Regions consist of one or more Availability Zones, are geographically dispersed, and are located in separate geographic areas or countries; providing protection from failure in a single location.
Outage reporting: Service outages are reported via our Customer Success Manager assigned to each Customer and via our Customer Support portal dashboard. The channels of communication and list of customer designations will be agreed with each individual customer and may include email and direct telephone contact.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed: Yes
User authentication: Username or password

Other
Other user authentication: Integrated sign-on (SSO) is provided in Akari Curriculum using Shibboleth, LDAP, Azure, SAML, SAML2, OpenAM, ADFS and Edugate. The Akari application also includes a proprietary in-built authentication module.
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Access in management interfaces and support channels is tightly controlled via Akari Curriculum's User Privilege and User Teams functionality which in tandem provides access to the application based upon an individual's specific role. Akari's approach ensures relevant access to all areas of the software application and associated support channels.
Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
Management access authentication: Dedicated link (for example VPN)

Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
How long system logs are stored for: User-defined

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
CSA STAR certification: No
PCI certification: No
Cyber essentials: No
Cyber essentials plus: No
Other security certifications: No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
Security governance certified: Yes
Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes: The AWS hosting environment holds compliance certifications including ISO 27001, ISO 9001, SOC, and many others. Third party assessments of the AWS hosting environment are conducted twice annually.

Akari Software Ltd will undergo assessment and certification against ISO27001 in 2020. However, our Board designated responsible for Information Security ensures that:

• The Information Security policies and systems are fully documented, implemented, audited and reviewed
• All employees are made aware of customer requirements and have the skills to ensure they are met and continue to be maintained;
• All employees are aware of the Information Security policy statements, procedures and their role in the implementation of these,
• Management reviews of the performance and improvement potential of the Information Security Policy and Procedures are regularly undertaken.

The Akari Security policy addresses the confidentiality, availability and integrity of the data stored and processed by Akari Software Ltd and ensures that Akari Software:
• Complies with data protection regulation and follows good practice,
• Protects the rights of staff, customers and partners,
• Is open about how it stores and processes individuals’ data, and
• Protects against the risks of a system or data breach.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach: Akari Software has a robust and well-documented configuration and change management process to support the successful management of the application and any associated change requests to that application. This process is subject to continual review as part of Akari's internal quality management framework.

Requests for change are submitted to our Customer Support team and undergo internal assessment and review prior to obtaining approval to proceed by Akari Software. Any such approved changes are further approved by the Customer Senior Responsible. The Customer and Akari collaborate at each stage of the Change process until the change process has been successfully completed.
Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach: Akari identifies and assesses potential threats to our services via known threat information highlighted by both industry and users, Akari's internal risk assessment activities and via Akari's internal operational business procedures.

Security patches are applied on regular basis and/or as soon as they are available for critical vulnerabilities, adhering to any contracted notice periods agreed with customers.
Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach: Our services include the proactive monitoring of application and network service availability to identify potential compromises. Should a compromise be detected, Akari shall respond to the incident in line with the identified Severity and Priority and in accordance with our Service Level Agreement (SLA) thresholds.
Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach: Akari operates an extensive policy underpinned by robust procedures for the management of all incidents, in addition to pre-defined processes for common events. All personnel employed by Akari have responsibility for the reporting of incidents to Akari's designated responsible for Incident Management and are required to complete an Incident Report which records in full the details of the identified incident . Post-incident review is conducted and findings output by report.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks: No

Pricing

Price: £45,000 a licence a year
Discount for educational organisations: No
Free trial available: No

Service documents

Request an accessible format

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Curriculum Management

Features

Benefits

Pricing

Service documents

Framework

Service ID

Contact

Service scope

User support

Onboarding and offboarding

Using the service

Scaling

Analytics

Resellers

Staff security

Asset protection

Data importing and exporting

Data-in-transit protection

Availability and resilience

Identity and authentication

Audit information for users

Standards and certifications

Security governance

Operational security

Secure development

Public sector networks

Social Value

Pricing

Service documents