Consolidate the current Erasmus Without Paper infrastructure, says technical community

This request comes out of a meeting in Brussels as part of ongoing consultations with the Erasmus Without Paper community on shaping Erasmus Without Paper.

One of the main concerns is that a fast-changing development landscape will lead to additional costs.

Main insights from in-house providers

In-house providers are EWP community members who use their institution’s own mobility management software and connect it to EWP.

They said:

• Keep the work already done on inter-institutional and learning agreements. Since we are aiming for 95% of learning agreements to be approved via Erasmus Without Paper, then it’s important we have a stable system to work with. If we can reach this goal with the current system, we shouldn’t change it. Conversely, changing systems will stall or revert progress towards wider usage.
• Future changes must be justified by cost-benefit analysis. Since in-house providers use their own systems, we must show that our investments are worth it before redoing work that already meets users' needs.
• When discussing lessons from the transition to version 7 of the inter-institutional agreements API, we learned that more time is needed for such changes. Even a 14-month transition can be challenging for systems where different processes are interconnected, making it difficult to change one process without impacting others. Allowing enough time for all phases of an IT project benefits the initiative and should be considered for future changes, whether API updates or more fundamental ones.
• When asked if the current infrastructure can handle digitising the remaining steps of the mobility process within five years, most colleagues felt we can build on what we have. They are open to exploring improvements.
• Colleagues representing in-house systems are open to starting work on functionality to nominate their exchange students to the partner institution and promoting its use. They need assurance that their implementations will have a long enough usage period to justify their investment.

Third-party providers confirm conclusions

Representatives of third-party software solutions were invited to discuss the outcomes presented above. In general, there were no major objections or disagreements with the conclusions. One can conclude that stability is key for this important community responsible for the technical hemisphere of Erasmus Without Paper implementation.

Share your feedback with us!

During the coming weeks and months, other stakeholders will be consulted on the next phase of the European Student Card Initiative. Are you working with Erasmus Without Paper? Do join the EWP User Groups and keep an eye on the communication from your Digital Officer for upcoming consultations.