The Baffin Divisional Board of Education in the Nunavut Territory of Canada (formerly part of the Northwest Territories) operates its schools with a multi-user 4th Dimension database which helps administrators track budgeting for their schools freeing them to spend more time with their students. The database connects approximately 30 sites across 400,000 square miles, which amounts to over one-quarter of Canada’s landmass.
The bilingual database named Quajisaut was originally co-developed and maintained by David Garrard, vice-president of Nufocus, Inc. and is designed to print reports in both English and Inuktitut, the native language of the region. Installed in 23 schools, various student residences and a number of council offices, called site clients, the database tracks, calculates and reconciles the accounting for each education center and allows administrators at the board office in the town of Iqaluit to monitor the schools’ expenditures.
Since the schools vary in size, and since most are located in remote and fairly inaccessible areas, the Board of Education required that the new accounting system provide features to fulfill some very unique needs. For example, the ocean in the Nunavut region is frozen over for all but three months of the year so ordering inventory such as copy paper, books, and desks must be completed while ships can still deliver goods. For this reason the database was developed to simultaneously track two consecutive fiscal years and is divided into six modules to carefully track the allocation of administrative funds. When administrators enter needed supplies into the database, it creates the appropriate purchase order, fills in vendor information, commits the funds against the General Funds module in the appropriate budget, sends the information to the board office and faxes the purchase order to the vendor. "The quicker the turnaround in the school, the quicker we can get the material into the classroom to do the job it’s intended to do," states Clay. This same automated process occurs in the time sheets, leave module, system maintenance and data exchange modules as well. The module for special funds is maintained locally but has the same automated check management and reconciliation functions as the other modules.
The original proposal to run the accounting system with 4th Dimension on the Macintosh was accepted by the Board of Education because 4th Dimension’s relational abilities and programming language would allow the board to be more flexible. Garrard develops only in 4th Dimension because; "The 4D toolset is exceptionally feature-rich and flexible for professional developers. We haven’t found anything comparable."
Another important factor in designing this system was the fact that many of the school administrators live in small communities containing a few hundred people. Therefore, the database system had to be user-friendly and menu-driven so that users could learn the system quickly and easily. Administrators in the division are required to use the system so it had to be easy, and even fun, for them to learn.
In the Canadian Arctic, school funding is provided by the government of the Nunavut Territory and is subject to stringent regulations concerning expenditures. The database complies with all government accounting regulations and requires administrators to get approval before spending large amounts of money. Explains Clay, "It ties in with the government accounting procedures because we have to account for every penny that the government gives us."
The database has built-in government codes to classify all purchases according to government regulations. In a way it provides a built-in purchase analysis mode since the purchasing manager has the ability to reference and cross reference the purchasing habits at all of the sites. The purchasing manager at the board then uses this information to determine which vendors should be included in the database since sites can purchase equipment only from listed vendors.
Qaujisaut has been running 4th Dimension using an old Macintosh server since 1994. Recently it was decided that the system needed a hardware overhaul but before the equipment could be updated Qaujisaut needed some work done. So Baffin brought Garrard back in for the renovation project. He is currently in the process of updating Qaujisaut to make it compatible with the latest Mac communications protocols. This update will bring some security of mind to the administrators once the hardware update is complete.
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