On multiple systems

Before I get started, a comic:

(source: xkcd.com/927)

Not quite the same, but very similar to the multitude of ICT systems we use at JMSS. The Department of Education provides the school with CASES (the central school admin system), which does some things, but falls behind in access and UI. So some smart people developed Compass. In an earlier day and age, a school's techies might develop their own DB systems to keep track of their school's data (attendance, timetabling, reporting, finances, etc etc). But in-house developed software requires maintenance, which might not be feasible in small organisations like schools. I understand that Compass grew out of such a system, but the development and maintenance happens elsewhere. Great. Only, rather than replacing all of the existing systems, it adds to them. While it has messaging capabilities, people still use email. There is a schedule, but only for school events, and it doesn't gel with our calendaring system quite as nicely as you'd like. Purchase orders still require a print-out. We use a seperate timetable system, and reporting has been put on hold. Which is what I'm leading in to. We do semester reports using Accelerus - a dedicated system for assessment data reporting and analysis. But interim reports go to Compass. Compass doesn't do much with them except present them to parents and students, so one of our staff members developed an Excel sheet to present this data in a colourful format that can be filtered by student, tute group, etc, so tutors can get an idea of where their cohort is at. We've now cut off parent access to the interim reports, and are using them for school use only. So: Interim report data entry: Compass (web based). Interim report analysis: Excel. Semester report entry: Accelerus. Semester report analysis: Accelerus. Semeter report parent viewing: Compass. Is that too much? Should there be one system to rule them all, or does diversity bring resilience? If a teacher has to enter three different spaces to gather the data on a student/class/subject/etc, they might start forgetting about which is which. They might have different representations, or not 'link' together. Or perhaps I'm trying to dumb this down too much. It is a complicated problem. These aren't even all of the relevant data we have on each student.

The same goes for any other system. As soon as 'one system to rule them all' is implemented, another requirement arises that can't or won't be implemented in that system. Someone will come along and implement it independently. They might talk to some extent, but there are now two systems. Big systems have large momentum, and don't respond quickly to user needs. Small, independent, communicating systems (The Unix Way) help, but with heavily interlinked data, how do they fit in?