TCSI Newsletter November 2020

TCSI Analytics is now live in production and available  from the following link: https://analytics.tcsi.education.gov.au/ You can now directly check out your reports on the data that has been migrated to TCSI. This provides you with the opportunity to review your migrated data, which is a critical step in your preparation to transition to TCSI.

Don’t forget that you must have completed your PRODA set-up to access TCSI Analytics (and all other TCSI services).

* Note you need the ‘TCSI Analytics – Read’ role in PRODA to access reports in TCSI Analytics [even if you have ‘TCSI Analytics – Signoff’ and ‘TCSI Analytics – Verify’ roles].

The TCSI Analytics user guide and list of available reports can be found on the TCSI Analytics page on TCSI Support. 

Are you one of the 70 providers that have not yet completed their PRODA registration? You cannot use any of the TCSI services until your PRODA registration is complete. This includes reporting your student data, which may affect your students’ access to HELP loans.

We strongly recommend that you make this an immediate priority for your organisation; this is the first essential step in transitioning to TCSI and meeting your 2021 reporting requirements.

All the details on how to complete your PRODA access are available in the step b--step PRODA  guide on TCSI Support. You can also contact PRODA Support at proda@servicesaustralia.gov.au or 1800 700 199.

Delegations

If you have already registered for PRODA, please make sure that your staff have been assigned the appropriate delegations.

Note that a member of PRODA can only be added to your PRODA Organisation for a set period time (up to 12 months). After this period their access to your PRODA Organisation will automatically expire.

If this expires, they will no longer be able access the TCSI service through PRODA. Staff members with appropriate delegations in PRODA can extend other user’s access before the expiry date. See “Setting up for TCSI” on the TCSI Support PRODA webpage for further information.

TCSI will be released to production on the weekend of December 5th and 6th 2020. Once we go live, from December 7th to the 11th, we will be conducting Business Verification Testing (BVT) in production, with nominated providers

If you wish to nominate to be part of the verification testing, please email TCSIsupport@dese.gov.au.

From December 14^th, TCSI will be open for reporting by all providers.

If your organisation has confirmed you are onboarding to TCSI in December, we will be contacting you this week to invite you to the first preparatory onboarding webinar, which will be held on Wednesday 11 November.

Please ensure you have registered for this session, as this will provide the detailed information you will need to start using TCSI.

More details on our series of onboarding webinars is available here.

Temporary suspension of HEPCAT 

While we transition the TCSI system to production, there will be a temporary hold on HEPCAT submissions from Friday the 4th, to Monday the 7th of December.

VSL Providers have data to be reported by December 7^th.  If required, providers may have an extension until 10 December 2020 to report these student data in HEPCAT.

The October VSL newsletter provides full details of the VSL reporting arrangements during the transition to TCSI.

User Acceptance Testing

From Monday the 16^th, to Friday the 27^th of November, we will be conducting User Acceptance Testing with nominated providers in the test environment. If you would like to nominate for this testing, please email TCSIsupport@dese.gov.au.

Our series of targeted onboarding webinars commences next week. The first of these preparatory webinars is on Wednesday 11 November. Each month, from November until the end of the transition period on 31 March, we will be conducting a series of four webinars to support providers that are onboarding to TCSI in the following month.

If your organisation has confirmed you are transitioning to TCSI in December, we will provide the webinar registration link to your nominated contacts this week.

Please note that the invitations to these webinars will be sent to the two contacts identified in your Vice Chancellor's or CEO's response to the Information Request. Please ensure these details are correct so that you don’t miss these important communications.

Separate webinars will be tailored to higher education providers, VSL providers, and dual providers.  The format will be:

• Week one - a readiness assessment, in which we discuss your progress with PRODA, your familiarity with the 2021 data requirements, and your data cleansing and checking approach.
• Week two - the first ‘health check’, in which the team will be on hand to help address any issues you have encountered and provide assistance with your preparation for TCSI.
• Week three - a second ‘health check’ – we can talk through any common issues and help troubleshoot problems you may have encountered.
• Week four - a final “go-live checklist”, where we cover the confirmation needed to begin reporting in TCSI, data population, and for Higher Education Providers we will walk through safe mode (VSL Providers have an in-built safe mode, through their monthly VSL payment cycle).

If you have any questions relating to the onboarding webinars please contact us at TCSI Support.

With the passing of legislation for the Government’s Job-ready Graduates Package of reforms, updates are required to the 2021 reporting requirements to support measures that take effect from 1 January 2021.

Implementation of the new arrangements will see new codes added to three existing data elements.  The details for each new code are explained below.

1. Student contributions

To account for new categories of student contributions, two new codes will be introduced on the Maximum Student Contribution (Element 392). These codes will identify unit enrolments in Professional Pathway Psychology or Professional Pathway Social Work:

• New code ‘8’ will be used for students who are not subject to pre-2021 grandfathering but are doing a professional pathways unit.
• New code ‘9’ will be used for students who are subject to pre-2021 grandfathering.
• Existing code ‘7’ will be used for students who are not doing a professional pathway unit and who are not subject to pre-2021 grandfathering.
• Code ‘0’ will be retained for students who are exempt from student contributions.

10 % discount for up-front payments

To allow for the 10% discount for up-front payments of student contributions, two codes will be reinstated on the Student Status Code (Element 490). These will apply to units of study with a census date from 1 January 2021:

• New code 202 - Paid full student contribution up‑front with the HECS‑HELP discount
• New code 203 - Paid full student contribution up‑front without the HECS‑HELP discount
• The existing code 201 - Deferred all or part of the student contribution through HECS‑HELP will be retained.
• The existing code 204 will be retired and will only be required to report revisions to pre-2021 data.

Short course places

Two A new code will be introduced to the Course of Study Type (Element 310) to identify new short courses:

• New code ‘23’ - undergraduate short course  
• New code ‘24’ - postgraduate short course Note: following this newsletter the update to the Ministerial Notice did not include code '24' on E310. Graduate certificate type (code '11') should be used in these cases.

Update to the 2021 Ministerial Notice

An update to the 2021 Ministerial Notice will be issued shortly to formalise these requirements.

The Notice will also provide formal confirmation that the 2021 University Applications and offers and Staff data collections are to be reported using HEPCAT.

Some minor modifications to explanatory texts will also be included in the Notice, where clarification has been requested.