The Challenge
Student Aid BC faced challenges in delivering its financial assistance programs to post-secondary students in British Columbia. The existing technology, policies, and processes were outdated and misaligned with the modern student experience. Students struggled to access the full range of financial assistance options, and the Ministry staff encountered inefficiencies in managing and processing student loans and grants.
The challenges were as follows:
- Outdated technology leading to inefficiencies and delays
- Lack of alignment between technology, policies, and student needs
- Difficulty in processing student loans and grants under both federal and provincial policies
- Manual workflows and calculations for annual policy changes
The primary objective was to completely replace the current system to provide students, post-secondary institutions, and Ministry staff with a modern platform that efficiently managed access to federal and provincial loans and grants. The solution aimed to streamline student processes, ensure compliance with annual policy changes, and reduce the administrative burden on Ministry staff.
The Solution
To address the challenges faced by Student Aid BC, the AOT team developed a comprehensive solution that was both dynamic and future-proof. The project team was composed of highly skilled cross-functional experts, including full-stack developers such as Andrew Boni Signori, Dheepak Ramaswamy Ramanathan, Gurumoorthy Mohan, Andre Luis Silva Pestana, Lewis Chen, and Katrina Strickland. This diverse group worked collaboratively to design and implement a system capable of handling the complex workflows and calculations required to manage both federal and provincial loans and grants.
The team employed several modern technologies to build a robust solution. At the core of the system was Form.io, which allowed for dynamic form management and process automation, and Camunda 8, which provided workflow and decision automation. These technologies enabled the system to easily accommodate the annual policy changes that govern financial aid calculations. The use of GitHub Actions ensured a streamlined and automated CI/CD pipeline, allowing for continuous updates and deployments, while OpenShift provided a stable, scalable environment for containerized deployment. To enhance the security of the platform, ClamAV was implemented to ensure that data integrity was maintained throughout.
From a technology stack perspective, the solution utilized Vue.js for the frontend, while the backend was powered by Node.js using NestJS and TypeScript. Data was stored in a PostgreSQL database, optimized with Crunchy Data, while Redis was used for efficient caching and quick data retrieval. These technologies were chosen after a thorough evaluation process to ensure that the solution was not only a good fit for the current needs of the Ministry but would also provide long-term scalability, flexibility, and ease of maintenance. The architecture was designed to allow for future expansion and updates, making the system adaptable to changing policies and technologies in the years to come.
The Impact
Implementing the new Student Aid BC system significantly improved the overall experience for students, post-secondary institutions, and Ministry staff.
According to Nino Samson, Director, Business Solutions, Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills,
The SIMS AOT developers worked steadily to ensure the new platform for student financial aid management was scalable and maintainable. They focused on code quality, documentation, and an adaptable design. Student Aid BC users are experiencing the benefit of continuous improvement as each release contains enhancements to functionality. The ministry is starting to benefit from the low-code approach, where the system allows for non-developers to update assessment workflows, forms, and notifications without writing code.
Students experienced a smoother and more transparent process when applying for financial aid, and Ministry staff gained greater visibility into the core workflows of the system, allowing for better oversight and collaboration. The automation of loan calculations and other workflows resulted in a 50% reduction in processing times, which significantly improved the responsiveness of the system to new applications. Moreover, the Ministry now had a much more efficient process for implementing the annual updates required for provincial and federal policy changes, reducing the manual burden previously placed on staff.
In addition to the immediate benefits of the solution, the AOT team also introduced modern development practices, such as Agile methodologies, to the Ministry. This included forming the first Agile team and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. The team’s technical leadership was instrumental in adopting new technologies and stabilizing the solution’s architecture from scratch, ensuring that the system was not only effective but also sustainable for the long term. The ability to deploy updates with each sprint cycle further ensured that the platform would remain current and capable of adapting to future requirements. The Ministry’s collaboration with the AOT team on system design also empowered them to take an active role in the evolution of the platform, ensuring that it met their ongoing needs.