Q&A FOR ALL RADII SERVICES
This section provides answers to questions raised by users.
Lower down on this page, you will find a 'add comment' link that allows you to ask question about radii.org services.
SECURITY
Q: What happens if the system crashes — could the data be lost/destroyed?
A: All data is backed-up in real-time to a 'mirror' server. and also backed-up to an off-site server. Any catastrophic failure will bring down the whole Australian financial system (since the servers are part of the onsite ASX server-farm), and any potential significance of the loss of the data from a single survey will be of less significance than the wider financial turmoil that would ensue from such a catastrophe.
Q: Can the database be hacked and the data stolen?
A: Since the data is held on the ASX Servers, it is kept under the highest level of civilian security available in Australia — it is certainly a lot more secure than data on a school's own servers or on the DET servers.
Q: Could the data be misused if it was hacked?
A: No personal identifiers are recorded in the database — ie. there is no information about who provides each response linked to the received data — hence, there is no possibility that data about individuals could be misused.
ACCESS FOR MULTI-LANGUAGE SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
Q: What are the issues that need to be considered in multi-language communities?
A: In all cases thus far, both teachers and students in such communities are not disadvantaged by using the HERMES Survey Kiosk in the English language — except, very young students. The problem is two-fold — both parent mother-tongue and culture are in play in this situation. Issues that need to be considered include the following:
- How does the school currently access the views of different language groups in its community?
- The school may be best off to conduct focus-groups in each of the languages. — although, a high level of expertise is required to get useful data from each cultural group — certainly, the cultural groups should not be mixed within focus-groups. Focus-groups need to be conducted by native speakers of the language, who are NOT members of the local community.
- RADII plans to address this situation as follows, and welcomes schools to be involved in developing this approach: two strategies will be implemented — first, specific surveys will be translated on demand into a range of community languages for hard copy surveys; and, second, surveys will be made available as self-service phone interviews in which the respondent uses the phone keypad to provide a response to each question. This system is not yet available for deployment, but RADII will move forward with this service as demand develops. Schools will need to advise parents of the phone number to call to respond to a survey in their language language of choice. The parent will then select the survey they wish to respond to. RADII will provide instructions for schools to provide to parents outlining what they need to do to respond to surveys in community languages