K12 Federation Launches Nationwide Educational Cooperative to Focus on Cybersecurity, Technology Interoperability and Collaborative Solutions

BLOOMINGTON, Ill., Sept. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — K12 Federation today announced the nationwide launch of its educational cooperative that provides a range of technology services for the K through 12 education community, including identity, interoperability, security and other collaborative solutions.

Established in regional markets one year ago, K12 Federation brings together dozens of technology leaders from states representing over 4 million students, fostering collaboration and providing K12 operators and districts around the country with low cost services and solutions into federated identity management, cybersecurity, and access to all the products and services within an inter-operational buying cooperative.

The K12 Federation began as a community of K12 operators – large school district, purchasing cooperatives for various products and services, and state level providers who often found themselves working together in pursuit of visions and goals within the same space. By coming together, they realized they could build great tools that not only led to more effectively acquisition and implementation within schools, but also optimized the use of resources and public spending through pooled efforts and a centralized source for acquiring reliable technology.

“K12 Federation is built on a model of sustainability and collaboration,” said Jim Peterson, Executive Director of K12 Federation. “Our founding operators brought decades of experience in buying, building, and implementing successful tech tools for the K12 community. By joining together, our members provide answers to K12 technology problems that have confronted us for decades with valuable insight, talent, and services which they could not provide as separate organizations. K12 Federation brokers relationship between operators to help provide best in class solutions to assist with operations, curriculum and instruction, and help improve student achievement.”

K12 Federation grew from the success of IlliniCloud, a non-profit tech cooperative of school districts across the country that provides scalable computing resources and state-of-the-art IT resources that educators could not otherwise afford. IlliniCloud helps members procure and implement physical and cloud infrastructure including storage, recovery, and federated identity services that connect and automate data transfer across schools, state reporting agencies, and service providers and allows students, teachers, and all authorized personnel to login to centralized portals designed for their administrative and curriculum needs. All current IlliniCloud products and services are available nationwide through the K12 Federation.

K12 Federation was founded by operators across 4 states: Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and New York. New operators are welcome, and gain access to valuable resources along with opportunities to shape the organization itself as it continues to grow in the next year.

For more information, and to learn how join K12 Federation, visit https://www.k12federation.org/

About K12 Federation

K12 Federation sharing solutions and services for the most common tech problems for the K12 community, working together with technology leaders across the country to provide efficient, affordable, and scalable solutions for K12 operators. Gathering dozens of technology leaders from states representing over 4 million students, K12 Federation is built on a model of sustainability and cooperation. For more information, please visit https://www.k12federation.org/.