The district faced challenges with data compliance and privacy, especially with unstructured data from teachers.
They chose to adopt a data platform infused with AI— including Power Apps, Power BI, and Microsoft Fabric—to make the most of their data while keeping it safe.
Education data and analytics are centralized within a secure platform, empowering teams with transformative insights in the apps they use every day.
British Columbia’s School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) is committed to providing quality, student-centered learning for all its 35,000 students across 70 schools. As the third largest district in the province, Coquitlam offers a variety of specialized programs and services, focusing on the goal of “learning without boundaries,” ensuring equitable opportunities for all students.
To fulfill its commitment to equitable, student-centered learning, Coquitlam is embracing a modern approach, focusing on data-driven decisions, streamlining workflows, and empowering faculty with the right tools. Coquitlam’s transformation, powered by its partnership with Microsoft, has enabled the district to build a secure infrastructure to store raw and structured data, which Coquitlam uses to make informed, real-time decisions.
Assistant Superintendent and CIO Stephen Whiffin, believes strategic technology adoption is the key to achieving this mission. “We want to leverage technology to be able to service kids better, and that means leveraging data to understand what’s happening in our schools. My vision is that you can accomplish, at the highest level, two critically important things through effective system planning,” Whiffin shares. “One, is that you make the work of everyone supporting students in your organization easier. And two, at the same time, you work with the best data possible to be able to support kids better. With effective system planning, you can accomplish both those critical outcomes at the same time.”
Coquitlam’s journey began with recognizing the need for a strong, modern foundation. Like many school districts, Coquitlam faced challenges in managing outdated systems and heavy administrative workloads. The district turned to Microsoft tools, using their Microsoft 365 Education A5 license, to create a flexible, scalable infrastructure. These tools offered advanced security features like threat protection, phishing prevention, malware defense, and mobile device management.
“I had been waiting for the emerging technology to speak to me and say ‘Yes: this is a platform that's converging in a significant enough way that—by making investments in it—we are going to achieve our two goals of making the work of people easier and providing the best support for students that we possibly can. Intelligent, AI-supported tools like Copilot will give us the ability to gain insights that will change the educational world,” Whiffin says.
By investing in a cloud-based, unified system, Coquitlam centralized its data, streamlined administrative tasks, and are planning to enable educators to shift focus to higher-value work, like supporting students and enhancing the learning experience. This infrastructure also positions the district to meet future technology needs with ease.
In the past, Coquitlam discovered that 80% of its data was unstructured, posing significant risks and potential compliance issues. Recognizing this, Whiffin’s team leveraged Microsoft’s framework to strategically balance in-house capabilities with outsourced maintenance and compliance.
Coquitlam integrated its tools into a unified system, ensuring seamless data flow and real-time operations across all its schools. Microsoft’s ecosystem of tools, including Power Apps, Power BI, and Fabric, eliminated data silos and improved collaboration, allowing the district to manage its operations more efficiently.
“To move data more effectively to a centralized platform and not have to deal with upgrading every time a new piece of technology is introduced, we rely heavily on Microsoft to give us that confidence. And the more unified the experience, the easier it is to have that confidence.” says Whiffin. This is also a place where Microsoft Copilot is going to play a very, very important role because we're taking steps now to leverage Microsoft Copilot's security tools in order to actively monitor all of our data across the network.”
To address the challenges of unstructured data, Coquitlam implemented Microsoft Fabric and Purview. These solutions transformed the district’s data management systems, turning unstructured data into actionable insights.
Purview provided detailed visibility into data access and usage, significantly improving both security and compliance. Randy Shen, Systems Manager at Coquitlam underscores the transformative impact, "With Purview, we have filters and access to information in our ecosystem that enable us to audit file access and really understand how our data is being used and when."
Power Apps played a centralized role in Coquitlam’s strategy by providing AI components and connectors for system integration, while Power BI made data accessible across the organization. Microsoft Fabric brought together capabilities for data analysis, science, and management in one platform.
With these AI-powered tools operating within secure environments, Coquitlam can track and monitor data usage, ensuring that privacy concerns are addressed while leveraging AI’s potential to improve outcomes.
Structured data now enables Coquitlam’s educators and administrators to make more informed, real-time decisions. Instead of relying on fragmented information, the district has access to data that guides everything from classroom management to long-term strategic planning.
For Whiffin, trust and transparency are essential in data-driven decision-making. Before sharing data with principals, Coquitlam prioritizes secure and ethical practices, reducing the delay between data collection and action.
“In order to establish trust,” Whiffin notes, “it's absolutely incumbent on us to make sure that the practices that we follow are secure, are controlled, and that we have the ability to be transparent about what it is that we're doing.”
Coquitlam has also embraced AI to enhance workflows and efficiency. AI tools like Copilot automate routine tasks, which they are now training educators on, to focus on supporting students. AI’s ability to analyze large datasets provides valuable insights, helping respond to student needs quickly.
Coquitlam has developed a Power App called the “Insufficient Evidence app”, which provides real-time data to student support teams and administrators as well as automatically notifying parents when a student is not successful in class. With a Power Apps form, educators initiate a chain of workflows, replacing time-consuming manual processes. This automation ensures that interventions happen quickly, preventing issues from escalating.
Whiffin and his team also understood that systematic approaches were required to make the tools accessible and usable for all faculty members. “We have 3,000 teachers, and I can make a lot of data available to them,” Whiffin explains. “But a large number of them won’t know how to use it.”
To overcome this, they are focusing on standardizing processes and providing educator and faculty training to reduce learning curves.
Involving technical leads and experts ensured robust data infrastructure, while gradually sharing data with principals fostered trust in the system. This measured approach prioritizes ethical data use and ensures that principals have access to richer data for more informed decision-making.
Coquitlam has also employed rigorous pressure testing and user proficiency checks to promote responsible AI use in education. Integrating AI into district workflows presented both benefits and risks. AI could analyze diverse datasets and provide insights into student performance, but a secure data foundation was essential to mitigate privacy risks and ensure responsible use.
“We’re leveraging some of the new capabilities that we have in Microsoft 365 to secure, track, and monitor our data to ensure we’re preventing some of that leakage from happening,” Whiffin explains. “And by moving our tools into an AI environment that places intelligent tools in secure, monitored environments, especially with Fabric.”
In addition to leveraging advanced tools, Coquitlam School District has focused on standardizing processes across its schools. Veronika Farnell, Vice Principal of Digital Innovation and Compliance, has witnessed firsthand the impact this has on daily operations. “We had a lot of tasks and things that we had to complete daily. Every single school that I was in was doing it in a different way,” she recalls. “Now, using these new platforms, we can create uniform processes."
This shift not only streamlines administrative tasks but also promises a direct benefit to students. Farnell emphasizes, “If we can streamline all of our data, make it compliant, collect it, get better insights into it, then that's only going to help the students in the end."
Coquitlam’s commitment to supporting students using AI extends to its approach to meeting new regulatory requirements for report cards. The district required a centralized system for educators to document and share supplementary materials for students not meeting expectations.
In response, Whiffin and his team developed a Power App solution that allows educators to fill out a form when a student isn't meeting minimum expectations. This form is published in a centralized database, giving principals access to Power App and Power BI reports where they can easily drill down into the data. With this system, decisions that meaningfully impact students can now be made quickly and efficiently.
By focusing on security, data, and student-centered solutions, Coquitlam is well on its way to achieving its goals. Treating data as a strategic asset, they have empowered educators and leaders to intervene earlier and more often, addressing challenges before they escalate.
“As we explore looking forward with AI and Copilot, it's only going to help us in analyzing data. It's going to bring us new insights,” says Farnell, “It's going to be that a-ha moment of things that we weren't thinking about before and make things better for students in the end, and I really can't wait to see where it takes us.”
We’re leveraging some of the new capabilities that we have in Microsoft 365 to secure, track, and monitor our data to ensure we’re preventing some of that leakage from happening. And by moving our tools into an AI environment that places intelligent tools in secure, monitored environments, especially with Fabric.
Stephen Whiffin, Assistant Superintendent and CIO, School District No. 43 (Coquitlam)
Follow Microsoft