December 15, 2020


Joanne Duklas awarded the Distinguished Service Award

DCC Inc. is pleased to announce that Joanne Duklas, its founder and president, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) for her volunteer work in the standards field. DCC Inc. has been a member of PESC, an international standards body, for several years. During this time, Joanne has volunteered with PESC to advance interoperability and shared understanding of the education ecosystem as a support to learner mobility. As a leader in higher education, Joanne has often been called upon to oversee large scale system and technology projects to advance consistency, quality and scalable solutions to support institutions and learners across Canada. 

“Supporting PESC is a natural fit for any higher education organization,” says Joanne. “Often, people operate at the level of mission, vision and policy as we do at DCC Inc.; however, it is essential to ladder this thinking to operational realities in order to create scalable change. Standards and infrastructure are key prongs to actualizing these broader goals and objectives. The intention is not to harmonize or undermine intellectual freedom. Data exchange standards and interoperability are perfect partners to innovative thought and expression. I recommend all higher education institutions and organizations consider becoming PESC members.”

ABOUT PESC DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARDS: Many volunteers from the PESC membership and education community have helped shape PESC into the organization it is today. The key to PESC’s success is the valuable output (from white papers to development, approval and maintenance processes of standards and services) produced through workgroups and committees that are staffed and run by these volunteers. Certain individuals from the PESC Membership have gone above and beyond the call of duty and PESC takes the opportunity each year to recognize them with Distinguished Service Awards. Distinguished Service Awards serve as our opportunity to say thank you for being a leader and for making a positive impact on education. 

ABOUT THE POSTSECONDARY ELECTRONIC STANDARDS COUNCIL ESTABLISHED 1997 AT THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION & HEADQUARTERED IN WASHINGTON DC: PESC is an international, 501 (c)(3) non-profit, community-based, umbrella association of data, software and education technology service providers; schools, districts, colleges and universities; college, university and state and provincial systems; local, state/provincial and federal government agencies; professional, commercial and non-profit organizations; and non-profit associations & foundations. Leading the establishment and adoption of trusted, free and open standards across the education domain.

Through open and transparent community participation, PESC enables cost-effective connectivity between data systems to accelerate performance and service, to simplify data access and research, and to improve data quality along the Education lifecycle. PESC envisions global interoperability within the Education domain, supported by a trustworthy, inter-connected network built by and between communities of interest in which data flows digitally and automatically from one community, system or network to another and throughout the entire ecosystem when and where needed without compatibility barriers but in a safe, secure, reliable, legal, and efficient manner. 

by Maya Hardy