This past year was all about energizing our focus and core business, namely the domestic and international applications. These services received new support in the forms of Domestic on Demand and OCAS Verify – both of which are now being used to support the college system – while also receiving continuous enhancements.

This focus on our core business was a central part of OCAS’ new Strategic Plan, which our organization unveiled after extensive research alongside our higher education partners and an external consultant.

The following section explores how we innovated over the past year, along with how our Strategic Plan sets our course for the coming years.

Strategic Review and Plan

Vision

To enable everyone to benefit from lifelong learning through Ontario colleges.

While OCAS’ innovative work is often complex, our vision is simple and deeply tied to our extensive history working in the college system.

Mission

We deliver application management services that support the journeys of prospective students. We also provide tailored solutions that contribute to the success of Ontario’s public colleges.

We were created by Ontario’s colleges to support those colleges. That remains a core part of our mission, even as the needs of learners change and technology evolves.

Values

Strategic Goals

Operational Goals

Domestic Application

As usual, the past year saw enhancements to the domestic application, including a considerable upgrade of the platform’s underlying technology, improvements to how we process key documents, and the introduction of a new Vouchers Portal.

Platform Upgrade

The Domestic Application Service platform upgrade – completed in March 2023 – was about enhancing the core infrastructure of our domestic application to modernize our technology and improve the security and stability of our core service.

Not only that, but this project enables OCAS to add new features designed to improve data integrity and maintainability; in other words, it makes it easier for our organization to organize, access, and share critical data associated with the domestic application.

With the upgrade now complete, OCAS can focus on enhancing several of our most important and related offerings, from Domestic Apply to the Data Warehouse, Power BI reports, and My Student Record.

Document Processing Enhancements

Vouchers Portal

To assist learners in managing the cost of applying to college, OCAS and our partners participate in a voucher system that helps cover the domestic application fee. However, in the past this process was cumbersome, with partners filling out PDF forms that are sent to OCAS’ Finance team, while using spreadsheets to manage their vouchers.

The new OCAS Vouchers Portal is designed to simplify and modernize this process. By using a new, highly secure self-service digital solution, the new portal makes it vastly easier for partners – including colleges and high schools – to acquire vouchers for prospective post-secondary students. Through the portal, partners can view details on how many vouchers they have access to, as well as which specific vouchers have been redeemed. Partners can even export a list of vouchers for their own reporting and analysis.

To access that user guide and learn more about the new Vouchers Portal, reach out to us via service@ocas.ca.

Developer Documentation Site

International Application

This past fiscal year also saw lots of activity involving the OCAS International Application Service (IAS). During that time, our organization introduced measures that help our partners more effectively manage application caps; access and analyze relevant data; and save time and resources in helping international students begin their education journeys in Ontario.

This was also a banner year for the IAS, with more than 267,000 international applications managed by OCAS in calendar 2022! To help continue growing these applications and support our partners’ goals for international education, we’ll be investing even more in the IAS in the years to come – in fact, that’s a key part of our new Strategic Plan.

Seat Management and Diversification

To support our college partners’ seat management and diversification goals, we introduced an application caps feature that automatically adjusts program availability when a college’s own cap is met for applicants from specific countries or agencies. This measure has already resulted in fewer excess applications and improved application processing times – meaning it’s benefitting both colleges and learners.

OCAS also secured a patent for this technology last year – this patent was filed in February 2019 by several members of the current OCAS team, including Alisha Sanghera, Darren O’Shea, Michael Aldworth, Wayne Hesch, Kevin Schneider, and President and CEO Marc Provencher.

International Data

Because we understand that our partners need easy and immediate access to accurate, reliable, and recent data related to international applications and enrolment, in the past fiscal year we improved the ways in which partners can access this kind of information. This has taken the form of customized reporting and dashboards – embedded in the IAS – that leverage interactive data visualization software.

OCAS Verify

As explored in more detail elsewhere in this annual report, last year was big for OCAS Verify, our international applicant verification tool. Now being leveraged by almost a dozen Ontario colleges, in 2022 Verify was embraced by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which began using it at several major ports and border points of entry.

This rollout has resulted in expedited verification of legitimate applicants, earlier detection of potentially suspicious application behaviour, and reduced phone calls and emails to college staff. Overall, that’s meant considerable time savings for everyone involved, from international learners to immigration officials and college administrators.

Strategic Initiatives

Formed during the early stages of the pandemic, for several years now Strategic Initiatives has played a key role in helping OCAS keep in touch with our partners in higher education.

Today, they’re a small but mighty team that, with the pandemic subsiding, has enjoyed the opportunity to interact with our partners in face-to-face conversations during major events, campus visits, and community engagement activities. In doing so, they’re helping OCAS tailor our service offerings to the evolving needs of our partners.

Strategic Initiatives is led by Shannon Lipskie, Vice President, Partner Relations, who spent roughly 25 years working at Ontario colleges before arriving at OCAS two years ago. Shannon’s vision for the Strategic Initiatives team – which also includes Erin Babbey and Vanessa De Luca, both of whom hold the title of Strategic Initiatives Coordinator – is to establish meaningful connections through listening and learning opportunities that support OCAS’ higher education partners.