Ohio has a unique system for supporting the educational and administrative technology needs of over 900 school districts, career centers, community schools, and educational service centers.   The OECN ITCs provide a level of efficiency that can't be reached if each school were to "do their own thing." The OECN has a 30-year record of providing cost effective services to Ohio's K-12 educational community.

The OECN was originally created to assist school districts in meeting the State Auditor's requirements for Uniform School Accounting System (USAS) reporting. In the decade of the 1980's additional services were created to assist school districts in managing staff payroll, inventory, student attendance, student grade reporting, and student scheduling functions.

In 1989 the State Legislature passed legislation creating new school accountability and data reporting requirements called the Educational Management Information System (EMIS).  The OECN ITCs (then known as "DA Sites") were a key component in the EMIS data collection and reporting process.  Today Ohio's schools continue to rely on the OECN ITCs for vital EMIS support.  Along with EMIS several other services were added in the 1990's. These include the INFOhio library automation system, Internet access, and local and wide-area network support.

Today the OECN ITCs continue to support schools' information and technology needs by provide a vast menu of services including accounting, payroll, library automation, EMIS, network management, student information systems, video, remote distance learning, electronic resources, computerized grade book, parental access, web conferencing, Internet access, web and email filtering, firewall and web security, telephony, web hosting, server hosting, and data-driven decision support.