Open Services: Sustainable ICT for UK Schools

Today sees the publication a report from NWLG CEO Gary Clawson on the savings that would follow from a move to open source, open services and open content in schools and across local authorities. Gary argues that a switch to open source and open content would offer 25% savings on IT spend with relative ease, with a further 30-35% if LAs looked seriously at re-modelling how ICT is implemented and supported. Across a local authority with some 20 secondaries and 120 primaries, this would amount to over £1.4M pa.

Oh yes, and you get more flexible, sustainable IT and systems which support generic transferable skills in the classroom.

Gary outlines the first steps for schools and LAs:

Do an immediate review of ALL of your current licence costs and look at the alternative Open Source products. Pay particular interest in your Learning Platform and Digital Resources and cost up an alternative Moodle/National Digital Resource Bank implementation. This is incredibly easy to physically implement. Examine what you spend on Microsoft Office, you do not need it on the curriculum desktop, most of your students use Open Office at home. Do a software build for an edubuntu/Openeducation disc and try it at teacher and student level. If it works well, start the process of replacing every curriculum desktop with it. Brand it and distribute to all of your students for home use. Check performance of new desktop and re-assess any hardware replacement and refresh cycles you may have. 

The report is online at http://www.nwlg.org/downloads/docs/papers/openservices.pdf

Open Source Schools Steering Group

After the election and looking to the post-Becta future, Open Source Schools has been making new plans to ensure that the community is able to respond to the changing educational landscape where the benefits offered by open source are becoming ever more important.

A number of core community members were invited to a meeting on 29 June 2010 to develop an action plan for the future, and this group will continue to meet virtually or in real space on a regular, monthly basis. The group initially consists of:

Tim Bateson, Network Manager, Houghton Kepier Sports CollegeAlan Bell, CTO, Open Forum EuropeMiles Berry, Senior Lecturer in ICT Education, Roehampton UniversityPaul Haigh, Assistant Head, Notre Dame High SchoolBrian Lockwood, Head of IT, Egglescliffe SchoolAnne Matthews, Director, AlphaPlus Consultancy LtdDavid Willmot, Head of D&T, St Thomas More Language College 

This informal steering group agreed to work together on a voluntary basis and a number of tasks are already in hand.  Over the summer work on the website will be undertaken to develop the navigation to provide tailored content for specific audiences, initially senior leadership and network managers.

The withdrawal of the Harnessing Technology Grant is requiring senior leadership teams to review their IT strategies. within the community there is wide experience of the challenges, successes and benefits of implementing open source solutions as well as information about cost savings. This information will be shared on the website, and will form the basis of a conference for senior leaders planned for early November following the Comprehensive Spending Review. 

Wikis and turnkey solutions for network managers are also being developed.

For its part, AlphaPlus has offered to continue to host the website and to make some funds available to support the work of the community in these early stages. 

The group will also consider the longer term governance of the community and its resources, and welcomes involvement from all members of the community, whose views and character it seeks to represent.