This makes one increasingly sceptical about the value of BECTA's procurement frameworks. If Drupal is good enough for the Whitehouse why would it not be good enough for presenting e-portfolios in schools? (Or indeed entire school web sites) If the argument is about SIMS links we are into the tail wagging the dog. Schools should be about learning not admin. In any case, on a national scale the cost of building whatever additional functionality is needed to make Drupal conform to the BECTA e-portfolio specification is a drop in the ocean. Instead of saving money and supporting best value, we find these frameworks blocking innovation and putting up costs to the tax payer.
Example, we provide a free, supervised hosted Drupal environment on the INGOT community site. Any learner is free to set up an account there and if they follow the on-line learning course at http://theingots.org/community/ITQcourse1 they will be able to:
- set up their own free e-portfolio
- achieve e-skills new National Vocational Qualification for ICT users for doing so
- meet all the QCDA APP criteria for the National Curriculum
- get a certified National Curriculum level
- get a certificate for PLTS
- get a certificate in enterprise
Of course if they want to pay for e-portfolio software they can and we'll still accredit their learning but why do that when they can have it for free and also be provided with the learning support required to actually use the things?
Ok, we have to stay in business and charge for certification but that is less expensive than conventional qualifications at least in part because we use FOSS throughout the company. That also illustrates to the sceptics that business models do not have to involve selling software licenses to support development and ICT learning. Any company is free to change its business strategy, so government backing FOSS is not favouring any particular company any more than putting 500 million into the closed source paradigm. In fact backing FOSS wit development resources would simply redress some of the imbalance caused by putting 500+ million into a dated and largely unsustainable model at the expense of the new up and coming one. Again evidence that BECTA frameworks and actions in the field of ICT block education innovation. So the tax payer is paying to make things worse!
Becta might argue that any provider, group of providers or consortium is free to submit services based on open source to scrutiny under its frameworks and that these might include Moodle, Drupal, Mahara or any of the other open source systems. One Becta framework provider sells a Moodle service to Coventry schools and an open public procurement process was used to purchase the LGfL Fronter service which uses a lot of open source. I wonder if the problem is more about the fact that the big companies like RM do not find open source sufficiently profitable?
Ok you can quote one or two exceptional cases but they are noteworthy because they are exceptional and only emerging when the tide has already turned - despite rather than because of the system. BECTA were told about the effects of these things years ago. Ironically at the same time as they were claiming to be leaders and at the forefront of technological thinking :-)
It is the very fact that large companies can't easily change business models profitably that is the issue. Read up on Professor Clay Christensen's work at Harvard on Disruptive Innovation. The whole point is that a market disruption can't be taken up by incumbent dominant players without them destroying their own currently dominant business models. That's why new companies, technologies and methods emerge.
The frameworks reinforce the status quo and add to the inertia which we already know is predicated on monopolies, they act as a barrier to the natural evolution of the ecosystem. UK is too small and insignificant to affect the longer term outcome of a global trend but what is the additional cost of the bureaucracy that actually slows down the change as well as the cost of continuing with artificially supported inefficiency? We now get into a situation where BECTA ought to invent more bureaucratic systems to counter the other bureaucratic systems as it becomes obvious that FOSS is going to be the dominant force in the future. I hope they don't have the gaul when that happens to claim any credit for it - but I'm sure they will :-). Don't forget only about 30% of software has ever been the mass produced licensed stuff people are familiar with. The other 70% is developed internally by companies and governments for their own specific purposes.
BTW, Fronter claims to be commercial open source, whatever that is, but would the license be OSI compliant? I don't think so but I'm willing to be corrected. A lot of companies (and government agencies ;-) ) are trying to jump on the FOSS bandwaggon now it looks like its good for marketing but many of them will fail the basic tests of license definition.