Another Think Tank 'provocation paper', from Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius Corporation.
Open Source software it is widely agreed, is the way of the future. Not only can Open Source lower your costs, but it produces world class, stable, scalable software with practically no defects, hardly any security vulnerabilities and will open a golden age of empowerment and engagement for all. Bridging the digital divide and unleashing the potential of individuals everywhere in the world and solving all outstanding problems facing the human race, including world hunger, poverty and global warming.
Unfortunately, short-sighted and misguided Governments everywhere and especially in the UK, due to either incompetence or corruption, have held Open Source back. Government and Public Sector employees don't understand Open Source, don't appreciate it, and would prefer to stay in their comfort zone and go with the incumbent suppliers. Combine this with the backroom dealings of the convicted-on-every-continent Microsoft, scheming and plotting to hold Open Source back at every opportunity, and it is obvious why Open Source hasn't taken off like it's wild-eyed advocates have been predicting for years.
Except Governments everywhere are falling over themselves promoting Open Source, especially in the UK. Widely regarded as the best policy paper of any advanced economy in the world, the UK Government's Open Source Action Plan is a massive stimulus to the uptake of Open Source accross the UK Public Sector. In Education the position is even better, with Becta being a dedicated, persistent supporter of Open Source uptake in schools for years. Not only does Becta promote the uptake of Open Source at every opportunity but it has recommended schools to not take up alternative proprietary products and even reported Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading. The environment for take up of Open Source in the Public Sector and Educational sector is ideal.
It is now understood that the environment for take up of Open Source in the Public Sector and Educational sector is far from ideal. Entrenched interests especially from proprietary vendors, has a deep hold. Institutional preference for the status quo plays out and locks poor educational institutions further into unfair, anti-competitive deals with mercenary companies out to short-change them and keep them locked into inferior technologies. Procurement policies are myopic, unfair and one-sided. In practice incompetent procurers have no regard for what little protection there is and cavalierly specify Microsoft software in violation of national and international laws calling for equality. No matter how hard the visionary Open Source community representatives in the UK try, the forces of darkness somehow obscure their message and misguided teachers continue to go their own way with the evil monopolists.
Meanwhile the UK Open Source community continues to fragment, squabble amongst itself, and order unwanted pizza deliveries to punish the evil monopolists. The so-called community in the UK is it's own worst enemy and whilst it continues to behave childishly, angrily and with a complete lack of awareness of the real issues facing teachers, local authorities and Government it will continue to spend it's time howling in the wilderness whilst the far-more-mature proprietary industry continues to serve the real needs and requirements of the crucially important educational sector.
Ever more complex and powerful developments continue to emerge from the innovative and creative Open Source community, the UK by far in the lead. Self-organising into corporates, hugely competitive companies have emerged from their community roots and are bringing the benefits of fully-supported Open Source, packaged and polished, to schools, colleges and Local Authorities in forms that they understand and are happy to procure. Not only are UK Open Source companies leading the way in the UK, but on the world stage with Canonical and Alfresco to name but two. UK Open Source companies look after world-class companies, schools, Local Authorities and even national Open Source projects endorsed by Government ministers.
Unfortunately so-called Open Source companies have violated the spirit, and occasionally even the legals, of the original Open Source movement. Back in the real world their practices are indistinguishable from the proprietary companies they claim to despise. There is no qualitative nor quantitative difference between paying a licence fee to Microsoft or paying a 'subscription fee' to one of the 'Open Source' vendors... let's get real here! And while we're at it, studies have conclusively proven that the vaunted 'benefits' of Open Source are illusory - nobody cares about seeing the source code, Microsoft Windows, especially Windows 7 is 68.45% more secure than even the best of the 384 mutually incompatable forks of Linux, there is nobody qualified to support Open Source and the predicted cost savings evaporate the moment anyone actually tries to implement it in the real world.
Confused yet? I know I am. Let's throw away all the nonsense we've ever heard about Open Source in Education, good and bad, and start with a clean slate.
Ok, I'll bite :-)
The problem is education, not Microsoft, not Open Source companies and not the evil face of capitalism. While we preside over an education system that is not at all concerned about learning, with teachers happy to shovel technology to the student without any understanding as long as it gains league table points and quangos and the DCFS more interested in commercial sensitivities and procedures for controlling schools than what children actually learn, it is hardly surprising that we are where we are. Microsoft realised (or perhaps it was a lucky guess) that most people were going to be unthinking consumers and so once the brand name is strong enough any change was going to be difficult. That is smart business, taking advantage of being handed a monopoly on a plate by IBM. This takes us back to a more important and wider principle in the purpose of education. Young people need to be able to make objective choices. They need to see through branding hype especially in a world that is increasingly dominated by material consumerism. They need to be in a position to make objective decisions - unlike their parents and grand parents who are currently making bad and expensive decisions, often through sheer ignorance.
The key is education. We need to teach children about the alternatives and give them time to explore a range of technologies so that they are in a better position to make informed choices. The irony is that the people who are shouting the loudest about assessment for learning, personalised learning and lifelong learning are often the very people who seem to think IT innovation is using an IWB or rubbing shoulders with some industry dinosaur with the capacity to innovate inversley proportional to the size of its turn over.
My personal view is that the rapidity of technological change will make the traditional desktop GNU/Linux Vs desktop Windows with MSO argument irrelevant. The biggest change to the desktop is migration to the web. AJAX, Adobe air and similar technologies allied to Google's increasing commercial might and the plethora of devices such as smartphones and i-pads mean that it is going to get easier and easier to dispense with Desktop Windows (and Linux unless it is your Phone OS). The browser is already just as important and there are several cross-platform technologies to choose from. Monopolies based on file formats are already being eroded and the trend is towards open documented formats. If it takes schools years to make this transition, all that means is we are failing to prepare youngsters properly for the future and history will show vast quantities of money being spent on achieving very little - Curriculum on-line 500 million + has the most significant effect of slowing down change and entrenching dated technologies. Its almost unbelievable that the political commentators dismiss savings on waste as largly unachievable! If its like this in education, what is it like in the NHS, MOD and DSS?
So I come back to education. The only real hope is if there is positive leadership to provide a change in attitude to technology education. More understanding and less mindless button pressing. Unfortunately, I haven't heard any politician say anything very convincing about improving education - bleating on about preserving fron-lie services - what, like Curriculum On-line? Wow, what would we have done with out it? The civil service on track-record is hopelessly incapable. The sterile debate never seems to get past SATs and Diplomas and I can't see either of those things making any massive step change for improvement.
So I'm not at all confused, I think it is perfectly straightforward. Good educational principles are the only hope. What is far from clear is where the leadership is going to come from to make it happen.
My suspicion is that the sort of funds available to waste on CoL and learning platforms that nobody used, because every time you tried to do anything you had to pay extra, will simply no longer be available. Because there will no longer be earmarked funds or funds retained at local authority level and because e.g. BSF places schools in long term contracts, schools will find themselves paying substantially more for the same or inferior services. The chunk the local authority used to pay from the no longer available Harnessing Technology budget will be a new charge to the school's budget.