Whilst I agree that LAs or any IT Support Company could reduce licensing costs from using open source software. The cost of IT projects encompasses many elements during planning, creation and delivery.  Your document talks around issues for staffing in LAs, which are a key element of a Service Delivery orientated organisation. Indeed research consultants such as Gartner have identified that staffing can often be up to 85% of the cost base for a service delivery based organisation. So in real terms it is changing in staffing or an increase in revenue from expanding customer bases that would be of more help for LAs. Reducing centralised IT funding  is effectively outsourcing this provision from the LA.

In relation to saving for an individual school:-
If an organisation already owns a license for say Windows XP and Microsoft Office reinstalling that software onto a new machine costs nothing.
Extending the life of hardware has some merit, and I am looking to work with our local primary schools to extend the use of their hardware. One big problem we are having with this is that the costs of getting support for Linux work stations integrated into an existing network operating system is proving to be prohibitive.

I agree that most schools could save money implementing a range of open source software packages, but again they would run into issues of support charges and re training. Our own school has implemented substantial savings by implementing open source software. When I have tried to include commercial support for open source solutions it has either made it the same price as proprietary solutions or even made it more expensive. More importantly than the money, our own school now has a richer learning environment thanks to Open Source software.
 
Given that centralised funding for ICT has been substantially reduced by the new government. Schools will have take greater responsibility for managing and implementing ICT, or via economies of scale, IT Service Delivery organisations will need to help schools deliver ICT services.
 

I think I'll start my holding my hand up and saying that the report was a deliberate attempt to try and get many 'enterprise level' deliverers of ICT in schools (local authorities) to stop and try and look at things differently. At the moment with HT grant cuts, all that is being planned is.......cuts. Before you start to scale back in ICT it is eminently sensible to seek lower cost alternatives amd reduce licencing costs rather than reduce staffing costs (which most are planning to do).

We live in a country where Open Source seems to exist but is never held up as an Enterprise level solution in the UK education sector. Tony, despite your view that DanGuardian is not a BECTA accredited solution, in the East Midlands it is. It has been modified and managed and BECTA accredited and working in around 1500 schools. So it is possible that we can have Open Source developments in the UK, and if enough people shape them and scale them that can considerably reduce costs. I don't believe that individual schools will achieve the kind of implementation to ever be able to say that Open Source can save significant cost but I do believe that it can be done at scale, hell we can even have a SIMS replacement if we wish, and why not a national learning platform with scaled Moodle developments. In fact instead of wasting around 100M on licencing commercial products over the last 5 years, maybe we should have just spent £10M on shaping Moodle to fully suit our needs, forcing every provider of content and administration systems to have the same open standards in order to be part of that open source core MLE instead of each one inventing a slightly differently shaped wheel, and UK schools paying for 40 wheels when just 4 would have done nicley.

Can I evidence cost savings in detail, no of course not - everybody does things differently, some are capable of implementation, many are not, some spend lots and waste lots of money on licences, some do not. I have evidenced national expenditure though and I know that there is considerable waste in the system on licences for applications and content and I do know that this waste will be squeezed out and it may result in less ICT in schools when maybe Open Source will replace (for better or worse) what we will have to stop buying.

We're hamstung at the moment. Large scale deliverers of ICT such as Local Authorities or regional bodies are sceptical as they have got used to simply buying what works for them, and it comes out of a box. Many Open Source schools don't get any ecomomy of scale so they see the freedom rather than the savings as being the main benefit -  but using my national learning platform or SIMS replacement example, we can have both and in many countries they do just such developments based on Open Source.

And no there is no black and white here, complete Open Source or complete commercial licences, there is a middle ground so save sometjing between zero and £200M nationally by bringing in more Open Source but be aware that there will be £200M less money around next April so you may have to aim high........as the report does.

So in short the challenge is there. If the money goes (and it is) then look at every licence and content purchase and if there is an option to put something with no licence cost in its place rather than have nothiong then do it - you know it makes sense :)

Thanks for the response Gary ... one quick thing first ... Yorkshire and Humberside? East Midlands? I am sure some Yorkshiremen will be insulted not to be thought of as Northerners.

Onto the work done on 2006 to get Dansguardian into Y&HGfL ... it isn't a true DansGuardian rollout though is it ... it does form the core, but it was adapted, has managed lists on a subscription model IIRC and I was pretty sure the adapted source hadn't been rolled back into the pot for DansGuardian. I am happy to double check my sources tomorrow to clarify any of my comments ... however, the model at Y&HGfL is not one that can be easily replicated if a school pulls down the source to load up their own version. As I keep saying to people ... like for like.

I know the report was a prodding exercise ... anyone might thing my response was too (people are starting to come up with what I was expecting them to over on the blog post now ... )

I am also a tad disappointed that the report didn't take a pragmatic tone in some areas. The focus was cost, not education ... it hides that many LAs / RBCs cannot suddenly make changes due to contractual isses ... something you know all too well ... so to whip up a frenzy and have people expect change immediatley is bound to cause problems for some folk.

As for the MLE / VLE / LP debacle ... the thing that annoys me most about anyone, schools or LAs, just picking a product is that if you cannot clearly see an educational adoption model behind it then you are leaving a large number of schools floundering. Unfortunately not all LAs have an Ian Usher, even though they are growing, so if an LA relies on a commercial company to provide a solution and the training / principles to go with it ... then how is that an issue? When you have some companies like Frog who can help move schools on in leaps and bounds ... do you honestly think they don't know that by using on open source version they could make a larger profit? I have been into a few former Frog schools who are now with moodle ... because of the development in understanding of what impact a VLE can make, and the training to go with that came from Frog first. I also know of some schools who tried Moodle first and went to Frog as they had no idea what to really do with it or how to manage it ... and I have examples of similar stories with FirstClass, LP+ and DB Primary. A good trainer and good principles are key ... the actually platform you use is almost secondary. If you are going to use Moodle as a key focus in this drive then you have to talk about training and staff development ... and then you have to talk about how the cost savings from not paying licences can help fund that.

It is worth saying that in some schools, with the Moodle options they go for from some Moodle Partners, it doesn't work out any cheaper when you take into account training and development ... not until you look at a model stretching to 4-5 years ... which then hits our next brick wall. Until you can get a school to do long term planning around IT needs then you are getting into rushed decisions ... which is part of both our arguments.

Also ... I don't actually mind paying for content if it is of high quality. We've both seen some stuff from teachers which is diabolical. There is still a place in this world for BrainPop, GGfL and EncyclopediaBrittanica ... we can't rely on Wikipedia for everything after all.

The use of the word "force" here is falling into the same trap  as LAs and Enterprise firrms have for years. They have forever been trying to impose their "expert" or "industry standard" solutions.

Brian I agree with this many third party support firms and LAs try to undermine what individual schools do by using words such as "expert", "industry standard", "best  of type", etc. BSF was full of such grandiose terms, after vewing several schools in my local area that outsourced their IT to a third party experts the waffle does not seem to match the actual delivery.

I worked for many years as an industry expert and the bottom line is that the majority of implementation costs are related to charging for expertise, not licenses and software! But hey what do I know I only work in a school :)

Tim

Here is my my personal views on sustainable IT in schools. It is taken from an edugeek thread on this subject. That seems to be getting diverted talking about the merits of Dansguardian as "industry standard" application. LOL

I think that schools working together to share expertise and experience of using ICT could work much better. We have worked with several local schools to show them how we use all our software in school and they have done the same for us. Every time we meet with another school to share ideas and experiences we have always learned a lot. Tools such as twitter, edugeek site, open source schools site have been a great way of sharing ideas with other schools, but meeting in person is far more productive.

So perhaps more communication between schools could be more important than what software license we are using

Tim

 If the government put its fingers into Open Source development in this way it would quite possibly spell the death knell of whatever projects they touched. Regardless of how much money they put in. Given the record of public sector ICT projects, the more money put in, the worse the outcome.

From a computing POV this would be interesting, a series of projects whose outcome was precisely the reverse of the specification!

On a more serious note, as a model, we can look at how large firms that take part in OSS projects are very careful that they don't destroy the project by taking over completely. They try to act as enablers, (e.g. patent sharing by IBM) rather than developers.

The point is that all OSS requires is a level field and so far as possible, user level choice of how they use whatever processing and networking they have available. The definition of "user" here is not necessarily the same as "individual". I am not an anarchist here, just a bit anarchic.  

Brian L