Breaking away from LEA

[Gatt]

OK our LEA is really starting to piss me off...

At present they only manage the core network, staff domain and SIMS.net, we have already gone it alone with the Pupils and this is now running smoothly, unlike the staff network.

We have talked in the past about moving away from the LEA and creating our own Domain and signing up with the Westfield Centre in Lancs for SIMS support.

There is a lot involved - Switches & servers to be bought either new or off the LEA, Staff domain to be created & user areas migrated, etc

The ONLY thing that works very well are our VOIP Phone's (Cisco)

CAn anyone give me some advice on how to migrate off the LEA, including pitfalls to be aware of, and if possible what it'll cost us to do..

The staff are very unhappy at the (lack of) support that we are getting from our LEA and the way in which things are being run..

They use ScriptLogic/Desktop Autbority to control desktops, etc, but it's causing us so many problems with permissions

Example - Users have no recycle bin, very few Control Panel applets - INCLUDING the ability to set up email accounts in Outlook!, Cannot add/remove printers - dept's wanting network printers in their dept, but can't cos Script Logic deletes all printers then adds one printer for the entire school!!
I called them about giving users the right to add printers - they said they would need to re-organise AD to accommodate this 8O errr ok...

I could go on - and this is starting to turn into an FFS thread so i'll leave it at that :P

[broc]

You had better check where you stand with BSF before making any plans.

If your school is an independent/trust school, then you may have a chance to break away. If you are part of an Authority who's schools are part of BSF then most likely you are heading for a fully managed ICT service that will be run by a private consortium of companies or the LA.

In a managed service environment you and all of your colleagues in the schools will become employees of the service provider. I wouldn't care to say if that will deliver a better or worse service to your schools users than now......

[Gatt]

argh! BSF!

BSF has resulted in our school being merged with another school - both to close in aprox 5 years and then reopen as 1 school

[klawd]

Probably a good idea to check for sure what services the LEA provides and make a list of what you require. You may find they provide contracts which tie you into several things, some of which you may not be able to provide otherwise, or worse, contracts that tie you in for years to come (RBC contracts especially)

I would also check liability for the various services you provide.
One of the advantages of using LEA services is that you can always blame them if anything goes wrong. (e.g if students circumvent filters etc)