Securus Pilot - Centralised and aggregated

[ayoward]

In the interests of trying to drive down costs for schools across our region and in response to the famous Ofsted report that came out in February that talked about schools with monitored rather than or as well as filtered web access (I may be over simplifying here) doing better in terms of ICT, we have contacted Securus to do a pilot (or do a proof of concept) to see if we could host Securus centrally and enable schools who wish to take advantage of bulk or aggregated purchase to get Securus for cheaper than individual schools could otherwise get, similar to the Sophos AV agreement we have in place. To this end, we have set up Securus in the core of our network and now need partners who we could collaborate with to prove the concept.

Our Securus pilot is now accessible across the Grid. We have gratefully accepted the assistance of some schools in this proof of concept, but we require more to make it a more realistic pilot so we still require more volunteers. We are looking for volunteer locations to trial running the software from a central location (i.e. our Wakefield Data Centre) for updates and downloads. This would mean that schools do not have to purchase their own appliance, or run their own server, saving them money.

These locations are not limited to primary and secondary schools, but PRUs, children’s homes and libraries can all benefit from running the software. The software assists in the monitoring of internet access and also monitoring of potential cyber bullying activity and enforcement of acceptable use policies. Our aim is to make this sort of software available to the masses on an aggregated procurement similar to the money saving that we secure from Sophos, we really need this pilot to be a success and is part of our scheme to save the schools money and time. Anyone wishing to join in, we will need the IP range and AD Domain (if used) of the location and also email of administrative and or technical contacts.

We will be doing similar projects with other vendors as demand dictates. We are all about trying to save our schools money. I'm not sure I mentioned it? Best value and all that.

Register your interest through your usual LA contacts in the first instance please. Any questions, just let me know.

Regards,

Andrew

[Marci]

Have registered our interest with EdIT HelpCentre...

[plexer]

Just to add to this for you, Norfolk are doing exactly the same thing which is now a service being offered to schools and I believe to such an extent that securus are not allowed to do individual installs into any Norfolk school now.

Norfolk have been doing this for a while for the Home Access laptops that have been dished out as well.

Thanks.

Ben