EMBC Schools

[GrumbleDook]

As some people may be aware the next round of planning for the RBC in the East Midlands has started.

 

To give some background for the uninitiated, the EMBC (East Midlands Broadband Consortium) is the RBC for the East Midlands. Presently the lead LEA is Northants and this is where the project team abide. EMBC is not a seperate company but is made up of the 9 LEAs and each helping to do something with providing content and service (some more than others). The service is provided via Fujitsu who then sub-contract things out. EMBC has it's own helpdesk, but some LEAs (Northants for example) make you go through their support team before you get to the EMBC helpdesk.

 

On 31st March 2007 the present contract with Fujitsu finishes and the 9 LEAs are starting to think about what to do next. The Steering Group (containing a rep in a senior position in each LEA as well as the EMBC execs) will get together in early December to decide on which of 3 proposals to go for.

 

The options are to keep the status quo, for NCC to ditch the ide of the EMBC as we know it now and source a new ISP for connectivity and then worry about connecting to the NEN, or for the EMBC to be made a Company Limited by Guarantee.

 

This will then go out to tender as usual (the Prior Information Notice has already gone out to the EU noticeboard on this)

 

I say all this because I was at a meeting tonight about it ... one aimed at Heads or other Senior Manglers (notice it was done whilst some heads will be at the SST conference ... poor timing methinks).

 

It was shocking to see how little some of them knew about who controlled what and who talks to whom.

 

Don't get me wrong, there were some very informed people there, but these are usually the people that are already involved with steering groups / committees within the LEA.

 

I had a number of concerns (yep ... me at the front ... heckling and sticking my nose in again ... what's new!) including -

 

1 - Are there going to be decent SLAs between schools and the resulting group?

 

2 - Will this be decided by the Steering Group, the lawyers, by Heads or by people technically capable of saying what an SLA shold be?

 

3 - If the resulting group is a seperate entity to the LEAs will they then have the power to tell schools that they must do things a certain way on their networks otherwise they can bugger off? (an off shoot of a discussion on the common digital infrastructure for every school ... it has been misread as someone will tell schools that networks should be set up a certain way ... it was pointed out to them that Becta give technical specifications for schools to work to, but never say it has to be done a certain way ... this needs to be clarified)

 

4 - Will the technical stuff end up over-ruling the education stuff ... again!

 

Most of these were answered in a positive manner (Brenda Scoble doing most of the talking, but also some stuff from Jamie Clarke, Head of Sponne School) but the obvious concerns of cost and reliability came up time and time again.

 

There is a chance that schools will be dictated to about how to run things, and if you don't want that to happen then you need to speak to the relevant person in your school to get the put in the General Comments that you will accept advice and specifications about your network / systems, but not dictation.

 

The other noted thing was the lack of option 4. A school ditching the EMBC and going on it's own. This was apparently left out for a few reasons. Cost (more schools together drive the cost down), technical expertise in schools (there is still to much variation in the levels of technical expertise in schools), time (the steering group and their minions do the running around findong prices for you ... learn to accept what is offered) and then there is the connection to the NEN ... only one ISP is accredited atm. You have to go via an RBC, Redstone or UKERNA to get onto the NEN ... and even then you may not get everything at the moment.

 

What are the general thoughts on the above? Are we confident that Heads / Manglers are informed enough to be able to set out what some of the goals of the resulting group should be?

[russdev]

ok will post full repy later but how about preparing document that outlins these things that can be presented to head/lea giving advice like this.

 

Russ

[kingswood]

Good post Tony.

 

I think you have hit the proverbial nail on the head with your points (and your questions). I would love to see a big contender to EMBC appear as if by magic. Don't know if that will happen though. Seems to me this round of dicussions is really aimed at making management feel there really is no better option than maintaining the way things are. It'll be EMBC who get the contract again :-)

 

Paul

[russdev]

embc will get it...

 

But this gives us the schools/ict support staff a chance to say demand some of thing we have wanted from them defined sla and the suggested technical network setup but nor being forced upon us.

 

I still think if we at edugeek can come up with a document thats says as ict support staff this is what we would like to be seen written into any new contract. We info on heads ways heads/leas can voice the views as i suspect our head dosnt know how to do that. It gives the views across....

 

anybody want to write something then?

 

Russ

[GrumbleDook]

I am trying to get permission for the LEA people about sticking something on paper along these lines ... something that will be useful bits of knowledge that NMs / Techies can tell Senior Manglers to help them work out what would be the right decision.

 

I have to get permission first because a) I have only seen the side from the Lead LEA in the EMBC project, and b) I *am* a Mangler ... I *have* to play the game that way ... sorry.

 

Also, please remember that the EMBC is not a company as such at the moment ... it is a groups of 18 employees who manage and work with schools and the contractor (Fujitsu) to make sure a series of services are provided.

 

Also remember that this is not regarded as a technical issue ... it is a monetary/political/educational issue. But we need to make sure those who make the decision are informed of all the aspects.

[russdev]

once weh ave something on paper and people agree then we will release it as edugeek Bulletin which as tony says you take this to lea/heads and say this our our view.

 

Russ

[kingswood]

Oh don't get me wrong- I agree!

 

I think we do need to have something concrete from EMBC in the way of an SLA etc. If they are going to start operating as the supplier in the way they hope, then there needs to be some accountability and some communication. If Tony can muster up a document outlining these things I will certainly take it to the head and let him raise those things for us (and he would do that).

 

I'm not anti manglement at all- though it probably seems that way to many of you. Carry on with the good work- it might seem we aren't interested or behind it, but that's not the case at all.

 

Paul

[Dos_Box]

I'm glad we in the North West (Lancashire and Cumbria) don't have the problems you face. We created our own ISP and own all of our own equipment. All of our high schools are an a minimum of 11Mbps, most on 50+ Mbps and some in cabled areas on 100 Mbps. There are no multiple levels of contracts, no third party contractors doing support, and by the sounds of it no problems such as those you face.

Our responsability ends where the connection arrives at the school. Everything in the school is their responsability and they are free to do whatever they want within their schools and any requests for ecxtra services or facilities are passed directly by them to us to see what we can do. We keep all of our schools informed by making sure that eveyone knows our numbers and who is responsable for what. I wish you the best of luck in getting the service you need.

[spc-rocket]

We were with EMBC, but found the service to be very unreliable and the SLAs, well eh there werent'y any in my opinins because on some days we found that we didn't have any internet access and we weren't informed of anything.

 

Migrated this half-term to NTL and yes its is only about £700 expensive than the EMBC so called brilliant 10mb service. We're very happy and had no problems at all with NTL. They even let you manage your own router etc.

 

Ashok.

[eduabncs]

Here in Brum we have a similar setup to Dos_Box. We give the schools a suggested technical standard which most stick too as it makes their and our lifes easier support wise. That said they are free to do as they wish on their networks our responsibility ends at the NTE.

A

 

s for the RBC we now route a large chunk of our traffic via our RBC WMNet. This will only increase as more content & facilitys such as Video Confrencing are made available via the NEN & RBC's.

[kingswood]

@ashok: How easy was the migration to NTL?

 

Paul

[russdev]

yes but problem is ntl not part of national network(as far as i amaware) so going to cause problems down the line.

 

 

 

Russ

[Dos_Box]

Correct Russ. You have to be connected to the national educational grid and JANet. I doubt NTL does this, amd with many facilities coming to the fore tieing into these such as video confernacing etc it would leave a school looking very silly when they cannot carry out required curriculum activities because you cannot connect to any of the end sites.

[GrumbleDook]

At the moment there is only one ISP that is accredited to connect to the NEN and that is Redstone ... and there are a number of hoops to jump through to get to it ... and even then you only have access to some areas because RBCs are still not completely open to the NEN until Shibboleth is sorted.

 

The other option to an RBC is to go directly to UKERNA and ask them for a pipe. Irregardless of what some RBCs may tell you, they do not just do universities ... they can also supply to schools, museums, libraries, prisons, courthouses ...

 

They are a nice bunch and if they can do it they will do it. The issue is actually with the cost of installation. Because only one school is having it the cost is high ... if a number of schools get together the cost is lower ... and so on ...

 

Again, there is the issues of accessing resources too ... SSO/Shibboleth is the stumbling block. Let's face it, most of us are still going to have to talk to someone about Shibboleth ... how many of us here can honestly say that they can reliably set up SSO on their systems to talk with anything else on the NEN?

 

The bonuses of accessing an RBC instead of going your own way are pretty much educational ones. Schools collaborating together to produce and share resources, and because they are local to one another it can be managed and focussed by an LEA ...

 

Anyway ... I'll let people know more when I have it.

[spc-rocket]

@ashok: How easy was the migration to NTL?

 

Paul

 

Hi Paul,

 

The migration was quite easy really they installed all their kit, and we only had to connect the serial cables to our router. IN our case we have 4 x 2mb serial lines (8mb in total) that utilises Point to Point protocol so the router config is easy as well.

 

They wavied the install cost as well and we only had to pay a £500 odd one of fee for installation and we went for a non managed service so we can use our own router and control it.

 

We had enough time to carry out testing because to get out of the contract with EMBC we had to give them a year's notice so we are still infact paying EMBC now and i think the contract will end in May 06. It was not an easy thing to pursuade embc or the LEA to allow us to go on our own but in the end the headteacher outlines some real problems that we had with embc and they backed down.

 

Now i do understand that if you do go out of embc you lose the ability to connect to NEN and all that stuff but NTL are soon to becom Becta accredited and will then work with relevant parties to join NEN or partly join NEN (where they supply connections to schools).

 

Having recently installed ISA Server 2004 to control net access and provide firewall services we have not seen the traffic going over 3mb where as with embc it was flatlining all the time. With isa we have been very strict on what kids can do and what they access. Only allow access to HTTP and HTTPS to students and that it.

 

HTH,

 

Ashok.

[spc-rocket]

Just read a few replies on this posts and people are wondering that if the schools are not with RBC they will not have access to video conferencing outside NEN? well in that case what happends when a school on a NEN has links with schools in other countries ??? say your school has links with another school in japan for example and they offering video conferencing either parties will need to initiate a connection (VC). I think people are jumping to conclusion on HOW NEN will work when we haven't even got the thing working correctly and not many schools are using it either so you can't possibly work out what it will and will not allow.

 

NEN will be flexible - have to be really because will they deny a school acces to say VC session with another school non it NEN or in another country?? i doubt NEN will extend on the japan's school network

 

Ashok.

[GrumbleDook]

VC within the NE is based around one school or institute initiating the service and allowing others to connect irregardless of their connection.

 

We are about to start doing some VC stuff via the EMBC but technically we can't becuase we don't have a line yet ...

 

But thankfully, those helpful folks at the Learning Discovery Centre in Northampton can initiate it for us and we even have a few accounts courtesy of them too.

 

WRT NTL becoming accredited ... they are only slightly further along than they were 2 1/2 years ago when they said the same thing to encourage form INS/EDEX customers to join them ... I wouldn't say that I am holding my breath ... but ...

 

I suppose the main difference with us wanting to join an RBC is that we are not doing it just for the connection ... we want some of the content, we want an area to help with collaboration between us and partner schools. I know we could host these areas, but then that adds onto our workload ... and if it is with another school and their guys/gals are busy and we need to get something sorted then it cause problems.

 

I'll take your comments into account ashok in my guidance notes on EMBC.

 

If you could also PM me with what things are costing you with NTL?

[kingswood]

@ashok: sounds like it went well- thanks for the details. One of the things that Tony has addressed is "content", and I know my Systems Manager and I discussed this during the past month or so as a major downside of EMBC. But it depends what you want from a broadband provider. I think primarily they have to be reliable and fast, and that content isn't king.

 

Why is that? Because by definition what they do is provide a broadband connection for the school. The content is "out there". The only people I've heard complain about lack of content are the IT staff! lol! The students aren't interested with the EMBC page- they want "out there" where the real content is.

 

Thanks for the summary of your experiences though ashock!

 

@Tony: I think collaboration is a good idea, and having some kind of collaborative content is of course a great idea. What makes you think that EMBC will offer a decent level of collaborative tooling or content though? Have they said anything about this aspect of their bid?

 

Thanks.

 

Paul

[spc-rocket]

Tony,

 

I'll send you a PM with the relevant info.

 

Few things about the content, we have a portal setup (no hosting at school no no hassle of backup restore manintaince etc) which allows content to be placed on it in a organised way, by class groups, subjects etc. What is good about this is that it allows other schools to view the content as well and we have around 3 schools who will be connecting to it so we can collaborate.

 

If you guys want to check it out here's the link:

 

http://www.school-portal.co.uk/Grouphomepage.asp?GroupID=21501

 

When we went with NTL and away from from EMBC we did really think it through and to be honest the service was not good enough and they were not meeting the SLAs. I'm not saying that they will not improve I think they will but what suprises me is that the strategies used by goverment to the RBCs. It seems that there is no consistency between RBCs across the whole UK, some RBCs do things differently than others. i.e. there is no standard way of delivering the service to schools for all RBCs - now i do understand that there will be sometimes technical limitations but even the processes are not consistent. i.e. some RBCs allow more public IPs say and some are really really restrictive.

 

Tony if you could put the above issues to EMBC it may aid in getting the service to be improved or at least get their attention i suppose.

 

 

HTH,

 

Ashok.

[GrumbleDook]

@ashok

 

:-) You should have been there the first phone conversation I had with Mike Kendall ... it was partly based on the service I had seen in other schools but it went along the lines of refusing to join due to "constant faults that are only ever described as intermittent and are poorly logged, a restrictive structure that hides behind guidelines set out by Becta as an excuse not to allow schools more flexibility, a poor interface that puts off even the most evangelical of ICT users and connectivity that is worse that using free AOL accounts."

 

Since then I have spoken with people like Andy Murphy a lot ... the change of provider (notes of guidance and explanation should be up by the end of today) should give schools more power to say "get it sorted", even if we keep the status quo and remain with Fujitsu ... it will still be a new contract and will have to be negotiated.

 

EMBC are claiming that no school has left, and technically that is probably true ... even though you are now with NTL you still have a line vai EMBC, but it is unused.

 

I'll raise the above issues and see what their response is ... I may even point the Service Manager of dotICT in this direction so he can give his views directly ... it's about time his team realised that people can get support from elsewhere too.

[russdev]

here goes first edugeek bullitin has gone live see here http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=68

 

the news story contains download to pdf file

 

comments views etc

 

Russ

[kingswood]

@Tony:

 

"Since then I have spoken with people like Andy Murphy a lot"

 

Did you get baffled with science then? ;-)

 

Paul

[GrumbleDook]

Give Andy his due, he does explain things in detail. I do have a number of issues that I want to chase up with Becta first, and then check things with other RBCs to see if it is just an "EMBC thing" situation.

 

I know that RBCs vary from region to region, and Becta are happy with that because it means that lots of different things are tried. I still feel that it is based around technology and politics, and quite often they are one and the same ... "no, my solution is better than yours because it comes in a blue box!!!"

 

Just out of interest have any other EMBC users here actually looked at the policies and procedures stuff before? I have asked about some of this stuff before and never managed to get hold of it, but finally have been pointed in the right direction by Andy ...

 

I presume there are similar documents from other RBCs ... is it possible for others to check if these are publically available and if I can have copies to look through?

[russdev]

oh yes always take ponder around webview every so often....

 

Russ

[spc-rocket]

I'm glad we in the North West (Lancashire and Cumbria) don't have the problems you face. We created our own ISP and own all of our own equipment. All of our high schools are an a minimum of 11Mbps, most on 50+ Mbps and some in cabled areas on 100 Mbps. There are no multiple levels of contracts, no third party contractors doing support, and by the sounds of it no problems such as those you face.

Our responsability ends where the connection arrives at the school. Everything in the school is their responsability and they are free to do whatever they want within their schools and any requests for ecxtra services or facilities are passed directly by them to us to see what we can do. We keep all of our schools informed by making sure that eveyone knows our numbers and who is responsable for what. I wish you the best of luck in getting the service you need.

 

 

This is the kind of setup that woulod suite schools best and you guys are very lucky in the north. The main here is the flexibility and at the same time realiabilty of important service ie.. net access. Because of having less layer of heirarchy in support, things get done quicker and response is much quicker.

 

The issue that many RBCs face is that the RBCs need to rely on many suppliers i.e EMBC uses BT, Kingston, Fujitsu, Synterix and probably others and this creates lots of issues as to who deals with the queries and how that is communicated through these providers. Cutting down a supplier and created less dependency on many suppliers may be the answer. If a county or LEAs are bidding for services from one suppler i'm sure then the suppliers will drop the prices as wholesale kind of thing and the LEAs and schools will still benifit.

 

Just out of interest Dos_Box do schools recieve the discount or some sort of payment (full or part) for their internet services?

 

I had a chat with the Public sector director at NTL and he said that Becta about 2 years ago put such a restrictions or demanded things that was not easy to implement quicker for NTL - one of the thing that he said was that surf control software that NTL put forward for filtering was not good enough for Becta and this is reason NTL cancelled their accreditation bid for Becta accreditation. They are going to do this again soon as now Becta are saying that this would be fine. Aparently Surf Control approched Becta explained a few things to them interesting

 

Can't believe surf control is not good enough come on its better than NetSweeper

 

Anyway i'll keep you posted on what is happening with NTL.

 

Hope this helps in putting together some document that could be passed onto the relevant people are EMBC and other RBCs.

 

Ashok.

 

Ashok.