OPEN SOURCE

[alandickey41]

Specifically, has anyone attempted to develop a school management information system using open source?

Generally, can anyone flag up what they think the positives and negatives are with regard to open source development?

[webman]

There's FreeMIS and SchoolTool that I can think of.

[alandickey41]

many thanks

[budgester]

I am working on building an Opensource ZIS at the moment.

 

Then I'll start looking at some clients for some of the software people use out there.

[penfold_99]

I am working on building an Opensource ZIS at the moment.

 

Then I'll start looking at some clients for some of the software people use out there.

 

have you seen Open Source Zone Integration Server (ZIS) - Zone Integration Terminal (ZIT)

[zag]

FreeMis doesn't look like its been updated in a while

[budgester]

have you seen Open Source Zone Integration Server (ZIS) - Zone Integration Terminal (ZIT)

 

Yup, and I have tried to sign up for an account.

 

There is no code available, there is some java stuff for the client, I also looked at the tinyzis by tom from the schooltool project but that looks like it has been abandoned.

 

I am finding my self writing all sorts of custom scripts to connect various applications in the school, which is what SIF/ZIS was supposed to do.

 

So I figured I'd write my own, it won't be a full implementation of SIF straight off but should get that way over time.

 

I'm developing it in PHP, prolly with a mysql back end for storage.

 

I use and am planning on writing agents for :

 

RM CC3

Serco CMIS

Eclipse.Net - Library

EasyTrace - Cashless Catering

Paxton NET2 - Door access.

 

So let me know what applications you want agents written for.

 

Code will be GPL'd looking at hosting it on Launchpad, or something similar.

[penfold_99]

@budgester

 

sound like so many other but good luck to you.

 

Good to hear you are developing in php and mysql, i would recommend using Cakephp as a framework. Cake can handle all the boring but necessary bits like security and email just to name a few things.

 

if you did go down the cakephp route i would be willing to contribute.

[MkII]

FreeMis doesn't look like its been updated in a while

Yeah - lack of assistance. The creator is a member here IIRC. I never did get around to formally interviewing him.

[dhicks]

Generally, can anyone flag up what they think the positives and negatives are with regard to open source development?

 

As is so often the case, Jeff Atwood sums it up quite nicly:

 

Coding Horror: Procrastination and the Bikeshed Effect

 

I would also add that someone, somewhere, has to pay for any open source application's development, either in time and effort or simply in money, in hiring other people to work on a project. Some open source business models rely on selling consultancy, but in my experience consultancy sucks as a way of developing software, either open source or otherwise. The best open source projects (think the Linux kernel, Mozilla, MySQL, Apache, OpenOffice) have salaried employees who's job it is to write that software, relying purely on volunteers gets you a rather assorted collection of expertise.

 

--

David Hicks

[Richard_Finnigan]

Dhicks is absolutely spot on !!

 

However there is an awful lot of small scale MIS development going on out there that fills the huge yawning gaps that exist in the products that can be bought from companies like Capita and Serco.

 

This work often withers on the branch once the key proffessional who has developed these add ons moves on and I do believe that there is a great deal of scope for sharing these projects on an open source basis, maybe a site like MIS WORK or MIS ADD ONS.

 

Thankfully because I work in the private sector I dont have to cope with information needs of central or local government so I certianly intend to share the small scale MIS system that I am developing for my school using Access, Eeeek Microsoft !!! lol well I'll be sharing all of the code and I'm deliberately keeping the server side technology to a minimum so that it can be made kosher by using MySQL. that's open source enough for me.

 

BTW there are some excellent consultants out there and the cost of consultantancy is going down but I strongly suspect that once the money stops then so do they. I doubt that they will work on a project just for the love of it.

[Deep_Throat]

BTW there are some excellent consultants out there and the cost of consultantancy is going down

 

I've been in the IT / Teaching game for over 30 years. I have never worked with or met a good consultant.

 

A consultant is a man who knows 101 ways to make love but doesn’t know any women.

[Richard_Finnigan]

Mmmm I worked with an excellent one this Monday, he was worth every penny that we paid him.

 

I have friends and family who do IT Consultancy work so I find such ignorant sweeping statements quite offensive.

 

These are people who are only as good as their last job and they depend on word of mouth recommendation and repeat business from clients who are under no obligation to re-employ them.

[Deep_Throat]

Mmmm I worked with an excellent one this Monday, he was worth every penny that we paid him.

 

I have friends and family who do IT Consultancy work so I find such ignorant sweeping statements quite offensive.

 

These are people who are only as good as their last job and they depend on word of mouth recommendation and repeat business from clients who are under no obligation to re-employ them.

 

I find consultants offensive. The majority of them are full of themselves, blissfully clueless, have no common sense, make stupid mistakes, try to use large words to sound impressive, don't listen, & don't really know anything about the business or company who are paying their over inflated wages.

 

I too have friends who are consultants, and they will agree with me.

[localzuk]

I find consultants offensive. The majority of them are full of themselves, blissfully clueless, have no common sense, make stupid mistakes, try to use large words to sound impressive, don't listen, & don't really know anything about the business or company who are paying their over inflated wages.

 

I too have friends who are consultants, and they will agree with me.

 

I'm thinking of moving into consultancy myself actually, in a few years. Simply because I feel that my knowledge and skills are better suited to helping those organisations without them.

[Richard_Finnigan]

DTs hostility towards consultants is actually quite common place and many permanant staff resent outsiders who are brought in to fix their problems and yes there are duff consultants who have queered the pitch for the good ones.

 

Somehow I think if you go down that road you'll be robust enough to cope with it

[russdev]

Problem with any opensource mis is keeping up with the ever changing targets that government set on mis systems.

 

So unless your it staff include a coder is it risky option as you can't say to government/la we not sending you the census as our system doesn't support it.

 

A opensource mis system will work only if some org takes its and hires fulltime developers and someone with the business knowledge to deal with the goverment side of things.

 

 

Russ

[SYNACK]

I have thought about this issue to as the government is always changing the targets of what they want hence the endless and usually needless upgrade cycles. If the govenment would put out their requirements in some kind of open XML type template that could be interpreted and processed by each different MIS this whole situation could be solved.

 

The MIS system would just need to understand the well defined XML format and could use it to generate any form of report that was required regardless of the back end system used. The problem is moving the onus of this task onto the govenment where it should be as they want the data.

 

Here in NZ the govenrment had to get involved in the MIS market and regulate it because the software was sooooo bad. They are also forcing minimal interoperability on the vendors but something like this would be game changing and lead to far superior software as it could be coded solidly to work with a single spec and not have each years different census requirements nailed onto it like ome kind of dodgey slum shack.

 

In my opinion MISs should have been coded like this to begin with, even if the vedor had to make their own templates but they seem to much preffer the constant revenue of their JIT (Just In Time) model of development.

[Richard_Finnigan]

Here in NZ the govenrment had to get involved in the MIS market and regulate it because the software was sooooo bad. They are also forcing minimal interoperability on the vendors but something like this would be game changing and lead to far superior software as it could be coded solidly to work with a single spec and not have each years different census requirements nailed onto it like ome kind of dodgey slum shack.

 

In my opinion MISs should have been coded like this to begin with, even if the vedor had to make their own templates but they seem to much preffer the constant revenue of their JIT (Just In Time) model of development.

 

I agree with the above and its interesting to note that the British MIS vendors are not calling for these clearly established open standards, the fact that they are able to keep up with the government's changing requirements does force a dependent relationship on the schools who are unable to do this without being tied into an expensive contract with one of these companies, they are financially benefitting from the Government's poor IT management.

 

Fortunately I work in the private sector so an in house solution is still possible for us.

 

When I did work with one of these companies I really resented having to attend an endless number of training courses in order to learn their badly designed proprietary software that involved learning skills that I could not use in another environment. It was just dead knowledge and I also felt that their system was difficult by design because the training courses were another source of income for them.

[sahmeepee]

I have thought about this issue to as the government is always changing the targets of what they want hence the endless and usually needless upgrade cycles. If the govenment would put out their requirements in some kind of open XML type template that could be interpreted and processed by each different MIS this whole situation could be solved.

 

To some extent, although the government do periodically change their minds about what is worth recording depending on the prevailing wind direction. As an example I heard that at one point they wanted to know if pupils had a parent in the military, presumably to check how moving around a lot affected their performance in school. The MIS would need to be altered to reflect the new requirement - it's not always simply a case of pulling out a different set of fields.

 

Here in NZ the govenrment had to get involved in the MIS market and regulate it because the software was sooooo bad. They are also forcing minimal interoperability on the vendors ...

 

They have had to do that here with the suppliers of clinical systems software for GPs. (Are GPs called GPs in NZ?) The market was similar to the MIS market in schools - 2 very large companies taking up ~90% of the market and then a long tail of smaller companies. The companies fought tooth and nail to escape interoperability requirements because it reduced their lock-in capability.

 

...its interesting to note that the British MIS vendors are not calling for these clearly established open standards, the fact that they are able to keep up with the government's changing requirements does force a dependent relationship on the schools who are unable to do this without being tied into an expensive contract with one of these companies, they are financially benefiting from the Government's poor IT management.

 

My cynical side suspects that the government's obsession with lining the pockets of private businesses meshes well with a system which is woefully inefficient and ultimately leaches money from the taxpayer into %MISVendor%'s bank account. If an open source system was to keep up with changing government requirements, there is one organisation very well placed to produce it: the Government! Unfortunately they aren't allowed to set something up which would compete with private industry (see also: BBC Jam), but that's a topic for another rant!

[Ric_]

Just stumbled across mention of ScholarPack on OpenSourceSchools.org.uk too.

[SYNACK]

To some extent, although the government do periodically change their minds about what is worth recording depending on the prevailing wind direction. As an example I heard that at one point they wanted to know if pupils had a parent in the military, presumably to check how moving around a lot affected their performance in school. The MIS would need to be altered to reflect the new requirement - it's not always simply a case of pulling out a different set of fields.

 

 

They have had to do that here with the suppliers of clinical systems software for GPs. (Are GPs called GPs in NZ?)

 

New data fields could be handled in the same way by listing the datatype, catagory and parent relationship. This could be interpreted and added to the datastructure no matter what back end was in use. The data entry portion could also take the required input boxes for the data, their titles and a heading to file them under from the schema document. This could be handled differently by each vendor as to how it looked but each entry chunk could still be displayed, even if it was on a GOVAdded tab until it was tidied up and put in a fixed location in the UI by the developers or the MIS manager.

 

Yes GPs are called GPs in NZ, what software did they use in the UK, ours all seem to use MedTech32 here which actually did seem to be a solid bit of software when I used it last (installed for a client at one point).

Edited March 7, 2009 by SYNACK

[Richard_Finnigan]

My cynical side suspects that the government's obsession with lining the pockets of private businesses meshes well with a system which is woefully inefficient and ultimately leaches money from the taxpayer into %MISVendor%'s bank account.

 

Yes I wouldn't discount the possibility of an unholy alliance through various informal contacts and arrangements, that would be very difficult to prove though, the genesis of a new conspiracy theory perhaps ??

[Richard_Finnigan]

Just stumbled across mention of ScholarPack on OpenSourceSchools.org.uk too.

 

Somehow I doubt that Capita and Serco are going to be even slightly worried about scholarpack, their website is full of blankpages and there is no content in the products section.

 

Its not ready yet.

[sahmeepee]

New data fields could be handled in the same way by listing the datatype, catagory and parent relationship. This could be interpreted and added to the datastructure no matter what back end was in use. The data entry portion could also take the required input boxes for the data, their titles and a heading to file them under from the schema document. This could be handled differently by each vendor as to how it looked but each entry chunk could still be displayed, even if it was on a GOVAdded tab until it was tidied up and put in a fixed location in the UI by the developers or the MIS manager.

 

Your common sense is not welcome here boy!

 

Yes GPs are called GPs in NZ, what software did they use in the UK, ours all seem to use MedTech32 here which actually did seem to be a solid bit of software when I used it last (installed for a client at one point).

 

At the time I was working in that area (6 or 7 years ago) I think they were Torex and EMIS (sp?). Not sure what they were like from a user's point of view as my knowledge of medicine ends at Alka Seltzer.