Becta - Requirements or recommendations

[Craggus2000]

Hi,

I know this is probably a ridiculous/novice question, but...

How much of the Becta guidelines are requirements that we as NMs have to adhere to/follow? or are they all recommendations that if we have other methods for doing things are perfectly acceptable?

Thanks

[GrumbleDook]

Are we talking FITS here or other requirements such as data protection?

 

If we are talking FITS then also consider that it is a framework (very important word) and that there will be things that you and your school pick and choose. It may be that the single point of contact is not in sync with how the school works ... instead you might have a number of ways for jobs to reach the team (meetings, calls to the office, emails ... all of which might be taken by a variety of different people) but usually logged in a single place.

 

You might not like the idea of take the call, hand over to the engineer ... you might want the person taking the call to spend more time finding a fix to resolve the problem.

 

Change management might purely consist of you deciding how things happen, or you being told ... these might work fine, but the approach of the CAB/CAG is pretty common, not just in IT either.

 

so ... it is basically a set of guidelines, based on existing principles and good practice.

 

Things like data protection are a tad trickier ... the guidance is based on the idea of "please follow this ... there are laws involved!" but leaving it open to each school to manage the risk. Some schools will have more problems than others so have to be that little bit more inflexible about data.

 

If we are talking about the technical and functional specifications for IT infrastructure ... it is not a shopping list. It is a set of criteria which will answer most of the requirements within the school, but it does need a bit of a refresh. If nothing else it gives a good base should you opt for particular technologies. The two specifications should not be used in isolation of each other either ...

 

HTH