Tory government not backing BSF?

[srochford]

Yeah, sorry, back on topic.

Hopefully this will mean the end of the managed service centralised IT part of BSF.

 

I'd love to think you're right but the talk of "efficiency" suggests you're not. the current school model of IT is wildly inefficient - it has too many people paid too much money doing too little (and yes, I am playing devil's advocate!)

 

Do you really need a network manager in every school? Why not one per LEA? You do need bodies in the school to put new machines on desks, unjam printers, reimage machines etc but all these are low skill (= low pay)

 

If you're looking for efficiency savings then the first thing you target is people - they are the big cost. I read on here recently some criticism of a BSF project which was insisting on having (I think) 10% of hardware just kept in store as spares. Sounds daft but having a spare computer which an unskilled person can put on a desk to replace a faulty machine is far cheaper than having a skilled technician to diagnose the fault and fix it - you just ship off the machine to your central place and they fix it.

 

It's not good but it's what I think is coming.

[teejay]

I'd love to think you're right but the talk of "efficiency" suggests you're not. the current school model of IT is wildly inefficient - it has too many people paid too much money doing too little (and yes, I am playing devil's advocate!)

 

Do you really need a network manager in every school? Why not one per LEA? You do need bodies in the school to put new machines on desks, unjam printers, reimage machines etc but all these are low skill (= low pay)

 

If you're looking for efficiency savings then the first thing you target is people - they are the big cost. I read on here recently some criticism of a BSF project which was insisting on having (I think) 10% of hardware just kept in store as spares. Sounds daft but having a spare computer which an unskilled person can put on a desk to replace a faulty machine is far cheaper than having a skilled technician to diagnose the fault and fix it - you just ship off the machine to your central place and they fix it.

 

It's not good but it's what I think is coming.

 

Well if that's the case, why is it that the costs mooted for the managed service part of the BSF would cost our school nearly £100k more per year on the base contract? You also have to add on top of that any change orders, which if our PFI contract is anything to go by will add a substantial amount on top of that, plus the cost of any hardware, which will be higher than what we currently spend.