The Fallen...

[Grommit]

Our Respect to our fallen Comrades....

 

Stoke

 

Press release: Stoke announces ICT preferred bidder

 

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has announced that Research Machines (RM) PLC is their preferred bidder for ICT in BSF. RM will design, implement and manage an ICT service supporting around 14,000 pupils in 24 schools, and will work with the council’s construction partner, who is yet to be announced.

 

Knowsley

 

Press release: ICT preferred bidder for Knowsley

 

Knowsley Council has appointed RM as ICT preferred bidder for their BSF scheme. RM will design, implement and deliver an ICT managed service to Knowsley’s seven Learning Centres

 

Leeds

 

Press release: Leeds announces ICT preferred bidder

 

Leeds City Council has appointed RM as the preferred ICT bidder for their Building Schools for the Future scheme. RM will initially provide ICT infrastructure to 14 schools and other ICT services to Education Leeds, which provides Leeds City Council’s frontline education service.

 

Manchester

 

Press release: Manchester announces ICT preferred bidder for BSF

 

Manchester City Council has announced that Ramesys is their preferred bidder for ICT in BSF. Ramesys will deliver a managed ICT service to schools in Manchester’s BSF programme

 

Solihull

 

Press release: Solihull announce preferred bidder for BSF ICT

 

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council have announced that the BAM PPP consortium is their preferred bidder for BSF. Working with RM, their ICT preferred bidder

 

Waltham Forest...

 

RM

 

Lambeth ...

 

RM

[john]

Spot a pattern yet

 

Glad to see Ramesys in there!

[Grommit]

Spot a pattern yet

 

Glad to see Ramesys in there!

 

Sorry

 

Waltham Forest should read RAMESYS

 

Newcastle

 

went LEA In-House ( believe)

[tosca925]

RM

 

God help them.

[steve]

The Leeds one is a bit strange.

 

Education Leeds ... is a unique partnership between Leeds City Council and Capita.

 

So the schools are managed by Capita, with RM supporting the IT.

 

 

Luckly I don't work in Leeds

[john]

I will cross Leeds off as a place to work instead now, Capita I could manage but not RM.

[Grommit]

RM

 

God help them.

 

One thing I don't understand..

 

The BSF and others state that the "new" ICT systems must be Non-Proprietary... and open..

 

yet they are now spending millions on RM systems ..like the CC3 which is Proprietary.. ??!

[GrumbleDook]

Is it confirmed that they are using CC3? I was under the impression that they weren't ... and even if they did they can say that CC3 is not propietary as you can still buy and use a number of other AD integrated solutions too ...

 

The difference between CC3, CSE, Classlink, Ranger ... and then something like Microsoft's Learning Network Manager or self-coded tools ... is that the first bunch *extend* the schema ... but do not remove anything, and the latter sit on top of the schema.

 

The AD schema still exists and can be editted ... you just might not be able to edit the extended sections.

 

Damn ... I'm defending RM again ... I'm off to see Russ ... he has twisted me to the dark side!

 

On a serious note ... does anyone know if any of the proposals by winning companies are public domain yet?

[john]

@Tony, don't worry I have the perfect cure for you, two tickets to a west end show in the new year That will solve it

[Grommit]

@Tony, don't worry I have the perfect cure for you, two tickets to a west end show in the new year That will solve it

 

It doesn't happen to be the new show in town.... "We are all stuffed because The BSF is giving our jobs to RM" ?

[john]

I suppose it could be though of as something similar, it contains globalisation and an evil ruler and some dudes that want to break free from it. Hey the more I think about it the more its BSF set to Music!

[beeswax]

is there anywhere we can see the full list?

[Dos_Box]

Some wil be excellent, some will be good, and some will be abysmal. Unfortunately we will only find out is a few years which is which. I blame the 2 in 5 schools (IMHO) whos ICT was p**s poor for brining this on. For every 5 schools rolled up into a BSF project 3 had good to excellent ICT setups ad 2 had not bothered to do anything, a failure of either senior manglement of poor network management or just apethy. It is because of these 2 schools that the othere will proberbly lose the facilities they currently enjoy and will have to pay extra to get them back in the future due to the contracts only providing a 'base level' of service.

[GrumbleDook]

I suppose it could be though of as something similar, it contains globalisation and an evil ruler and some dudes that want to break free from it. Hey the more I think about it the more its BSF set to Music!

 

Does that maker Gazza, Scary Bush and the Bohemaians all members of schoolforge then?

[Guest richard]

I was thinking of looking up around Stoke for a job as I'm from there orginally but don't think I will now

[petectid]

Some wil be excellent, some will be good, and some will be abysmal. Unfortunately we will only find out is a few years which is which. I blame the 2 in 5 schools (IMHO) whos ICT was p**s poor for brining this on. For every 5 schools rolled up into a BSF project 3 had good to excellent ICT setups ad 2 had not bothered to do anything, a failure of either senior manglement of poor network management or just apethy. It is because of these 2 schools that the othere will proberbly lose the facilities they currently enjoy and will have to pay extra to get them back in the future due to the contracts only providing a 'base level' of service.

 

Dos_Box I know you work for the LEA up here but were do you get your figures from. I'm not disputing them yet but I am interested in your sources.

[GrumbleDook]

nonononono .... DB doesn't work for an LEA ... he works for us ;-), you must be thinking of someone else with a similar name (shhhhh .... people are watching, you know)

 

Those figures have been mentioned a few times to me, and have been part of talks by Becta, DfES and companies bidding for BSF. I suppose they come from the ICT audits that are done in the various regions and used in comarison with things like the PANDA and PAT ... seeing if there is a link between the amount of equipment and whether it has had any impact. Obviously OFSTED have had an input into this bit too ... so trying to pin it down to just one organisation making the judgement is difficult.

[john]

I suppose it could be though of as something similar, it contains globalisation and an evil ruler and some dudes that want to break free from it. Hey the more I think about it the more its BSF set to Music!

 

Does that maker Gazza, Scary Bush and the Bohemaians all members of schoolforge then?

Yup, sure does hehehe Its got some good links to BSF though aint it It was an excellent weekend though, shame it seems so long ago Never mind roll on next years birthday celebrations

[CyberNerd]

The BSF and others state that the "new" ICT systems must be Non-Proprietary... and open..

 

Who said this? All I can see is the Becta Tech Specification that specifies things in terms of open standards. On the face of it it is open but it does not preclude proprietry software and many bits looks like they were written as a way of including to include many MS products. eg word processing documents *must* be saved as ODF *or* txt - doesn't preclude MSOffice, but of course nobody will actually save word processing docs as .txt

 

and even if they did they can say that CC3 is not propietary as you can still buy and use a number of other AD integrated solutions too ...

They could say that, but it would be utter rubbish.

I can buy lots of things to integrate to windows but that doesn't mean windows is non-proprietry. Anyway I think this is slightly beyond the point because BSF doesn't preclude non-propriety, in many ways it encourages it -eg the early day motion (now signed by 67 MP's!) only large companies are allowed to bid and most of the bidders are MS partner companies (probably MS MoU precludes them from OSS - seems to anyway).

 

As for Contractual documents, These are Public Domain after the bid is won as it is public money. Probably available on the counties website but certainly available by Freedom of Information search.

[CyberNerd]

ooh. my 1000 post

[Grommit]

The BSF and others state that the "new" ICT systems must be Non-Proprietary... and open..

 

Who said this? All I can see is the Becta Tech Specification that specifies things in terms of open standards. On the face of it it is open but it does not preclude proprietry software and many bits looks like they were written as a way of including to include many MS products. eg word processing documents *must* be saved as ODF *or* txt - doesn't preclude MSOffice, but of course nobody will actually save word processing docs as .txt

 

and even if they did they can say that CC3 is not propietary as you can still buy and use a number of other AD integrated solutions too ...

They could say that, but it would be utter rubbish.

I can buy lots of things to integrate to windows but that doesn't mean windows is non-proprietry. Anyway I think this is slightly beyond the point because BSF doesn't preclude non-propriety, in many ways it encourages it -eg the early day motion (now signed by 67 MP's!) only large companies are allowed to bid and most of the bidders are MS partner companies (probably MS MoU precludes them from OSS - seems to anyway).

 

As for Contractual documents, These are Public Domain after the bid is won as it is public money. Probably available on the counties website but certainly available by Freedom of Information search.

 

What Scares the crap out of me tho is...

 

80% of the Contracts awarded so far are for RM...so therfore RM will be taking over the IT of English Schools... as well as the KS3 Testing...

 

God help us all..

 

The last government IT thinktank apifiny was the NHS CFH IT Contract .. and look at how that disaster is turning out ...

[webman]

Government IT projects: Over-budget, never on time, and never works properly.

 

Their ID card scheme (and the NHS NPfIT, amongst other "systems") were/are both disasters, what will make this any different?

[Dos_Box]

Some wil be excellent, some will be good, and some will be abysmal. Unfortunately we will only find out is a few years which is which. I blame the 2 in 5 schools (IMHO) whos ICT was p**s poor for brining this on. For every 5 schools rolled up into a BSF project 3 had good to excellent ICT setups ad 2 had not bothered to do anything, a failure of either senior manglement of poor network management or just apethy. It is because of these 2 schools that the othere will proberbly lose the facilities they currently enjoy and will have to pay extra to get them back in the future due to the contracts only providing a 'base level' of service.

 

Dos_Box I know you work for the LEA up here but were do you get your figures from. I'm not disputing them yet but I am interested in your sources.

 

This is from personal experience when I am called out to visit schools who are having 'problems'. The majority of schools are good to excelent, however the 2 out of 5 are the school sthat you never get to hear from (usually they have their heads in the sand) and we only fin dout about them when they contact us to complain that a piece new of educational software is not NT 4.0 or Win 98 compatable. They are out there, and in large numbers.

[broc]

Government IT projects: Over-budget, never on time, and never works properly.

 

To make things worse, many (most?) of these Govt IT projects were undertaken by govt departments who had already been outsourced and so lacked IT skills & knowledge, so they had to bring in consultants to advise them.

 

Where are schools going to get their advice & guidance from after managed services take over? Will they be able to afford 'consultants' rates from their managed service providers I wonder?

 

My role in school today is part Network Manager, part IT Architect and part IT Consultant, as I suspect many other school NMs are too. My school gets all three roles done for the price of one. They certainly won't get this from a managed service, as the architect & consultant roles will be premium priced optional extras. This is precisely where the managed services comapnies will aim to make their money from schools. You can't make much profit out of shipping 'tin' and providing low-level technical support onsite these days.

[Grommit]

Newham has fallen to RM

 

RM appointed preferred bidder for £20 million Newham LEA educational

 

RM will equip approximately 140 classrooms with interactive whole-class teaching environments comprising interactive whiteboards, the Kaleidos VTLE (virtual teaching and learning environment) and a range of interactive learning content from RM and other educational software publishers. Teachers will be provided with Tablet PCs for planning and lesson delivery, with teaching assistants and more than 4,000 pupils receiving notebook computers. Underpinning the whole-class teaching environments will be Community Connect 3 networks with wireless capabilities in each school, combined with an authority-wide portal based on Microsoft SharePoint Portal server.

 

Warwickshire is RM

 

Dudley is RM