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The MoE in NZ have negotiated the renewal of the Microsoft agreement for another two years from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2012. They have also announced the renewal of anti virus licensing for schools however have changed the product from CA Integrated Threat Managment to Symantec’s End Point Protection (SEP) antivirus. This is great news for schools that no longer face loosing half of their IT budgets (subject to school) on software subscriptions. I am not sure about the switch to the Symantec product as in the near past it has been a bit of an underperformer but I have heard good things about their new AV core so am hopeing for the best. TKI - The ICT Helpdesk - About the ICT Helpdesk I'm not sure exactly when the news was posted as my checks of the site had become less frequent given that this is the first update in two years

This post is just an overview of what is avalible from the MoE to New zealand schools at the moment, if anyone finds any more please do add them to this thread. As I have come across schools that were still running Office XP and paying for certain software titles as they had no idea that they were entitled free stuff I thought this thread might be a good idea: As to what is avalible, the MOE offeres: Free core Microsoft Software including Office, Windows, Encarta, Visual Studio which must be appyed for each year by filling in a form with the number of computers and sending it off to datacom. This gives you direct access to the MVLS portal so that you can download the required software as it comes out and you also get Software Assurance along with CDs posted out too. (http://www.tki.org.nz/r/ict/helpdesk/ms_faq_e.php) Reduced cost Microsoft server software including ISA $380, Server Standard $85 etc. This is purchased yearly through Datacom along with the subscription to the other stuff. (http://www.dsv.co.nz/moe/) Free antivirus and antimalware from CA in the form of CA ITM (http://www.av4schools.co.nz/) which is sent out once appied for and works on Windows, Linux, Mac. Subsidised filtered internet access from either Telecom Schoolzone or Watchdog - ick to both but they are better than nothing, if substantially more expencive. They used to offer free liscences to surfcontrol filter and antispam but have stopped providing this to new schools and have not payed for any upgrades (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/educationSectors/Schools/Initiatives/ICTInSchools/ICTInitiativesAndProgrammes/ManagedInternetServicesSolutionsForSchools.aspx) There is also a deal for Macs offered from the MoE which provides the latest version of Mac OS, iWork, iLife and Kidpix (http://www.red.co.nz/moesoftware) which is again free to schools to sign up to. They used to provide Office for Mac but have moved over to iWork. Additionally there is the Laptops for teachers scheme which allos schools to lease subsidised laptops for each employed teacher in the school (hp, Toshiba or Mac) (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/educationSectors/Schools/Initiatives/ICTInSchools/ICTInitiativesAndProgrammes/LaptopsForTeachers.aspx) Laptops for principals, in which the principal is given a free lease laptop (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/educationSectors/Schools/Initiatives/ICTInSchools/ICTInitiativesAndProgrammes/LaptopsForPrincipals.aspx) And projectors for classrooms which offers subsidised projectors (http://www.minedu.govt.nz/educationSectors/Schools/Initiatives/ICTInSchools/ICTInitiativesAndProgrammes/ProjectorsForClassrooms.aspx)

I have been reasonably quiet about this but I thought I should post it for informative purposes. The NZ MoE has in their limitless stupidity decided to take all the schools pay rolls stuff off the NZ company that was managing it fine and invested millions and years in some dirty cloud application built by a dodgey Australian company that even the Australian's won't use. I imagine that several of the MoE people ended up with new golf clubs or cars to make that happen. At any rate after four to five years of development and a trial run where they admitted to not listening to any of the feedback they launched it. After several months of it actually running their 'software' is still managing to pay people in lots of minutes instead of hours, ie. 7 minutes a day or days instead of hours. This epic mess up is spectacular from a software point of view in that they must have actually written people's jobs into the software in order to stuff up this badly. There are situations where reliving teachers are being paied $10k for a days work and cleaners are being paid $3.50 for a week. That is if they pay them at all, each week there can be 20% or more of the staff of each and every school that is paid wrongly or not at all. Couple this with hour wait times to call their support desk to get things sorted and their habit of storing things like sick leave in two separate places. Problem reports that get sent from CMS to CMS to the point that you get up to five different case numbers which is the only information they provide as to what it is in relation to. They also continuously loose or simply don't read email and will reply to an email (with the documents still attached) requesting those same documents. Finding a single fault with those documents, printing them out and posting them back six weeks later with a post-it note on it requesting a slightly different number. It is stunningly epicly bad and out idiot government is stuck in a ten year contract with these dropkicks. They have been largely panned in the NZ media but I think they actually need to be shamed in the international media to actually do something, this farce has been on going for more than three months. The system at fault is http://www.novopay.govt.nz/default.aspx The idiots who made it are Talent2 Global Here are some of the stories about it's fail: No-pay Novopay has to front up » The Gisborne Herald | Gisborne's latest News, Sport, Family Notices, Photos and Events Novopay: No compensation, more errors - National - NZ Herald News Talent2 blames Novopay Teacher Pay Problems On Teething... | Stuff.co.nz Novopay | The National Business Review Anyone not in NZ count yourselves lucky that your pay is not tied up in this system and that you don't have to try and sweep up the pieces after the weekly cataclysm.

Bit of backstory here, the NZ Ministry of Education (MoE) is looking into SSO for MoE resources as currently there is absolutly no unified structure meaning that the average principal requires around eight different usernames and passwords to access the basic set of online services. As you can imagine this amount of passwords with heavy password requirements takes quite a toll on the usability of the systems and to their credit they are looking at ways to improve. At the moment their plans (which are not set in stone) are to work with Google Apps or Live@Edu to get a SAML2.0 compatible identity service avalible for those schools that have it. This should mean a single logon for many MoE sites. The issue is that due to limited funds only one may be developed therby either forcing schools to a single provider to get SSO or isolating them if they want or need to use a different system. My view is that instead of forcing all schools onto a cloud based service that each school should have the option to federate directly from their own servers to the MoE ones if they choose. At first I was looking at AD Federation Services for the Windows side but apparently this does not work quite right with their existing SAML2.0 based services and they don't want to alter them. I have looked around and found a couple of promising opensource candidates that will interface with LDAP and provide compliant SAML federation. My questions are: Has anyone used Identity Federation in their schools/environments? Has anyone found or used any opensource Federation providers on Windows, Linux or OSX? Does any other country or provider offer such a federation service at the moment? Do you think that I am on the right track or should I just submit to the cloud? Any feedback would be appreciated.