I have become increasingly interested in what can only be described as the Windows XP effect. My previous two posts focussed on the idea that XP is, in the user's mind, the end of the upgrade journey and that even mighty Microsoft is struggling to budge them away from XP onto bigger and 'better' things.

I assert, and would expect little dissention, that change away from XP (voluntary change that is) wherein most users reside deep in their comfort zone, would need a really powerful driver. For arch conservative schools and public sector workplaces it will have to be a very good reason indeed.

This driving force will come from the Open Source community for one simple reason and that is here we find diversity. The winning strategy is lurking in the open source primordial soup waiting to reproduce rapidly and burst onto the scene we just don't know which it is yet. Corporate proprietary software programs, despite having access to huge talents and huge budgets, have 'strategic visions' and 'road-maps'. In short they plan and they fund accordingly; for them diversity is expensive, wasteful and often futile.

The Open Source community by virtue of its very core being has no plan!

Individual projects within the pantheon of Open Source software do of course have a plan. The OpenOffice project knows where it is going (for a while at least) as does, I presume, MySQL and even Java (is it Open Source now or not? I lose track). I have admittedly been a little disingenuous with my choices as all three above have one rather vast corporation in the background. Enterprise-level Open Source operating systems also have a plan just like any large corporate product, Novell's Suse and Red Hat Enterprise being obvious examples.

However, non-enterprise Open Source projects number in their thousands and reflect the interests and passions of their developer or group of developers. Projects start in one direction and may fork in another. Some die out others flourish. Taken in the round though no statement can be made about their 'direction'.

The above brings me to the point of this article, and that point the great corporation known as Google. Google has, as is well known, always fished in the Open Source pond. They have it seems followed a natural selection model assiduously. They feed the fish randomly it seems using their vast wealth and then select promising and sometimes unexpected products. As a result they now have a suite of very impressive online and offline applications the latest is the Open Source application, the browser called Chrome.

Google's Chrome Plated Genius

As discussed above, a driver for change will have to be found to wean off the XP users who after all are in the vast majority of computer users.

If it were to be a new computer to bring about change, this machine most manufacturers seem to agree, would be nicer looking, quieter, less power hungry, and a lot faster at everything than the machines they are asking the consumer to replace. I happen to think that the latter point is very significant and that Open Source software has the means to speed up computing. The basket of changes above may be enough to encourage users to move from XP and their old desktops but Google has had a better idea.

Chrome is a very fast browser as I suppose most readers know full well by now. Fast is obvious and desirable and a good enough reason to slip Chrome onto your Windows desktop, it only takes a few seconds. Don't be afraid.

But the real cleverness follows.

Chrome allows you to create menu icons for online applications which look and behave like regular apps, no sign of the browser shell. It is better to think of Chrome as a shell OS. Install Chrome on your user-comfort zone XP computer and let it take over. With a decent Internet connection you'll soon be using a faster machine that is really an Open Source computer sitting on top of a slave OS. Google have borrowed from biology again this time it's looking at the parasite strategy.

This parasite is smart too. Chrome helpfully tells Google (in confidence of course) what kind of things you like so it can be improved and because it is Open Source anyone can help improve it too. This is truly new. Chrome will rapidly evolve and adapt to its user, hosted by an increasing vestigial operating system. That is really clever, maybe I should have called the post 'Chrome eats Windows'. Chrome will put a shiny hard coat on rusting mild steel Windows, one day all that will be left is the coat.

As a strategy for change this I think is breathtaking. What then is left for Linux (or Mac) , does the same fate await Linux on the desktop? I think so, at least for the big beasts, all the computer will want is an ultra light, ultra fast operating system with a few choice offline applications that can sync with online when needed to. Maybe this is what happened to the dinosaurs.

This post is prompted by some outstandingly depressing UK statistics:

The summer 2008 will see  fewer candidates taking GCE Computing than even the previous year's low, approximately 5000 out of the total of 800,000 GCE's, of which barely 600 are female; secondly the drop out rate for Computer Science at University is  now the highest of all subjects at over 10% and to top it all our projected industry demand for IT professionals is estimated at a massive 150,000. If all our computing GCE students went to university to do computing they would amount to under 2% of demand.

How on earth do we find ourselves in this position? To set the scene before we look at what actually happens in schools I will remind you that some months ago I predicted Linux will dominate school desktops in 5 years through low cost personal computers. Since then HP and Dell have lined up their own Open Source offerings in this sector so it may be a lot quicker than I first thought. There will be an accompanying growth in demand for Open Source engineering services. If we are to meet this demand for new engineers able to work with Linux then the statistics are even more worrying.

The Rise and Rise of ICT

A survey of school IT qualifications provides the clue. There are today a plethora of examinations relating to using computers in schools. The majority, the overwhelming majority, are ICT qualifications: this is to say qualifications in Information and Communication Technology, a title that needs a little exemplification...

ICT qualifications are offered by various QCA approved awarding bodies: AQA, EdExcel, OCR, E-Skills, ECDL, BCS and INGOTS to name most but not all. The qualifications themselves subdivide into categories: Key Skills, GCSE, GCE (AS A2), GNVQ, CLAIT (cert and diploma), BTec, HND and of course the new Diplomas which are due to replace a lot of them. We are not quite finished with categories; all of the above are divided and united into 'Levels'. Thus CLAIT operates at Level 1 through to Level 3, Key Skills are Level 3, INGOTS Levels 1-2, GNVQs Levels 1-4 and so on. AS and A2 GCE's are levels 3,4.  Many have proxy transferable Levels between categories. Confused? I hope so, most teachers are. In any case whatever qualification you get, ICT means 'Office' skills, lots of coursework (mostly institutionalized cheating) with a bit of other social stuff added in.

There are scores of intersecting ICT courses barely differentiable from each other, the vast majority date from 2000 (floppy drives anyone?), all talk about social impact of ICT, none know about social networking; all instruct about copyright, none mention patent issues or intellectual freedom; none except INGOTS know about open standards. It's not all doom and gloom though. Buried deep in the OCR course list is a nugget or two. Did you know that the OCR GNVQ course iPro is a gem or that one of the new ICT Diplomas has a great Sys Admin Level 3 course? I thought not. It's all too complicated. ICT qualifications are manifold because IT literacy is seen as an imperative and awarding bodies make lots of money from qualifications.

What does ICT really mean?

ICT courses mean proficiency in presentation, word processing, e-mail and spreadsheets. Ho Ho, I should have said, MS Power Point, MS Word, MS Outlook, MS Publisher and MS Excel. Actually, unlike a few years ago, no publicly examined course today dare explicitly require a single proprietary package for its qualification (except CLAIT which has no such qualms),  but when reality on the ground is taken into account, an ICT qualification in UK schools really means proficiency in MS Office. Nice work Bill, how did this happen and what are the consequences?

The infamous MOU

The great change happened in 1997 when the newly elected Labour Government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Microsoft for ICT in schools. The MOU still exists but Becta is less than happy with it nowadays as I have referred to in previous posts. I can still see a happy smiling Prime Minister and the CEO of Microsoft beaming the good news through my television screen (I no longer own a television just in case). Almost overnight on a wave of funds and 'advantageous' educational licencing, ICT replaced IT in schools. No ICT course has a programming or a systems module, instead students are taught to be mere consumers of technology, and operators of applications. Complex fragile networks in schools also mean that students are locked out of the system and potentially invasive coding activities are deprecated. Thus in barely one school generation ICT wiped out computing.

If you think I am over egging the pudding, here is a timely reminder courtesy of Labour's David Lammy MP at a launch of a new 'literacy in IT'  Government initiative this week. The answer to bridging the  divide for the estimated 17 million digitally excluded from ICT is ...Microsoft's Digital Literacy Curriculum !  Yes thanks to  a $ 12 million donation from Bill those non-Microsoft users missed out by UK Gov-MS plc will at last get their chance to join the fold.

Ways Forward

Most computer engineers I know are self-taught. You will commonly hear mention of Atari, Commodore, BBC Micro, even Win 95 as platforms on which they cut their teeth. I have yet to hear of XP/Vista script kiddies. Coding and engineering requires open systems (you knew this was coming), the legendary taking the clock apart as an indication of nascent techno behaviour would not have happened if we started with quartz mechanisms; you simply can't get under the bonnet (hood). The same applies to modern appliance like computers you are not encouraged to find out what makes them tick. Open Source software gives us the tools to play with the clock again. Here is my recipe for the success of computing in our schools.

1. Move ICT courses out of the Level system of the curriculum. The accrediting and examining QA processes just freeze content. ICT is not like chemistry, it changes uniquely and continually and has no core knowledge. ICT courses should live or die according to their usefulness and should not be promoted by the state.
2. Increase the availability of computing courses at all Levels within the system. Engineering principles have a much longer shelf life and make very good qualifications as it happens.
3. Becta should do as did Newham Council last week and drop  MS's MOU

In summary for as long as school computing amounts to little more than how to use MS Office, our technological base will continue to erode. We cannot hope to compete in the modern world by relying on a few, intelligent self-motivated and self-taught individuals to escape the education system. As a first step in liberating the next generation why don't we give them a tweaked copy of Ubuntu's excellent live Linux distro. On it with all the other usual goodies will be the developer environments for Python, Ruby, Java, Gambas. Go kids, reboot those closed boxes from your live CD and learn about freedom. At least then we may have someone homegrown to recruit in the future.

John Spencer talks to Dr Stephen Lucey, who having joined Becta in 2000 is now their Executive Director (Strategic Technologies). Becta is the Governmental organisation which has oversight of all things ICT in UK schools. Specifically, apart from being a general advocate for ICT in schools, it is charged with providing strategic leadership, technical direction and advice on obtaining best value. Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the OFT then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007. Becta has consistently maintained an interest and a monitoring brief on the progress of Open Source software in education and this interview explores some of their current thinking.

JS: With regard to Becta's recent advice to schools referred to in the introduction, do you think that a respite from the upgrade cycle will cause more schools to consider FOSS as an alternative?

SL: Well the key message in our advice to schools, colleges and other FE providers in relation to Vista and Office 2007, based on extensive research, was that there were no “must have” benefits to compensate for the considerable costs of upgrading. The days of educational institutions just “chasing” the latest release of a product are hopefully, long gone. ICT investments must be based on an assessment of how they will help the institution deliver its educational vision in a cost effective and sustainable way. So I hope our advice will encourage more institutions to think carefully about their ICT spending priorities, and examine the full range of choices that are available to them. Will this help Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)? Debatable - some educational institutions have an attachment to the philosophy underpinning FOSS, and will adopt it for those reasons. However most institutions do not purchase ICT solutions on the basis of a software development methodology, but on the basis of what best meets their needs. So the major opportunity for FOSS will be via solution providers who can integrate them into an offering which is seen as an overall solution.

JS: To what extent do you feel that modern school ICT reflects vendor-driven change rather than a needs-driven agenda?

SL: I think this is less true nowadays than it was in the past. Educational institutions are developing a more critical understanding of their needs. The move to functional specifications as the mechanism for defining requirements either in Becta’s Frameworks or in BSF procurements is really helping this process. This approach requires the institution to think much more carefully about what it is procuring than would have been the case otherwise. Additionally we have established a Consultancy Framework Agreement. Through this educational institutions and Local Authorities can get access to high calibre advice on how best to frame their requirements. This helps ensure that their ICT systems support their educational vision, and are not unduly driven by what the vendor wants to sell. The best vendors in the marketplace really understand that their interests are best served by providing solutions that positively impact on the institution's needs as opposed to those which are just easy to sell.

JS: It would seem self-evident that FOSS should be very beneficial to schools with regard to value for money, and indeed one of your reports a few years ago confirmed this potential. To date however FOSS has made only modest inroads into the education sector. What do you think is the main reason for this?

SL: I have no doubt about the increasing potential of FOSS. However I think one of the critical limiting issues is that we do not have accurate data on the extent of use of FOSS based products and services so we are not really sure of how and where they are being effectively used. If we are to increase competition and choice in the marketplace we need to understand where products and services are being used successfully and where they are not. So for example we need better data that lets us understand the FOSS uptake as the desktop operating system, as desktop applications, on school based servers, in internet and email connectivity etc. For each of those segments we need to know what is being done, what the ICT supply side is considering and what Becta needs to do to help that competitive opportunity develop. We have some interesting ideas here and hope to develop a significant debate with the sector later this year.

Also, the regulatory framework needs to be right. At the licensing level, we need to address situations where the marketplace is foreclosed to FOSS, and at the interoperability level we need to make sure that there is a true level playing field. We have been able to address some of these challenges via discussion with the supply side directly, and reach an agreed way forward. In other cases, we have had to call on the competition authorities. So a range of issues to address, but real progress is being made.

JS: Do you think that the differences between FOSS and proprietary software are understood by school buyers, or indeed do you think that this matters in any way at all?

SL: No I do not think such differences are well understood by schools, nor for the most part do I think they need to be. The point at which they do need to be understood is at the point where the school’s statement of requirements is being turned into a technical solution.

For example, when planning new ICT provision, an educational institution might have a requirement that says it wants to assist in reducing the digital divide by being able to legally provide copies of the office productivity software it uses to pupils and parents for no additional cost. When the ICT supply side comes to offer solutions to this requirement it needs to understand that this request is more likely to be met by FOSS software than by a proprietary offering and reflect this in their proposal back to the institution.

JS: Since you joined Becta, its main achievement surely must have been to bring order to the ICT procurement chaos that previously existed in schools. This was achieved in great part by the introduction of the Procurement Frameworks. Would you agree with that statement and do you feel now that there is a danger that domination by a few major suppliers will stifle innovation which invariably comes from smaller companies?

SL: We have made good progress in recent years but we have further to go. Framework agreements underpinned by effective functional and technical standards are a major part of our work. They are also a key tool in helping ensure an effective marketplace that works to the advantage of all educational institutions and ultimately of learners. We review our functional and technical standards annually to ensure they are current and reflect the changes taking place in a fast moving environment and make best use of available open standards. We also need to ensure that our Frameworks identify suppliers who satisfy our defined service standards and are able to provide compliant solutions rather than then just being a list of approved products.

We also review each of our frameworks regularly to ensure that they meet the needs of their users and offer value for money. The UK has one of, if not the most vibrant and dynamic educational ICT marketplaces in the world, so I think that domination by a single supplier or a small group of suppliers is increasingly unlikely.

All our procurements are conducted in strict accordance with EU regulations with all the attendant openness and guarantees of equitable treatment to all bidders. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get accused of being secretive. In fact, we have a website dedicated to explaining how our Frameworks operate and we are more than happy to answer questions put to us.

On the issue of innovation, I do not really think one can automatically argue that innovation “invariably” comes from smaller companies. For example, the Asus PC is an example of an innovative product within education – Asus had a reported turnover in 2007 of $6.9 billion! Now that is not to say we do not value small companies – we do. Latest figures indicate that SMEs form about 99% of UK companies so they are a very important part of the economy and the ICT in education marketplace. This is reflected by the fact that SMEs form a high proportion of the companies on our Frameworks. In some Frameworks this proportion would be as high as 70%, and overall SMEs make up over 60% of the companies on our Frameworks. But Frameworks are not the only mechanism we can use to ensure effective competition and help SMEs operate in the sector. Ensuring effective interoperability is another important tool. So for example when we published our MIS and Value for Money report in 2005 we were clear that improved interoperability arrangements were crucial. We identified SIF, tailored to UK needs as the most likely way forward. Now encouragingly we were able to bring together a community of interest which was wide ranging, involving the dominant supplier, to agree a way forward on SIF that is acceptable. So in that instance we did not need to seek the intervention of the competition regulator.

Unfortunately that was not the case with document interoperability in the office productivity space, where despite considerable efforts, interoperability arrangements remain unacceptable. So in October 2007 when it became clear we were not making progress we moved to refer the issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading as part of a formal complaint. In January 2008 the European Commission launched its own investigation into this issue, covering similar ground, and we have now intervened directly with the Commission to ensure that the interoperability matters we had initially referred to the OFT (including implications for the digital divide and mitigating against effective Home School links), are now addressed by the Commission's new investigation. But intervention via the competition authorities is not our preferred approach. Ideally we want to work in partnership with the industry and we are doing so in a range of ways. We welcome the recent formation of SALTIS (Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools) and look forward to working with them.

JS: Open source companies often complain long and loud about being shut out from the frameworks. Do you think they have some justification or do you feel frustration when you hear this and tend to feel that in fact with regard to trading with schools, Open Source companies can be their own worst enemies?

SL: Well I’m not sure I would go as far as frustration, but it’s obviously a disappointment when any category of potential suppliers feels that they are not able to compete effectively in the marketplace. Becta’s ambition is a vibrant and competitive marketplace that is providing high quality, innovative products and services that all learning providers value, can afford and can depend upon. At every layer of our National Digital Infrastructure (institutional infrastructure and home access, connectivity, data services and learning services) OSS solutions have a role to play and I am keen that they play it. Indeed if the general ICT marketplace is anything to go by it will be an increasing role. So to the extent that Open Source companies want to compete, and Becta wants to promote competition, we have a shared agenda. Now I know you might not think that’s the case judging from some of the (not entirely accurate) blogging out there but I want to get beyond that level of debate. I want an ongoing professional and constructive dialogue with the open source community helping us to understand the issues and where possible put in place appropriate actions. This should help make OSS products and related services a more compelling offering for educational institutions. And that helps competition. I believe that our frameworks do allow such competition, but it’s not really what I think that counts, it’s what suppliers that want to compete think. So we are having a careful look at our arrangements, talking to key users of our Frameworks like BSF. We will also be developing our dialogue with the wider industry and the OSS community about the uptake of OSS, looking to see how we can improve the overall competitive climate.

JS: I know you are keen that more use of technology is made by teachers and students. Do you think that the emergence of the ultra-low cost notebooks such as RM's minibook and the Elonex One will help drive up the use of ICT?

SL: Yes I think that they have certainly a role to play in improving access and addressing digital divide issues. These devices have really captured the interest of the wider consumer market, not just the educational market and I expect to see further innovation in that space sooner rather than later. They bring together an interesting combination of a new form factor - a Linux based operating system, OpenOffice.org as the productivity suite and at an attractive price point. They are therefore likely to ensure more users experience an open source product that just “does what it says on the tin” and from a competition perspective that is good news.

But they also reinforce the importance of the issues we have referred to the competition regulator. This relates to circumstances where schools using Microsoft’s School Agreement licensing model, are required to pay Microsoft licensing fees for computers based on Linux, or using OpenOffice.org. Finding ourselves in a position whereby a school pays (say) £169 for a device only to be faced with for example a £30 per year after year payment to Microsoft, for a system that is not running any of their software would just not be acceptable to Becta. Indeed I don’t think many people would consider that fair.

So whilst a number of suppliers are innovating and bringing new OSS based products to the marketplace, Becta must act decisively to ensure that neither they nor schools are disadvantaged by restrictive licensing agreements imposed by a dominant player.

JS: Looking to the future once again, schools have a target of being carbon neutral by 2016. Given the complexity and power of modern school ICT systems how is Becta helping them to achieve this target?

SL: DCSF has set a target that all new school build should be carbon neutral by 2016, with the added intention that by 2020 all schools will be ‘sustainable schools’. Clearly the greater use of technology and the introduction of longer school days have the potential to raise energy consumption just at the time when we are trying to reduce them. So Becta in conjunction with its partners intends to help in a number of ways.

Firstly by working to increase the extent to which energy compliant products are procured and used by educational institutions. Secondly we will work to ensure that the energy efficient features of existing products are effectively used. We will also help with advice on how to use technology to help educational institutions reduce their environmental impact. Lastly but by no means least we will help institutions ensure that they reduce their use of IT related consumables.

We are becoming more active in this area and have useful guidance for schools online. At BETT this year we had a seminar on ICT and Environmental Sustainability and yes before you ask – it can be downloaded in Open Document Presentation Format.

JS: Thank you very much Steve, I very much appreciate you taking the time to talk so openly. I am sure that there will be much to comment on and very much hope our readers make their contributions to the debate.