Monthly Archives: December 2011

Leading technology

We have a lodger staying at the moment – a primary school teacher. While chatting I discovered that the laptop she was using was a school-supplied unit from the Laptops for Teachers (LfT) initiative, a programme kicked off by the DfES and Becta in 2002. “Of course I can’t do anything useful with it,” she said. “Huh?” I replied (in my usual articulate fashion). “They don’t like me to put any of my own stuff on it.” I’ll admit this floored me. One of two things was possible:

a)  Working on national projects with aspirations at the cutting interface of education and technology has unhitched me from the reality of technology in schools at the coalface, or
b)  My lodger’s school is at the end of a, no doubt, long, trailing technology tail.

I think it’s probably a bit of both. I won’t go into the conversation that ensued, but it became clear to me that the technology in her school was being managed, not to enhance learning and teaching, but to minimise technical issues. Even now, it seems this is far too common.

I’ve been very lucky in my career so far to have visited many hundreds of education organisations. I’ve engaged with all manner of staff from leaders to technicians. What’s become clear to me over time – and please accept that this is a generalisation to which there are notable exceptions – is that the majority of education leaders built their education experience in a pre-digital age. They are not digital natives and regard technology as something between an expensive distraction and an interesting diversion. They don’t intuitively ‘get’ technology and they certainly don’t trust it to make a significant difference to learning outcomes or life chances. Their perception is that budget allocated to ICT is displacing spend on things they do understand, like teachers, and this is uncomfortable and so unwelcome. Furthermore, technology is evolving rapidly and so the knowledge they do have is constantly challenged and there’s relentless pressure on them to refresh their investment in terms of stuff and skills.

As a general rule, leaders are not very good at being out of control and I think technology is one of those areas where many leaders feel exactly that. I’ve met many heads who’ve been proud to tell me they don’t even own a computer, yet their organisation’s raison d’être is to prepare young people for a digital age. It’s also not uncommon to see a head wielding his or her iPad as evidence of a progressive attitude to ICT while their school languishes in the middle ground of technology adoption. It is one thing to be a user of technology and appreciate its merits, but quite another to develop and drive an ICT strategy for an organisation.

So technology is often perceived by leaders as a threat rather than a valuable ally in achieving successful outcomes. The usual responses to a threat are either to marginalise it or dominate it. Given that the former is becoming more and more difficult in a digital age, the latter is the usual course of action. The most common way of dominating technology is to regulate it into submission by creating ring-fenced, in-house control structures, both curricular and technical.

An internal structure is far less likely to expose or challenge than an external one. Better the devil you know. The technology manager in a secondary school usually becomes the trusted source of technical advice, despite the fact that he/she is probably under-qualified to be making learning-focused, strategic decisions about technology adoption. Yes, I know there may be another member of the SMT with the  portfolio for technology, but I’m as wary of technology enthusiasts as I am of Luddites. I can count with the fingers of one hand the number of technology leaders I’ve met in schools who have any significant professional technology experience outside of their school. They usually mean well but lack perspective.

My contention is that in-house technology management is almost always inefficient and a distraction from the core organisational mission. In my opinion, the necessity for an ICT department has become a self-perpetuating myth in most schools and colleges. To change would involve asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. This is of course why leaders need to get to grips with technology and lead their organisations from the front, not by becoming experts, but by taking expert advice.

To be clear, this is not a gratuitous critique of education leaders. The reason for making these observations is to shed light on the current state of technology in education organisations. In general, we see a very conservative landscape, with significant tracts of technology experience out of bounds for learners, let alone staff. We see tragic waste through under-utilisation of technology assets. We see technology managed to reduce support rather than to enhance learning and teaching. We see inefficient procurement. Mobile phones are a threat. Social networking is a threat. Parental access to school data is a threat. Data is a threat!

I see the proliferation of Interactive Whiteboards as a symptom of this malaise. It is a comfortable choice of technology because they simply perpetuate the same didactic techniques as before but delivered with elevated anxiety. Do they improve learning outcomes? Where is the evidence? Yet the idea of engaging young people through their mobile phones in social learning is almost non-existent in schools. Did you know that 1 in every 5 minutes of Internet time was spent using Facebook in 2011? Where does the opportunity really lie?

My intention over the coming few weeks is to challenge the status quo and blog about how technology in schools can be different and better while costing less. I want to engage education leaders in a dialogue that’s about relinquishing technology control and focusing all their effort on their organisations’ core mission. The trend is already well underway in business, with many SMEs letting their CIOs go and outsourcing their ICT. They see they get better advice, better value, a more agile organisation and better outcomes. I think the education sector is ripe for a revolution and I’m delighted to be one of those waving a red flag.

2012 and beyond (part 5)

I know, I know, this flurry of blogging activity is more than you can keep up with. Don’t worry, it’ll ease off in the New Year. I blame Techmarketview for running their 2012 predictions in five parts. This is the fifth and final part of their series in which John O’Brien does business process services (BPS). You know the routine by now: my edu-speak comments in blue… 1. ‘BPS’ term will become mainstream – The term ‘business process services’ (BPS) will replace the outdated acronym ‘BPO’, very much associated with old era ‘lift and shift’ and delivering ‘your mess for less’. ‘BPS’ in our view, is BPO coming of age, using technology as an enabler, to help drive business process change, and delivering measurable service outcomes back to the customer.

In K12 education, the traditional provider of most business process services has been the Local Authority. The current economic pressure on the public purse combined with acceleration in the number of schools breaking free of the Authority by converting to Academies, means some Local Authorities are losing their advantage of scale. The creation of Free Schools is relevant because, as new schools, they usually have to scale slowly to full capacity and therefore need services to scale with them. It is also a general truth that LAs are often less competitive and agile than they’d have us believe. The consequence for schools is that they’re having to take decisions about how they procure services more efficiently and they’re trying to work out who the successors to Authorities will be. I think we will see a small but perfectly formed proliferation of education-specific BPS providers in 2012 and beyond.

2. Market leaders will cede share – Newer and more agile platform-based BPS players will see their market shares grow. Indian tier ones will continue to gain momentum through new platform innovations, and specialists such as Diligenta and The Innovation Group (TIG) in hot areas such as life and pensions and general insurance will gain further market share. However we expect a fight back by the ‘old guard’ as they embrace M&A in both vertical and platform capability, and flex their muscles on new business and renewals. 

The large BPS providers like Capita and Northgate already have a strong foothold in education but their current offerings are products of a previous world that is rapidly slipping away. Their lack of agility may well leave room for other education-specific BPS offerings to proliferate in 2012 and beyond, delivering value into areas such as Management Information Systems, HR, payroll, Learning Support and CPD. 

3.Unusual suspects’ will disrupt the market – The construction sector is now looking to partner or acquire support service and BPS capability for ‘bundled’ BPS deals, notably in local government and the broader public sector. Costain and Interserve made moves on Mouchel during 2011, although in the end pulled out after spotting ‘something under the covers’. Nonetheless, there are plenty of other partner or M&A opportunities, so we expect one of these ‘unusual suspects’ to make their first big move in 2012. 

In education, the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was instrumental in forcing those Authorities and schools who were involved to look at the lifecycle costs of running schools. Towards the end of the programme, we saw the ‘Facilities Management’ and ICT offerings broadening their scope to include BPS as a way of driving down the overall lifecycle cost of schools. Once again, this is all about scale. The Local Education Partnerships (LEPs) created through the BSF programme were supposed to act as points of aggregation to generate the scale required for more effective procurement of a range of services. The termination of the BSF programme put paid to that ambition. In the ensuing vacuum, there is yet to emerge a clear pattern of aggregation and this will act as a brake on the adoption of BPS. 

4. ‘Big will eat small’ – The big players will look to buy up platform-based BPS rivals as they attempt to close the gap. Insurance specialist TIG, and HR and public sector player Northgate will find themselves subject to M&A approaches. Weak players are also likely to be approached, albeit at far lower valuations. Embattled Mouchel for instance, is likely to sell off larger, more attractive chunks of its business in 2012 in an effort to stay afloat. 

I refer my esteemed reader to (2). Ever has it been thus that big players look to absorb the small in an effort to stabilise their borders. In the education space, I think the players are still feeling their way and so it will be a while before a clear map for BPS in education emerges. After a generation of labour education policies, the upheaval in the political landscape has brought an equivalent upheaval in education. Nevertheless the ‘more for less’ mantra will drive activity. 

5. Perfect storm of disruption – These trends will create a perfect storm of disruption for the UK BPS market in 2012. The risks to large BPS incumbents like Capita, Xchanging and Serco will only increase as a result, making new business wins and retaining client relationships at renewal a far tougher prospect. ‘Staying relevant’ amidst all of this change has to be the number one priority in 2012.

I think I’m in danger of trying to say the same thing in a slightly different way if I give this prediction an education context. Perhaps I’ll just summarise by saying there’s everything to play for. There’s political disruption, economic disruption and, if the 2011 UK riots are anything to go by, social disruption. Against this backdrop, schools are trying to work out how to do the best by their young people. But they’re not business specialists and learning and teaching should be their central focus. Even though the adoption of BPS makes real sense for schools, it will no doubt take both schools and the market some time to work out how to make it work.

2012 and beyond (part 4)

Here we go again with my edu-speak interpretation of the next  flock of predictions from Techmarketview. Flock? What is the collective noun for predictions? I checked here but it’s not yet listed although I did like “an annoyance of mobile phones.” Perhaps I could propose “an inaccuracy of predictions.” Anyway, I digress. This time Phil Codling picks out the headlines for the UK infrastructure services market. My comments in blue…1. Cloud-based infrastructure services will grow at double digit rates – But where cloud is replacing an existing service, it’s a more-for-less substitution that is shrinking the overall market. 2012 is another year of clients putting costs first.

Cloud is a paradigm shift in technology that represents a partial displacement of existing spend. The effect of cloud is to improve utilisation and efficiency while driving down management overheads. Sometimes though, on-premise is the right answer. Optimising the blend of off and on-premise infrastructure will be the evolutionary trend of 2012 and beyond. A consequence of moving off-premise is an increasing requirement for high quality bandwidth. Taken in the round, we may be seeing a redistribution of budget spend rather than an absolute decrease in 2012 but as scale bites, the overall cost-base should be driven down leading to lower prices. What is clear is that the economic climate is helping to drive the speed of transition to cloud services in business and this trend is beginning to emerge in the education sector too. Technology delivery in education, particularly in K12 is often highly inefficient with inadequate local technical support. Cloud infrastructure and services offer schools a real chance to shift their focus away from managing technology to managing learning while at the same time reducing IT budget, if not immediately, then certainly over time. Bring it on!

2. Public cloud won’t make it to the mainstream – Private cloud remains the preferred option in 2012. Small businesses and niche/non-critical applications provide the exceptions to this rule.

A public cloud is one in which a service provider makes resources such as storage and applications, available to the general public over the Internet. The term ‘public cloud’ arose to differentiate between this standard model and the private cloud, which is a proprietary network or data centre that uses cloud computing technologies, such as virtualisation. A private cloud is managed by the organisation it serves. A blended model, the hybrid cloud, is a combination of cloud services managed by both internal and external providers. In fact it is this latter category that will, I think, emerge as relevant to education in 2012 and beyond. Scale is all important here and clearly it is SMEs and education-equivalent organisations that benefit from public clouds because private isn’t really an option. However, larger educational aggregations such as the Regional Broadband Consortia (for example SWGfL) do provide the scale for private clouds. Thus education organisations will probably find themselves in a blended environment.

3. Bring Your Own Technology becomes a market opportunity – Forward-thinking players will seize the chance to help CIOs turn BYOT [Bring Your Own Technology] into a positive for their organisation. Meanwhile the technology in question will include a major new entrant, as Amazon “Fires up” competition in the tablet space.

I’ve already blogged on BYOT and I make no secret of the fact that I believe education is ripe for this trend. The benefits of personally owned tech, for the organisation and the individual, are numerous and profound. Addressing the issue of equal access in education is the challenge. The mention of the Amazon Fire tablet does however give me an opportunity to evangelise about a parallel trend that I think is just around the corner: eTextbooks. Having a 14 year old daughter as I do, I know how many textbooks she lugs around the place. Not only that, but her teenage brain is adept at forgetting most things, including textbooks, at crucial moments, such as the day before an exam. One of the huge benefits of personally owned technology would be anywhere, anytime access to eTextbooks. I find it astounding that it has not taken off. Not only would eTextbooks offer a better quality of experience including multimedia assets and links to extended or remedial resources, but they would be available whenever and wherever a learner required them. It would be possible for teachers and learners to annotate them and otherwise add value. As electronic documents they could also be subject to the range of social tools, such as reviews and rating. Imagine as well being able to measure how a young person used their textbook. That data would be extremely valuable in identifying patterns and trends for understanding learning and timely interventions. The list goes on and on. Yet it hasn’t happened. Perhaps 2012 is the year…

There were a couple of other predictions too but they were very tech-infrastructure-sector-specific and I couldn’t see how I could add any edu-value. So there you have it for this instalment.

2012 and beyond (part 3)

“With a yo ho ho and a bottle of rum I bring you…” No, wait… I mean “Yo ho ho. Merrrrrry Christmas!” Yep, it’s almost here and Santa (minus the rum, honest) has another sacklet of goodies for you. This is part three of my ‘education-speak’ version of Techmarketview‘s 2012 predictions. My comments in blue. Enjoy!

1.  More SaaS vendors will lose money – Lack of consistent profitability is a telling sign that the commercial aspect of SaaS [Software as a Service] has not been mastered by SaaS pure plays. Higher prices and better cost control are one approach to addressing the problem but few will get the opportunity because acquisition activity will ramp up in 2012..

To make sense of this prediction, I think it’d be handy to understand what exactly “pure play SaaS” is. Helpfully, the September 12th 2008 Gartner report, “Market Trends: Software as a Service, Worldwide, 2007-2012,” states: “Gartner defines SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. The provider delivers an application based on a single set of common code and data definitions, which are consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers anytime on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on use metrics.” Vendors that strictly adhere to this definition, and whose software is only available by SaaS, are often referred to as ‘pure plays’.

For some organisations, SaaS is the right answer. For example, if the organisation does not have sufficient capital budget to make the initial investment for an on-premise solution then a predictable monthly cost and payment out of a revenue budget might be attractive. Also, if the organisation does not have in-house technical expertise, a SaaS deployment managed remotely by the vendor might be the best option. Sound familiar? If you’re in education you’ll recognise these constraints. But what about the downside? Well, it is not necessarily cheap and it’s difficult (or impossible) to integrate with other systems. The May 29th 2009 Gartner report, “Dataquest Insight: SaaS Adoption Trends in the U.S. and U.K.” pointed out these issues with the top two barriers to purchase being high cost of services (42% of respondents) and difficulty with integration (38% of respondents).

With these points in mind, I think the SaaS vendors, and indeed the markets, are still working out where it really delivers value and 2012 will inevitably bring a distillation of vendors. As we know, education and particularly K12, suffer from the twin challenges of limited on-premise technical support and tight capital budgets. For this reason, I think there is a significant and largely untapped market in that sector. As is often the case, education is a little behind the curve in technology adoption. I would predict that through 2012 and beyond, schools in particular will begin to recognise the value in SaaS and that Management Information Systems will be a particular target. 

2. Social platforms will challenge enterprise platforms – Relentless pressure from employees and customers will ensure enterprises get the social and collaboration bug despite the negative pull of rigid and hierarchical organisational structures and traditional software.

It’s hard to argue with the mind-boggling adoption metrics of Facebook and Twitter, let alone fly in the face of millions of years of evolution. Homo sapiens is a social species. Who’d have guessed, eh? OK, so it’s easy to be wise after the event, but I think social platforms are leading the charge towards the general socialisation of software rather than displacing enterprise platforms as such. That is to say, pure play social (yep, even I’m doing it now) platforms offer the full social experience (like going to a Christmas party) whereas I think we will see the evolution of social features in enterprise software (like facilitating corridor meetings). Social features such as rating, reward, reputation etc will be integrated into enterprise platforms and converge the social with productivity, leveraging the benefits that we already know and love in the physical work place. For education, the convergence will be ‘social’ and ‘learning’ and here I believe there’s massive as yet untapped potential. Young people are exceptionally good at ‘social’ and harnessing this to support learning is going to be transformational. Which makes it all the more amazing that social platforms are usually non grata in schools. 

3. MEAPs will prove more ‘mobile’ than incumbents – Software suppliers will not have the mobile opportunity to themselves. They will be challenged by nimble Mobile Enterprise Application Providers (MEAPs) looking to claim a portion of the revenue software suppliers are eyeing up to help maintain growth.

Just one word: Darwinism. In a previous blog entry (Open or closed) I explored the role of natural selection in the technology ecosystem so I will not labour the points here. Suffice to say, the barriers for entry to development on mobile platforms are relatively low and so this market is wide open to massive competition. Massive competition generates rapid evolution (innovation) and so will continue to put pressure on even the big players, in some cases rendering them irrelevant because they simply take too long to bring their products to market. Small is beautiful (and mobile).

4. Big Data will move from hype to reality – Large data volumes are a fact, unstructured (and structured) data is a fact. They have to be managed and interrogated and this real need will convert hype to reality in a shorter period of time than is usual.

I’ve been listening to (thanks again Audible) ‘In The Plex’ by Steven Levy. This is the story of Googol (doh, my spelling is dreadful). And my memory… Where was I? Oh yes, so Google basically knows everything and I no longer need a memory. Well not quite everything, but you know what I mean. They know enough to be scary. One of the elements of Google I hadn’t appreciated was the centrality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to their vision. The reason the dynamic duo of Page and Brin were so excited by large datasets is that massive amounts of data were required to enable their machines to learn meaningful things. And it’s still the case. Their view is: “If it moves, measure it.” And then they work out how to use the data. Clearly it works for them. We’re definitely in the age of ‘Big Data’ but the key will be how to convert that data into information, and that information into knowledge. Turning knowledge into wisdom may be a step too far although the idea of ‘Google Wisdom’ as our new deity is not entirely implausible.

From an education perspective, I’d say this is a largely untapped well. Culturally many education organisations find that data capture and analytics are too difficult. If you’re a parent of a child in school, you’ll certainly be aware that your child’s report is fairly one dimensional and more or less unchanged from your childhood. This is a massive missed opportunity and given that technology in schools is pretty ubiquitous, there are really exciting opportunities for capturing enormous amounts of data about learning pathways and using this data to understand what learning looks like, bringing incremental improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. I will probably blog on this specific subject in 2012, but meantime I think analytics is a significant trend to watch out for in education. 

5. Security will take centre stage – End-point security and data loss prevention will be hotbeds of activity as more businesses ramp up their use of the cloud and mobile platforms. It is not just data that is at stake, but reputations that once lost are hard to win back.

Data security and eSafety are significant concerns for education organisations too. Why? Because they hold potentially sensitive information about individuals and, for minors, they have a duty of care, acting in loco parentis. For this reason, issues of identity and security will continue to grow in importance through 2012 and beyond. Of the two issues, in education I think eSafety will be the greater concern.

While it’s easy to condemn schools for trying to control the experience of their young people while using technology, schools in particular are very vulnerable to accusations of carelessness and even negligence. As a consequence they over-compensate and ban platforms that might expose their young people to bullying, manipulation, grooming and so on. It is the reason why education so often tries to create walled gardens and why the issue of identity is particularly important for schools. Arguably this may indeed be appropriate in primary schools, but by the time young people reach secondary school, and indeed beyond, we should be supporting them to understand the risks and manage their own eSafety. The alternative – banning significant portions of the Internet experience – is ineffective (because they will usually access this experience outside of the school) and counter-productive for learning (because higher order skills required in the digital world need to be taught). Once again, this is a topic all on its own and I may come back to it in 2012.

Digital history

I love it when technology does things better, not just differently (or sometimes less well).For the last decade or so I’ve been interested in family history. Not uncommonly for this interest, it emerged with the birth of my daughter. The long journey that had brought her into the world suddenly seemed more relevant to me. So I set about researching my family history and, with my characteristic obsession, soon had a family tree of more than 6,000 connected individuals.

Over the course of this last decade, more and more reference resources have been made available on the Internet, making it easier to conduct research from the comfort of my kitchen table, only venturing out into dusty archives on occasion. One of my favourite resources is Google Books. Google’s mission of digitising the world’s knowledge has already created an invaluable library of digitised, searchable books, many of them historical for reasons of copyright. For a genealogist and a historian, this archive is gold dust (as opposed to the other variety). It’s one thing to know the date of birth, marriage and death for a given individual, it’s quite another to know the individual, who they were and what they did with their lives. Archives like Google Books bring family history alive and I think family history brings history alive by making it relevant.

Before I set out on my family history quest I would characterise my relationship with history as ‘distant’. At school I found the subject dry and uninspiring. Occasionally I would be allowed to pursue project work which I found more engaging. I remember one such project on the Battle of Jutland which interested me because it was a naval battle and my father had been in the Navy. Mostly I couldn’t link these events to my life. Since embarking on the exploration of my family history, I’ve become fascinated with history in all its forms. I can see how it shaped the lives of my ancestors and, in some cases, how my ancestors shaped history. It’s exciting, authentic and personal.

The most amazing thing about these digital resources is that they bring immense power to your fingertips. A decade ago, if I’d wanted to search the contents of a million historical documents I’d have had to employ an army. Today, I can do it by myself in seconds, revealing intimate details about the lives of my ancestors. A recent and fascinating new resource is the British Library Newspaper Archive, offering more than 3.2 million digitised pages, a number growing day by day. In graphic detail, it charts the national, regional and local history of our country, our institutions and our ancestors, opening up the possibility of making history relevant to each and every one of us.

Yes, it is a subscription service, but this is an example of a resource worth its weight in gold (dust), especially when we learn how to mine it (or ‘pan it’ if I’m to stick to the gold dust metaphor). To illustrate my point I’d like to use the example of my 2nd great grandfather, William Smith Binnie. He was a marine engineer, born in Glasgow, who emigrated to Australia in 1876 (by choice rather than at Her Majesty’s pleasure). As a direct ancestor I’ve learned a lot about him. However, he had an elder brother, Andrew, who I’ve never been able to locate. Andrew was in the 1851 census of Scotland aged 14 and then… he disappeared. I assumed he’d emigrated. Within a day of subscribing to the British Library Newspaper Archive, I located the following (and I’m sure they’ll forgive me for reproducing the clip here):

I didn’t intend to end on a poignant note so I won’t. The point is that technology is doing something fabulous here. It is enabling learners (researchers if you will) to access and filter huge volumes of information, vastly increasing the potential to find the points of intersection between the general and the personal. So often it is the relevance of learning to our personal situation that creates engagement. Technology can enable us to do this better.

2012 and beyond (part 2)

Here’s the second instalment of 2012 predictions from the Techmarketview team, this time from Georgina O’Toole and Tola Sargeant with a focus on the public sector tea leaves. My education-speak translation comments are in blue…

1. Government ICT strategy will languish as new CIO team is put in place: The search is underway for a new UK Government CIO [Chief Information Officer] (to replace Joe Harley by spring 2012) and a new UK Government Deputy CIO (position currently vacant). When in place, the new Cabinet Office team will face an enormous task with a myriad risks threatening to hamper the implementation of the UK Government ICT [Information & Communications Technology] strategy (not least the threat of a hiatus as the new CIO team finds its feet).

If you haven’t read the UK’s Government ICT Strategy then I can summarise it for you in a familiar phrase: “More for less.” The diagram to the left here represents the core themes. It’s the Government’s deep seated belief that technology can and will drive enormous efficiency and that a leaner public sector is one of the foundations of economic recovery. Whether or not you agree, their strategy is built upon this thesis and education leaders would do well to understand the big picture because the “common ICT infrastructure” is something that they will need to factor into their plans. The lack of a CIO at the helm is acting as a brake at the moment but expect the process to accelerate in 2012.

2. A peak in renewals will result in radical contract restructuring: 2012 is the start of two years in which we will see a peak in the number of contracts coming to their natural conclusion. Contracts will be radically restructured on renewal as UK Government moves from a vertically-siloed model to a horizontal model.

In part, this refers to the “common ICT infrastructure” and in part, the procurement strategy. The phrase  “horizontal model” refers to a more joined-up (across sectors) approach to technology procurement that  benefits from increased aggregation and improved competition. The common ICT infrastructure is part of the mechanism by which this can be achieved, i.e. standardisation. Again the key for education is awareness and planning. Cloud technology is an important element of the approach to scaling and standardisation and education leaders would reap rewards from understanding the direction of travel.

3. Megaplayers will retain lion’s share of major contract renewals: Leading suppliers have worked hard to support the UK Government ICT strategy and many have ‘come off the naughty step’. In times of austerity, and a propensity for low-risk options, organisations will stick with ‘the devil they know’ if there is sound reason to do so. Suppliers will likely find their wallet share from existing clients eroded but will have the opportunity to broaden their client base by offering successfully implemented horizontal solutions to a wider range of organisations.

In summary, big players like Capita have allowed the Government to renegotiate contract terms in recognition of the difficult economic climate. In return for playing ball with the Government, they will likely be treated as favoured partners and retain big contracts. I think there is truth in this statement but I’d also point out that “megaplayers” tend to be a little slow on the uptake and that significant shifts in the ICT landscape offer opportunities for more agile players to grab market share. Taken in tandem with the trend for consumerisation of enterprise IT, I think we’ll see the emergence of new names offering great value to education customers. As a general observation, if you’re an education customer taking services under contract from a company, now is a good time to negotiate better terms. It’s a buyers’ market.

4. Shared services will really take off: 2012 and 2013 will be remembered in the UK public sector as the period when shared services really took off. The trend towards ‘tower-based’ procurements will give departments and agencies more flexibility to buy from shared services centres in the future. The competition to be involved in the handful of hosting organisations that will eventually emerge as shared services centres will be intense.

This is all about efficiency. Aggregation drives efficiency and a shared service is a way of creating that aggregation. For example, if all the schools in an Authority choose to procure payroll services in one block, that drives down the cost-base for the service provider and means a keener price for schools. Over time the market for shared services will shake down to a “handful of hosting organisations” because the more aggregation, the lower the cost-base (up to a point). In my opinion, education leaders could save their organisations very large sums of money by collaborating with organisations with similar needs to procure shared services. It still amazes me how many education organisations run themselves as islands, trying to do everything in-house. It is not only expensive but it is a distraction from their core function: learning.

5. SMEs will establish beachhead in government shared services: SMEs  [Small and Medium size Enterprises] will have more opportunities as contracts are broken down, particularly where niche requirements, for example, security, are separated out and procured separately. The most successful suppliers will be those that focus on being best of breed in one or a handful of niche service lines that can be shared horizontally across multiple organisations.

This final point is linking together two of the previous ones, i.e. (4) shared services and (2) contract re-structuring. Successful suppliers are ones that add the most value for the lowest cost. Given that aggregation is one of the keys to efficiency, SMEs that focus in on elements of the technology where they not only add more value, but also leverage scale by offering that value horizontally across a variety of sectors, will find opportunities emerging as contracts come up for renewal and the Government’s “horizontal” strategy bites. If you are an education leader, my advice would be to analyse the way in which your organisation conducts its business (and business of education) functions. Use this analysis to work out whether you’re really better off doing everything in-house. A useful concept in this context is ‘opportunity cost’. This may be defined as “the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the best alternative that is not chosen.” For example, you may choose to manage your technology in-house because it is 15% cheaper than a managed service delivered by a 3rd party as measured in pounds/dollars. However the opportunity cost of not choosing a managed service is that you may find you/your staff are 25% more tied up in technology-related issues with a knock-on degradation in learning outcomes. This is just one scenario but one I have come across similar ones on a regular basis. Technology can be a distraction and my advice if you are an organisation in the business of education, is to shed distractions and focus, focus, focus on your core business: learning.

2012 and beyond (part 1)

Around this time of year I’m always interested to see what the technology pundits predict for the following year. The advantage of being in a sector for a while is that you work out who’s worth listening to. Richard Holway from Techmarketview is a seasoned oracle with a great track record. Education is not his thing but it’s worth reading what he predicts for technology in 2012. Just replace “business” with “school” and “2012” with “2015+”! I jest, but it is true that trends in business often feed into education in time. I’ve added a few lines (in blue) after each item offering my education-speak version of his prediction.

1. “It’s the economy, stupid” – Although what happens in the general economy – UK, Europe, US and globally – has always had some impact on UK SITS [software and information technology scene], it has often been minimal. Indeed, UK SITS has often thrived in downturns – indeed, growth has been spurred by the need to cut costs/change business models etc. But the UK faces the possibility of an unprecedented downturn which is just bound to affect the UK SITS sector and, indeed, consumer tech too. The Governor of the Bank of England was recently asked “What will happen to the economy in 2012?” and replied “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year”. So, the greatest driver for our markets in 2012 will be the economy. The greatest problem facing the executives in the UK SITS sector will be uncertainty. Nobody – not the Governor of the BoE or any TMV [True Market Value] analyst – can accurately predict what will happen.

The impact on the education sector of the economic downturn in the UK is already being felt and the termination of the Building Schools for the Future was an early indication of this. Traditionally education is fairly resistant to economic cycles but I think the situation is sufficiently dire to send waves out across the entire public sector, and indeed the country, with increasing pressure to do more for less.

2. Consumerisation of Enterprise IT – Consumerisation of Enterprise IT is already an established trend but will become mainstream from 2012 providing huge threats and similarly huge opportunities. This will particularly apply to mobile, social and tablets.

Consumerisation of Enterprise IT means users finding and using their own technology tools to meet their day to day requirements in work rather than being enterprise driven. Thus the power-base of enterprise IT companies is being diluted as users create their own ecosystem of technology to meet their needs, e.g. iPhone, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. This trend is inevitable and desirable in the education sector too. It promotes a self-personalised experience as well as rapid innovation and diversity while reducing the management overhead for organisations.

3. Bring Your Own Tech – Similarly, BYOT will also go mainstream. Enterprises supplying tech items such as mobiles, laptops etc to employees will become as uncommon as the supply of company cars. BYOT will spur major growth in security systems and in desktop virtualisation. However, supply and support channels will be adversely affected by the BYOT trend in much the same way as manufacturers and suppliers of company cars were affected in the last decade or so.

BYOT is an extension of the consumerisation of enterprise IT. Again it’s about self-service, self-personalised technology solutions that meet the specific needs of the individual and remove the management and control of edge devices away from the organisation. It not only removes the management overhead from organisations but it also increases personal responsibility and utilisation. This is an important step to take in education in order to improve utilisation of, and therefore access to, technology.

4. Social media bubble bursts – Consumer social networks have already peaked. The winners are in place. Valuations were always in bubble territory and that bubble has also burst. However, just like the Internet bubble of 1999/2000, the world has changed. Social networks will have a huge effect on the next 10 years just as the Internet has had on the last decade. The real opportunities are now the adoption of social networks in the Enterprise.

The key point here for education is in the last sentence. There is a huge amount of potential tied up in social learning, both formal and informal, and most education organisations have resisted the integration of these platforms into their cultures. Adoption of social networks in and across education organisations will revolutionise when, where and how learning happens. It may not be 2012 for education organisations but young people are there already – in their tens of millions. We should take notice of them.

5. IT as a utility. “It’s business not IT, stupid” – For as long as I can remember, pundits have suggested that IT will become a utility – like the supply of electricity. They have made the point that nowadays nobody has an “Electricity Supply Director”. So, why do we have IT directors? Or even why do we have CIOs [Chief Information Officers]? The acceptance of BPS means that in many companies that day has already arrived. Much of the previous IT budget is now controlled by user departments. Decisions are taken for business not IT reasons. CIOs are probably a dying race. The same might well apply to some SITS companies. The need to supply a business solution already supersedes the need to supply an IT solution. I remember Paul Pindar has long objected to me ever referring to Capita as an IT company. –I suggest most other companies will object in similar fashion in the future.

This is a key one for schools in particular. Even now, all round the world (and especially in secondary education and above) network managers and technicians have created stand-alone IT empires that are mostly about the technology. They are usually characterised by being non-standard, difficult to support, lacking in scalability and  dreadfully inefficient. Technology paradigms such as the ‘cloud’ are offering great opportunities to deliver IT services from an off-premises location, increasing standardisation, availability, consistency and driving down cost. The consequence? More focus on learning in learning organisations. “It’s education not IT, stupid.”

I do it in the cloud!

For a while now I’ve been exploring the value of the so-called ‘cloud’ technology paradigm to the education community. For clarity, I’m referring to services hosted off-premises and delivered to premises via wide area network connectivity. I’m interested in this technology paradigm because it offers the possibility of increased access to technology at reduced cost. More for less. But how?

Hosting applications and data away from school premises means fewer or no technical staff employed by the school. Every pound/dollar spent on employing technical staff to manage, deploy and/or support your technology is a pound/dollar less spent on the technology or staff directly supporting learning. A 2006 research report by Becta in the UK found that for both primary and secondary schools, around one third of the technology budget was spent on formal technical support. Pushing services out to the cloud reduces or eliminates the requirement for in-house technical support because technology management, deployment and support take place off-premises. For companies who deliver these services, aggregating demand means a lower cost-base, higher resilience and faster innovation. Cloud services also increase access. For example, web applications (apps) are available on any web-enabled device, including mobile devices, and fulfil the promise of anytime, anywhere, device-independent learning.


The pivotal question is: what proportion or parts of the user experience can be delivered with cloud services while maintaining or improving learning outcomes?

In order to evaluate the user experience, one must start with a baseline. Rather than use anecdotal evidence, I used audit data from three UK schools, two secondary and one primary. These schools are part of a large managed service and application usage data is recorded automatically by an audit tool. The usage was tracked over between 64 (primary) and 138 (secondary) school days in early 2011. It is worth noting that the sample schools had a high application diversity with over 3,500 application installed across all schools subscribed to the managed service. The technology paradigm is traditional client-server and MS Windows-based.

I don’t intend to reproduce all the detail from my analysis here, but I’d like to focus on some of the more interesting trends I identified. I excluded all browser events and non-user triggered events from the analysis. Firstly, I looked at what proportion of the events were ‘Office’ or equivalent, i.e. word processor, spreadsheet, database or presentation software.

Noting the high usage of ‘Office’ software titles, I reapplied the analysis, extending the range of applications to cover office and multimedia tools such as graphics, video and audio creators/editors. The objective of this analysis was simply to understand what proportion of usage a core productivity suite of software for education was receiving. The result were startling. This core productivity suite of applications was receiving very high usage relative to other applications in both primary and secondary schools.

Finally, I analysed the data with a view to understanding what proportion of the application usage might be delivered by an existing web app (as opposed to a local software application). We were trying to establish what proportion of a user’s current technology experience might be delivered via the web.Again the results were very clear. It’s quite possible to cover the majority of requirements currently delivered with local software applications with web apps. The key question that remains unanswered in this analysis is the relative merits of local versus web apps in supporting learning outcomes. In making this comparison, it would be understandable to think that the local version of the software is better than the web app but I want to challenge this assumption.

Most users, most of the time, use a small fraction of the total feature set of an application, especially core productivity applications such as Microsoft Office or indeed Open Office. So the first issue is one of utilisation. Local applications are generally too feature rich for most users, most of the time, and thus under-utilised. This problem is exacerbated by a lack of access to the same applications from any potential learning location and – as is still the case in the majority of schools – fixed provision of technology rather than personal ownership. Not only is utilisation of the resource low, but the utilisation of the capabilities of the resource is low. A double hit of inefficiency.

Most web apps are less feature-rich than their local cousins but they make up for it in other ways. They are upgraded regularly without any impact on the user and therefore evolve quickly with user demand. They usually have native support for collaboration and social engagement. Most importantly, web apps are available anywhere, anytime, and are broadly device independent. This means consistent delivery of user experience at home, in school or in any learning location.

So as a school leader, just imagine: you move to 80% cloud delivered services, saving money by reducing your support bill and paying less for applications. Into the bargain you greatly increase the consistency of the user experience and widen the choice. You use the saving to subsidise a personal device ownership scheme thereby further enhancing access, reducing your support bill further and focusing the attention of educators on what to do with technology rather than how to use it. Your learners are immersed in a web experience that they know and love already and will arm them with the skills they need for the workplace. Just imagine.

It’s my assertion that a cloud ‘desktop’ for education is here now, but as is often the case in the education community, we’re lagging a little behind . It’d cost less and deliver – arguably – more. I’m not suggesting that this is the end of local software; just that it is possible to have a lot less of it and use it as necessary rather than as first choice. We have the opportunity to put our learners at the heart of the web experience, absorbing the social and collaborative skills that today’s workplace demands, let alone tomorrow’s.

Do I have a choice?

Christmas is fast approaching. An unfeasibly large tree now inhabits half the front room and is bedecked with crimbo-bling. My fourteen year old daughter has started talking to me. And last night we went to see a pantomime (Peter Pan at the Bristol Hippodrome) starring – wait for it – David Hasselhoff. Oh yes. Christmas is fast approaching.Now I’m not a bah humbug kind of a guy. Far from it in fact. I love Christmas and I revel with the best of the, uh, revellers. Nevertheless, it’s difficult not to become slightly frayed at the edges as the commercial machine cranks up and launches a multi-mode assault on our senses designed to engage us in bumper consumption. Perhaps the new TV advert from John Lewis does represent a minor backlash this year, triggered by that pesky global economic recession. So I think perhaps I’m allowed a little cathartic moan around mid-December to purge myself of negativity before gorging myself on Christmas spirit…

My theme this year is the paradox of choice. You may be wondering whether this theme will eventually meander anywhere near the intersection of technology and education but please bear with me. It’ll happen – eventually. So, choice. Go and watch this video from 2006. It’s Barry Schwartz talking about this very subject at TED and promoting his book ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less’. If you haven’t the time, then here it is in brief. In essence, it posits the following:

  1. Freedom is good!
  2. We must therefore maximise freedom.
  3. The way to maximise freedom is to maximise choice.
  4. But more choice means higher expectations.
  5. Higher expectations mean more disappointment.
  6. Ergo, more choice leads to less happiness.

In other words, life was simple when there was only one type of TV. We bought a cathode ray TV and that was it. Now we have a choice between plasma, LCD and LED! OK, so we plump for plasma because of its faster image response time (so say better for watching sport). But ringing in our ears is the counter argument: but the picture isn’t as bright… Perhaps I should have bought an LED TV? And having seen the LED TV in the store, when I get home and I’m not watching sport? Well, the image just isn’t as bright is it? I’m disappointed. The choice that was supposed to fulfil my every consumer need has in fact left me disappointed because of what I didn’t choose! And that’s if I didn’t fall into consumer paralysis through the sheer overwhelming breadth of choice.

Now, here’s where it gets relevant. If there’s one tool that could have exacerbated this problem beyond all recognition in the last two decades, surely it’s the Internet? The proliferation of shared ‘stuff’ is simply staggering. No infographic is really going to help me here. It reminds me of a quote from Douglas Adams: “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.” Substitute ‘Internet’ for ‘space’ and you’ll get where we’re coming from. If more choice leads to less happiness then the Internet must be the single greatest cause of depression in all history. Is that how it feels?

OK, so I don’t feel like that although I’m open to the possibility. There’s no doubt that the amount of information available on the Internet is vast. And the more creative we all become, the more there is to consume. No doubt the quality bar is continually raised and we become more and more discerning in order to filter down the volume to a manageable level. And surely if our discernment is high, then our capacity and tolerance for ‘sub-standard’ is diminished? If our tolerance for sub-standard is diminished then surely we’re going to be disappointed more often and live miserable lives? Here’s where I think the theorem breaks down for the modern Internet age. Why? Two reasons:

  1. Because as the number of choices we have to make increases, the relative investment we attribute to each micro-choice decreases. If we’re not attributing high value to choices because of their sheer volume, then we’re less likely to suffer as a consequence of them.
  2. Because the crowd power of the Internet further dilutes the potential negative impact of wide choice by reassuring us that somebody else has and will always make the same choice. We’re not alone.

It’s the second of these two points that I think really holds the key and represents important value for the education community to grasp. The way in which human beings cope with complexity is through reliance on social structures, not by developing highly tuned skills in the field if information filtering and critical analysis. There’s no harm in teaching young people these skills but they depend on a single point of failure – the individual. But the power of a best friend’s interpretation? Or 50 friends? Or 50,000 acquaintances? The power of a crowd dialogue? As unfathomably vast as the Internet (or possibly the universe).The point I’m trying to make is that the emerging social structures in the Internet are an extension of our essence as learning beings. We intuitively grasp that our social structures extend and enhance our senses, the capacity of our brains, more effectively than any individually learnt skill or fact. The Internet is a tool that offers us a vast expansion of our social capacity and therefore enormous opportunities for relevant and engaging learning (personalised if you must), both informal and formal. Of course it can be frivolous too. Nothing wrong with a little bit of ‘frivolous’ from time to time. But it can also be serious and formal if those words offer some comfort. The challenge to educators and education systems is to embrace social learning and collaboration through the Internet, not eschew it.

Open or closed?

I’ve just finished listening to Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson (thank you to Audible). By the way, whilst I generally resist simpering plugs for individual companies, in this case I’m happy to send you there, or indeed anywhere that sells audio books, as gratitude for the transformation to my health. Up until recently Henry Ford had my vote saying, “Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.” I now feel like exercise is not wasting my time. Whilst walking, cycling or otherwise self-powering myself about the place, I’ve been immersed in the drama of Steve’s life, feeding off his impressive energy to drive me up the next hill.

What did I learn? Well, Steve comes across in the book as an enormously forceful individual with an obsessive character and a passion for design. He believed that design should lead the user experience, not technology. His spiritual affiliation to Zen Buddhism in his early life was probably symptomatic, rather than causal, of his black and white view of life. Things were either “shit” or “amazing”. There was nothing in between. He strove compulsively for simplicity, both in design and in product focus. He used his “reality distortion field” to drive people where they didn’t want to, or didn’t think they could, go. Whilst he was definitely not known for being a ‘nice guy’, let’s be honest, it worked for him and for Apple.

Part of the book’s narrative is built around technology paradigms characterised as ‘open’ and ‘closed’. Steve passionately believed that Apple needed to own the end-to-end user experience, including hardware, in order to design in quality control – a closed approach. The likes of Google are proponents of a (more) open approach that invites consumer driven innovation to varying extents. There are those who feel Apple has betrayed its roots and become the Big Brother it once parodied but that’s a blog for another day. In reading Steve’s biography, I realised I was hoping for an answer to this question: which is better, open or closed?

I pulled myself up short. There’s rarely one right answer and certainly no happy ending in sight to the open versus closed narrative. Life isn’t black and white because people aren’t black and white. The unique Apple culture is a reflection of a unique individual with the passion and energy to drive the company where he thought it should go. Steve also quotes Henry Ford who supposedly said if he had asked his customers what they wanted before coming up with the Model T, they’d have asked for a faster horse. In other words, he didn’t listen to what his customers wanted, he worked out what they needed. To make this work, one needs to have an exceptional vision. Perhaps, in the last analysis, this was Steve’s greatest gift: to build a future that people wanted, even if they didn’t know it.

Without an exceptional visionary like Steve, what’s a company to do? This brings me to the open approach and consumer driven innovation. I was reading a blog post by Jason Dixon regarding Android in which he was celebrating the large number of Android app downloads (over 10 billion now) while lamenting their poor quality. I pondered this issue and came to the conclusion that this is in fact the sign of a very healthy ecosystem. Why so? Well, in the absence of a visionary like Steve Jobs, it is the sheer number-crunching power of the crowd that will micro-innovate us towards the future. It’s essentially natural selection at play in the technology ecosystem, relying – as does evolution – on a staggering number of mistakes to eventually ferret out success. The only way to generate the volume of failure required to create success is to expose technology to the crowd. An open approach. The problem with the open approach is that companies who start out that way become increasingly afraid of failure because they feel they have more to lose as they grow. Innovation is inversely proportional to the intolerance of failure (Dawson’s Law).

As a point of interest, that’s not exactly the basis of most education systems. The DNA of most education systems is success-focused with failure seen as, well, failure! I’m certainly not the first to point out this fact but perhaps this is where we find the genetic parent of the closed and the open technology paradigms. In different ways, they provide a strategy for managing risk and reward. In the case of Steve Jobs, he had the combination of personal qualities and the seniority required to bet the company on his instincts. Apple was agile and innovative because Steve had the sheer willpower to make it so. I mean, look at the iPad? Who’d have guessed, eh? The important question is: what happens to Apple without Steve at the helm?

For companies with an open culture who rely, partially or completely, on crowd-driven micro-innovation, risk and failure are happening thousands of times a day and slowly but effectively evolving their products. You only have to look to the natural world to see how well this approach can work. The challenge here is to find ways of curtailing the ascendancy of corporate risk aversion as the share price rises.

In this characterisation of the open and closed technology paradigms, I’m thinking the closed system will only really work with an exceptional leader at the helm. A rare breed. For the majority of companies, the open approach is more likely to deliver sustainable and consistent innovation because the risk attached to each micro-step is relatively low but the cumulative reward is potentially (and eventually) great. After all, this evolutionary approach is nature’s greatest achievement so we’d be fools to ignore it, wouldn’t we?