Education Business

Schools and educational bodies across the UK are relying more on software and technology to teach the majority of their curriculum. In much the same manner as the commercial sector relies on software to perform business, education is developing a greater dependency on Information Communication Technology (ICT) to teach and plan lessons to students.
     
Software terms and conditions often vary greatly and their reconciliation with how many instances are installed is not so simple to keep track of. Upon disclosing an unintentional error education establishments may find themselves spending a large part of their IT budget rectifying licence fee shortfalls – a situation that no school or college would want to have happen to them.

A cause for confusion
John Lovelock, chief executive of industry association, the Federation Against Software Theft – Investors in Software (FAST IiS) explains: “Schools and universities face a tough time balancing the use of software with the right to use it. Software licenses come in many forms that includes per seat, per site and even per user. Some vendors have special exemptions, pricing or restrictions whereas others do not, which all adds to the confusion that many schools find themselves in with regards to demonstrating effective software licence management.”
    
FAST IiS, is a not-for-profit body that exists to educate and encourage business users in their use of software to ensure software resources are used effectively in compliance with licence agreements and the law. Having assisted countless organisations with achieving and demonstrating software compliance FAST IiS advocates the use of software asset management (SAM) tools to aid end user organisations in reconciling software assets with licence requirements.
    
“The issue of software compliance is higher on the agenda with Trading Standards being granted the right to enter businesses without a search warrant to check legitimate use. Trading Standards are unlikely to knock on a school’s door, but there is always the possibility that a software vendor may ask for an audit if they feel a need, commonly an audit clause in the licence agreement will allow this.”
    
Education organisations that have experienced an unexpected software audit before will know just how much time and effort they demand. It is important staff spend their time teaching and not having to worry about accounting for software licenses in their organisation.
 
A time consuming task
“The amount of bother and effort schools need to commit to successfully manage a software compliance audit is huge. It’s not right that the teachers focus is diverted by having to check individual hard drives for installed software, even sometimes having to sort through cupboards for actual licence certificates, and then confirming with accounts to see they have the receipts and purchase orders of the software bought,” says John.
    
Specialists in school asset management solutions, Tim Roots, managing director of Parago Software explains: “Software asset management is key for schools who are striving to adopt best practice for the Becta Framework for ICT Technical Support (FITS).”
    
Becta leads the national drive to inspire and lead the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. It’s our ambition to create a more exciting, rewarding and successful experience for learners of all ages and abilities enabling them to achieve their potential.
    
“FITS is based on IT Infrastructure Library processes which enable schools to effectively deal with incidents and also to help incident prevention. Proper SAM procedures can aid ICT in schools by reducing workload for technical support and improving service availability by helping prevent incidents from occurring due to out of date or illegal copies of software.”

Focusing on teaching
With effective ICT tools and services in place teachers and administrative staff are able to focus on their teaching responsibilities to do their job. Once SAM processes and effective ICT is in place then the ICT will help to run itself. This means that staff can focus on teaching and running a school rather than getting sidetracked by ICT issues including the major task that a software compliance audit can be for the unprepared.
    
Tools to simplify the software asset management exist, some specifically tailored for the needs of educational environments. This deserves investigation since it is not widely known but is true that governors and head teachers are responsible for what software is installed on school machines.
    
Roots continues: “Commonly smaller schools have been found to be auditing themselves once a year using a spreadsheet to reconcile the installed software base with their proof of purchase. The ease and speed at which software can be installed means that after the walk around audit has been completed there could be 364 days of non-compliance until the next check. Any software vendor is going to want to be reimbursed if you have copies of their product on your hard drives, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t use it or even if that machine is stored in a cupboard.”

The right infrastructure
With the increasing reliance upon software effective support of the infrastructure is critical to the successful adoption and use of technology in schools. The traditional approach was to use home grown support systems using databases and spreadsheets. However, to effectively manage and develop large and complex ICT infrastructures requires purpose built solutions.
    
As Eric Wright, managing director of help desk software specialists Richmond Systems, explains: “Schools must be able to support their increasingly techno-savvy ICT users whilst meeting their compliance requirements. It is therefore essential that schools adopt supporting technology that is compatible with these demands.”

The right tools
With schools now responsible for their own ICT budgets, the choice of how to fund support for IT services increasingly lies with the school. Support staff are an expensive resource and need tools to enable them to deliver a cost effective service. The nature of the education systems often means these tools need to be easy to deploy and be accessible from any location via e-mail, phone, web or mobile devices. The tools must also integrate with existing school systems.
    
By deploying packaged service desk software, IT staff can track issues rather than just react, identifying underlying causes of technical issues and help to prevent their recurrence. This improves the confidence in IT and encourages more staff and pupils to benefit from it.
    
“Becta FITS provides an effective framework for managing support and compliance and by using systems that are FITS compatible, schools will give themselves a head start,” Eric Wright concludes.
    
ICT goals for the educational environment that are aided by software asset management solutions include aiding future purchasing decisions with detailed procurement; freeing system resources by freeing up machines from unneeded software and standardising machines to make helpdesk support easier.
    
Schools and colleges gain peace of mind to be able to concentrate on educational and not administrative matters; licence compliance means no sudden outlays to cover already installed software; overages can be cut to reduce annual licence fees and monitoring of unauthorised installations stops mischievous users compromising the network.
    
Software asset management offers far more than just what its name suggests, particularly when undertaken as part of an intelligent ICT programme designed to make a network fit for education in the 21st century.