28 Feb 2008
It is a common misconception that work in the public sector lacks the dynamism, innovation and pace of its private sector counterpart – and in the area of IT, nothing could be further from the truth.
The challenges of moving from private to public sector, particularly where education is concerned, are much greater than people think.
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But if you are ambitious, keen to innovate and eager to work on some of the largest IT projects in the country, then the education sector could be right up your street.
The detailed procurement processes that schools and universities go through when reviewing an IT implementation can help to fuel innovation, by opening the door to new firms that might be seen as too bleeding-edge for private business. As a result, IT managers and directors are often ahead of their private sector colleagues when it comes to the latest technological advances.
With the drive into electronic government, for example, public sector organisations of all shapes and sizes have developed some of the most proactive and responsive web sites in the UK.
The response mechanisms to online information provide citizens with a channel of communication that many private sector companies struggle to achieve. Such processes are mirrored in the education sector, with even the smallest village schools having their own web sites for prospective parents to access information.
The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is providing many opportunities for innovation in the education sector. The project is receiving major investment, which will have a considerable effect on the technology available in secondary schools across the country.
While innovation is not a word commonly associated with the public sector, the government can lead the way in IT skills and standards.
Some of the world-class standards, such as Prince2 for project management and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – see Key skills for public sector IT workers, below – have become core to not-for-profit working.
Prince2 was developed in 1989 by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency as a government standard for IT project management.
Undertaking large-scale projects enabled the public sector to spot a gap in the market, and to propose standards of project management that could help implementations run smoothly and to budget.
As personnel transferred out of government into business, they took these skills with them into the private sector.
Prince2 is now used in more than 50 countries worldwide for all types of projects, not just those in the IT sector. The approach will prove invaluable to schools going through BSF projects to ensure they are properly managed and cause as little disruption to pupils as possible.
But if you are looking for a smooth and an unchallenging role, do not assume the education sector is for you. Just because there are no financial shareholders reviewing performance on a daily basis does not mean there is a lack of accountability.
In fact, you could argue that the education sector has a much tougher audience – the general public. When mistakes happen they will reach the public domain – something that may not always happen in the private sector.
But if you want to get involved in some of the largest IT implementations in the UK, then the public sector offers a wealth of opportunities.
The scale of projects in the major government departments such as the Department for Children, Schools and Families, or the Department for Work and Pensions, provides an ideal career opportunity for IT professionals looking to build their skills set.
There are few such opportunities in the private sector where you can expect to be involved with so many users or as many customer records. Add the joined-up government initiative and you can see why any IT professional should be getting excited about public sector projects that will look to push the boundaries of technology in the future.
The public sector offers an innovative environment, without the financial pressures of shareholders, and the added incentive to educate children and young adults to help make a difference.
Robert Chapman is chief executive of IT training specialist Firebrand Training
Key skills for public sector IT workers
Prince2
Prince2 – Projects in Controlled Environments – is a project management method covering the organisation, management and control of projects. Since its introduction, Prince2 has become widely used in both the public and private sectors and is now the UK’s de facto standard for project management. Although Prince2 was originally developed for the needs of IT projects, the method has also been used on many non-IT projects. The latest version is designed to incorporate the requirements of existing users and to enhance the method towards a generic, best-practice approach for the management of all types of projects.
ITIL
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development and operations. ITIL is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT service management. Used by many organisations around the world, an entire ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance.
Low pay and no future due to threats about outsourcing to DII (Atlas Consortium) My Pay as a Server Manager (Network Manager) is £26k - This is after 35 years of service, part of which was as a RADAR Engineer. I buy configure and maintain approx 30 Servers on a Network of 1500 Workstations. There are two people looking after the Network and four low skilled "Operator Maintainers" in the Workshop looking after over 2000 Workstations and Notebooks- My Advice is DO NOT Work for the Public Sector.
Posted by: Ron Bumstead 26 Mar 2008
What planet is Chappers on, is it planet BSF,or BSP as we call it in our school, Building Schools For Profit, because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Has he even had a sniff of working in ICT support in a school? Thought not! Come to work in Education ICT he says. Well I did, in 1998 when innovation, dynamism and thinking on your feet was key to driving ICT provision in schools forward. Now it's going to be a very different proposition as other people quite rightly point out in this thread when schools technical staff are downgraded to time constrained monitor monkeys who may not even work in one place but could even get shifted around. I know plenty of people who have jumped ship in the last 2 or three years as they see what is unfolding in the future and would prefer to swim rather than sink with the BSF project. Do I know what I'm on about you may say Chappers? Well yes actually, I do, as I am presently employed in a BSF school in the Burnley/Pendle area and have had to put up with the stress, heartache, uncertainty and mushroom management of the ICT provision and state of play regarding our jobs in the near future. Even the very thought of looking at one of the Redstone Technology proposals for one of our almost-built BSF schools again makes me shiver down the spine. Wireless everywhere, hundreds of laptops in students hands, computer controlled door access all flooded throughout the school and all requiring expert on the spot support. It's going to be a nightmare, especially when the private company re-negociate our contracts after the TUPE 2 years, which they WILL do, and downgrade all the IT staff or even make some redundant in the relentless pursuit of profit. Am I jumping ship? You betcha, as soon as possible. Get out of ICT in education before BSF gets in!
Posted by: Saul Hudson 26 Mar 2008
Yes, come and work in the public sector, where an "IT Officer" can get paid £10k-£14k and a Network Manager around £20K tops. Add to that the problem of unruly, abusive pupils who find it fun to damage the IT equipment you can ill afford to replace, and the constant misuse of all IT facilities.
Posted by: Andy Davis 20 Mar 2008
Did you actually compile this report from the comfort of your own chair?
Did you actually ask anyone about what was happening, this is an extremely un-balanced view of the state of technical support in schools.
It is time to give up reporting if this is the best you can do, or go work for the BNP
Posted by: fred 06 Mar 2008
People who know me understand that I sit on the fence about BSF as I can see that many schools will benefit from raising the baseline of IT facilities.
However, it is not all roses... far from it, and to talk about BSF and innovation in the same sentence is seriously misleading.
Fact one - Each BSF contract is different. The possible template used as part of the business plan is flawed as pretty much all LAs don't use it as a template, but stick to it rigidly to ensure that it goes through all the red tape. This means that Local Authorities give up their flexibility at this point.
Fact two - Each contract is the result of prolonged stages of negotiation. However, to make a difference you have to be in from the start and individual schools often get involved too late to make a difference to what provision they get as part of the contract. This means that any innovative work that the school wants to do will be stifled as it does not meet the standard build ... and doing things outside of the standard build will incur additional costs and any proposed cost savings due to group procurement and delivery are likely to disappear, if not actually cost more in the long run.
Fact three - the staff in schools who are liable to be innovative are likely to be gone, reduced in stature and/or with no ability to make significant impact on how IT impacts what goes on in the classroom. How IT will be used really needs to be decided by each individual school, and working with the existing support staff is likely to be key to this. Having a standard build that is not a raised baseline, but a limiting bar will reduce the efficiency of support as the change process will slow innovation. "Can I try this piece of new software?" Sorry ... you will have to call the central helpdesk and request the change ... it will take about 2 days to get an answer!
Fact four - there is no guarantee that the staff will be employed by the school, by the Local Authority or that there will still be the same number of staff supporting IT. In all likelihood existing staff will be TUPEd across, moved around and some will go. On one side, those with the right skills *will* rise to the top, get promotions to team leaders, have better training and more opportunities, but these sort of places are limited and will also take the real experts and innovators out of the schools ... and so we lose more chances to innovate. Instead we will end up with support technicians who just unbox hardware, plug it in, run a basic install script that does it all for them and then go off to change a toner. No input into the long term planning of IT at the school, not involved with the implementation of any policies or procedures, and likely to be seriously de-skilled.
No ... BSF and innovation are difficult to shoe horn into the same sentence in a positive manner and only time will tell how it works out.
I will still sit on the fence as I am optimistic about some aspects of it (BSF) and will do what I can to ensure that support staff in schools have their chance to make a difference, but the realists out there know that we need to see the successes and mistakes from the first few waves before it will be fixed, by which point hundreds of professionals will have left schools to work in the private sector and skills will be lost from schools.
Take a look at discussions on http://www.edugeek.net for just a sample of the issues schools face and try not to worry about the loss of innovation.
Posted by: Tony Sheppard 06 Mar 2008
...for tuppence a day and a cup of hot gravel
well until BSF causes you and your job to be outsourced, so that you end up being regraded from network manager to 'mouse' technician, or your new school has big lovely ICT suites full of fancy wireless and spanking new whiteboards and your server room is downsized to that of slightly smaller than the cleaner's broom cupboard,
oh wait a mo, you now have to share with the cleaning supplies, watch out mildred, don't put that open bottle of bleach on the server, no its not a tray for your cup of tea, oops too late
and too late to halt the tide of BSF
unfortunately
Posted by: neb ap'neb 05 Mar 2008
As an IT manager working in the education sector, I must disagree with the comment that "BSF is providing many opportunities for innovation in the education sector".
Unfortunately this is simply not true - ICT BSF is about putting a one-size-fits-all approach into school, installing a managed service, run by companies who are simply more interested in profits than in the education of our future generations. Innovation in ICT will be taken away from IT professionals and teachers in schools, and placed in the hands of private sector companies, away from those who care, and given to those who want their Christmas bonus.
The article states that "IT managers and directors are often ahead of their private sector colleagues" - and this is very true - however, under BSF, those IT managers and directors will either be transferred to the private sector company, and made redundant. "the advantages for the IT professional of working in education" says the title, under BSF, there won't be any IT professionals in education, it'll all be outsourced.
The "dynamism, innovation and pace" of ICT in education will die with BSF, as schools are forced to adopt a system in which they have no control over, no ability to tailor the ICT facilities to enhance the teaching and learning of those whose education is in our hands.
IT managers sometimes get a bad reputation from teachers in schools for not seeming to be flexible enough - due to the need to balance the needs of teaching, against the needs of providing a stable and functional IT system - they're in for a shock under BSF, as they find that the school has no real control over the flexibility and resources of their ICT provision.
The NHS project has taught this Govt nothing, as they continues to try to shoehorn everything into the middle-ground.
Posted by: Marc Blake 05 Mar 2008
Mr Chapman fails to mention that thanks to BSF, practically all technical ICT staff in schools will be TUPEd to private companies. The remaining teaching staff are severely restricted in their ability to innovate without sound technical backup, which the replacement toner-drones will be unable to provide.
Posted by: J Wiltshire 05 Mar 2008
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