Becta confirms government will retain its key services

Government agency's procurement, research and interoperability standards work will be retained

Becta, responsible for improving the use of IT in schools, will be closed down

Becta, the government body in charge of ICT in schools, will see its research, procurement and interoperability work transferred to other parts of government next year, following the announcement in May that the body will be closed down.

Becta said that it expects to make an announcement later this month, when negotiations with the Department for Education and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills are concluded.

“There has been some notification in a general sense that certain functions of Becta’s work will be transferred, such as procurement,” explained a Becta spokesperson.

“And there is still a need for the research we were doing, as well as the work that is being done on interoperability – but at the moment we’re looking at which elements of that project work will be transferred.”

Becta has also been involved in researching how the Systems Interoperability Framework standard could work in practice in the UK education sector.

The spokesperson added that negotiations between Becta, the Department for Education and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills are in the final stages.

“We’re in talks with staff and unions and will have a more definite idea of functions that are transferring at the end of October 2010,” the spokesperson added.