London Borough of Newham

The IT Advisory Support Service for the London Borough of Newham provides ICT support to all of the primary and special schools in the borough through a school-based technician (SBT) service.

One of the key roles of the SBT service is to ensure that an accurate, up-to-date inventory of the ICT equipment and peripherals in each school is maintained.

Past ICT Audit

Generally this has been done manually through the use of a spreadsheet. Increasingly, however, more and more information is required to be held in the inventory. For example not just the make, model and serial number anymore but specification, upgrade details, room details, etc.

"Clearly maintaining an accurate and up to date record was taking an ever-increasing amount of time. Fortunately we found Parago, Parago Software's unique asset management tool," says Graham Pragnell Head of Education ICT.

London Borough of Newham’s School-based technicians previously recorded the audits via an excel spreadsheet for the schools.

"Basically, I recorded all the information by hand. It was laborious, although provided the facility of collecting exactly the information I wanted," says Gerald Hornsby, SBT for London Borough of Newham. "There was a lot of information I didn’t have time to record, and keeping up with software licensing was difficult," continues Gerald.

Benefits of Parago

"Parago has enabled our SBTs to work more smartly, reduced the time they spend on inventory tasks and has enabled them, through the reporting facility, to provide advice to the ICT co-ordinator and school about upgrade and replacement requirements," continues Graham Pragnell, Head of Education ICT.

A schools-based technician is responsible for the ICT equipment, both hardware and software within the school environment. "As a SBT, we have the responsibility for tracking equipment and software within the schools, says Gerald. "We can now check dates of equipment to see when it needs replacing. It helps with forward planning and budgeting," continues Gerald.

As Parago has been designed to reflect the school infrastructure from buildings to rooms and even cupboards, in the event of a burglary or theft, missing equipment is clearly evident and can be immediately identified to the police. With all the details recoded and the locations of where the equipment was originally located.

The web-based interface retains all the information in one offsite location allowing an SBT to check inventory items even when working in another school, from home or from our central offices.

Parago brings the advantage, and with it the reassurance, that the software used in all the schools is licensed and up to date, for example the SBTs can check the virus software in all the schools is up to date and working properly.

As well as benefiting the ICT departments Parago provides benefits for other school users such as Teachers, Head Teachers and Bursars by providing an accurate and easily accessible view of ICT inventory enabling cost efficient planning and procurement decisions.

Local Authority support for Schools

As an application purchased across the authority for all the schools, London Borough of Newham can configure reports to provide summary information across the whole authority. For example Parago identifies equipment which needs to be replaced or upgraded aiding procurement decisions for the school and the LA.

Parago has become an essential tool for the London Borough of Newham, accurately calculating pupil-to-computer ratios for individual schools and as an average for the authority. "Parago has completely revolutionised the time-consuming and mundane task of inventory maintenance," says Graham.

"The things I like most about Parago is its user interface as it’s really easy to use and maps out the schools in detail. I also really like the fact it’s web-based therefore there is no complicated software to install and then update and Parago updates are automatic using the interface," says Gerald Hornsby, Schools-based Technician, London Borough of Newham.