Birmingham Local Authority

Why do you need an IT Audit?

Schools are accountable bodies for the spending of public funding and since the original 1999 National Grid for Learning (NGfL) funding streams about £12 million per year has been spent on IT. Now there is a significant change in emphasis on accountability of spend, it was clear to us in Birmingham that schools really did need to know what the equipment estate was: what state it was in, what was coming to end of life-cycle, were they meeting the ratio targets and did they really have enough information to be able to plan sensibly for future investment?

Our conclusion was that no such co-ordinated (and corporate) approach existed. Many schools had the Excel/Access approach, especially in the secondary sector. A software application that automatically audits, daily with accurate information makes it easy to demonstrate the cost benefits to schools.

An added incentive for the use of audit tools has been the development of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. Within this there is a requirement for schools to have an up to date audit of equipment and, as we hope in Birmingham to be able to deliver the same level of service to all schools, the BSF standard will be the one to work to. We therefore had a desperate need to be able to have an up to date audit of what equipment was in schools, both for the schools themselves but also at a corporate level.

For this and many other reasons, we initially decided to create an independent online tool with the Birmingham Grid for Learning (BGfL) that would let schools create a shared audit log of their equipment, and let us as an LA have access to the information that would enable us to fulfil our monitoring role for grant allocation/spend. This was a voluntary thing and (no surprises) was a total failure with only 40% of schools registering in a six month period and, like any census, it was out of date before it was complete (which it never was). It was just not a priority for schools as it appeared to create yet another job that the LA wanted them to do. There was no perceived cost benefit to them as far as they could see.

With BSF driving towards a managed service, local ICT teams are only going to survive if they offer enhanced services (and at lower cost) into the future as part of the Local Education partnership (LEP) supply chain. Though the LEP approach is not the only method of delivering BSF it is likely to be the most common, besides which local ICT support (which globally schools would prefer) should be looking to use available technologies to reduce the burden and total cost of ownership of ICT.

In Birmingham it is true that we have been very fortunate. Firstly the city has invested in ICT heavily, including an MPLS network delivering a high speed network into all schools that also connects them to the internet and all other council buildings.

Secondly schools have embraced the value of ICT and have, over time, kept faith with the local LA providers for support, guidance and advice. Often we received the comment back from schools, "Thanks for the choice, now tell us what to pick!", but given that we could make out a good case, as in the case for a shared information resource audit tool, schools were willing to see that the major benefits accrued with global use: the Gestalt approach.

Why Parago?

Given that we had identified a need it didn’t take too long for us to size up the possibilities of Parago, from Parago Software. Like most ICT support providers we are approached almost daily by suppliers with the next great widget that will transform the world. Few, if any, have the possibility for impact as did, say, the safety pin, but just occasionally one comes along that might just fulfil a real need. For us in Birmingham this was Parago.

The initial features of Parago that we liked were:

• It was built for a specific market rather than being universal joint technology, i.e.: fits everything badly and nothing very well. It was designed for schools using the right terms and with icons that fit the context of a school
• The build of the application was such that it could be used and understood by both the technical and non technical
• It was scaleable from small primary school to large secondary
• It was web based so that the data risk was taken out of schools and the data could be accessed by multiple users. With data off-site disaster recovery (e.g. insurance claims) was made simple
• It was priced at an affordable level
• With costs passed onto schools, corporate benefits would provide efficiency savings
• Support to schools could be enhanced
• It was straightforward to deploy and was suited to all of the system variations in our schools
• Schools had access to online support

Benefits to the Local Authority

The true benefit of an automated web-based audit tool is with its universal use. The school has an accurate and always up to date audit of their ICT estate although with Parago’s web-based system the LA also has access to all the information it needs to sustain its monitoring role.

At any one time we would be able to see if, at a corporate level, schools were going to hit the ratios’ targets and highlight those schools which were not. More importantly, the LA has information that can be used by its ICT support group to proactively monitor, support and advise schools.

With Parago we could even see machine level information, actively updated on a daily basis, creating the opportunity to provide technical support down to an individual machine level without relying on user intervention for information. Better service for the same price is always a good selling point and can be used in the drive for local authority efficiency targets.

Alternative Technologies

Given that we liked the product we checked out if there were other providers of similar products specifically for the education market. Whilst there are some heavyweight applications available, none of them provided the web-based, and therefore shared, access that could maximise benefit. We also checked against the Becta technical standards and felt that the product was in line with their following standards:

• Our vision for data services aims to reduce the technical and bureaucratic burden on schools
• By improving the management, reporting and analysis of data, schools will be able to make their information available in real-time in the places where it can be of most value
• In the same way that effective connectivity provides the opportunity to offer a wide range of new services to schools, connectivity also makes it possible to remotely manage an institution’s own infrastructure if it is required. This type of support is evident in many other sectors already and it can become a reality within the schools sector too

After meeting with Parago Software we decided that this was a product for all of our Birmingham schools and we set about building a plan to take it to market.

Advising the schools

A major difficulty is that Local Authority support teams may wish to deploy Parago but how to do you fund this when all cash is passported through to schools? The logistics of consulting with all 450 schools in Birmingham was deemed very difficult.

The raising of awareness was done at our bi-annual ICT conference (February 2006) with all of our schools, in a series of workshops. When there is a good product/service to sell then (as the saying goes) it sells itself. Schools were very keen to get the product and were unanimous in their views that we had made another sensible investment on their behalf. Our pitch was as follows:

• Do you want this?
• Do you want it free [paid for by us] for a year?
• Will you pay for it after that?
• Can you see the overall benefits?

However, we were so convinced that Parago was a tool schools shouldn’t do without (and because we would be better able to support them at no additional cost to the LA) that we speculatively invested on schools behalf for the first year from predicted over-recovery/under-spend funds. As there was no initial licensing expenditure only annual maintenance was applicable.

We have an excellent relationship with our schools and most (especially in the primary sector) wanted us to make strategic decisions on their behalf.

Implementation

Alongside Parago Software we installed Parago onto a variety of schools systems, picking out a cross section of the most likely scenarios that could be encountered. This threw up surprisingly few issues, all of which were rapidly dealt with by Parago Software.

The next stage was to roll out this service to around 450 schools and sites. To do this we sub-contracted the installation work to a contracted supplier. The supplier visited the established reference sites to get a feel for the installation and we worked through the technical details with them. The roll out over the summer 2006 term was based on 4 sites per day (with a reserve) per engineer. If the engineer experienced any difficulty then they would leave the installation, notify us and alert the reserve school that they would be visited on the day. Each day we would remotely check the schools to be visited to ensure that connectivity was in good shape (no point in wasting a visit if there was a problem) and sign the visits off to the engineer.

Once a site was complete the engineer would email in to confirm completion and we could begin monitoring the first data harvest. School technical staff were offered training in the use of the software (a 2 hour session was sufficient) as groups were completed. As long as you can get all the logistics in line this works well. The programme of roll out was planned to be completed within a seven week period of time.

Conclusion

For Birmingham Parago was found to be a very useful software application to do regular IT audits more accurately, faster, and in real time demonstrating huge benefits and efficiency savings.

"Because the Parago product can supply cost and efficiency savings the schools benefits from a higher level of support offered to them. The Authority receives accumulated benefits and savings plus a discount on price, you can’t get a better deal than that!"

"I think its (Parago) a winner as I definitely believe in the product. It takes away a problem and it works; it’s simple, scalable and cost effective, all hugely important within the education sector."

Andy Jackson, head of Service Delivery for Birmingham LA.