Key points

● Global technological change means changing the way software procurement is approached.

● Current procurement frameworks in the education sector are based on assumptions about software markets that take no account of open source software.

● Becta's own figures suggest Open Source offers savings of up to 60% for schools, yet only a handful of the thousands of applications available from their non-curriculum software framework are open source.

● Framework agreements reduce risks associated with financial stability posed by SMEs but ignore the risks posed by large companies and proprietary software lock-in.

● We call for the Government to put students and taxpayers first and the supply industry firmly second, by adopting strategies to reduce dependency on monopolies and to stimulate and promote open standards and open technologies.

Becta Frameworks

Becta is the body tasked by the Government with advising schools on ICT.  One way Becta is doing this is to set up procurement frameworks that  identify a number of recommended companies chosen in advance to supply particular products or services to schools.

From the thousands of companies currently providing ICT services and products to schools Becta selects between 10 and 50 companies for each framework.  It recommends schools choose from amongst these and, by implication, recommends that schools do not do business with the others.  This is just a recommendation: schools are under no obligation to follow Becta's advice.

The current frameworks cover laptops, interactive whiteboards, non-curriculum software, consultancy, Internet and support services.  A framework on Virtual Learning Environments is being developed and one on Management Information Systems is due to be opened to tender shortly.

Free and Open Source Software

Free and Open Source Software offers alternative ways of creating and licencing software that gives control to the software buyer rather than the vendor.  The alternative, proprietary software, is controlled by the vendor.  They decide what the software will do, when new functions will be added and, as a buyer, you purchase a licence allowing you to use the software in certain ways.

With Open Source, the buyer is in control.  You can install the software on as many computers as you like.  You don't have to worry about keeping track of numbers of licences.  And if you want the software to do something new, or just get support for it, you're not tied into the vendor - you can shop around for the best deal.

We've devoted a page to telling you more about Open Source Software.

Why do schools want Open Source Software?

Open Source Software is increasingly widely used in business and in the home.  Schools, too, are coming to recognise the benefits, including :

• We don't know which software is going to be prevalent in universities and businesses in a few years' time.  Open Source Software gives pupils access to a wider variety of software, giving them the opportunity to learn the skills that will serve them well whatever happens in the market.
• Infrastructures built with Open Source Software (such as web servers, mail servers, firewall, proxy servers, file servers and thin client environments) have been shown to be very reliable and cost-effective: much of the Internet relies on it, for example.  Money saved is often put into more ICT provision, paying for more experienced and skilled ICT staff or to local support companies.  Many schools feel that keeping money in the local economy is preferable to having it going to foreign multinationals.
  
• Open Source gives schools control over their software.  There's no need to worry about how many licences they have, or being held over a barrel when they want to extend or enhance their systems.  For example, schools using the OpenOffice.org office suite (an alternative to Microsoft Office) can, entirely legally, give every pupil a CD with the application on to install on a computer at home.
• Becta's own research (May 2005) suggests that schools can make significant savings in ICT (up to 60%) by switching from proprietary software to open source.
  

The problem with the frameworks

To see what's wrong with the frameworks, we first need to understand what they are intended to do.  Their aim is to give schools and local authorities access to the best of breed services, including hardware and software.   So a successful framework would capture the best, most cost-effective options and present them to schools.  It would also ensure that new, better, options that emerged over time could be included.  After all, technology is an area of very rapid development and yesterday's best buy is often today's turkey.

When we look at the companies which are today successfully supplying services to schools, they cover the full range from one-man bands to multinationals.  (The companies providing poor services to schools cover the same range).  Looking at software, the companies supplying proprietary software tend to be larger; those supplying open source software tend to be smaller.

The frameworks favour larger companies.  Not only is applying to be in a framework a considerable investment that smaller companies often can't afford; there are also minimum levels of turnover and other financial requirements making it difficult for many smaller companies to be involved.

So here we see the problem.  The frameworks filter out many of the companies which today are successfully working with schools and, in software, open source companies are disproportionately affected, with more of them being small innovators. 

If you set up a procurement framework for software, as Becta have, and you put more hurdles in the way of companies selling open source software, it can hardly come as a surprise when none of the suppliers in your shiny new framework supply open source.

The reality is that Becta is recommending against buying from many companies with excellent track records of supplying schools; we wonder how many of those companies will survive if Becta's advice is widely followed.

Market distortion

There is an implicit assumption in the framework approach that software is a product that is bought and sold through proprietary licensing when globally the trend, particularly for productivity and internet based tools, is in the opposite direction.  The result is market distortion in favour of companies whose business models are predicated on selling proprietary licensed software, and against those with business models based on supplying services around Open Source Software.

How can schools get Open Source Software?

For schools which follow Becta's advice, getting Open Source Software is going to be very difficult.   There are many companies offering implementation, support and consultancy services around Open Source but none of them are on Becta's list. 

What if a school wanted to implement OpenOffice.org as an desktop office suite?  Many organisations, including an increasing number of companies, are using OpenOffice.org as an alternative to suites such as Microsoft Office.  It meets the needs of most users just as well (in some cases better) and has no licence fee, either now or in the future.  Note that "no licence fee" does not mean that it's free.  There are still costs to plan, install, customise and support it; whether that's done in-house by the school or by an external organisation.    The companies making money from OpenOffice.org do so by offering those services. 

Unfortunately, that's not the model Becta has chosen to offer.  Instead of purchasing from companies that can work closely in partnership with schools, Becta's framework rules have directed them to choose companies primarily selling shrink-wrapped software.  When a company makes its money from selling software licences, why on earth would it sell software that has a zero licence fee, especially when it isn't set up to offer the surrounding services? 

The answer is that it wouldn't, which is why you'll look in vain to find OpenOffice.org or many other popular Open Source applications if you look at the offerings from the non-curriculum software framework.

Moodle misses out

Moodle is an open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that's been adopted by hundreds of schools, colleges and universities including over 150,000 users planned at the Open University.  Around a million teachers worldwide are members of the Moodle community and its take up is growing.

So Moodle has proved itself as one of the world's leading VLEs, innovative and cost effective whether for ten or 100,000 users.  It isn't owned by any one company, and has a vibrant development and support community around it, including numerous companies offering commercial services.  Because no one company owns it, the risk of implementing Moodle is low: if one small company can't perform or goes bust, another can take its place.

But Moodle, like most Open Source Software, just doesn't fit into the Becta frameworks model.  No big company is promoting it so it doesn't matter how good it is, nor how much benefit schools are getting from it today, nor how much value for money it offers.   Even if a big company were to promote it, the Becta recommendation would be to buy only from that company, not from the many other experts.

eLearning Credits :  what benefit from £350m?

We've been here before.  Around £350 million of taxpayers' money has been spent on eLearning Credits - a scheme due to end in 2007.  Like the frameworks, eLearning Credits are based around proprietary software with what little Open Source Software there is shoehorned in and buried where no-one is likely to find it unless they know what they're looking for.

The Content Advisory Board report (2005) says "Although eLCs may have had a significant impact on promoting awareness and use of digital content in the classroom, they have probably not led to a step change in the level of innovation embodied in digital content used in the classroom." 

£350 million is a lot of money to spend on educational software that hasn't produced a step change in innovation.  Rather than making similar mistakes with frameworks, perhaps it's time for the DfES and Becta to look at their own research and think a little more innovatively about how we can really get value for money.

No strategy to exploit Open Source

Respected research company IDC has provided evidence that Open Source development is the biggest change taking place in the global software industry since the 1980s, yet there is no strategy to exploit this in our schools; it's left entirely to innovative teachers and small businesses that get more obstacles than help from government agencies.

Becta and the DfES should be providing leadership by accelerating and supporting improvement of these innovative products, not placing barriers in their way.  Moodle is just one example. There are many others where innovation is being stifled before getting going simply because the bureaucratic procedures are not keeping up with the rate of change in the technology markets.

How to get the benefit from Open Source

By treating Open Source Software as just another product, the UK Government is failing to grasp what many other governments around the world are understanding.  From a commercial perspective, Open Source is different because it moves control from the vendor to the buyer.  The buyer (especially a large buyer) has far greater power to have the software do what it wants, to install the software where it wants and to get support from whom it chooses.

To really benefit, the public sector must move from being a software licencee to being a software owner. 

The less radical option is to revise the existing frameworks to reflect the impact Open Source Software and Open Standards are having on the global stage.   For example, since doing business with a small company is less risky in the Open Source world, a sensible approach to frameworks might make it easier for SMEs to get onto frameworks where they were providing services around Open Source Software.

If the Government is really interested in getting best value for money, it could do a lot worse than re-evaluate all the assumptions behind procurement frameworks as they apply to Open Source Software.   After all, software really is different from most other products the Government wants to buy.  It has a high initial cost for development and implementation but once that's done, the marginal cost of installing more instances of the software is virtually zero.  And yet the Government buys software as if it was buying chairs, where the manufacturing cost is far more significant than the R&D.

Open Source gives Governments a way to buy software that reflects the costs involved in creating it and, in doing so, to transfer the high profit margins some proprietary software makes (up to 80%) into savings for the taxpayer or money going into local economies.

The supply industry will re-order itself once government removes frameworks that are inherently stacked to support a dated and largely discredited commercial model.  The newer commercial models promise to lower costs, provide greater opportunities for learners to participate in their own resource development and to stimulate more innovation in learning resources. Things that the Content Advisory Board report (2005) clearly shows existing methods have failed to achieve.

Next steps

We recognise that making the changes we're proposing is a big step for a Government closely wedded to the proprietary software industry.  Whilst hundreds of millions are poured into the proprietary software industry, virtually nothing is being invested in exploring Open Source.

• As we've mentioned, Becta published a report suggesting savings of up to 60% for schools switching to Open Source.  However, this study was based on a small number of schools and, as both we and Becta agree, is a first step rather than a definitive body of research.   More research could easily be conducted if the Government were willing to invest relatively small sums of money.  For example, the National Computing Centre, Open Advantage and Service Birmingham have recently launched just such a research body - the National Open Centre; but it is short of funding.

• The Government spends large amounts of money on developing agreements with companies such as Microsoft which we're told save money.  They certainly save money compared to the cost of buying software from Microsoft without the agreement; but we don't know whether they save money compared to taking a similar centralised approach to procuring Open Source Software because that research has never been done.
• Becta tells us that their frameworks are fair and unbiased and yet, whether by design or not, they deny schools following Becta's advice the opportunity to buy Open Source Software.  Government policy from the Cabinet Office states "UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements.  Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis" and "UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services".  We ask that the frameworks be amended to bring them in line with current Government policy.

We are not asking for any special favours for Open Source Software; rather that the disproportionate spending on propping up the proprietary software industry is more fairly divided.

Useful links

Becta - British Educational Communications and Technology Agency
Becta procurement frameworks
DfES
IDC press release on the impact of Open Source Software