[ubuntu-uk] [ubuntu-marketing] (UK) headline - 'Schools set to go

[Chris Rowson]

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 8:25 PM, John Botscharow <info at jbotscharow.com> wrote:
> Preparing the ground is only effective if there is someone who will come
> in behind you and do the planting. My question is who is that and how do
> we work with them?
>
> I disagree with an earlier opinion that the kind of marketing that a
> proposal to Becta entails is something that we should not be involved
> in. At the very least, we need to know who to make aware of these
> opportunities, especially if we've "prepared the ground."

As far as I can suss out.....

Becta operates on the basis of advising schools on what they should be
buying, but it stops short of ordering them what to use. If you read
around on the Becta website, they offer up 'framework suppliers' as a
'best value purchasing route'. You can get the list of approved
suppliers here http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=31815&page=1629&catID=1623
(and it's nice to see the list available as an open office document
download too!)

I think that they're likely to want to add some open source software
to the 'catalogue' of software available for use in schools. In order
to achieve this I guess they want some open source consultancy
companies to agree some support prices in advance (that's the best
value purchasing bit).

That way, if a school decides to use FOSS, it will know exactly how
much support will cost, and where to buy it from.

I believe that the decision about exactly which software is used
finally comes down to the headmaster/governors school IT department.

There is a chap on the ubuntu-uk mailing list who works for a school
IT department. I've forwarded this email to that mailing list to see
if anyone has any comments.

As for making people aware.

Opportunities like this are always published in the Official Journal
of the European Union (and have to be as part of the contract
procedure rules employed by government).  You can see current
contracts up for grabs etc here
http://ted.europa.eu/Exec?DataFlow=ShowPage.dfl&countryFile=country_edition.xml&currentDataFlow=N_browse_bo.dfl&currentTable=ALL_browse_opportunities_edition.xml&Template=TED/N_browsebybo.htm&tb=o&currentPeriod=1&DataFlowPeriod=N_browse_bo_period.dfl&StatLang=EN&hpt=ALL&fn=browse_opportunities_edition.xml

I think if any businesses are not checking the Journal/not aware of
it, then they're probably not in the business of going after public
sector contracts anyway.

Chris