BECTA attacked on two fronts over open source

Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on December 21, 2006

BECTA (the body responsible for IT in compulsory education in the UK) has come under attack over their approach to open source on two fronts.

An early day motion in the commons, supported by 1 in 5 backbench MPs said:

That this House [...] expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source software and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market.

A report by Sirius found that:

Becta cannot account for over £200m of taxpayer's money spent on software for schools

Sirius is hardly an independent third party in this, but their figures are based on FOI act requests and seem to add up. What Sirius want is a change in the way IT money is allocated so that more open source gets used.

Coverage at: itnews and ITWales.

cheers, stuart

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		BECTA attacked on two fronts over open source Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on December 21, 2006 BECTA (the body responsible for IT in compulsory education in the UK) has come under attack over their approach to open source on two fronts. An early day motion in the commons, supported by 1 in 5 backbench MPs said: That this House [...] expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source software and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market. A report by Sirius found that: Becta cannot account for over £200m of taxpayer's money spent on software for schools Sirius is hardly an independent third party in this, but their figures are based on FOI act requests and seem to add up. What Sirius want is a change in the way IT money is allocated so that more open source gets used. Coverage at: itnews and ITWales. cheers, stuart BECTA \| British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) \| Open Source Software \| open_source \| sirius \| UK \| UnitedKingdom Stuart's blog Login or register to post comments 4337 reads
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