London councils reveal joint IT jobs cut plan Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Kensington & Chelsea have said they will save £400,000 annually by axing a number of IT posts In a document titled "Tri-borough proposals report: bold ideas for challenging times", the three local authorities outline plans to cut 10 to 12 IT posts "excluding schools' ICT support". The …
Open source is free if you are using it at home, and you know what you are doing.
For a large organisation, it carries the same support and training costs as commercial software. Possibly more so, because it is more difficult to recruit staff who are already skilled in it. And, dare I say it, there are a few open source products which don't work quite as well as their commercial counterparts.
It has its place - you would need strong reasons to run Windows web servers rather than Linux. But you can't assume that switching to open office across the organisation will save money overall.
What is *so* special about council X's IT/HR/Accounts procedures (other than their fairly stupid if looked at by an independent assessor?) that can't be shared.
Note. I'd hope they consolidate *long* before they even *think* about outsourcing.
*Cautious* thumbs up. Might encourage other groups of councils to do the same (but I won't hold my breath).
Shouldn't be too hard to exceed the expectations of primary heads in at least one of those authorities.
For over £6k a year a head will expect a whole 2 hours of on-site time from a LA tech (39 weeks a year). Which might be fine if either the majority of techs were competent or remote support was the norm, sadly neither is the case.
Oh, and they certainly won't expect wireless - the head of primary schools ICT support reckons it's a health risk.
"Oh, and they certainly won't expect wireless - the head of primary schools ICT support reckons it's a health risk."
I'm a governor at a local Primary school, the school has a mix of cabled and wireless. Even the fire alarm system and door closers are wireless (old victorian building - running cables is either really, really ugly or just plain difficult).
I have said to the head (was 'teacher' but now more like 'general manager') that any parent wishing to discuss the possibilities of risk from wireless signals damaging the health of thier child can discuss the issue with me where they will be listened to politley and patiently and then told to fuck off while I shove thier mobile phone up thier arse.
He understands parents very well, does our head, and offered to hold them while the suppository is applied.
Thier habit of driving 1/4 mile to drop off the kids is far more hazardous to the health of thier kids than the wireless networks at school.
You sir are the sort of people we need to listen to when discussing education!
I just don't get these "Mommies" who whine about little Jimmy or Jemima cutting themselves on a pair of plastic scissors or getting brain-death cancer from the wireless devices in the school, yet walk their kids to school breathing in toxic car exhaust or drive them in the most horrendous vehicles ever designed to kill!
If "mommies" aren't allowed to drive their kids into school, and aren't allowed to walk them in either, I'm not sure what you want them to do?
But I think it is a bit of an urban myth. I often walked my kids to and from school, and there were plenty of other people doing the same thing. There was one car I used to see trundling along from a house about 200 yards from the school, dropping the kid off then trundling back again. That's just one car. Maybe she was disabled and had trouble walking, maybe she was just an idiot.
Very few people choose to drive their child to school if they didn't need to, for the simple reason that it is a nightmare. It's a nightmare because the councils take delight in building schools with inadequate dropping off facilities, to discourage people from driving their kids in. But then they spoil it by not providing enough local places, so kids get allocated to schools which are miles away.
This myth seems to exist at least partly because the roads clear during the school holidays. Even the main roads are clearer - why is that, if the problems are caused by people driving their kids 1/4 mile to school?
Fact is, is you took any significant group of road users of the roads for a week, the roads would be noticeably clearer. It just never happens, except with the school run.
"Thier habit of driving 1/4 mile to drop off the kids is far more hazardous to the health of thier kids than the wireless networks at school."
But if they don't then their little princes and princesses might have to get on some kind of IDN *public* transport and share with those horrible *poor* children.
Not part a two working parent family then.
IT is an essential part of maintaining parent-teacher communication.
From the simple e-mail messages reminding parents of appointments; clarifying homework assignments to a well run web site that actually supports parents in helping staff to educate kids.
I suppose you'd have them place the grenade in the server room - I can imagine others would suggest somewhere closer to your brains.
Are Councils paying their IT staff £40k a year now?? Someone please tell me these are contractors going and not your bone idle hypochondriac idiots who sulk about in the basements of power and think the world owes them a life because they've been to a workshop.
Oops, I'd better get my coat.
"Are Councils paying their IT staff £40k a year now?? Someone please tell me these are contractors going and not your bone idle hypochondriac idiots who sulk about in the basements of power and think the world owes them a life because they've been to a workshop."
Fat chance.
That' ll be the "CTO" or whatever top purveyor of products from the Strategy Boutique is called and 11 minions who get paid whatever is left over.
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