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ICT Infrastructure Management

This part of the operational documentation is to a greater extent about technology. The other chapters about service support and service delivery, are about work processes and procedures. Infrastructure management, are about planning, design, deployment, and ongoing maintenance of ICT systems. The purpose is to provide ICT solutions adapted to the organisation's needs, which can be operated over time to a cost one can afford.

Good planning, administration, and management are the key to ensure a well-developed ICT service, and that the service can be adapted to changing organisational needs over time. It is about using resources well and having skills and competences required to offer a good ICT service.

Even with a well-developed infrastructure, one must expect 60-70% of the cost to go on operations, i.e. service support and service delivery. Likewise, infrastructure constitutes around 20-30% of the total costs, and one must take this part just as seriously as operations. The infrastructure chosen also has a major impact on what operations will cost and what the systems can deliver.

Most people associate infrastructure with roads, water and sewage, and power supply. Building a house requires infrastructure in place if we are to have a certain housing standard. In the computer world infrastructure is often associated with the data network. This was in the 1980s. Over the next two decades infrastructure extended to networks, computers, software and maintenance. So in this part of the documentation is all network, hardware and significant portions of the software part of the infrastructure.

Even here we focus on practical planning and implementation. We have gathered concrete planning data from different municipalities with good ICT plans by budgetting and procurement. We went through design and planning, deployment process, operations process and support. It is important to keep in mind the difference in operational terms of what Service Desk does with, for example. support, and the support operations does for example with network cables to the school. It is basically four processes that recur at infrastructure management:

<ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"> <li><p>Design and planning process</p> <p>Development and maintenance of ICT strategies and processes for deployment and implementation of appropriate solutions in the ICT infrastructure of the organisation.</p></li> <li><p>Deployment process</p> <p>Concerns implementation and deployment of activities and / or ICT solutions designed and planned with a minimum of disruption to the organisation</p></li> <li><p>Operating process</p> <p>All activities and initiatives to deliver and/or maintain the desired use of ICT infrastructure.</p></li> <li><p>Technical support process</p> <p>The development of knowledge for evaluation, support and quality assurance of all current and future infrastructure solutions.</p></li></ol>

Design and planning

Design and planning is about providing pervasive strategic guidelines for the development and installation of an ICT infrastructure to the institution's needs. It applies not only to infrastructure networks, computers, and applications. Also basic processes must be in place to get the technology to work. It applies to both Service Desk and processes for service management.

Avoiding scheduling, or cutting corners, is very risky. Therefore it is often wise to spend a little more time and effort on planning, which will reduce risk and provide significant benefits during implementation. Most projects that get stranded do so for lack of planning. Putting in place an ITIL process in an organisation depends entirely on preparation and planning, along with effective use of people, processes, and products (tools and technology).

It is very important to communicate with and talk to every part of the organisation while planning ITIL. In Norway this is regulated by the labour act §4-2:

• Employees and their representatives should be kept informed of systems used in the planning and execution of the work. They should be given the necessary training to be familiar with these systems, and take part in designing them.

The objective is to deliver the right ICT solutions for your organisation. These must be easy to maintain and adapted to the school's needs. The solution must be reasonable over a long time, also when the systems expand. During a design and planning process should one relate generally to a steering group and a reference group. A good project ensures to have skilled people in the steering group and people who contribute to the reference group. A good planner is clever to use those groups and other employees to bring up the good solutions.

We created a check list over activities and deliveries in an infrastructure project.

Feedback

• Plan for the schools, both curricula and activity plans
• Existing ICT strategies
• What's expected of operational services
• Current ICT systems and operations management

Processes

• go through all the suggestions and documents
• look at others performing design- and planning activities
• making and maintaining ICT plans and decisions
• making and maintaining ICT architecture
• making and maintaining the ICT strategy

Deliveries

• ICT-strategy
• ICT decisions (with justifications)
• IT plans
• the entire IT architecture
• Design and planning of processes and procedures
• organisational structure and framework
• Design, planning standards and decisions
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
• user cases and usability studies
• Requirement lists and tender documents
• Project plans
• Technical drawings, plans and maps
• Comments and feedback

As you can see extensive planning is carried out for an infrastructure project. An ICT project for schools in the municipality can quickly reach several million NOK (hundreds of thousands pounds) should one deliver 500-1000 computers with power, computer networks and software. With such amounts, it is important to have good and feasible plans with realistic budgets.

There are several examples of municipalities that have underestimated the need for funding for ICT in schools. They have installed lots of nice equipments remaining unused. Maybe the software could be missing. The network might be of poor quality or lacking power connectors. The municipality gets quickly an additional expense of 2 million NOK (around 165 000 pounds) if 800 machines in 10 schools should have a computer network and power connectors.

Good development plans are made to avoid surprises. Plans are also made to ensure a proper level of ambition with a realistic budget.

Deployment

Definition:

• Is about implementation and deployment of activities and/or ICT solutions designed and planned with a minimum of disturbance for the organisation.

The planning project shall have assessed what equipment schools have, and how much is available. From that, one creates a plan to roll out new equipment, or replace equipment, at each school and at the central operating service.

This is about placing the equipment where it is to be used. Set each PC on a table and connect it to the computer network with a network cable. Plug the power cable in to the electrical outlet. Connect the screen and put network cables in the correct switches.

The term roll-out (or deployment) is used both for placing the equipment, and for installing and configuring software on many machines. Rolling out software may also be referred to as "release management". But the word roll-out is short and fine, although one should make clear whether you are talking about hardware or software, which require totally different procedures.

Rollout management is about implementing what has been planned and designed in the release process. Getting out the equipment where it should be is often harder than we think, and takes considerable time. This is because many parties are involved either to deliver the equipment, or being among the many to receive it. In a way you could say that rollout is the same as a wheel bolt that holds the vehicle wheel in place on the shaft.

To get everything in place, is totally dependent on a lot of coordination. One must make good tactical planning, which involves both change management and project management. One must make sure that the roll out is associated with the design and planning process.

Danger may often occur by underestimating how deployment affects existing systems. Taking in use new solutions or upgrades will affect or change the organisation. Work routines are changed and one gets new ways to solve tasks.

In the school , the change means introducing ICT tools in school subjects. This is new and different for teachers. Many are unfamiliar with how the equipment can be used in teaching. At the same time, an operating and maintenance service should be in place to give schools a safe and stable ICT solution. This leads to changes in the organisation, which must be planned and requires resources. Therefore it is important to take this into consideration both under planning and rollout..

Roles during roll-out

Building an IT infrastructure can be likened to building a house. When building a house one really needs an architect, a builder, an owner, masons, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and one or more supervisors (foremen). Much the same applies to deploying infrastructure. We have summed up the roles recommended as part of the operating standards ITIL.

• Owner of the deployment process - is responsible for the deployment process, and for it happening in a good and efficient manner.
• Project manager for the roll-out - is responsible for developing appropriate plans for deployment of the ICT system and day-to-day directing of the roll-out.
• Coordinator for the roll-out - is responsible for coordinating roll-out activities. The Coordinator shall ensure that the project attains the objectives and acceptance requirements for the system and ensure an orderly handover.
• Roll-out analyst - responsible for ensuring that equipment is installed in suitable settings. Shall verify that the equipment and premises are suitable for the standards, tests and deployment agreed upon..
• Employees in the rollout team - are responsible for the ICT solution and the work environment, and support the acceptance and test processes.

As we see, roll-out touches many parts of an organisation. Technically it affects configurations and versions of software and equipment. It also influences the process of change and how work is done at the service.

One must think carefully about who gets assigned each of these roles. Even in a full-scale roll-out project costing several hundred thousand pounds, one person might have several roles. But it is not always prudent to give one person several roles, because it can be very demanding to follow up with both suppliers and customers of the equipment.

For minor upgrades and adjustments, there might be soon too many roles. For example, one needs not to have a project manager to place a new server, or replace a switch. This is part of the infrastructure, but is very close to the operations and maintenance. The important thing here is to distinguish between a rollout in infrastructure, and operational services. The operations department will not take over the equipment before it operates as agreed. In other words, you have a transfer document where one acknowledges that the equipment is delivered as agreed.

Operations

Definition:

• The development of knowledge for evaluation, support and quality assurance of all current and future infrastructure solutions.

Operations of the equipment is about having tools and machines in place as the basis for delivering the agreed upon ICT services. Operations of equipment has a strong focus on technology. This supports all other activities being done with the ICT systems. Often operations are seen as support tucked away in an office at the end of the corridor. As a hygiene service" .First when something goes wrong, operations personnel are contacted. A good operational service is still crucial for ICT tools to work properly. Without good operations one accepts the loss of time and that tasks cannot be solved. For example a school can get problems when using tests done with ICT tools.

One may ask whether one needs operations. Needing people to operate in today's high tech world? Is there no one who has found a way to solve operational tasks automatically? Why should you have people in the operations? The answer is usually that balancing between what is done automatically, and what people have to follow up with. An important realization is that most people want someone to talk to when a problem occurs. They want the error to be fixed, and they want feedback that everything goes smoothly. This type of error correction is not particularly easy to replace with machines.

A good operations department chooses to automate where possible. Simultaneously one needs people to monitor and keep control of the automated solutions. The automation must be further developed. There are also situations where automation is insufficient. Equipment breaks, and applications crash. You need someone who is handy and can rectify errors, or obtain substitutes for what cannot be repaired.

A poorly organised operations service wastes a lot of time fighting fires and working through manual procedures which could have been avoided with automation. Time spent automating can quickly pay for itself by freeing up time. This time can be used to improve support, provide more services and raise the quality for users. To get a permanent fix of errors, sometimes people might have to delay upgrades or remove services for temporary repair. This makes time to fix problems properly when monitoring the system manually would otherwise take up all the time.

Operations is mostly about preventing errors, or correcting equipments with reported errors. One is often not entirely familiar with causes of an error. One must troubleshoot to find the fault. Good operations' employees have flair. They use past experience to uncover errors. Then they go almost right to problem solution and correct the error.

Configuration item

A Configuration Item (CI) is part of an infrastructure. It often describes a wish for change or a question. Maybe to put in place a new service, or make adjustments to the services you already have in production. Often it is a question of upgrading some equipment, or obtaining something new.

Configuration items are important in configuration management when it comes to equipment and infrastructure. Often a configuration item is about whether systems shall:

• be run
• be closed
• be shut down
• be started
• be interrupted
• be removed

Technical support

Technical support ensures staff are available with the right skills to support services provided in the computer network, as well as staff to work at the Service Desk. As part of technical support one should have in-depth documentation with technical advice. The advice should provide information, guidance and examples of roll-out activities, and describe support and maintenance of all parts of the ICT service. To achieve this, the staff must know, or be able to obtain information, about the technologies, processes and documentation in use. As listed below, technical support consists of several activities:

• Research and development related to new technology.
• Third line service in response to incident reports from the Service Desk and general handling of problems.
• Delivery management - technical support lack in-depth knowledge or understanding of the technology in use and need technical support from others.
• Coherence of design and planning. Especially in support and documentation. For example, when preparing tender documents.
• Coherence with the deployment of new system versions, and acceptance in the operating environment.
• Analysis, interpretation and distribution of information from reports and logs.
• Tactical assembly of improvements in the quality of the ICT service delivered.

A design and planning example

As an example of how infrastructure can be made, we have taken significant portions of the ICT plan for schools in Nittedal 2005-2008. We have made some adjustments, to make it more general and easier for others to copy.

• Background for the plan
• What's expected of the ICT tools and services
• Skills needs
• Investments
• Objectives
• Students and teachers
• Status and objectives
• Costs
• Other purchasing options
• Software, learning platforms, and services
• Software and learning platforms
• Online services
• Resource usage
• Centralized operations and roles
• Operation and support costs
• Recommendation
• Attachment

Background for the plan

In its "Program for Digital Competence 2004-2008", the Ministry of Education and Research sets objectives for the use of digital technology in the Norwegian school. "By 2008 we will have an infrastructure, an organisation and a culture that makes our school system to one of the world leaders when it comes to development and educational use of ICT in teaching and learning."

Being able to use digital tools is defined as a basic skill for all 13 school years. Pupils' development of basic skills is to be given priority in all subjects. The new curricula will mean that students must increasingly make use of digital tools when learning. Pupils should be able to use the same technology in work, that forms the basis for the final assessment, as they use when learning. When the examination is carried out using digital tools, this provides better coherence between the learning process and the final assessment.

A national survey in Norway (Skolenes digitale tilstand 2003, ITU, Feb. 2004) shows computers are seldom included in the subjects in primary school and computers are barely used by pupils in the school.

This plan builds on "Competence Plan for schools in Nittedal (2005-2008)" and implements that competence plan's objectives for digital knowledge in Nittedal's schools. In addition, this is a plan for investment and resource requirements associated with the operation of our Linux network.

What's expected of the ICT tools and services

We have different objectives for different groups in the school and to different aspects of the ICT commitments. Briefly put, our goals are:

• Get increased use of ICT among both students and teachers by increasing physical access to ICT equipment.
• Be tools-oriented, and therefore emphasise the use of ICT tools in the school's subjects.
• Give full access to educational software for everything from musical composition and use of the Internet to learning to write, simulations and games.
• Be thrifty and utilise the financial resources we have in the best possible way.

Through these main objectives we will achieve:

• Teachers get good working and communication tools at work.
• Students get the opportunity to be personal users of ICT and use ICT as a natural tool in everyday school life.
• The school will be physically able to fulfill various aspects of the curriculum related to ICT.
• Operating and maintenance costs are not greater than what the school budget can allow.

Skills needs

To build and maintain the infrastructure you need a collaboration between many different professionals. As an example, we show what equipment areas you need expertise in. These are equipment areas that form part of the infrastructure in an ordinary school.

• Network infrastructure with local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN). Mostly it is easy to obtain switches and other network equipment. This is off-the-shelf kit. But it must be set up for the planned architecture designed for centralized operations. This is a job for professionals. The municipality building department must approve the changes made.
• Power supply (230V/110V) supporting client computers, servers and network equipment. Many schools have not installed outlets for all computers to be placed in classrooms, computer labs or the library. It is a job for professionals to plan a power grid with enough sockets, and follow given regulations. The municipality building department must approve the changes made.
• Servers and clients support a greater variety of network services and end-user applications. To obtain the right equipment is a considerable job. It is about finding equipment with appropriate capacity, good quality, decent guarantee schemes, and low prices.
• Machine setup and systems for monitoring hardware. To be sure that all equipment is running, it is normally accompanied by remote monitoring systems. That way you can have an overview of the health status of the equipment in a centralized operations center.
• Designing appropriate environment or room for placement of equipment that needs cooling. Computers and network electronics emit considerable heat. First recently, manufacturers of equipment have addressed the ever-increasing power consumption. Therefore, one must sometimes ensure that the excess heat gets transported away. Such cooling systems need to be installed by professionals.

• Knowledge of different performance requirements for software. A program for video editing must run on a workstation with >1.5 Ghz processor and ample memory. Other programs may easily be used on a thin client. One must have relatively good knowledge of what can be expected of different types of client machines to choose the right mix of equipment. This requires insight into how computers are intended to be used in different subjects and in different rooms of the school.

• Installation and setup of optional equipment such as printers, video projectors, computer boards and the like. To set up accessories may quickly take considerable time. For example video projectors need to be screwed into the ceiling, and one must arrange for both screen cables and power to reach them. Printers must have a network point and be connected to the network. This type of installation usually requires professionals for both installation and setup.

Besides to the different professionals needed to build the infrastructure, you will additionally need:

• Owner of the deployment process - is responsible for the deployment process, and for it happening in a good and efficient manner. This may be the steering group.
• Project manager for the roll-out - is responsible for developing appropriate plans for deployment of the ICT system and day-to-day directing of the roll-out.
• Coordinator for the roll-out - responsible for coordinating deployment activities. Coordinator shall ensure the project fulfils the objectives and acceptance requirements that apply to the solution, and ensure an orderly handover. This may be an assistant to the project leader.
• Deployment analyst - responsible for ensuring an appropriate environment at the locations where the equipment will stand. Shall verify that the equipment and premises are suitable for the agreed standards, tests and deployment. This may be an assistant to the project leader, with the task of reporting deviations from plans to the steering group.
• Employees in the roll-out team - responsible for ICT solution and the working environment, and support for acceptance and test processes. This is employees who participate in one or more sub-projects.

Organizationally it will look like this

Investments

To meet a new curriculum, schools must have sufficient computers available for their students and staff. This investment plan includes the actual costs of increasing the stock of computers at schools to reach national objectives. Those objectives call for at least one client machine or PC per four students. The requirements for equipment shall probably increase in a few years, so we expand that to a PC workstation per three students. All teachers should have access to a computer in their daily work at school.

Today the school net consists of servers and thin clients at the schools, and a shared server for backup in the municipality. Since we can use used computers as client machines in our network, the users' computers are not the most expensive (we buy used equipment and receive donated equipment from industry). The major costs lie in increased need for power outlets in classrooms, and possibly an increase in electricity bills in the schools.

The increased number of concurrent users will also increase support and operational costs. There will also be a need for tables and chairs for the new PC workplaces. In addition, all schools received a broadband connection at a fixed price. Later, we shall illustrate the total cost by doubling the stock of equipment.

Status for pc coverage 01.06.2005 is:

1. 8.9 students per computer in primary schools
2. 4.4 students per computer in secondary schools.

Total number of machines:

We envisage a combination of thin clients, diskless clients and laptops. Schools should have an infrastructure making it possible to roll out thin clients in every classroom. Here students can write, calculate, using the internet and make presentations. In addition the school will have the opportunity to lend laptops to different groups. In this way students get close to full PC coverage in certain work situations. The laptops are connected to servers in wireless networks. In this way teaching becomes more flexible.

Pupils

We recommend an investment providing at least one client computer per third student, something the government has stated as a goal for ICT tools in schools. To achieve this we need nearly a doubling of the number of client machines.

Status and objectives

To reach our target we need to increase the machine park from 506 to 1033 machines. This is an increase of just under 600 machines. (thin clients, diskless clients and notebooks).

Costs

We have counted with these prices, which might be subject to changes:

• Thin Client: 700 NOK, per piece
• Server: approx. 50,000, per piece
• Monitors: 500, per piece
• Portables: 8,000, per piece
• Power plug 750, per piece
• Table/chair: 700, -
• Increased resource here means increased number of hours for ICT contacts in schools. Here we consider an hourly rate per teacher of NOK 270 (£22.5) - per hour, or NOK 467,100 (£38,925) a year. We also consider somewhat increased resources to central operations of the municipality. We expect slightly less than one new hire in centralized operations for over 1,000 client machines. In addition, ICT contact at each school, training and ICT coordinator.
• Licence costs. Today, we can install Linux on laptops using the school's existing network. Thus we avoid the rent of Microsoft products such as Windows and Office. School Rates for rental of Microsoft program cost as much as all computers over a period of 5-6 years.
• Broadband agreement, all schools have broadband connection. Price depends on the individual school agreement.

Recently used equipment have more performance than the machines that were available for 3-4 years ago. If the users machines had 256 MB of memory and 800 MHz processor then those would fit as diskless clients. This simplifies support for using the CD / DVD player, audio, USB stick and similar.

Other purchasing options

There has been a growing interest from politicians, parents and teachers to go over to laptops in secondary schools. Laptops and a wireless network will give schools a completely different flexibility in room layout and teaching.

The problem with only focusing on laptops is:

• We have to buy Microsoft licenses in addition to the machines.
• The machines have a lifespan of approximately 3 years. Thus the municipality incurs an annual expenditure to cover new classes in secondary schools.
• Increased insurance costs
• A greater need for power outlets when all laptops must have access to electricity.
• Increased need for the schools ICT-contact resources
• Doubling of central operating costs of preparing the disk images etc. for laptops, and maintenance of a locally-installed system on 266 additional laptops.

This option has a total price tag of roughly 12 million NOK, just over 1 million pounds. (This does not include any increase in insurance costs.)

Teachers

Each teacher should have access to a client machine at the school.

Status and objectives

Status: Schools today have approximately 65 PCs divided among approximately 266 employees. This gives a PC coverage of 4 teachers per PC.

We want to give credits to the teachers in Nittedal. The new curriculum sets high requirements for teachers' ICT skills. It will be necessary to ensure that all teachers in Nittedal have access to a computer. Today's teacher plans and implements teaching on and with data. They document and report, write weekly plans, work plans, annual plans and IEPs. More and more teachers use e-mail for contact both at home and school.

Schools have already arranged to buy computers for their staff. As a result, the number of computers varies from school to school. We aim to give each teacher access to a computer at work.

Here we outline two options to achieve full PC coverage for teachers in Nittedal.

Costs

Option 1: Thin clients in combination with portables. This will give each teacher access to a thin client + that 3.3 teachers share access to one laptop.

The advantage of the thin clients to teachers are the low cost of procurement. We can also expect a longer lifetime of the thin clients compared to laptops.

But reused equipment is often without flatscreen. Client machines' cabinets can be large, giving space shortage in the workplace for teachers. Should we obtain a flatscreen to all teachers, one must triple the cost, going from 500, - NOK ( 43 £ ) to 1500, - NOK. The total cost would increase by 200,000 NOK. Overall equipment to teachers cost 1.74 million NOK ( 150,000 £ ).

Other purchasing options

Option 2: Portables for all teachers

The problem we see is the actual location of the thin clients. Teachers have small work desks often in large common rooms. A thin client per teacher with old-style (CRT) monitors would create a space problem in all schools. The problem is greatly reduced with modern flat screens.

The advantage of portables is that they require little space. Teachers can easily bring their work home. The disadvantage is the lifespan of a portable, around half that of stationary equipment. It is reasonable to assume that laptops are twice as expensive to maintain as desktop PCs, and three to four times more costly to operate than the thin or diskless clients.

Recommended technical development budget

In the period 2005 to 2008 we put up the following recommendation for an IT infrastructure at the schools.

Software, learning platforms, and services

Where software runs, depends on infrastructure and capacity of the network. It's fine to operate all installations on schools from a central location, for example from ICT services in the municipality or a centrally located operation.

One must take into account that network capacity to schools can provide limits to how much schools can download at the same time, or where it is best to place servers to get the equipment's full functionality. There is a big difference between a single teacher downloading a film from for example NRK, compared to about 30 students doing the same simultaneously. If the shool has 1.5 Mbit/s broadband capacity, it is not possible for 30 simultaneous users to download the movie directly from NRK. Then you must have cacheing proxies in place at the school.

Check list centralisation

UNINETT ABC has made a document with recommendations <<?FootNote(Recommendations of UNINETT ABC: http://www.uninettabc.no/?p=veiledning&amp;sub=annet )>> related to the centralisation of ICT operations. It gives advice about the placement of servers and which operational tasks may be centralised from the available capacity of the bandwidth to the school.

Software

The new curriculum (L2006) highlights the use of digital tools as one of the "basic skills". We wish that the use of ICT should go beyond teaching, and increasingly provide educational and administrative tools to support learning activity and new forms of learning while providing easy access to knowledge. Giving experience with digital learning platforms is one of the objectives of the competence plan. The aim was for one or more schools to try this out in 2006.

Research shows computer equipment being used to a limited extent for teaching in schools. Computer usage has stagnated and in some subjects declined, research shows (ITU Monitor 2005). The use of ICT in schools is often individualized, and students learn to become consumers. Teaching methods are hindering the sharing of knowledge in school. Few teachers use ICT daily. Internet and text-related services are the most important forms of computer use in schools.

Simply put, teachers focus too much on using tools for office administrative work such as MS Office or OpenOffice.org. What they ought to focus on was the use of simulations, editing pictures, audio and video communication on the Internet, and games.

Home use is often quite different. At home students are producers and use ICT mostly collectively and for communication. They put together and send each other pictures, exchanging content, using the major opportunities for recording, editing and sharing of movies which is possible with today's computers with broadband. Children and young people also play video games more at home than at school (ITU Monitor 2005).

Researchers say that video games are one of the main leisure activities for children and young people. One child in four plays every day (Youth Agency 2006). Video games are a social activity. In the wake of the games both virtual and physical communities arise, from playing together on consoles to participating in gatherings where youth can play.

An important task is that the school development contributes to update general education perspective in the general part of the curriculum. Allowing digital judgement or digital education developed in relation to steps and learning strategies, as stated by the national Research and Resource Centre for ICT in education.

To get equipment more in use requires considerable effort by the teacher. They must be continually educated in new forms of learning to use the new ICT tools for teaching. There must be more emphasis on youth's actual use of media and forms of communication. It is not enough to provide a teaching platform and e-mail. The tools should fully support the new ways of using media.

To achieve this, the equipment must be adapted to the software and the online services that teachers and students use in their school work. The browser is arguably the most important program students use in learning. Many will also be surprised that office programs as OpenOffice.org or MS Office are irrelevant in lower grades. At those grades, simple programs for practicing writings, drawings, communication, simulations and music forming apply. So what is important in the choice of software is to provide good access to the Internet and support for active learning using ICT tools that are relevant to the school subjects.

With diskless clients you get full support for multimedia, film, USB sticks and more. The advantage of thin clients is that they allow reuse from as far back as 1995. At that time the machines had no video capabilities. The USB standard was not fully developed. Computers from 2000 and later usually have a much higher capacity. Such machines can easily show video clips from NRK, DVDs, and one can play games.

The advantage of diskless clients is that they provide the same performance as the so-called thick clients or computers with most of the software installed locally. At the same time one gets the same low operating costs with diskless clients as with thin clients. This is because all the software is managed on the central server machine.

Today Skolelinux comes with over 50 school-relevant programs. In addition, it has browser, email client and OpenOffice.org with 8 different office applications. This is much more than what comes with Microsoft which mostly offers browser, e-mail and 5 current office tools.

With Debian Edu, it is also relatively easy to customize menus for the various stages of education so that we can reduce the number of educational programs. Especially since some applications are introduced in 4th-5th grade. While programs may be popular at first or second stages of education will be too easy when students have gotten older and learned more. In addition, there is an increasing number of educational programs on the Internet. This is software that works on any platform. So you can use the programs at home on Apple or Windows, and the school's Debian Edu. Students handle this just fine.

Learning platforms

Various digital learning platforms are found on the market. Some cost money, others are free. They all offer teachers and students an area where they can share and store documents, send and receive information.

Online services

Regardless of the bandwidth the following functions can be centralized:

• Configuration management, i.e. having oversight and control of the configuration of machines, networks, applications and services
• Program management, i.e. having oversight and control of access to, usage and performance of applications and services
• Updates and patching
• User administration, preferably with a FEIDE compatible user management system (BAS)
• Licence administration
• Monitoring and measurement

Checklist for services that can be centralized or replicated. For example can backup be centralized. The same applies to the user database with a central directory server (LDAP) with replication to each school.

Use of resources in operations

For day-to-day operation of its computers, each school has an ICT contact. ICT contacts have from 2 to 4 hours allocated to this work per week. In addition, the municipality has an ICT tutor in a 50% position working with, among other things, competence and operations. The operation of the Linux network would gradually be transferred to the municipal ICT service in the school year 2005-2006.

On behalf of Debian Edu, Kapp næringshage (business park) made a calculation program which estimates the use of resources for ICT in schools. Today we operate the school network for over 3000 users with 2.1 FTEs. (Schools' ICT contacts allocate a total of 1.6 FTEs for their work, and 0.5 FTEs in the municipality.) When Kapp næringshage calculates our resource requirements for operation, they estimate the current needs to be 4.6 FTEs. This shows that the school has managed much with few resources.

Increased resources must primarily be placed in schools, because the schools' ICT contacts get busier when the number of PCs goes up. Increased number of pcs means increased use, and increased need for guidance in educational use of ICT tools.

Maintenance will increase faster than number of simultaneous users, but maintenance of the machines themselves will increase almost linearly with the number of machines. We want to focus more on the educational use of the equipment, and want most of the increase to be go towards use of ICT tools in school subjects.

There will also be a somehow greater need for increased resources for the municipality's ICT service, but because of economies of scale, the increase here will be small.

Today it is difficult for schools to prioritize hours to an ICT contact. Both because money for this must be taken from already stressed school finances, and because schools have lacked guidance on what and how much ICT contacts at schools will perform.

Operations' roles

The duties of ICT contact at each school:

• Oversee the school's server room.
• Be the school's contact at the municipality - report errors and outages.
• Perform simple maintenance tasks such as replacing mice and keyboards, upgrading thin clients, and simple patching.
• Be the school's superuser - able to advise colleagues about: user interfaces, e-mail, video projectors and relevant applications.
• Participate in ICT gatherings.
• Create and administer local users.
• Perform simple maintenance of printers.
• Create and manage email accounts.
• Facilitate the use of ICT in teaching.
• Perform simple commands and operations under guidance of an ICT-tutor.

From experience, we reckon these tasks take a minimum of 4 hours a week for a school with 50 thin or diskless clients. If the school has fewer machines, this reduces the number of hours a bit. With more machines, for example 150 machines, the local ICT contact at each school needs around a 30% position to easily handle technical maintenance.

If the school can't set aside a sufficient number of hours to the ICT contact, duties in the work list above must be removed, and the opposite if the school can use more hours.

Tasks beyond this, for example updating a website, being an instructor (beyond normal collegial guidance), must be agreed individually for compensation/taking time off.

The ICT supervisor recommends the following tasks for ICT and ICT service supervisor.

Operations:

• Mentor ICT contacts by telephone and e-mail.
• Visit the school for troubleshooting defects and errors on computers, printers and servers.
• Make joint purchases of computer equipment and enter into joint agreements etc.
• Backups.
• Continuous updating of software on school servers.
• Procurement of equipment and software with tenders in the market.

Skills:

• Develop the competence plan.
• Provide schools with courses in the educational use of ICT.
• Operations course.
• Training of ICT contacts in schools.
• Introduction to user interface and standard programs for teachers.

How much of the central operating resources are required, depends on which client types you have selected. Operation of workstations is almost twice as expensive for the operation of diskless clients.

Operation and support costs

The definition of operating costs:

• All activities and initiatives to deliver and/or maintain the desired use of ICT infrastructure.

We have described what is a realistic operating environment, considering a moderate level of service with proactive operation. The Norwegian "Program for digital kompetanse" is the basis for our assessments.

Proactive operation is to discover and rectify errors before they affect users. An example of proactive operation is to update laptops with new disk images once a week. When teachers log in the morning after, all the machines will have been reset to the school's preferences.

Operations get messages about defects in the system before it goes wrong for users. Defects are rectified and bugs fixed before users notice anything. A system example that provides messages used to proactive operation is disk store. They can notify when a hard disk is defective, or if the disk cache is full. Operations can also get information if the computer network is available, or whether processes must be terminated when users logs out.

• Advantage: One achieves very high stability of the system, supposing one has access to the right tools and the right skills. It becomes easier to maintain multiple types of computers because they know if they work or fail and can replace faulty equipment. Disadvantage 1: Requires higher technical expertise. Higher costs of establishing and managing operations. Disadvantage 2: Proactive operation is more costly than reactive operation if one does not count the loss of working hours for equipment that is defective. What you focus on depends on what the consequences are if the system is down. It is difficult to calculate the loss of teaching when ICT tools do not work. If it is required that the pupils and teachers have little downtime, one must invest in high uptime.

When we expand the fleet in schools this must have an impact on both ICT contacts' working resource and municipal ICT service for schools.

To quantify the need, we have estimated increased resource requirements in some of our investment options:

Teachers in 2008

• ) Additional FTEs for maintenance of 266 laptops

Costs for the administration of all the computers for students and teachers. We go out from Alternative 1 in regards to the thin clients for students and teachers, and some laptops.

• ) NOK 270, - per teacher hour 1730 hours a year. ICT contact at each school uses 75% of the time on pedagogical support.

Alternative 2 with laptops for every teacher:

• ) An additional position for maintenance of laptops.

Training costs for students and teachers is roughly the same with Windows and Linux, according to surveys done in schools in Norway and the UK. This is because the training is related to the use by end user programs in everyday school life.

• Usually, at a school with 300 students and teachers only one or two persons need training in operating computer systems. This refers to both an ICT contact at school, and an operator in the municipality.

We have included additional training costs for Linux. When all teachers have one day going through the Linux desktop option, the transition to the new system goes easier for those who think they can only manage Windows. The cost for displays like LærerIKT and similar are not included as we have done in the cost overview from the municipalities in this survey.

Summary of the options

To achieve the objective of one computer per third student and one pc per teacher Option 1 is recommended. This option requires over 800 additional computers compared to current coverage of 506 client machines. Overall, we will then get just over 1300 client computers with emphasis on thin and diskless clients. Some machines will also be portable to provide additional flexibility in everyday school life.

Operating costs:

The large increase in operating expenses from current option 0 to option 1 is due to investment in ICT contact at schools. This increases from 10% to a full 100% FTE. The maintenance ICT contacts do today is around 10% FTE. This will probably increase to 20% with a doubling of the number of client machines. On increase to a full-time position, 80% will be used to support the educational use of ICT tools in school subjects. This means that principals at school must allocate resources for this, so that one follows the national curriculum from 2006.

Recommendation

Alternative 1:

Attachment

Many schools have developed an activity plan for the use of ICT in the school. This should be included as attachment.