London’s Local Authorities Save over £100m for Education

By Brian Durrant, CEO, London Grid for Learning

“Save millions of pounds, hundreds of man-hours and benefit from the support and insight of colleagues in other authorities? – No thanks, I’d rather stay in the driving seat.” Perhaps no one has ever said that out loud, but you may have heard this sentiment silently, countless times. Procurement aggregation initiatives can work, but not always, and there have been some notable failures. Numerous factors militate against successful collaborative procurement, but these have less to do with the process involved and more with the politics.

Combining with others may mean a loss of control and accepting the risk that it might not go well. If it does work, it may also seem that the prestige will not accrue directly and wholly to “me and my organisation”.

Since 2002, London’s Local Authorities (LA) have saved in excess of £100m through the collaborative procurement of broadband infrastructure, learning platforms, digital learning resources and a portfolio of managed services, ranging from security systems and e-mail hosting to video conferencing.

“The London Grid for Learning” (LGfL) is a consortium of all LAs in the capital working together to achieve outcomes which exceed what can be achieved by working individually.

The LGfL exemplifies the doctrine of “delivering a national digital infrastructure for education” which is embodied in the DfES “e-strategy” and facilitated through the work of Becta. This recognises the need for minimum and consistent standards in schools’ technology as well as removing the procurement burden from schools and achieving better value through aggregated procurement, employing established frameworks managed by Becta.

By taking a strategic approach, London’s LAs have not only pooled their buying power but also their expertise, securing a set of assets which would still be pipe-dreams if they worked individually. The largest known centrally managed network of its kind, the London Grid connects all 2,600 maintained schools in the region over high-speed fibre optic cable, and also serves most of London’s libraries and local authority offices.

By connecting schools to a discrete managed network, rather than straight to the Internet, pupils are not only kept safe from the dangers of the Internet but also given immediate access, via IP-authentication, to a wide range of online premium learning resources.

There was a lengthy evaluation process looking at all suitable suppliers by a team drawn from the 33 London Local Authorities that LGfL represents. As a result, Fronter was selected as the preferred partner to deliver the London Managed Learning Environment (MLE) to the schools. It uses the Fronter learning platform technology delivered as an end-to-end managed service, which will be an important part of delivering a pan-London vision for transforming educational outcomes.

Content, or any kind of software, is a useful illustration of the collaborative approach. Once software is developed, costs are almost entirely “cost of sale” (advertising to invoicing). The experience of the LGfL Editorial Board – a team of the best minds from across the region, who come together in lively and critical debate to commission or select the best resources – is that by offering to replace 2,600 separate sales with one single sale, discounts of up to 95 per cent are often achievable. A glimpse at www.content.lgfl.net will illustrate the wide range of content freely available to all of London’s maintained schools, and is testimony to the success of this approach.

So what are the downsides, and why does this approach work so well for the London region?

The adoption of standards can feel like “standardisation” and removal of choice. I once heard the phrase at a national meeting “Don’t do a London on us”, but I lost count at the annual BETT show of the number of non-London teachers who said: “This is amazing, can we use all this material in our schools?” LAs hundreds of miles from London have tentatively asked, “How can we join your consortium?” While some schools love it and others hate it, London has had a learning platform and a 100Mb online learning space for every pupil since 2001 – a target which all schools must meet by 2008.

The keys to success for LGfL are communication, enfranchisement and a bottom-up approach, supported by those at the top, including Directors of Children’s Services, who have played a key role in establishing and maintaining the Consortium. Decisions on technology, content, pedagogy, learning platforms, procurement and contract management are taken by specialist groups of officers drawn from across the region who have particular expertise.

Brian Durrant will speak in the plenary D on Friday, November 30, 2007, “The Role of Technology in Supporting Cradle to Grave Learning” from 9:30 – 11:00.

London Grid for Learning

October 29, 2007

Parts of this article were previously published in the eGov Monitor, UK.

 

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