BECTA
Ian Lynch
contract. Apparently some company that has no known experience or track
record in FOSS won it. Looking at the detailed assessment criteria, they
seem skewed away from FOSS and towards subjective judgements about what
professional attributes are important in such a project. Of course none
of that detail was in the spec so I'm afraid I naturally assumed a track
record of building FOSS communities in the target education sector would
be important. Clearly that was a critical error. Apologies.
Ian
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Richard Rothwell
>
> Just in case anyone hasn't heard, we were unsuccessful with the BECTA
> contract. Apparently some company that has no known experience or track
> record in FOSS won it. Looking at the detailed assessment criteria, they
> seem skewed away from FOSS and towards subjective judgements about what
> professional attributes are important in such a project. Of course none
> of that detail was in the spec so I'm afraid I naturally assumed a track
> record of building FOSS communities in the target education sector would
> be important. Clearly that was a critical error. Apologies.
>
> Ian
> --
1) Ian, you have no cause to apologise.
2) Our only mistake was assuming that Becta would behave honourably.
3) Practically the entire education free software and open source
community in the UK will have been insulted by this decision.
The sooner this ineffective Quango is dismantled the better.
Up to now we have been very polite in our campaigning, I believe the
time for politeness is over.
rgds,
Richard
Chris Puttick
of the decision; appointing a company with no track record in delivery
of key aspects of the product tendered for seems a highly
inappropriate way to disburse public funds. If Becta procurement
assessors do not understand the complexities of successfully creating
a sustainable open source product, they should have engaged a
consultant to help them.
Chris
2008/6/12 Ian Lynch <ian....@zmsl.com>:
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Steve Lee
Thank you for all you hard work, enthusiasm, experience and
professional attitude.
This is a real disappointment for us all, hopefully not for schools
use of Open Source. I have no doubt that you and the proposed team
demonstrated a professional attitude and cannot help wondering if this
indicates really 'not getting it' as far as how Open Source operates.
Mozilla and Open Office clearly demonstrate that managing the
complexities of a large community for everyone's benefit and creating
high quality 'products' and services requires skills and and attitudes
that can sometimes appear to be distanced from a limited traditional
view of what 'professional' means. You just need to look at the
results to see it works so well.
We can only hope that the successful company are open as well as doing
a professional job and really embrace Open Source models.
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Steve Lee
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web: fullmeasure.co.uk
blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog
2008/6/12 Ian Lynch <ian....@zmsl.com>:
Iain Roberts
Again, thank you for all your work on this, absolutely no need to apologise.
The decision does seem odd; I think it would make sense to have the most thorough debrief with Becta that we can get to find out why our bid was marked down. On the face of it, it seems like an odd decision, but I'd like to know more.
(I'm happy to do the debrief from our side if you like).
Iain.
----- "Ian Lynch" <ian....@zmsl.com> wrote:
> Just in case anyone hasn't heard, we were unsuccessful with the BECTA
> contract. Apparently some company that has no known experience or
> track
> record in FOSS won it. Looking at the detailed assessment criteria,
> they
> seem skewed away from FOSS and towards subjective judgements about
> what
> professional attributes are important in such a project. Of course
> none
> of that detail was in the spec so I'm afraid I naturally assumed a
> track
> record of building FOSS communities in the target education sector
> would
> be important. Clearly that was a critical error. Apologies.
>
> Ian
--
Iain Roberts
Axiom Tech
p: 0845 127 0310 m: 07958 570202 w: www.axiomtech.co.uk
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Richard Rothwell
>
> There's absolutely no need to apologise Ian.
> Thank you for all you hard work, enthusiasm, experience and
> professional attitude.
>
> This is a real disappointment for us all, hopefully not for schools
> use of Open Source. I have no doubt that you and the proposed team
> demonstrated a professional attitude and cannot help wondering if this
> indicates really 'not getting it' as far as how Open Source operates.
> Mozilla and Open Office clearly demonstrate that managing the
> complexities of a large community for everyone's benefit and creating
> high quality 'products' and services requires skills and and attitudes
> that can sometimes appear to be distanced from a limited traditional
> view of what 'professional' means. You just need to look at the
> results to see it works so well.
>
> We can only hope that the successful company are open as well as doing
> a professional job and really embrace Open Source models.
>
I'm sorry I have to disagree. As I said earlier, Becta is simply not
behaving honourably in this - and the time has come to stop hoping
that they will ever do so. It is not that they 'don't get' FOSS, it
is that they loathe bottom-up movements as they might force them to
actually do something.
This tendering process was a farce and they have reached they outcome
they wanted - and they don't give a damn about:
* us
* value for money
* kids' education
They care about:
* themselves.
/rant
R
--
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Ian Lynch
> Hi Ian,
>
> Again, thank you for all your work on this, absolutely no need to apologise.
Ok, I have had time to go over the assessment feedback in a bit of
detail
Its obvious that the nature of the mark scheme is our downfall. There is
a set of general and specific guidance in it. Anyone who has seen this
-and it was not available with the tender - would be at a massive
advantage. Rather like showing one candidate the exam questions the mark
scheme and everyone else just the questions. I happen to be Chief
Assessor at a QCA accredited Awarding Body so I know these things :-)
So if one bidder has been through this or a similar process with BECTA
in the past they are at an unfair advantage. Secondly since a track
record in FOSS in schools seems to be entirely eliminated from the
assessment criteria, probably the most important factor gets no weight
in the assessment.
Here are our scores and an analysis. Of couorse if anyone wants a copy
of the bid I can supply it. If anyone wants copies of the other bids to
make a comparison, do a Freedom of Information Request to BECTA.
personally I have spent enough time on this. Some of us have to earn a
living without relying on state hand outs :-)
Capability and experience 40% 30.2%
Quality of proposal 20% 14.4%
Value for Money 20% 10.8%
Ability to meet timescales 20% 13.3%
Capability and experience
Relevant sector experience 13.3% out of 13.3% - ok we couldn't have done
better
Relevant subject matter knowledge and skills 11.9% out of 13.9%
If the subject matter is an Open Source project in education it's rather
difficult to see how we would be worse than anyone else, but of course
if everyone scores close to full marks there is no differentiation.
Professionalism and quality management 2.7% out of 8%
How a set of people who run successful small businesses and have recent
teaching experience that includes going through OFSTED etc, can set up a
new Awarding Body from scratch and satisfy the national regulators on
Quality Assurance can be scored as completely incompetent in terms of
professionalism and quality management is beyond me. Apart from that I
was an OFSTED RgI - how can I then have no idea about quality assurance?
Joan Knott is Principal Moderator for GCSE statistics so she has no idea
about quality management? We had Two people with PhDs in technical areas
that obviously involve quality control. The Spec criteria said quality
of the people involved. It did not say ability to double guess a marking
scheme that is completely opaque. Our bid was full of evidence in this
area but of course if it is mechanistically scored against specific
structures not clear in the spec an outcome like this is likely. What it
means is that the score bears no relationship with reality.
Provide three client references as evidence of relevant sector
experience on similar types of project. 2.4% out of 5.3%
AFAIK none of the references was actually contacted. Less than half the
marks but what is the definition of a similar type of project? If it
includes building open source communities in the schools sector I could
easily justify that if one reference does not include this the bid
should score zero and if it does it should score maximum points. In
other words the definition of the assessment criteria while crucial is
arbitrary.
Specify project deliverables, which should meet the stated requirements
7.8% out of 10%
Since we surpassed the stated requirements by a long way at the start
why was that not 10 out of 10?
Outline of project method 4% out of 6%
Who knows?
Outline project roles and responsiblities and detail corresponding work
effort, including client involvement 2.7% out of 4%
Again impossible on this to know why what was provided was or was not
enough.
Value for money
Analysis of the cost submission balanced against the deliverables of the
proposal. 8.3% out of 12%
All I can say is to score higher than our proposal someone would have to
provide as sponsorship a good deal more than the value of the grant
available as sponsorship. That would be interesting to see.
Of course this method also seems to have ignored all proposed
sponsorship and the value already built up by SF-UK over 5 years and the
investment of TLM in the existing community site.
Payment phasing 2.5% out of 7.5%
Payment phasing is not a value for money issue, except very slightly at
the margins. We specifically said in the interview that we were happy to
phase the payments in any way that BECTA wanted and that what was in the
bid was just a suggestion. Even so it was to put money in Escrow with
payment in arrears only on delivery so I can't see how we could score
less than half on that. Of course any bidder with knowledge of BECTA's
preferred methods is at an immediate advantage if other don't have that
information.
Ability to meet time scales.
Outline the proposed timeframe for delivery, including key milestones
6.7% out of 10
How can you score less than 100% when your proposal at outset surpassess
the targets set in the spec? What evidence is there that we won't meet
the timescales? We could of course have set undemanding targets - would
we then score 10 out of 10?
Current capacity to deliver 6.7% out of 10
Since we have already demonstrated a capacity to deliver with no funding
from BECTA why would theoretical considerations over-ride what is
manifestly proven? Again any bidder with access to the general guidance
from previous project applications has a massive and unfair advantage
since this guidance was not available to all bidders at the time of
making the bid.
> The decision does seem odd; I think it would make sense to have the
> most thorough debrief with Becta that we can get to find out why our
> bid was marked down. On the face of it, it seems like an odd
> decision, but I'd like to know more.
>
> (I'm happy to do the debrief from our side if you like).
>
> Iain.
>
> ----- "Ian Lynch" <ian....@zmsl.com> wrote:
>
> > Just in case anyone hasn't heard, we were unsuccessful with the BECTA
> > contract. Apparently some company that has no known experience or
> > track
> > record in FOSS won it. Looking at the detailed assessment criteria,
> > they
> > seem skewed away from FOSS and towards subjective judgements about
> > what
> > professional attributes are important in such a project. Of course
> > none
> > of that detail was in the spec so I'm afraid I naturally assumed a
> > track
> > record of building FOSS communities in the target education sector
> > would
> > be important. Clearly that was a critical error. Apologies.
> >
> > Ian
>
--
Ian Lynch
company to bid that has no track record in FOSS? Only one company fell
into that category of 4 bidders as far as we can tell and the tender was
not widely advertised except to targeted groups like us. So why target a
single company with no track record? Then use a mark scheme that is not
going to give any credit to a company bidding with a track record in
FOSS in schools.
Hm,
Chris Puttick
linuxgirlie
Jo
http://www.karoshi.org.uk
SteveLee
> Appeal.
Good Idea, it's public money at stake
Steve
linuxgirlie
So far I have:
Sirius
SchoolForge-UK
Open Source Software Watch
Dover Grammar School for Boys
Alphaplus Consultancy
But on the spreadsheet there are 6 places on the list. Who is missing?
Jo
http://www.karoshi.org.uk
Simon Elliott
garry
"cooperation with the Open Source community" We end up telling them
how to do the job. Stinks, and I am very depressed/angry/etc.
Garry
Iain Roberts
It goes something like this:
"Grow up! This is the way procurement often works: a company with close links to the procurer wins the business and then subcontracts all or part of the work out to the guys with the skills to do it (who are often other unsuccessful bidders). Yes, it's ludicrous, yes it's a waste of public money but for a risk-averse public sector it makes a strange sort of sense.
The question is what to do about it. If we boycott, we could see another OSS project fail, further discrediting FOSS in the UK public sector. If we work with AlphaPlus in a commercially mature way, we'll see a proportion of the funding money coming into the community and end up with a successful project.
We can point out that Becta, in following this procurement strategy, have been rather foolish (substitute alternative comment about Becta to fit your mood) but trashing the whole project is little more than an ego trip."
Iain.
----- "garry" <ga...@scholarpack.org> wrote:
John Ingleby
he/she tries to walk & falls over: let's celebrate the first baby step!
Trouble is, we also have to change the nappy...
John
****
rich...@m6-it.org
I can't agree I'm afraid. Becta have treated the entire community
with contempt. They have appointed a contractor who, by their own
admission, cannot deliver the contract.
For the time being we should concentrate on demonstating that Becta
have broken every rule in this contract.
Then we should do the work without them.
rgds, R
John Ingleby
disruptive in class. Send them out of the room for a while, and have a
quiet talk with them afterwards. Our school expects higher standards of
behaviour.
John
****
Peter Kemp
any links with the groups represented on here?
Pete
On Jun 14, 9:55 am, John Ingleby <j...@coronet.co.uk> wrote:
> I see what you mean: Like dealing with a pupil who is being wilfully
> disruptive in class. Send them out of the room for a while, and have a
> quiet talk with them afterwards. Our school expects higher standards of
> behaviour.
> John
> ****
>
> > Hi John,
>
> > I can't agree I'm afraid. Becta have treated the entire community
> > with contempt. They have appointed a contractor who, by their own
> > admission, cannot deliver the contract.
>
> > For the time being we should concentrate on demonstating that Becta
> > have broken every rule in this contract.
>
> > Then we should do the work without them.
>
> > rgds, R
>
Ian Lynch
> Has anyone actually had any dealings with these guys? Do they have
> any links with the groups represented on here?
Do you mean BECTA or AlphaPlus?
Sure we have had dealings with BECTA but not much with those that
assessed the bids. AlphaPlus as far as I know, none. They look like the
sort of outfit that gets set up when people take early retirement, have
a decent government pension and the connections to then become
"consultants" working on contracts with former colleagues or associates
of them without too much risk to themselves. That doesn't mean that
there was necessarily corruption as such, it just affects things like
the way mark schemes for tenders are designed.
I am inclined to go with Iain and John although I think it is worth
registering a specific complaint to BECTA to try and prevent such a
farce happening again. Let's face it I'm probably the most snubbed as
BECTA's official point of contact with the OSS community and the person
with the most similar professional credentials to the winning bidder. I
said several times in the interview that getting broad community support
was important if this project was to be a success. What they are saying
is that I'm professionally inferior to the people at AlphaPlus, can't
write a successful application (despite more than 200 specialist schools
apps, several EU projects etc) and my FOSS experience and knowledge
counts for nothing.
But despite that, if it looks like something sensible can be retrieved
from all of this I'm not going to just take my ball home. Equally I'm
not making any secret of the fact I think the process was not only
broken but demonstrates rank incompetence and someone should be held
accountable.
Let's see what comes up.
Ian Lynch
> The Education Consultants don't really have any in house expertise
> regarding ICT,
This educational consultant does. I do know others that do.
> they get their words from brochures and then call up a
> supplier. They have v few leads as to how OSS works but we could advise
> them.
>
> Actually, probably ONLY we could advise them.
That is just a touch arrogant. I know people that know about FOSS in
education through NAACE who are not members of OSC or SF-UK. We don't
have a monopoly on expertise.
> Maybe my assault on Iain was
> wrong headed, perhaps us little fleas should jump on the backs of fleas
> with money.
>
> it boils down to what is the value of our expertise to education:
>
> then
> 1) should we give it away to the fleas? (SchoolForge)
> 2) should be attempt to sell it to the fleas? (Axiom)
> 3) do we try to displace the incumbent fleas?
> 4) should we try to de-louse the system? (Blue Fountain)
I believe we do not let BECTA off the hook for a flawed tender but we
can also use SF-UK as the umbrella community group for education to make
the project workable.
The mission of Schoolforge-UK is "to bring together individuals and
organisations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for UK
schools and colleges.
So AlphaPlus can join SF-UK and use the SOSP to fund projects like
rationalising the case studies and giving the web site a revamp. They
can be a subset of SF-UK and we can look to bring in other supporters to
really make the SF-UK project buzz.
Thanks to John Ingleby for the idea of AP joining SF-UK.