Becta and AlphaPlus and a lot of crossness
Over the last few years Becta, the government’s advisers to education on technology, have been consistently increasing their level of interest and support for Free and Open Source Software. Today they surprised a lot of folk by awarding a contract relating to Free and Open Source software to a little consultancy called AlphaPlus. No I haven’t heard of them either. There was quite a bit of competition for this tender, and some of those who were unlucky this time, including our friend Mark Taylor at the Open Source Consortium, are struggling to understand the decision. You can read Mark’s reflective musings in an open letter here. It doesn’t appear to me that AlphaPlus have done anything untoward in the process, most reactions I have seen were along the lines of “Who?” rather than “Not them again!”. I am sure the education sector in the UK will continue on the path of software Freedom, in fact I wouldn’t be shocked if Freedom 1 (The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs) became mandatory for all software used in Education. I am sure that as schools continue on their path they will need more help and assistance which they will get via procurement processes (procurement just means “buying stuff from people who like filling in forms”) and in these processes contracts will be awarded to big companies and small companies and companies full of educationalists and others full of geeks. Some you win, most you lose.
We at The Open Learning Centre congratulate AlphaPlus Consultancy on winning this contract and wish them the best of luck in delivering a fantastic solution that will just encourage more and more future contracts to go to deserving little consulting companies 🙂
Come and see us at the Surrey Heath Expo
The Open Learning Centre has a stand at the forthcoming Surrey Heath Business Expo in Camberley on 17th June. We have been busy chaps getting stands made up, givaway CDs printed and preparing the all important speaking slot. We have a 20 minute seminar showing local businesses how they can spend less and do more, by using Free and Open Source Software. If you are in the general area then do pop in to see us, and the other exhibitors. It promises to be a fun event, a small local and friendly tradeshow, we are looking forward to it.
Upcoming Free Seminar
A quick plug for our business, The Open Learning Centre, coming up:
On the 20th November in Farnham, Surrey, England. We are running the first of what we hope will be a series of short and hopefully entertaining seminars on Open Source Software aimed mainly for the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise).
The seminar is called “The Way Out is Open!” and we will be using a totally Open Source Software solution to show how a typical business might deal with some of the usual activities surrounding a new product launch. We will demonstrate various popular products such as OpenOffice.org and Joomla! as well as many others.
I appreciate that for the main readership of this blog it will be rather uninteresting, but if you know anyone who could do with being shown the magic of Open Source then send them to this link where they can register to come and see The Open Sourcerers in action: http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com/component/option,com_performs/Itemid,83/.
As I said it is Farnham (not far from Guildford) and will run from 08:30am to 10:30 on the 20th November.
Thanks.
