SCHOOL ICT NEWS BULLETIN No 136 - 06/11/2008

Published by Children’s Services

e¹ Rollout Update

As you may be aware, we suspended the roll out of the e¹ product to Primary schools at the end of September. This action was taken in response to concerns being expressed by Primary Heads about issues with the way the software operated and a number of basic faults, which were making the administration of schools more difficult.

A meeting was held with representatives of SNAPP to understand the concerns in more detail. The meeting confirmed the range and volume of issues and we confirmed that until these issues were addressed, the roll out would remain suspended.

Despite the reservations with the way the system was currently operating, SNAPP representatives have also stated, that some areas of the system are much better than Gold and that they can see the benefit of the move to a web based system in order to integrate with other web based products such as Netmedia.

The decision to suspend roll out was confirmed with the e¹ Project Board and an action plan has subsequently been agreed with Pearson Phoenix to resolve the issues. The first step of this action plan is to confirm with those schools operating e¹, issues that they are currently experiencing. We will be sending out the faults and issues logs to all schools to ensure we have a complete picture and aren't missing anything.

As a consequence of the suspension of roll out, all October, November and December training courses have been cancelled. Schools who were scheduled to attend these courses will be contacted individually by the e¹ Project team. For the moment, training scheduled for 2009 is not being cancelled. In anticipation that training may begin again in January, pre migration technical checks will need to restart in mid November, to allow adequate time for any changes to equipment that may be required. In the event that training does not start again in January, this will not be wasted effort, as schools equipment will be ready for migration to e¹ at a later date.

All schools are encouraged to continue with their data cleansing activities. It is important that this work is still carried out.

In recognition of the additional effort schools using e¹ are experiencing, it was agreed with SNAPP represented that the project would reimburse those schools already using e¹ on a flat rate of £500. Arrangements are being made for this sum to be allocated to school budgets.

If you have any other issues relating to the suspension of the roll out, please contact Carole Barwell by email at carole.barwell@norfolk.gov.uk

Author: Carole Barwell

A notice to schools who are using Securus system

Due to a planned system upgrade, users might notice slight changes on the workstations that have Securus clients installed. Users might notice a new AUP (Acceptable User Policy) and a client update process which will be carried out only once after restarting the computer.

Securus Supervisors will need to contact ICT Solutions in order to reset their passwords as new profiles have been created for all subscribed schools.

If you have any queries or questions, please contact ICT Solutions.

Please note that schools who administer their own securus servers (mainly high schools) are not affected.

Author: Khaled Sa’aran