The problem with Balkanisation

In my January pieces in FE News I outlined three technology-in-learning challenges for 2011. Here I comment on the dangers of fragmentation.

Unless the Department for Education quickly steps in, sixth form colleges look set to lose their vital connections to the Internet, and to be cut off from other important ICT-related services. In my January column I emphasised how economies of scale can be achieved through collaboration and the sharing of ICT services.

The JANET network, through which nearly 670 organisations – including Universities, FE Colleges, Research Councils, and Specialist Colleges all over the UK – get their main connection to the Internet is a pre-eminent and genuinely world-class example of a collaboratively procured large-scale shared ICT service.

In England there are about 90 sixth form colleges. All or nearly all of them get their main Internet collection from JANET, as this list shows. But for how much longer?

Late last month JISC Advance reported that from 1 April 2011 the Department for Business Innovation and skills would be unable to fund support for JISC activities for Sixth Form Colleges, because all funding responsibility for Sixth Form Colleges now reside with the Department for Education (DfE).

If funding from DfE is not forthcoming, access by Sixth Form Colleges to all JISC funded services is at risk, including to TechDis, the Regional Support Centres, and JISC Collections. Most immediately alarming, those 90 Internet connections – through which a lot of the informational life blood of the colleges flows – will cease to be funded.

The rational optimist in me says that this is just an administrative glitch in arrangements between two Government departments, and that a solution will quickly be found.

But there are more general problems ahead for the coherent, cost-effective and collaborative provision of the ICT infrastructure on which publicly funded education depends.

Later this month the JISC Board will be considering the recommendations of Sir Alan Wilson’s Review of JISC for the Funding Councils. (ALT’s response to the consultation that preceded the review is on the ALT Open Access Repository.)

The review will surely recognise that the more optional a service becomes the less valuable it will be for those who continue to use it, and the less viable it will be.

The withdrawal of some sectors – the Sixth Form Colleges would be a case in point – in a piecemeal fashion from the JISC family weakens the coherence and value of the infrastructure for all users. Opting out not only carries the overhead of organisation but also leads to wasted public money.

The core JISC infrastructure – both physical, like JANET, and human, like TechDis – needs to be universal and coherent to be worthwhile. It should remain a centrally funded single package.

Seb Schmoller is chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology, an independent membership charity whose mission is to ensure that use of learning technology is effective and efficient, informed by research and practice, and grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies and their capabilities, and the situations into which they are placed