Top tips for maximising a minimal ICT resources and budget, from Ben Whitaker.
With school budgets under increasing pressure, one of the first casualties of any cost-cutting after staffing is usually the ICT budget. With ICT prevalent in every aspect of school life and schools now reliant on it for everything from classroom technology to backend functions, it’s always going to be a tough call to decide where to cut and save costs, while at the same time, still keeping the same standard of ICT availability and progression. From previous experience, to juggle this fine balancing act, over the years I’ve found a series of measures that can help without significantly impacting the levels of service offered by the ICT team.
Here are some things to consider that may also help you…
Maximising your budget
The first aspect is to get a grip of the ICT budget – you need to know what is being spent and where. You will usually find licensing and subscription services amount to a large proportion of the ICT budget. I always check not only that these services are still needed but that they are being utilised to their full potential. In addition, check out companies that tie multiple products into one solution; again, savings could be made over having an individual product for each service, such as text messaging, room bookings and parents’ evening appointments.
IT Management (ITAM) tools can further help with these decisions as they have the ability to check what software is being used as well as hardware monitoring, allowing you to see how well these current devices are being utilised.
Extend your refresh cycle
Another area is around the refreshing of ICT equipment. Most schools used to work towards 3-to-5-year refresh cycles, but this has become unsustainable in the current climate. Here, decisions can be made to either increase the life of the device or find more cost-effective solutions. From my own experience, I have found that by increasing both the memory and changing hard drives to SSDs, you not only increase performance but potentially get at least two extra years from the device.
New or refurbished?
This can, of course, vary from school to school and the preference of the person in charge of purchasing the ICT equipment, but good quality refurbished stock from the likes of ICT Direct and Rapid IT can make a small budget go a long way. Again, considerations need to be made based on what tasks the devices will be performing. Most refurbished kit also comes with a warranty but, with the ever-changing pace of ICT, is it still worth investing so much in fixed devices?
These are just some of the ways that have helped me to make the most of a limited budget. Decisions being made are not always educational, but business ones. I am sure colleagues in a similar position also have other ways they have managed to stretch their budgets. And, if you are an ANME member, you can find and share these tips on the ANME portal!
Author
Ben is director of estates and IT at Bury Grammar School. He is also the co-founder of the Association of Network managers in Education (ANME). Ben has worked in various IT support roles over the last 18 years.
