Schools CIO lacks anti-Abbott plan

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 01 June 2010 17:38

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Stephen Wilson, chief information officer of the NSW Department of Education and Training does not have a Plan B for making computers available to state school students if the Federal Opposition makes good its threat to pull the plug on the Digital Education Revolution if elected to Government.

Speaking today at an education forum organised by the Australian Information Industry Association, Wilson said he would be 'very disappointed if that was to occur.' He added that he hoped schools, students and principals who had benefitted from the Lenovo netbook rollout 'would make themselves heard,' presumably at the ballot box, although the Year 10 and Year 9 students with netbooks will be too young to vote at the next election.

Wilson, who described the technology that the DET had rolled out thus far as an 'unstoppable ball', said that 'there is a lot of technology out there and we have developed a foundation that will last for some years to come.'

He nevertheless acknowledged that there was no Plan B currently on the table about how to proceed should a Coalition Government pull the plug on spending on computers for schools as shadow treasurer Joe Hockey pledged in his recent Budget response. 'I can't answer something that might happen, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it,' Wilson said.

Unlike other States and Territories, which have largely left schools to decide how to spend their share of the $442 million Digital Education Revolution pot, NSW has been prescriptive - providing a Lenovo netbook, running Windows 7, and equipped with a range of Adobe software to all year 9 students in government schools. By the end of this year over 120,000 netbooks will have been provided to state high school students.

As students complete year 12 the DET says it will unlock the netbooks from the DET portal through which they currently communicate and gift them to students. NSW's approach consequently means that each year the government has to find the funds for tens of thousands of new netbooks for the incoming crop of Year 9 students.

If there are no more federal funds however, future generations might miss out, unless Wilson can think of a workaround, or wrest back control of the existing netbooks that have been provided to students.