David M Williams
Sunday, 05 April 2009 17:17
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Actually, I’d like to know the answers to those questions, myself. I called the office of the Honourable Verity Firth MP, Minister for Education, several times. I asked if information about the submissions could be made available, particularly the names of companies to respond, their hardware and software specifications, and the costings.
The first time I called Minister Firth’s office told me they’d already sent me that information. Although I would have been impressed if they had serviced my request before I made it this was obviously not the case.
I checked with my iTWire colleagues in case anyone else had been talking to the Minister’s office. Both editor
Stan Beer and fellow contributor
David Heath have been following this topic and have questions of their own. Yet, neither had called, and neither had received any response.
I thus called Minister Firth’s office again – and again, and again. I was repeatedly told “the” (singular) enquiries person was busy, was on the phone, was out of the office.
Happily, just before 5pm Friday, a friendly chap did phone me back. He did not balk at all at the request I made (“names, specs, costings”) but doubted he’d have anything for me by the end of the day.
Hopefully this coming working week will bring an inbox full of meaty substance. I certainly wasn’t told the information was private or confidential.
I have some big questions and I will be pursuing the government for answers.
I want to know how well the Lenovo and Microsoft solution met the DET requirement. Editor Stan Beer figures the cost to the government per machine is
actually $600 or more.
This doesn’t even include the extra expense for a hardware solution to prevent non-DET usage. (After all, a software solution isn’t going to prevent reformatting.)
How much is the hardware costing per student, and consequently, how much is the software? It stands to reason that as the hardware price goes up so too the software price must diminish to keep within budget. That’s one reason a Linux solution would be ideal; it involves exactly zero dollars in software licensing.
And were there any Linux submissions at all?
