Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in the education sector has promised to do more to promote the use of open source software within schools and colleges and has warned educational institutions in the UK against upgrading to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office.

Becta on Wednesday published its full report in to Vista and Office 2007 and has stuck to its interim view that migration to the new versions is not recommended as “the new features of Vista add some value but, taking account of the deployment costs and potential benefits, widespread upgrade of the ICT estate in schools and colleges is not recommended.” while “no widespread deployment of Office 2007 should take place until schools and colleges are sure that they have in place mechanisms to deal with the interoperability and potential digital divide issues”.

Becta and Microsoft have had a confrontational relationship in the past, although the two also extended a memorandum of understanding in early 2007 despite Becta’s misgivings about Microsoft’s licensing policies. Becta also recently reported Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading, complaining that its licensing policies in the education sector are anti-competitive.

Specifically, Becta is concerned that under Microsoft’s academic licensing programs schools are forced to pay for Vista and Office licenses for machines that are do not run, or are not capable of running, the software - including Apple Macs. Becta is also concerned that Microsoft’s use of converters to support the use of the OpenDocument Format effectively marginalizes the document format and discourages the adoption of office software alternatives.

Becta’s final report on Microsoft’s academic licenses, originally also due to be published this week, has been postponed until the completion of the OFT’s investigation. I had previously voiced skepticism about whether that OFT complaint would amount to anything more than a negotiation tool for better terms from Microsoft, noting that critics of Becta’s approach had pointed out that it could also be doing more to encourage the use of open source software.

While a Becta report from May 2005 had indicated that open source software could produce considerable cost savings, the Open Source Consortium had pointed out that Becta’s own supplier frameworks made it more difficult for schools to adopt open source software.

It appears that Becta is listening, however, following consultation with education and IT industry stakeholders. “During the next twelve months Becta will take a number of steps to encourage more effective choices for educational users. The work will involve delivering a programme of work,” it says in its latest report.

“The work is designed to:

• improve the information on Becta’s website about what open-source software is and its benefits to UK education
• build on the existing research base in relation to the use of open-source solutions in the education sector and identify exemplar deployments of open source. This would include developing a national picture of the current use of open-source software in schools and colleges
• work with the open-source community to develop an online catalogue of open-source software suitable for use in UK schools. The information available would include how to get support for open-source products and how to contribute to their future development. The catalogue would be published under a creative commons licence so that suppliers could repurpose it for their own use
• give guidance on how open-source companies can effectively participate in new framework competitions and how they can provide open-source solutions via Becta’s existing framework suppliers
• work with Partnership for Schools to address any impediments in relation to the use of as wide a range of technologies as possible in BSF (Building Schools for the Future), and to encourage easier access by learners, teachers and parents to a wide range of free-to-use educational ICT products via BSF”

As a UK tax-payer I have to admit to being a bit biased on this one. Ignoring the open source implications for a moment, anything that encourages choice and competition amongst suppliers to education has got to be a good thing, and it’s good to see Becta being more pro-active in that regard. I find the fact that Microsoft (or any supplier for that matter) is currently generating revenue from software licenses for hardware that does not run that software to be particularly distasteful.

In terms of open source and open standards, it is again good to see the promotion of choice, and Becta’s views on OOXML and ODF are particularly interesting. It is well worth reading the report to get the complete picture, but the position in a nutshell is as follows:

“We remain concerned about the approach taken to supporting ODF in Office 2007. While the product includes the functionality to read virtually every other relevant file format ‘out of the box’, the processes for dealing with ODF files are very cumbersome. We identified ten steps that users would need to take in order to locate and install the converter that gives Office 2007 the ability to access ODF files and note that the arrangements for opening and saving ODF files in Microsoft Office 2007 are not intuitive in that they deviate from the normal approach familiar to users. We believe that these arrangements present sufficient technical difficulties for the majority of users to make them disinclined to use competitor products and this may weaken competition.”