MoE, we have a problem!

At the risk of it falling on ears that have become spectacularly deaf since 25 May 2010, somebody needs to go to the Ministry of Education (MoE) at 18 Alexandra Street, St Clair, and screech loudly to the folks in there: 'MoE, we have a problem!'

If that shocks the senior technocrats there, and the Hon. Minister of Education or his Permanent Secretary, into pausing just long enough to consider what folks, like me, have been writing for the past few months on this issue, then it would be worth it.  The issue: the Laptops for SEA Graduates give-away.  We can analyse this in many ways, but I wish to focus on just a few concerns.

(1) What's the full, itemised cost for this project?
The Hon. Education Minister, Tim Gopeesingh, has claimed that the TT$83 million price of the laptops represents value for money.  He claims this was done by cutting out the middle-man and going directly to the laptop vendor, HP.  That may give some initial comfort to folks who're wondering, since one or both of the local agents for HP is part of the Gillette Group, if the decision to buy HP laptops is a reward for an alleged UNC financier.  However, having worked in the industry, I doubt any US vendor would undermine their local retail and support agents by selling directly to local customers (and thus preventing the local agent from earning a commission), so there must be something in it for the local agents: what is it, and what does it cost the taxpayers?  A further rebuttal of this value for money statement may be found here.

Let's look deeper at the costs.  The Minister appears to suggest that the cost of the 20,400 laptops, including software, is $83 million. That's about TT$4,000 (US$650) per laptop.  Let's presume the government is purchasing the laptops and software from the US.  According to HP's US website, the price of the cheapest laptop with basic configuration is US$580 (after a US$100 cash-back rebate).  This includes no additional software except for the operating system (Windows 7) and Computrace LoJack for Laptops (with a 4-year subscription).

If the claims of the Hon. Minister are true, then the laptops are not netbooks.  This leaves US$70 to purchase the additional software such as Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Students (regular retail price US$120), security software, Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office.  This also omits things like the customised curriculum that's supposed to go on the laptops (unless the MoE technocrats are building this in-house for free), the annual maintenance services (i.e. the cost of those technicians hired to provide support in the schools), any of HP's extended warranties (cheapest of which is US$75), additional accessories (e.g. laptop cases), the upgrading or installation of wireless networks in schools, the installation of secured lockers in school for children to keep their laptops when they leave classrooms.  It also excludes future annual fees, such as technical support fees, or software subscriptions (see Point 4 below).

Regarding value for money, I also question whether the discounts are significant at all.  By setting a deadline for purchasing within 3 months of being elected, the MoE reduced their own room for negotiating better pricing, despite tendering, since all bidders would know the government wanted the computers by Sep 2010.  Also, while buying in bulk can give you a discount, filling large orders at short notice can wipe out any discount. Even if the MoE was able to negotiate an additional discount of 10% above the rebate, that gives only an extra US$60-$70 to cover the software.  The numbers don't make sense.  The full cost of fulfilling this promise is much more than $83 million.

(2) How did you determine the required laptop specifications, and what are they?
There is no indication that the MoE went about this in a logical way, viz. (a) determining what subjects would be supplemented by a new computer-aided curriculum, (b) determining what software would be required to run this curriculum, (c) determining the basic laptop specifications required to run the software.  Thus, the fear is that the MoE technocrats visited a preferred vendor's website, examined whatever they listed under the branding of Student Laptop and put those as their basic list of desired specifications.  If the latter was done, it shifts purchasing power to the vendor rather than have the process driven by a locally-founded need.  This makes a mockery of the statement 'value for money': how can you know you got value, if you didn't start with a definition of your needs?

(3) What are the actual specifications of the laptops we're purchasing?
The reporters who wrote the articles in the Express, Guardian and Newsday this week announcing the $83 million price tag clearly know as little as the Hon. Minister about information technology.  Only the clueless would accept specifications like 'faster processing speeds' and 'faster hard drive speeds'; these are not specifications, they are marketing descriptions.  Nor should they let 'bandwidth will be upgraded from 3G to 5G' pass without some explanation (for the benefit of the IT illiterate: 3G and 5G refers to mobile phone network technology, and 5G is not expected to be implemented anywhere in the world before 2020).  Without the actual list of laptop specifications, the public cannot assess any claim of 'value for money'.

Message to the media: if you're going to do any follow-up articles, please send someone knowledgeable about IT to do the interview. Your reports to date have been absolutely poor.

(4) What Computrace service are we purchasing, and why?
The LoJack for Laptops comes in two flavours.  The Standard version does not provide GPS-enabled theft recovery, nor the US$1,000 guarantee if Absolute Software (the makers of LoJack for Laptops) is unable to aid local police officers in recovering a stolen laptop.  Now, if that's the version we're getting, and the Hon. Minister's claim that stolen computers will have their Internet disconnected is true, then Absolute Software won't be able to recover stolen laptops.  In effect, then, all we're doing is writing off the stolen laptops.  So why purchase the LoJack software?  The Premium version would have these two features but will need an additional GPS accessory: if this was purchased, were the GPS accessories included in the $83 million price tag?  All this presumes that the T&T Police Service is going to expend any resources in tracing a stolen laptop given their perceived lack of enthusiasm in recovering more expensive items such as cars.  Further, the theft recovery service has an annual subscription fee attached: has this been included in the costs, and for how many years will this subscription be maintained?

(5) Is it good management to spend $83 million on a pilot IT project?
IT project professionals would tell you that no thinking organisation that cares about the optimal use of their resources would create an IT pilot project involving over 20,000 users.  Since this is the first use of laptops by school children, it is in effect a pilot project.  The stakeholders are going to make mistakes (they already have), with potentially greater costs than if they just tried it at one school first.  Did anyone at the MoE discuss this laudable intention with any of the existing public servants managing the government's network expansion project (in partnership with Fujitsu-ICL) that's been running over the last few years?  If they did, they would have been made aware of the significant project risks that they are now facing.

(6) How will the MoE determine if this project is successful?
What benefits and factors will be measured to determine that this project has been successfully implemented?  Is is considered successful only if the 20,400 laptops have been delivered (so one of the PP's 120-day Plan items can be ticked), or are any measurable benefits actually education-related?

(7) When will the teachers be trained, and what is the nature of that training?
The Hon. Minister said that teachers are already enrolled to be trained in how to use the laptops in support of the curriculum.  However, we have no idea when that training will occur, nor what the training includes.

Further, if all of the extra 3,500 laptops being purchased will be given to the teachers of Form One students, and we accept the Minister's disclosure that it's being rolled out in 151 schools, then that's an average of 23 teachers per school.  Is that not a bit high, even for so-called prestige schools?  The Hon. Minister attempted to rationalise this by claiming that we have 151 schools, with 5 classes and eight subjects: thus he multiplied these three figures to get about 6,000 teachers.  This makes no sense: no school would hire one teacher per subject per Form One class.  The same Math teacher, for example, would teach all the classes, but at different times during the week.  Thus, the more sensible estimate would be 151 schools x 8 subjects = 1,208 teachers (well below the 3,500 extra laptops).  Further, the MoE should have a database of all their current staff: surely they can determine exactly how many Form One teachers they employ?

(8) What agreements have been made to make textbooks eBooks?
The Guardian reported that the Hon. Minister disclosed a future goal of eliminating textbooks and providing all learning material through computer software.  Can more details be given regarding this goal (such as timeline)?  Further, is the MoE intending to encourage local authors to pursue Creative Commons licensing schemes, similar to those which are currently saving university students money elsewhere?

Summary
These and other questions are not about me trying to prevent progress in education: it is about proper use of technology to improve education.  If you are going to buy anything worthwhile or expensive, don't you think beforehand how you're going to use it and what resources would be needed?  If this was really about improving the education of our children at optimal cost, then you won't buy the technology before determining what you're going to do with it.  Throwing money about in this haphazard, rushed way increases the risks.  Along the way you might hit a target, but improper planning increases the risk that you will miss.  I know this idea was spawned by the Congress of the People in the run-up to the 2007 elections, but based on the limited reports from the MoE to date, nobody appears to have put any serious thought into it since then.

In a wider sense, as hinted in my opening line, while the People's Partnership government (PP) has done some refreshingly good things since entering office, there have been some other things to make you wonder.  Both seem to be linked.  In this particular instance, the PP's desire to break political tradition by making grand campaign promises a reality appears to have the worrying side-effect of pulling flaps over their ears when anyone asks if the promise makes sense.  Thus, it seems that the PP Cabinet believes that if there's a choice between implementing a poorly thought-out campaign promise and reviewing a poorly thought-out campaign promise, they would rather the former.  Which leads to the dismal irony that one of the earliest examples of poor thinking has to come from the Ministry of Education. So the first general warning to the PP leadership: you're beginning to show signs of the arrogant deafness to public concerns that got the ex-government kicked out of office.

The latest news on the issue maintain another tradition that needs to be nipped: the lack of adequate public information underlying Cabinet or Ministerial decisions.  Just as with the laptops, we saw it recently in the Hon. Works Minister's proposal to sell off several water-taxis, claiming that it was infeasible to have a fleet of eight without offering any explanation that uses passenger and performance statistics related to the service.  It appears that they're continuing to believe that the public is allergic to information and would rather just have the decisions.  They don't have their fingers on the pulse of the online forums at all.  The same is being seen in this student laptop issue.

Should we be glad they're fulfilling their campaign promises?  Yes, but must it include the half-baked, expensive ones?  Roads may be paved with good intentions, but they should only be built after proper planning.  Also, the sooner the Cabinet addresses their sudden deafness and realises that the public is no longer willing to accept statements of decisions that exclude clarity of rationale, the better.  Otherwise, all we got on 24 May 2010 was exchange, not change.