Category: laptop

Is HP making MAS in T&T?

September 2, 2010 by Edmund Gall

The Hon. Minister of Education and the Hon. Prime Minister have both attempted to allay concerns expressed through media questions following reports of Hewlett Packard's (HP's) US$55 million settlement with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) yesterday.  The fears seems to arise from HP being accused of being involved in kickbacks, which in T&T parlance is most often indicative of some Minister or Party-in-Power representative getting undue state funding.

On analysing publicly available information, it appears that the US case differs from the T&T contract in key elements, enough to suggest that the risk of similar kickback charges in T&T is low or non-existent.  However, there are some questions relevant to T&T.  First though, a summary of what happened in the US.

What are the charges that led to the HP/DoJ settlement? {Read more}

A Note To The Minister of Education: No, Tim, You're Wrong.

August 27, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

According to this Trinidad Express article:

EDUCATION Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh says the $83 million to provide laptops for successful Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) pupils is not as exorbitant as some people believe.

He said the cost worked out to approximately $4,000 per computer, which had a number of special features, and Government was able to lower costs by eliminating the middle man...

Nonsense¹. First of all, $4,000 a laptop is exorbitant for laptops for children - that equates to roughly $625 U.S. per laptop. The 'special features' really aren't that special - they are customizations of existing software that can be done with a few clicks of a button. There are really no 'special features'. So, remember '$625 U.S.' and check pricing for individual laptops on Amazon.com. 'Special features'? 

I suppose you don't realize that we have the specifications for the tender (available in this post). {Read more}

MoE, we have a problem!

August 27, 2010 by Edmund Gall

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. {Read more}

Laptop Myopia

August 26, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

It seems that the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has decided to spend $83 million dollars (TT) on laptops for children when they don't have a proper plan for implementation within the present Trinidad and Tobago education system. It's not that children shouldn't have laptops. It's that adults should have a plan for educating children with laptops. They don't have one, or if they do it cannot stand up to a slight breeze of common sense.

But first, what we know. We know the specifications for the laptops (they can be found in this post). We know that the curriculum for subjects has not been adapted to technology use. We can infer that the majority of teachers in Trinidad and Tobago don't know how to use technology in the classroom effectively.

We should know that leveraging open source software such as Linux, Open Office and educational software could well have lowered the costs substantially. We should know that since the Ministry of Education doesn't know what educational software they are going to use because they let the vendor choose the software as shown in in the specifications for the tender in  this post. We know that the original budget for these systems was around $45m and that the Trinidad and Tobago government has decided to spend $38 million more on something that they have no effective plan for. We know that the laptops will be outdated in less than 2 years by Moore's Law.  {Read more}

And In The Real World, Real Laptops for $35 U.S.

July 25, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

Just a quick pointer - while the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has put out the specifications for laptops that 'public' tender has started on (see the specs here), there were remarks made about a laptop in the local media (Newsday, perhaps? ) that did not do much to answer questions regarding a cheap laptop that India was making.

It has been unveiled, complete with video:

...The tablet computer, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, will eventually be made available to the public. It will run on an open source Linux operating system with Open Office software and can be powered by solar panel or batteries as well as mains electricity. It will have no hard drive but users will have access to a USB port, 2GB of memory and a video-conferencing facility, internet browsing...

Is the present government of Trinidad and Tobago agile enough to reverse course and accomodate this technology, or is their political inertia going to press the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago to pay exponentially more for a political promise made with no plan in actually assisting educators and children?

Time tells all.

The Backward Laptop Project

July 6, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

From a distance, some emails came across that defined the specifications for the laptops that the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago will be paying for so that children can have them. No, the People's Partnership isn't giving them to the children - you are, out of your treasury. Being able to identify that means you are intelligent. Not being able to identify that means you are...

Before I post the specifications, I'll add my commentary. The hardware requirements for the systems are well defined, exceedingly so. As a software developer with over 20 years of experience and as a software developer who has worked as a technical lead on projects with budgets in excess of $1 million dollars U.S., I have some concerns. I believe you should too.

The logical progression to hardware requirements for such a project are: (1) Identifying the problems, (2) Identifying the software to be used to solve the problems, (3) Identifying the hardware that runs the software (this treats the operating system as an extension of the hardware).

What we have here is actually the complete reverse - which leads me to question the competency of those who are undertaking the project. I could delve into more detail with what is wrong with these specifications but I don't want to spend more thought fixing their specs than they spent in creating them.

In short: This is stupid but it meets the government's apparent requirement: Meeting a political party's promises while assuring that money is spent on something that will have no measurable benefit in the context of education of the children of Trinidad and Tobago. 

Here are the requirements, as posted on the main computing list of Trinidad and Tobago:

  {Read more}

One Hand Doesn't Know What The Other Is Doing?

June 10, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

I find it difficult to believe that on one hand, the newly appointed Minister of Community Development plans to wean out handouts while on the other hand the People's Partnership Campaign promise of lobbing laptops out of the Red House for children: 

Newly-appointed Community Development Minister Nizam Baksh will be moving towards weaning out social programmes which act as handouts causing an increase in the poverty bracket. Speaking to reporters after a tree-planting exercise at Lady Hochoy Home, Gasparillo, on Tuesday, Baksh said people must not depend too much on handouts. He said his philosophy was that people should be taught how to catch a fish rather than give them...

 Really? So what exactly is it about the laptop issue that doesn't make it an ill-conceived handout?

Or has the People's Partnership undergone a lobotomy such that the philosophy of the Minister of Community Development varies from that of the People's Partnership? 

Laptops? Really?

June 3, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

So the People's Partnership promised laptops for children who recently did the SEA. It was the first promise made in their manifesto for the first 120 days.

But what do we really know about that promise? What sort of laptops will they be? How will they be used in conjunction with the education system to increase the potential of these students to do well? 

How do we know if the laptop distribution will be a 'success'? How was success defined? Was 'success' defined? It doesn't seem that way.

Why is the government going to spend money on something that doesn't have a measurable result? And another question: Why is it that so many people blindly support this move without more information? {Read more}